Reflective Bible Study

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!

As we continue reading John’s gospel, we move to how John describes Jesus on the final day of the festival, and on how the religious leaders respond to Jesus, without having heard anything that He said. In this passage, we can discover some amazing themes about God and about human nature.

Our passage for this episode is found in John’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read it from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 37, John tells us that:

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” ³⁹ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Pausing briefly, I am fascinated by both Jesus’ words and by John’s side-note. Within Jesus’ words, we see Him claim a prophecy about living water and Jesus takes this claim and applies it to Himself. Within His message, Jesus promises all who believe in Him living water, and John tells us that this living water represents the Holy Spirit.

However, I am a little perplexed at John’s side-note, because from the way John describes Jesus’ promise, the Holy Spirit being given was something pushed into the future. However, I am pretty sure by this point in His ministry, Jesus’ disciples had been sent out in pairs and had cast demons out of people and healed them. The only way Jesus’ disciples could have done any miracles, cast any demons out, or healed anyone is if they had the Holy Spirit working in them.

To reconcile these two ideas, I must conclude that something more significant changed when the disciples received the Holy Spirit following Jesus’ return to heaven, and that the transformation that took place when the Holy Spirit was given was unmistakably different from simply healing people and casting out demons.

However, following Jesus’ words and John’s side-note, the crowd is given a chance to respond and react. Continuing in verse 40, John tells us that:

⁴⁰ On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”

⁴¹ Others said, “He is the Messiah.”

Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? ⁴² Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” ⁴³ Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. ⁴⁴ Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.

Pausing again, I am fascinated at the thought process that went through the crowd’s discussion about Jesus. In this passage, John describes some people calling Jesus, “The Prophet”, while others openly declared Jesus to be the Messiah.

However, to contrast these positive declarations about Jesus, others in the crowd focused on Jesus being from Galilee, and how scriptures say Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem, and from the line of David’s descendants.

Part of me wonders if Jesus had left at that point, if the crowd was not interested in asking the simple question about Jesus’ birth location, or if Jesus intentionally chose not to reveal the story of His birth and the miraculous escape to Egypt. I wonder if knowing the background of this event would have changed the minds of those in the crowd. I suspect that it would have, but I also suspect that if the crowd was united about Jesus being the Messiah, then it is likely Jesus never would have made it to the cross.

Satan had done a masterful job of twisting the first century culture towards looking for a messiah who would militarily fight against the Romans, and Jesus’ mission as a Messiah was distinctly different. Jesus wasn’t interested in meddling with the politics of that area, and the only time politics entered the discussion was when other people were trying to trap Him to discredit Him.

At this point in Jesus’ ministry, I suspect that He wanted to leave room for doubt within this crowd’s mind, because with room for doubt, we are able to have faith, and with room for doubt, we are able to better identify assumptions we might have.

The crowd assumed that since Jesus grew up in Galilee from a relatively young age, that Jesus was born in Galilee. Drawing this assumption into the light demonstrates how it could easily be proven false, but I suspect that families didn’t separate or move too far apart from each other.

It is also easy to assume that Jesus was born in Nazareth, which was a town in the region of Galilee, because both Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth prior to Jesus’ birth, and they moved there following their return from Egypt. If someone were condensing the story of Mary and Joseph, they could simply leave out anything about the census affecting Jesus’ birth and the young couple’s escape to Egypt, and what would be left is that the engaged couple that we began with who lived in Nazareth was raising the boy Jesus in Nazareth several years later.

However, God did have a plan for this, and I suspect God’s plan for Jesus’ birth when compared with where Jesus would be raised had something to do with challenging the preconceived ideas of the religious leaders.

Picking back up reading in verse 45, John concludes our passage by telling us:

⁴⁵ Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

⁴⁶ “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

⁴⁷ “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. ⁴⁸ “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? ⁴⁹ No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

⁵⁰ Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, ⁵¹ “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

⁵² They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

In this passage, we can clearly see that the religious leaders, Nicodemus excluded, had prejudged Jesus simply because of where He was raised. They discounted Jesus as the Messiah because they assumed He was born in Nazareth, or at least somewhere in Galilee, and that this did not match that single prophecy.

I find it also amazing to realize the extreme prejudice these religious leaders show when faced with the challenge to judge Jesus based on His words and His actions. I suspect these religious leaders are prejudiced against Jesus because they understand that nothing they have seen and heard conflicts with God but that Jesus didn’t match up with their picture of the messiah. The clearest way Jesus did not fit the prophecies in their minds was with their assumptions about Jesus’ origins and Jesus’ place of birth. The religious leaders reject Jesus as someone who is trying to pull the focus and glory away from God and perhaps away from the actual messiah they believed would be born and raised within Bethlehem.

We too face this challenge today when we let our assumptions about Jesus get in the way of simply asking the question. If the crowd had pushed past their assumptions and researched into Jesus’ birth story, they would have discovered a birth that took place in Bethlehem, but circumstances that made it unwise to stay there for long, or to return there when the immediate threat had subsided. We can easily fall into the trap of assuming things about Jesus today, but we are challenged to push past our assumptions, and let the Bible teach us what God wants us to know about Jesus, about His mission, and about what Jesus ultimately accomplished for each of us when we place our faith, hope, trust, and belief in Him.

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 place your faith, your hope, your trust, and your belief in Jesus and specifically in what He accomplished for us through dying on the cross. Trust that when we place our belief and faith in Jesus, we are accepted by God, adopted into His family, and will be resurrected when Jesus returns if we have fallen asleep in Jesus.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to grow your personal relationship with God even stronger. Through regular prayer and Bible study, discover how the Bible opens your heart to God and to His Holy Spirit, and how studying the Bible transforms your life from the inside as you grow closer to God and to Jesus.

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!

As we continue moving through the short set of parables in the second part of Matthew chapter 13, we come to a parable about as long as our previous one about the Kingdom of heaven being represented by treasure hidden in a field. However, while this parable sounds very similar on the surface, when we look a little closer at the details that are described, we discover this parable has a slightly different focus and a slightly different perspective.

With this in mind, let’s read the second parable in this set. Our parable and passage for this episode are found in Matthew, chapter 13, and we will again read from the Good News Translation. Starting in verse 45, Jesus continued sharing, saying:

⁴⁵ “Also, the Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man is looking for fine pearls, ⁴⁶ and when he finds one that is unusually fine, he goes and sells everything he has, and buys that pearl.

On the surface, this parable sounds almost identical to the previous parable. The similarities are powerful, because in both parables the man sells everything in order to gain what he sees as valuable.

However, whenever I read this pearl parable, I am left wondering about what happened next. Many translations describe the man seeking the fine pearls as a merchant. As a merchant, this man would be more able to recognize pearls that were valuable verses ones that were not. In this parable, the man sells everything he has in order to buy this very valuable pearl.

At the end of this parable, the merchant is left with nothing except for the one thing he desired the most. The merchant doesn’t have many options at this point. The man who found the treasure in a field could use some of that treasure to rebuild his life and repurchase some of the things he sold. In that case, he still would have most of the treasure, but also a life too.

But in the merchant’s case, the only equivalent option would be to sell the pearl, perhaps for a greater price than he purchased it, except that this option doesn’t result in the merchant keeping the pearl. A pearl cannot be divided like the treasure chest full of coins that I imagine was what the man in the previous parable stumbled upon.

The merchant gives up everything he has in order to purchase this pearl.

On one hand, we are called to give up everything for Jesus. However, when we read this parable a little more closely, there is an interesting shift in how this parable is framed that the Good News Translation misses.

If we read this parable from the New American Standard Bible, which is my first “go to” translation for study and cross-checking between translations, we discover exactly what in this parable is framed as the Kingdom of heaven. The New American Standard Bible translates verses 45 and 46 as:

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

While the two translations are very similar with describing the details of this parable, the New American Standard Bible prompts us to view the kingdom of heaven like the merchant and not like the treasure.

This is a subtle distinction with huge results. One might see the kingdom of heaven being a place or a location we could choose to be. We might be tempted to see it as something both passive and valuable, similar to a bar of gold or a diamond. But this is the treasure way of looking at the kingdom, which was the focus of the “Treasure in a Field” parable.

The “Kingdom as a Merchant” parable gives God’s kingdom an active role, and this description causes us to begin to see God’s kingdom as being more like a movement that is seeking valuables of its own.

While we are tempted to think that we should be the merchant in this parable, the way this parable is shared places us more likely as pearls that are being searched for. We are more like the pearl of great price than the merchant who sold everything!

With these two parables, we have two angles on the same thing. God’s kingdom is an incredibly valuable treasure that we should desire, but God’s kingdom is also looking for treasures that it sees as valuable. One might think of God’s kingdom being like an exclusive club that only admits certain people, and a club like this is seen by many as desirable.

While God’s kingdom is not exclusive in the typical sense of the word, it is instead inclusive for all who want to be a part of it. God’s kingdom welcomes those who accept the invitation into it, and God’s kingdom knows that not everyone has to choose to be a part of it. God is not going to force someone into His kingdom who does not want to be there.

This thought makes me ask myself if I am living in a way that God would see me as a treasure. While I know that nothing I do will make God love me any less, at the same time I know that God views different actions/choices differently. In my own life, am I choosing to live in a way that reveals how I am valued and valuable in God’s eyes? This is a tricky question, but it comes down to self-worth.

God loved you and I so much that Jesus came into the world to take the punishment we deserved onto Himself. This simple truth displays how much we are valued in God’s eyes. The big challenge I see is how to best respond to this amazing display of value. If God values you and I that He would be willing to give His own life for us, who are we to think we are worthless or cheap? Jesus came to show us how much God loves us, and to invite us to be sons and daughters of the King of the Universe!

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 remember and recognize that God sees each of us, you and I included, as so valuable that Jesus came to take the punishment we deserved for our sin. Because God valued us this much, let’s choose to live in a way that says we value ourselves because we are God’s pearl of great price!

Also, as I always challenge you to do, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Through regular prayer and Bible study, we open our hearts to God’s Holy Spirit and we let Him take us and transform us into the people He created us to be!

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