Reflective Bible Study

As we continue moving through John’s gospel, we come to another place where Jesus challenges the crowds, and from the context of this event, this crowd included a number of Pharisees. It is fascinating in my mind when reading this event to discover that the challenge the religious leaders bring to Jesus looks like a valid challenge on the surface. However, for these religious leaders’ challenge to be valid, they would have to reject much more than they would like to admit.

With that said, let’s read about what happened and about the challenge these religious leaders give Jesus.

Our passage for this event is found in John’s gospel, chapter 8, and we will read it from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 12, John tells us that:

¹² Later, Jesus talked to the people again, saying, “I am the light of the world. The person who follows me will never live in darkness but will have the light that gives life.”

¹³ The Pharisees said to Jesus, “When you talk about yourself, you are the only one to say these things are true. We cannot accept what you say.”

¹⁴ Jesus answered, “Yes, I am saying these things about myself, but they are true. I know where I came from and where I am going. But you don’t know where I came from or where I am going. ¹⁵ You judge by human standards. I am not judging anyone. ¹⁶ But when I do judge, I judge truthfully, because I am not alone. The Father who sent me is with me. ¹⁷ Your own law says that when two witnesses say the same thing, you must accept what they say. ¹⁸ I am one of the witnesses who speaks about myself, and the Father who sent me is the other witness.”

¹⁹ They asked, “Where is your father?”

Jesus answered, “You don’t know me or my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father, too.” ²⁰ Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the Temple, near where the money is kept. But no one arrested him, because the right time for him had not yet come.

²¹ Again, Jesus said to the people, “I will leave you, and you will look for me, but you will die in your sins. You cannot come where I am going.”

²² So the Jews asked, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he said, ‘You cannot come where I am going’?”

²³ Jesus said, “You people are from here below, but I am from above. You belong to this world, but I don’t belong to this world. ²⁴ So I told you that you would die in your sins. Yes, you will die in your sins if you don’t believe that I am he.”

²⁵ They asked, “Then who are you?”

Jesus answered, “I am what I have told you from the beginning. ²⁶ I have many things to say and decide about you. But I tell people only the things I have heard from the One who sent me, and he speaks the truth.”

²⁷ The people did not understand that he was talking to them about the Father. ²⁸ So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, you will know that I am he. You will know that these things I do are not by my own authority but that I say only what the Father has taught me. ²⁹ The One who sent me is with me. I always do what is pleasing to him, so he has not left me alone.” ³⁰ While Jesus was saying these things, many people believed in him.

In this passage, Jesus makes some very bold claims. And the religious leaders present were quick to challenge Jesus’ claims based on the detail that they did not see anyone else validating these claims.

This challenge is one of the better challenges the religious leaders could think of, because any secondary witness validating Jesus’ claims could immediately be challenged, judged, and likely discredited. Because of this, I suspect this is why Jesus didn’t remind them of John the Baptist, who made the same claim about Jesus. I also suspect this is why Jesus didn’t pull out the secondary witness of the scripture, because it would cut to the heart of their belief, and this wasn’t likely the right time for that.

Instead, Jesus counter-challenged the religious leaders on the detail that His secondary witness is God the Father, and that only those who knew Him would also be able to recognize the Father. Jesus subtly dismisses the religious leaders’ challenge by giving them a secondary witness but also telling them that they are unlikely to ever know Him.

Jesus emphasizes that without faith in Him, specifically faith in Jesus, everyone present, and we could also say everyone at any point in history, will die in their sins. Only through Jesus is a made way for us to trade our sins away. Jesus offers to take the punishment for our sins and in return, He offers us the life that He deserved – a life that can begin today and extend into eternity.

However, in this event, and in what Jesus shares, He makes a powerful set of claims that are easy to miss. In verses 15 and the first part of 16, Jesus tells those present that: “You judge by human standards. I am not judging anyone. But when I do judge, I judge truthfully, because I am not alone.”

This truth is powerful, because it tells us that Jesus did not come as a judge when He came to earth in the first century. Instead, while Jesus doesn’t claim the role of judge at that point, He does foreshadow that He will judge in the future. This verse brings out the powerful truth that: Our redeemer is also Our Judge.

If you have ever been worried or uneasy about God the Father judging you and that somewhere in your past is an unconfessed sin that could forever separate you from God forever, you should take that worry to Jesus, and understand that Jesus is not only your Redeemer, He is also the Judge. We don’t have a Judge who is unfamiliar with what life is like as a human living in a sinful world. Our Judge understands our lives better than we might be willing to accept, and our Judge gave His life to redeem us.

God loves us so much that Jesus came to take our place. Jesus not only became our Redeemer on the cross, Jesus also happens to be our Judge. This means that Satan’s accusations against us can simply be brushed aside by our Judge when we accept the gift of His sacrifice on our behalf, and let His perfect life cover our sins.

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 today to accept Jesus’ gift in your life. Choose to place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in what Jesus accomplished for humanity on the cross, and ask Him to take your sin-filled past and give you His life in exchange. This prayer is one that Jesus is more than happy to answer!

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God and Jesus each and every day. Choose to pray and study personally in order to make your relationship with God personal, and don’t let anyone get in the way of your relationship with God!

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 run from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Over the past several episodes, we have covered a set of six parables that together form an interesting theme. While too often, we take one or two parables and pull the themes from the smaller picture, I thought this episode would be a great time to zoom out and look at the logical pattern Matthew takes when telling us these parables.

In Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13, we find more parables than any other single chapter in the whole gospels. From the outline of our year looking at Jesus’ parables, I count 8 parables included in Matthew 13, and the next highest a single chapter comes is 3. So far, we have looked at 7 of the Matthew 13 parables, and in our next episode, we will focus in on the eighth.

While Matthew 13 begins by sharing the significant parable of the farmer planting seed and the four types of soil, the next 6 parables all reference the Kingdom of Heaven, and when looked at as a set, they form a logical, intentional structure.

The first three parables form one set. These parables are the Wheat and the Weeds parable, where the farmer plants wheat and his enemy sneaks in and plants weeds; the parable of the Mustard Seed that grows into a great tree; and the parable of the Yeast Hidden in Flour.

Within this first set of parables, we see several big themes. Within the focus of each of these parables is the theme of growth, the theme that the kingdom needs spiritual water to fuel its growth, and the theme that growth takes time. All three of these parables in our first set touch on all three of these themes.

From this set of parables, we can learn that God’s kingdom is a growing kingdom. While some of the parables allow for setback within the growth theme, these three parables tell us that growth is present.

From this set of parables, we also learn that God’s kingdom needs water to fuel its growth. With this theme regarding water, I am reminded of the Water of Life that Jesus referred to in other places in the gospels. This water of life is something that Jesus gives to those who ask and this water is spiritual water that satisfies our spiritual thirst. In the context of our first set of parables, I wouldn’t be surprised if the water that is needed for kingdom growth is the water of life.

Also, this set of parables focuses us on the detail that the growth of God’s kingdom will take some time. It takes time for a seed to turn into a plant, or a seed into a tree. It also takes time for yeast to rise when it has been mixed into dough. Given enough time, all these situations will equal growth, but they all need time. Yeast needs more than 5 minutes, and a seed needs more than 5 days to fully mature. We shouldn’t expect God’s kingdom to instantly appear in the world today or even instantly appear in our hearts. Instead, we should expect that God leads us on a journey of growth that will take time.

After this first set of three parables, Matthew shares Jesus’ explanation for the first parable, and He emphasizes in this explanation how the harvest this parable refers to is the Day of Judgment when the wicked will be separated from the righteous.

Following this explanation, Jesus then shares three short parables that also include some shared themes. These last three parables together form our second set of parables. These parables are the Treasure Hidden in a field, the Merchant looking for fine pearls, and the Fishing Net catching both good and bad fish to be sorted.

In this second set of parables, we discover the big themes that God’s kingdom is best viewed from God’s perspective, that God’s kingdom is willing to wade through a lot of inferior things in order to find that which it sees as valuable, and that God’s kingdom sacrifices in order to gain what it desires.

Within the parables of the treasure, the pearl, and the fishing net, we might be tempted to take these parables and read them from our perspective, believing we are the ones who are searching for treasure, seeking pearls, and sorting bad and good things from our lives. While none of these things are bad to do, these parables should be viewed as being from God’s perspective, since the clear explanation of the parable of the fishing net is given from God’s perspective and all three of these parables are explanations of the kingdom of heaven.

With God’s perspective, we discover how valuable we really are in His eyes, leading us to the other two big themes found in this second set of parables.

When looking at all three parables, we discover God’s kingdom is willing to wade through a lot of inferior things in order to find that which is valuable. While a case can be made for the parable of the hidden treasure and the pearl as being less about pulling everything together and sorting, these first two parables in our set have the element of patience included.

In the man’s case, while he might have not expected to find hidden treasure, he had a plan when he discovered it. There was a lot of dirt that was worthless in this man’s eyes, but one mound of dirt had a treasure, and when he discovered what mound of dirt that was, he was going to purchase it no matter what.

In the next parable in this set, the merchant was used to seeing, evaluating, buying, and selling products. The parable of the Merchant has a stronger theme of filtering because a good merchant is a salesman who only purchases items he believes he can sell, and he has learned this skill from experience and from wading through a lot of inferior items. When the exceptional pearl came past this merchant, he immediately knew its value, and he would not stop selling until he had enough to purchase it.

The parable of the fishing net has a clear theme of filtering and sorting, because that is what the fishermen do with what is caught in their nets.

Our final big theme for the last three parables is that when the valuable item appeared, God’s kingdom gives up everything to acquire it. The man with the treasure sold everything he had, similar to the merchant selling all that he had as well. In the parable of the fishing net, the time is spent collecting everything and making sure all the valuable fish were saved.

This big set of 6 parables begins with a parable about sorting wheat and weeds, which Jesus describes as a judgment scene, and these 6 parables end with a parable describing sorting good and bad fish in a judgment scene. In the middle point of these parables, Jesus gives the big explanation of the first parable that God’s kingdom will allow the good and bad to grow and live together until the point of the judgment. Up until the fishing net collected all the fish to sort out the fish, both the good and bad fish lived together. God’s kingdom will ultimately sort out the bad from the good when the judgment happens.

The second and fifth parables have a similar but also significant focus, and this shared theme is that the size of an item does not dictate its value. Whether the kingdom is small like a seed or a pearl, God sees what it can be, not what it is right now. The seed is capable of becoming a great tree, and the pearl can become the focal point of an exceptional necklace. God measures our value through our potential, not through our current circumstances.

The third and fourth parables have a hidden and internal focus, because God’s kingdom is something that lives inside of us and when God’s kingdom is alive within us, it shines through us blessing those God brings into our lives.

I believe Matthew arranged these parables with a very structured and logical thought when he wrote his gospel record, and I believe Jesus shared these parables because He was leading the disciples towards better understanding God’s kingdom truth!

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 let God teach you about His kingdom as you move closer to Him each and every day letting His kingdom enter your heart and mind. Be sure to place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus knowing that Jesus is the way to experience God’s kingdom in our lives today as we are preparing for eternity.

Also, intentionally and regularly pray and study the Bible for yourself to keep your personal connection with God strong. Never let anyone else get between you and God’s Word or between you and living out God’s mission for your life! Live each day for God’s kingdom grounded in the truth of God’s Word and blessing others with God’s love!

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!

As we continue moving through John’s gospel, we come to one of the most fascinating events in the entire Bible record. This event is fascinating not just because of what is described that happened, but because there is controversy over whether this event was actually included in the original copies of John’s gospel or not.

If you pick up any modern translation of the Bible and look up our passage for this event, you will likely find a footnote, or perhaps a more visible note about many or most of the oldest manuscripts not including this event.

However, that is only part of the story. As I researched this event not too long ago, I discovered that while this event likely wasn’t included in the original copy of John’s gospel, there is no doubt that it is a very old story. Sometimes, this event is written in the margin of John’s gospel, while other times this event is included at the end of John’s gospel as one additional event that happened during Jesus’ life.

As I have studied the origins of this event, I am left to conclude that either what we are about to read happened, and that God preserved it even though John didn’t include it in His original, or that this event didn’t happen, but perhaps something similar did happen and that is how this story came to be.

Regardless of the origins of this event, when we open our Bibles and read this event, there is no escaping the clear picture of Jesus’ love for sinners. This theme is one that is included in so many of the gospels that we can easily assume that even if this event didn’t happen the way we are about to read, if a situation like this did happen, Jesus would have responded in an equally loving way!

With that said, let’s read our passage for this episode, and discover what we can learn from this event. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, at the beginning of chapter 8, however we will begin by looking at the last verse in chapter 7. Reading from the Contemporary English Version, John tells us that:

⁵³ Everyone else went home, ^8:1 but Jesus walked out to the Mount of Olives. ² Then early the next morning he went to the temple. The people came to him, and he sat down and started teaching them.

³ The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law of Moses brought in a woman who had been caught in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband. They made her stand in the middle of the crowd. ⁴ Then they said, “Teacher, this woman was caught sleeping with a man who isn’t her husband. ⁵ The Law of Moses teaches that a woman like this should be stoned to death! What do you say?”

⁶ They asked Jesus this question, because they wanted to test him and bring some charge against him. But Jesus simply bent over and started writing on the ground with his finger.

⁷ They kept on asking Jesus about the woman. Finally, he stood up and said, “If any of you have never sinned, then go ahead and throw the first stone at her!” ⁸ Once again he bent over and began writing on the ground. ⁹ The people left one by one, beginning with the oldest. Finally, Jesus and the woman were there alone.

¹⁰ Jesus stood up and asked her, “Where is everyone? Isn’t there anyone left to accuse you?”

¹¹ “No sir,” the woman answered.

Then Jesus told her, “I am not going to accuse you either. You may go now, but don’t sin anymore.”

In this event, I am always amazed at how Jesus takes the focus off of the sinner and on to those judging. While some traditions say that Jesus was writing the sins of the woman’s accusers in the sand, nothing I see in this event prompts me to think this directly. Part of me suspects that Jesus simply chose a portion of the law that emphasized mercy, or some other relevant topic to this situation, and began writing it.

With Jesus emphasizing the demands of the law, mixed with the heart of the law, then His statement about those lacking any sin should be the first to throw the stones makes sense. I doubt that Jesus would clearly expose the religious leaders’ exact list of sins, because I don’t believe this happens anywhere else in the scripture. If you can think of a place in the gospels where one person is exposed for specific sins and specific events, then definitely let me know in the comments. It’s possible I’m forgetting an event that would set a precedent.

Instead, in other cases, it seemed like Jesus preferred challenging the religious leaders with parables that describe their behavior without calling out specific instances of sin.

With this framework, Jesus could have been writing a parable in the sand that hit at the heart of this situation. However, a story or a parable written in the sand, would likely have been remembered, copied, and ultimately preserved.

The most probable conclusion in my mind would be that Jesus began writing some Old Testament scripture, prophecy, or law, and this served as a reminder to all the accusers how their lives, attitudes, and actions were unfit to cast judgment on this woman, even if they began this event feeling fully justified.

Also, I find this event fascinating because if I’m not mistaken, this is the only time anywhere in the gospel record where I see Jesus writing anything. Jesus quotes what is written, and Jesus taught scriptures on a regular basis, but I don’t see anything recorded about Jesus personally writing anything outside of this event.

If this was the only time Jesus wrote in His entire ministry, and Jesus wrote it in the sand, making it easily removable or erasable, because Jesus chose this as His medium, we can understand several huge truths in the Bible: God’s love covers a multitude of sins. Jesus forgives us when we repent and turn to Him after we have sinned. We are invited to come to Jesus, let Him wash us, and make us as white as snow!

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 the gift Jesus offers to us through what He accomplished for us on the cross. Accept Jesus’ forgiveness and His offer to wash us and make us as white as snow.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Through the pages of the Bible, discover a God who loves us more than we can even imagine, and a God who was willing to be tortured by those He loved in order to redeem those who choose to accept His gift of redemption.

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 doubt yourself out of where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As Jesus begins to wrap up sharing a short series of parables about the Kingdom of heaven, He decides to share one more example. However, too often we focus on only the two preceding parables, and we stop before diving into the third one. Unfortunately, if we stop short of reading this third parable, we run the risk of misunderstanding where Jesus was going in what He was sharing with the disciples. While this third parable has some less than ideal details, and it is not all that appealing to think of you and I as fish, this parable is a fascinating conclusion to this set of parables Jesus shared while He was alone with the disciples.

Let’s dive into what this parable teaches, and unpack what we can learn from Jesus’ concluding illustration. Our parable is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will be reading it from the Good News Translation. Jumping into Jesus’ sequence of parables in verse 47, Jesus starts another parable by saying:

⁴⁷ “Also, the Kingdom of heaven is like this. Some fishermen throw their net out in the lake and catch all kinds of fish. ⁴⁸ When the net is full, they pull it to shore and sit down to divide the fish: the good ones go into the buckets, the worthless ones are thrown away. ⁴⁹ It will be like this at the end of the age: the angels will go out and gather up the evil people from among the good ⁵⁰ and will throw them into the fiery furnace, where they will cry and gnash their teeth.

After reading this parable, I can easily see why many people would rather ignore its presence. This parable isn’t all that pleasant because Jesus explains and describes the fate of evil people. It is much nicer to focus on those who are welcomed in to God’s kingdom and to intentionally not think about those who will ultimately be lost.

However, it is worth paying attention to this parable, especially its challenging theme, because if we focus in on this parable and theme, we can catch the lessons aimed at helping us avoid the fate being described.

As I read Jesus’ words in this parable, one word stood out to me more than the rest. The word that jumped out at me was the word “worthless”. This is the way this translation describes the fish that are thrown away. When randomly looking at a few different translations, we find that worthless and bad are the most common descriptive words used to describe these fish.

While it might seem obvious to throw the worthless fish away, remember that this is a parable, and Jesus immediately explains this parable in no uncertain terms. The fish represent people and at the end of the age, angels will sort the good and evil people and those who are evil will be separated and cast into the fiery furnace.

This leads us to a question: What makes someone worthless in God’s eyes?

Our parable gives us a solid clue. The fish which are described as worthless represent people who are described as evil. So sin and evil actions make us worthless – or at least that is one logical conclusion we could draw from this. While it is true that sin does cheapen our worth, what Jesus ultimately did defied all of this logic.

When we as a race were bound up in sin, through our nature, our choices, our desires, and our hearts, Jesus came to give us a choice. Jesus did not have to come, but from before anyone else had even thought of you, the Godhead decided together that Jesus would come. This is illogical because Jesus died for a worthless, sin-filled race of created beings, and only because Jesus did this do we have worth in God’s eyes.

Through Jesus, the Godhead reattached worth into humanity, and because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we have the choice of accepting Jesus’ gift of worth into our lives, or stay living worthlessly in sin. Sin does make us worthless, but Jesus came to remind us that our value is not in what we currently are, but in what God sees we can be. We are a race of sinners, but God sees us as His children!

Just like we are given value that we might not realize in the parable of the merchant that we looked at in our last episode, this parable teaches us that we have worth in God’s eyes when we are moving away from evil and growing towards Him. It isn’t pleasant to look at the fate of those who have chosen evil, but it is a reminder that our lives are a chance for us to decide whether we will be redeemed by Jesus, or whether we will prefer a life of worthless sin.

We have all been given the gift of life, and the most important decision we can make in this life is deciding to place our faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus. The decisions made in this life have eternal results.

In the past, some preachers and Christian leaders pressured people with a fear of hell approach to accepting the gospel. However, choosing Jesus because you are scared of burning is not the best reason to choose Christ.

The best reason to choose Jesus is because of what God has done for us through Jesus, and because you want a future life without any of the sin, pain, disease, death, and suffering in this life. Jesus is the way out of this life and the spiritual gate into a perfect sinless future life. While our lives with Jesus can begin today, as Christians, we know that the lives we are currently living are nothing when compared with the life God has planned to bless us with when Jesus returns!

We become more valuable than we realize when we place our faith, our hope, our trust, and our belief in Jesus, and when we turn away from sin, we become a fish that is worth saving for eternity!

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 and placing Him first in your life. Choose to keep making the intentional choice to place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Him each and every day, and also intentionally choose to grow towards God and away from sin.

Also, keep praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn firsthand what God wants to teach you through His Word. While learning from others is good, always take what others teach and compare it with what the Bible teaches, because the Bible has stood the test of time and it is the most reliable guide we have to help us live for God in a sinful world.

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 deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!