Reflective Bible Study

Following Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, John shifts focus and draws our attention onto what was likely Jesus’ biggest proclamation in the temple during His entire ministry. In this declaration, John draws our attention onto a dilemma the crowd faced when hearing Jesus predicting what will happen and having that conflict with what they knew the scriptures said concerning the Messiah.

This event begins with an interesting detail that is not really resolved anywhere in the Bible. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 12, and we will read it from the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 20, John tells us that:

²⁰ There were some Greeks among the people who went up to worship during the feast. ²¹ They came to ask Philip for a favor. Philip was from Bethsaida in Galilee. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” ²² Philip went to tell Andrew. Then Andrew and Philip told Jesus.

Pausing briefly here, nothing is said, implied, or suggested in the passage regarding whether Jesus left where He was standing to talk with these Greeks who wanted to see Him. I can suspect that Jesus went to speak with them, because it would have been the polite thing to do, but nothing in the Bible passage that I can see suggests this.

What follows next might be after Jesus has went out into the outer court where the Greeks would have been, or it may have happened immediately when Andrew and Philip told Jesus about the Greek individuals’ request but prior to Jesus heading to the outer courtyard to meet with these Greeks.

Either way this event happened, we continue in verse 23, which tells us:

²³ Jesus replied, “The time has come for the Son of Man to receive glory. ²⁴ What I’m about to tell you is true. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only one seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ²⁵ Anyone who loves their life will lose it. But anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it and have eternal life. ²⁶ Anyone who serves me must follow me. And where I am, my servant will also be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

²⁷ “My soul is troubled. What should I say? ‘Father, keep me from having to go through with this’? No. This is the very reason I have come to this point in my life. ²⁸ Father, bring glory to your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven. It said, “I have brought glory to my name. I will bring glory to it again.” ²⁹ The crowd there heard the voice. Some said it was thunder. Others said an angel had spoken to Jesus.

³⁰ Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. ³¹ Now it is time for the world to be judged. Now the prince of this world will be thrown out. ³² And I am going to be lifted up from the earth. When I am, I will bring all people to myself.” ³³ He said this to show them how he was going to die.

³⁴ The crowd spoke up. “The Law tells us that the Messiah will remain forever,” they said. “So how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?”

³⁵ Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light. Do this before darkness catches up with you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. ³⁶ While you have the light, believe in it. Then you can become children of light.” When Jesus had finished speaking, he left and hid from them.

In this passage, we discover some powerful ideas, and we also discover God the Father’s third declaration about who Jesus is. It is interesting to pay attention to the moment God the Father spoke, because with the crowd’s reaction, we find an interesting conclusion. When God spoke from heaven, everyone heard it. I suspect that the disciples understood it. Others recognized that it was a voice but they did not understand it. Even others simply discounted it as thunder and not a true voice.

I wonder if this reflects our varied experience with God. When God speaks into our lives, it’s most likely not going to be with a thunderous voice, but I wonder if God speaking into our lives might be met with the same three varied responses. Some people might understand God when He speaks. Others may recognize that God is speaking, but they are unsure exactly what He is saying. Still others might simply discount God’s voice as insignificant and ignore it. Whichever case we might fall in, the issue is with us and not with God.

However, what Jesus tells us in verse 24 is also significant: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only one seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” In this verse, we have an opening for Jesus predicting His upcoming death, and Jesus understands that it is through His death that His life will produce the greatest harvest. In an interesting way, we also discover the powerful truth that without Jesus’ death, there would be no harvest, because without Jesus’ gift, the only ones able to pay for our sins are ourselves and the payment is death.

God loves us more than we could possibly imagine, and because of this, God made a way for us to be redeemed while also keeping His Law in effect. If God discounted His Law in order to amplify forgiveness, then Satan would win by claiming God is truly unjust, holding different people to a different standard. If God upheld His Law without any hope of forgiveness, Satan would also win because his claim is that God is unloving towards those who break His Law.

The path where Satan loses and God achieves victory is through God paying the punishment for our sins, because this path proves both justness and love, and this was demonstrated through Jesus’ death on the cross.

In this declaration, we also have the powerful promise that Jesus gives us in verse 26, when He tells us that: “My Father will honor the one who serves me.”

If we want to be honored by God, the best way for us to do so is by serving and obeying Jesus. We are able to serve Jesus by obeying what He commanded His followers to do, and by modeling Jesus’ life and His love to the world around us. Jesus’ life consisted of helping as many people as God brought into His life, challenging those who wanted to build themselves up at the expense of others, and opening the door to God when the religious elite had tried to close the door and lock it for those outside of their clique of legalism.

We serve Jesus the best by proclaiming God’s love and inviting all who are willing to come to Jesus and accept the free gift He offers to us. Through Jesus’ death, we can have a new life with God, and because Jesus gave His life for us, we are guaranteed an eternal life with God when we accept Jesus’ life and His sacrifice on our behalf.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to accept Jesus’ gift of His life on your behalf. Reject Satan’s lies about God being unloving and unjust, because looking at what Jesus accomplished for us proved once and for all how big a liar Satan really is, and how much God was willing to go through to demonstrate His love for all of us.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself, paying special attention to Jesus’ life and His mission to this world. The whole Bible draws our attention onto the theme of God’s love and His justice, and even with the challenging parts of the gospel message, when we look at them in light of the cosmic conflict over God’s character and Satan’s accusations, we discover a bigger picture of God than we realized before.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Coming immediately following our parable about the lost sheep, Jesus continues by sharing another similarly themed parable that is set in a different context. While the previous parables we looked at focused on a sheep getting lost, or perhaps wandering off, this second parable involves finding something that was lost that could not really get lost on its own.

Let’s read the parable and discover what happened. Our passage is found in the gospel of Luke, chapter 15, and we will read it from the New American Standard Bible. Starting in verse 8, Jesus continued by saying:

⁸ “Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? ⁹ When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ ¹⁰ In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

When reading this short parable, I am intrigued by the detail that while a sheep could wander off and get itself lost, a coin can’t really lose itself. Sure, if the coin is bumped off of a table, gravity helps the coin fall and get the energy to bounce and/or roll away from the table, but after the coin has stopped moving, it will stay in the spot it stopped until it has been found by someone or something. On the surface, it sounds as though in this parable, God is capable of losing something.

However, this illustration Jesus told does not teach this. This illustration is not a parable that describes the kingdom of heaven in a traditional sense. When looking specifically at this parable, the emphasis is not on the losing, but on the type of joy that is experienced when what was lost has been found.

Imagine with me that you misplaced a check for one thousand dollars. This check had arrived as a gift in the mail and you hadn’t gotten the chance to deposit it yet. Whether one thousand dollars is a large amount of money for you or not, I am pretty confident that you would search your house from top to bottom until you found it. If the check was worth two or three months worth of your income, you might not have much of a house left after searching through it to find the lost check.

But continue imagining with me for a moment. Once you have found the check, it’s likely you’d race to deposit or cash it in, and then following that, you would breathe a huge sigh of relief. You may even celebrate depending on how difficult it was to find.

The gist of Jesus’ parable is that a similar joy and/or celebration happens “in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents”.

Part of me wonders if this actually is more accurate to how God looks at many people in the world today than the illustration of a lost sheep. While a lost sheep implies that it was part of God’s flock of sheep at one point in its past, the sheep may realize that it is lost after it wandered off.

However, a lost coin has no awareness of being lost, a lost coin doesn’t have any awareness of its value in the owner’s eyes, and a lost coin has no possible way of being found other than the owner, or someone else, recognizing and rescuing it.

In my mind, this is a better picture of our world today. Most people who don’t know Jesus wouldn’t think of themselves as lost. Most people don’t have any clue how valuable they are in God’s eyes. Most people have no idea that God desires to recognize and rescue them from the sin that is destroying this world.

When the majority of the people in the world believe that if God exists, that He started history then walked away, this belief supports the idea that God doesn’t care about them or the state of the world today. In most people’s minds, God is absent, and we are left on our own. If God exists and if He started everything, that doesn’t change anything today because God is off doing his own thing leaving us on our own.

Except that if that were the case, Jesus wouldn’t have come, and we likely wouldn’t exist. If God wanted a perfect universe, and part of the universe became infected with sin, a distant, uncaring God would simply wipe that part of the universe away. We wouldn’t exist and we wouldn’t have any clue.

This doesn’t mean that we came into existence without God’s involvement. Instead, this means that because we are still alive and breathing, God cares about us. Just as we focused on in our last parable and episode, this parable concludes with the same big idea. Verse 10 tells us that “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Jesus’ conclusion to these parables speaks volumes regarding who we are, who God is, and His plan for our lives. Unlike a coin that has no idea it is lost, we are able to recognize our need for God, we are able to repent, and we are able to return to God after we have gotten lost.

However, the huge truth in these parables is that when we get lost, we are not capable of finding ourselves. Instead, when we are lost, God is the One who finds us. Sometimes God finds us personally, through the Holy Spirit, while other times the Holy Spirit partners with others who God has found to help us return to Him. It is less relevant how God finds us; it is more relevant that when God has found us that we choose to repent, because when we repent, there is a celebration in heaven!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, continue to seek God first in your life and to place Him as your number one priority. Choose to accept that because you and I exist, that means that God still has a purpose for us being alive in the world today and that He still has something for us to learn and help others in this world tainted by sin. However, also realize that God’s goal isn’t for us to live forever in sin. Instead, it is for all of His people to live forever in a new, recreated sinless new heaven and new earth.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn what God wants to teach you about Himself and about His goals and ideals for your life. God’s view of us is infinitely higher than our own view of ourselves, and we know this because of what God gave in order to redeem us from sin. God gave Jesus to die for us to take our punishment for sin upon Himself.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or drift away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

At the beginning of the week leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion, one of the most famous events is Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Tradition suggests that this happened on Palm Sunday, which was one week before Jesus would step victoriously out of the tomb.

However, as I read this event, I am amazed by something that isn’t said, that isn’t even hinted at, but something that only God and the Holy Spirit could be behind.

Let’s read this event and draw out what we can learn from what happened. Our passage is found in John, chapter 12, and we will read it using the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 12, John tells us that:

¹² The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. ¹³ They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

¹⁴ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:

¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
    see, your king is coming,
    seated on a donkey’s colt.”

¹⁶ At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.

¹⁷ Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. ¹⁸ Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. ¹⁹ So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

When we read this event from John’s gospel, I am amazed at the order of events. According to John, the people start shouting and proclaiming their praise for Jesus before Jesus has even sat down on the donkey. Part of me wonders if this celebrating began while two of Jesus’ disciples were away borrowing the donkey Jesus asked them to go and get. After the celebrating had begun, Jesus’ two disciples arrive with the young donkey and Jesus sits on it in order to fulfill the prophecy.

However, in this event, I am amazed because nowhere do I find Jesus requesting or asking anyone for praise or celebration. If it were not for Jesus’ words in a different gospel record when challenged to silence His followers and their praise, we might conclude that this was something that the crowd had prompted. Instead, when challenged to silence the crowd cheering for Jesus, Jesus told the religious leaders that if they were to be quiet, the rocks themselves would cry out. This celebration was entirely God inspired and God prompted.

However, while the celebrating was going on, John inserts an interesting detail into this event that seems out of place. In verse 16, John tells us that “At first his disciples did not understand all this [referring to the prophecy]. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.”

While on the surface, we might be tempted to think that this celebrating was the point in time when Jesus was glorified. However, looking at the details of this verse, I suspect that John really means after Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected. In our next few episodes, we will discover how John paints Jesus being glorified as a future event, and not as this single celebration.

Because of this detail, I wonder if the crowd understood or remembered this prophecy about Israel’s King riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. This prophecy, and its fulfillment, is incredibly counter-cultural. The typical grand entrance for a king during that era, would be riding into the home city victoriously riding a mighty warhorse, riding in a chariot, or entering in an equally strong fashion. I don’t know of the Bible talking about any animal that would be considered lower than a donkey that could be ridden.

Not only were donkey’s considered among the least symbolically strong animals, John points us to the detail that this was a young donkey, and I wonder if this donkey was barely old enough to support Jesus’ weight. These details draw us to the conclusion that Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the weakest animal that could be ridden.

If the crowd remembered this prophecy, while the disciples didn’t, I wouldn’t be too surprised to then hear them proclaiming Jesus to be a King, especially after seeing Him riding on the donkey. However, John frames this event as the people proclaiming Jesus to be a King before the donkey shows up. This is powerful. The people proclaim their praise and belief in Jesus as someone sent to them from God before they witness the fulfilled prophecy!

By riding into Jerusalem on the weakest available animal, we are reminded that Jesus is not interested in proving His strength, His power, or His influence to us. That is something sinful people do. Instead, we are called to recognize that Jesus’ kingdom is one that challenges us to continue stepping down in order to help. We are called to help the lowest and least in society, regardless of what others think, regardless of whether we will be thanked or repaid, and regardless of what being associated with these other people means for our reputation.

Jesus didn’t focus on what other people thought of Him. Instead, Jesus focused on who He could help at each moment in time, Jesus focused on how He could step down in each situation, and Jesus focused on pointing all glory and praise upwards to God while He stepped down.

Interestingly enough, other people hoisted Jesus up onto the cross. Other people lifted Jesus up in order to glorify Him. In the same way, we are called to intentionally step down, pointing all glory and praise upwards, and let God, perhaps through other people, lift us up.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, continue seeking God first in your life and choose to intentionally step down when given the opportunity to. Choose to point all the praise and glory you might receive upwards to God and intentionally seek out places where you can step down and help those who need help. Choose to help those people who cannot pay you back for your kindness.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to Jesus each and every day. A personal relationship with Jesus is best formed and built on the foundation of prayer and study, and the closer we are to Jesus, the more we will recognize the opportunities He sends into our lives to help those in need.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

In our last episode, we focused in on one of Jesus’ most famous illustrations about a man seeking a single lost sheep from his flock of 100. This parable is found in two of the four gospels, and it is interesting to discover that the context and focus of each of these parables is different.

Because of this, for our episode today, we’ll spend our time looking at the other similar parable and discover that not only does God seek out His lost children because He wants to keep them safe, but God also seeks out a different group of people to save. This second group is the focus of Luke’s version of this parable.

So without delaying any further, let’s look at our parable and passage for this episode and discover what God wants to teach us through Jesus’ words.

Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 15, and we will read it from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 1, Luke tells us that:

¹ Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. ² Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

³ So He told them this parable, saying, ⁴ “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? ⁵ When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. ⁶ And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ ⁷ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

In this parable, the sheep that God seeks are sinners who are willing to repent. While on the surface, this sounds similar to the “little ones” in our last episode, the context this passage suggests is actually about the opposite. The little ones in Matthew’s version of this parable could mean those who society has rejected, it could mean children in a literal sense, or it could mean followers of God, who are people we sometimes refer to as God’s children. Matthew’s version of this parable focuses on God seeking and protecting His children if they get lost or wander away.

Luke’s version of this parable contrasts this by showing how there is celebration when God finds someone who was not His child who is willing to repent and be adopted into His family. The focus on redeeming sinners is similar but distinctly different in this similar, but also distinctly different parable.

When I read this parable, I am wowed by the fact that God is willing to leave those who are living righteously in order to search out someone who is lost. Through the details in this parable, we discover God is in the business of seeking sinners and bringing them to Him. When God finds a sinner who is willing to repent, it is as though He finds one of His lost children and is excited to bring them home.

However, as I read this parable, I am amazed at something else. Both Matthew and Luke’s parables include a detail like this, but each detail is different. In our parable, we discover that when the man realizes that one of his sheep are missing, he leaves the ninety-nine “in the open pasture” to go after the one who was lost. Matthew’s gospel describes the location as in the mountains, which sounds more dangerous, but it also implies that there is some natural protection from predators from the landscape.

When in the open pasture, there isn’t much protection from predators, and it is amazing to think in my mind that God was willing to do this for us. While my mind might be quick to conclude that this decision is reckless on the man’s part, when we look at the big picture of what God did for humanity, we discover an amazing truth: Those who need no repentance are not in danger. While there may be a group of people who live perfectly righteous, with no need for repentance, and while I know this is one goal Jesus has for His people, I wonder if we are forgetting God’s unfallen worlds in our first thoughts.

God is a God who creates, and it is illogical to think that God created the universe, the angels, then humanity, before then stopping. It is much more logical to picture God as a God who has created and who keeps creating. It would be an understatement to limit God’s creation to simply 100 worlds in a universe larger than we can comprehend, but this is one way of understanding God’s perspective in Luke’s version of the Parable of the Lost Sheep.

In this parable, we discover how God, through Jesus, leaves heaven, which includes all the righteous created beings, and He comes to earth to rescue and redeem the one world that was tricked by Satan and fell into sin. Those left in the open pasture had everything they needed. Looking from the big picture, those left in the open pasture had food, water, and a safe place to rest. The only place where there is real danger in the universe is the places that have been infected with sin. Places in the universe that are still sinless are safe places for God’s unfallen creation.

Zooming back into the smaller picture, the same is true for our individual lives. When a sinner turns away from their sins, when they repent, and when they let God into their lives and hearts, there is more joy in heaven because the number of redeemed people has just increased. While those who need no repentance don’t get a party in heaven like those who had just repented do, it is worth remembering that we all have sinned. This means that we all need repentance at some level and at some point in our past, and when we repented from our sin, there was a celebration in heaven at that point in our lives. When we turned away from sin, there was a celebration in heaven!

This passage also points us to another amazing realization. If we want to bring joy to heaven, all we need to do is partner with Jesus in helping bring sinners to Him. It is also worth noting that this is something that is only possible for God’s people to do in this life and in this world. When we reach the new heaven and the new earth, there will be no need to bring sinners to God because the only “sinners” present are those who Christ has redeemed and recreated!

Because of this, we have a reminder in this parable that we can partner with God and bring joy to those in heaven when we bring people who need a Savior to Jesus. This is one of our highest callings in the world today, and this calling helps God with His goal of redeeming and saving the greatest number of people possible for eternity!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, keep seeking God first in your life and keep trusting, believing, and sharing Him. If you haven’t been intentional about doing so, choose to live your life in a way that leads others to Jesus, and in a way that prompts people to give their hearts to God.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God. Through prayer and Bible study, you can develop a personal relationship with God and with a personal relationship with God, you can better understand His will, plan, and purpose for your life. Don’t take my word, or anyone else’s word, for it. Discover God’s truth for yourself by reading and studying the Bible for yourself.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, or chicken out of where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!