Reflective Bible Study

As we keep moving through Jesus’ last big message to His disciples on the night He was arrested, we come to an interesting idea that many Christians today either miss or choose to ignore. This idea is one that is both counter-cultural, as well as one that pushes against our human nature, even if we can see on the surface that it is logical.

Let’s dive in and discover what Jesus told His followers after describing and reemphasizing His command to love one another. Our passage for this episode is found in John’s gospel, chapter 15, and we will be reading from the New American Standard Bible translation. Jumping into Jesus’ teaching in verse 18, He tells the disciples:

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. ¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. ²¹ But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ He who hates Me hates My Father also. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. ²⁵ But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’

Let’s pause briefly here to draw our attention onto a big counter-intuitive idea that we might be tempted to believe. This idea is simply that a side effect of following Jesus and loving others is that other people will love us in return. Jesus never hints at the idea that His followers would be loved or even liked by the world. Jesus tells His followers very clearly that the world would hate His people, but that shouldn’t bother or surprise us because the world hated Jesus first.

Jesus faced the worst death imaginable during that era of history, and He tells us that because He was persecuted, we should expect nothing less than persecution as well.

Why does the world hate Jesus and His followers?

Some people have claimed that the Bible is filled with hate and because of this, all those who follow the Bible are filled with hate, but this in itself doesn’t translate into a reason to hate the Bible, or those who follow it, as a response.

There are plenty of reasons that someone could hate Jesus, the Bible, or His followers. However, the last phrase we read before pausing is fascinating to me. Verse 25 tells us that those who hated Jesus fulfilled the prediction in a very specific way. This verse says that “They hated Me without a cause.”

This verse and phrase gives us two frames of reference for the hate the world will throw our way.

The first is that they hate us because they don’t understand us, nor do they want to understand us. They may have heard or seen someone claiming to be a follower of Jesus who acts in a hateful way, and then conclude that every follower of Jesus is like this. In a similar way, they could have read a verse or story from the Bible that depicts God or His people as unloving and conclude from this that God is hateful and not worthy of love. In this frame of reference, there might be a reason for someone to hate Jesus, or some of His followers, but this hate is based on faulty assumptions. It might feel like hate in this way is justified through logic, but it is not. Hating someone based on what someone else has done is illogical at best.

The other frame of reference is that it is simply easier to follow the crowd and if someone is vocal about their hate for the Christian faith, then it is easy for someone without knowledge or an opinion of it to silently side with the vocal opinion. People who hate Christianity because the culture has placed a target on Christians are guilty of hating Jesus without cause. Open the pages of the Bible and search for a reason to hate Jesus. It is better to hate Jesus with a reason than to simply drift with culture. Drifting is easy, but it will never lead you to anywhere positive.

However, Jesus isn’t finished sharing with the disciples. He wants to emphasize and remind His followers that even if they will be abused and hated like He was, they will never be alone. Picking back up in verse 26, Jesus reminds His followers of the promise He shared earlier. Jesus tells them:

²⁶ “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, ²⁷ and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

^16:1 “These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. ² They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. ³ These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me. ⁴ But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.

Let’s stop reading here. Jesus tells us that His followers will be hated and killed, and He tells us that when this happens, those filled with hate who are doing the abuse will believe they are serving God. They do these things thinking they know God, but the reality is that they do not know God or Jesus. We can see hinted in these verses a warning against anything that tries to come between us and God.

If we let any person, idea, tradition, or logical idea filter our picture or opinion of God and the truth He reveals in the Bible, we are warned in these verses that we might ultimately become the guilty party thinking we offer a service to God when we don’t really know Him. Those who don’t know Jesus and who have not placed their belief in Him are susceptible of believing anything and everything, regardless of whether it is valid.

The solution to this dilemma is one reason why I challenge you every episode to pray and study the Bible for yourself. Through prayer and Bible study, God will lead us personally through the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and He will teach us what He wants us to learn. Learning directly from the Bible is the safest way to know God and to be lead by Him!

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

As always, be sure to seek God first and place Him first in your life. Be sure to place God ahead of the ideas and traditions in the culture you live in, and be sure to stay focused on His command to love others. Don’t worry if people hate you. Don’t be surprised when it happens. Jesus warned us that we will be hated because He was hated, but we can look past the hate and abuse to a world where sin has been destroyed and is gone forever.

Also, be sure to always pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow that personal relationship with God. While a pastor, speaker, author, or podcaster can give you ideas to think about, filter everything through the simple reading of God’s Word, the Bible, and don’t use other people’s ideas to cloud your picture of what the Bible teaches. As a side-note: I designed Reflective Bible Study as a way to study with as little bias as possible, because this is how I wanted to study personally!

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

Part way through Jesus’ ministry, He hears some news that would make for a good teaching point. As I read the gospels, it seems that Jesus loved teaching themes from the events and culture of the world which He lived in. Our passage for this episode is a perfect example of Jesus teaching based on the events of the world at that time.

To learn what happened, let’s look at Luke’s gospel, chapter 13, and let’s read from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 1, Luke tells us:

¹ Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ² Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? ³ I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. ⁴ Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵ I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Let’s pause reading for a moment to touch on what Jesus has just shared. On hearing the news about a group of Galileans who were tortured and likely killed, Jesus senses the opportunity to share about the importance of repentance – and repentance as a continual habit.

Because of the rhetorical question Jesus asks, we can conclude that in the first century culture, the belief was that the way a person died was an indication of their life. If someone died a horrible, painful, or humiliating death, then they must have been bad, while someone who died of old age, painlessly, in their sleep must have lived well and close to God.

Stating this belief in this way draws out the fallacy of this belief. Someone who is very vocally for God may be singled out and tortured, but this wouldn’t be because they were living apart from God but for God. Jesus’ key idea here in the first half of our passage is that the death someone faces doesn’t determine their life – but while one is alive, repentance is crucial.

The two events Jesus includes in His teaching bring out the point that we don’t know when our lives will end. While most everyone hopes for a long life and a painless death in their sleep at the end of a full and rewarding life, this is not practical in all cases. Disease, sickness, accidents, violence, and natural disasters all can end life before it was meant to end. It doesn’t matter if you have 30 days to live or 30 years, what matters is what you focus on today – because with rare exceptions, no-one knows what day will be their last day alive.

To help push this point further, Jesus continues in verse 6 by sharing a parable:

⁶ Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. ⁷ So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

⁸ “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. ⁹ If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

What amazes me about this parable is that it has no ending. We don’t know if the servant taking care of the vineyard was able to spur the tree into producing figs in the coming year.

However, what we do know is that unknown to the tree, that fourth year, was a very important year for it. If it wasn’t fruitful during year four, it would be cut down.

When I read parables like this, I begin to imagine what each character represents. For this parable, God is probably the vineyard owner, and Jesus or the Holy Spirit would be top contenders for the vineyard manager. This leaves the fig tree to represent us as God’s people.

If this is the case, and we are represented by this fig tree, then the discussion we can see surrounding the time we have been given directly relates to how fruitful we are being. Not only does this imply that we develop a character that includes the fruits of the spirit, but it also implies that we must be doing something with what God has given to us. In other words, we should be using the talents that God has given to us in order to glorify Him.

I don’t want to take this parable too far and state that you only have one year to accomplish what God has placed you in this earth for, but echoing Jesus’ earlier remarks, no one knows when their time on earth will be up – which makes every day the most valuable day we have to live. While we can predict that if we are living today we will most likely be alive tomorrow, for many this won’t be the case, and it is wise to remember this truth.

However, while I include this disclaimer about not wanting to take the parable too far, I also want to restate Jesus’ key idea that how a person dies does not determine the life that person lived. There will be a point in time when our lives on earth will end, and at that point, the only thing that will have mattered is how our relationship with God is. If we have placed our belief, trust, hope, and faith in Jesus, then our eternal lives are guaranteed, but if we have lived only for ourselves and have rejected God’s offer through Jesus, our lives will be eternally lost.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, let me challenge you on the positive side of this discussion instead of leaving us thinking of the negative:

Always intentionally seek God first and place Him as first in your life. Live each day with the attitude of forgiveness, repentance, and with the peace that knowing when our lives end, the next face we see will be Jesus.

As we seek to place God first, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself, because when we open our eyes after death and see Jesus, only those who have grown a personal relationship with God will be pleased to look into His eyes. It is the people who know Jesus and the people who Jesus knows who will inherit eternal life and live forever 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 give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue moving through the last things Jesus tells His disciples on the night of His arrest, Jesus shifts focus from obedience, which we talked about in the last episode, and onto a new word-picture. It’s likely this new word picture and the idea Jesus wants to teach us is connected with everything we’ve talked about so far in these last few podcast episodes.

Let’s read the next portion of Jesus’ teaching, and discover the next big ideas He wants to share with His followers. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 15, and we will be reading from the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 1, Jesus continued sharing, saying:

¹ “I am the true vine. My Father is the gardener. ² He cuts off every branch joined to me that does not bear fruit. He trims every branch that does bear fruit. Then it will bear even more fruit. ³ You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. ⁴ Remain joined to me, just as I also remain joined to you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain joined to the vine. In the same way, you can’t bear fruit unless you remain joined to me.

⁵ “I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain joined to me, and I to you, you will bear a lot of fruit. You can’t do anything without me. ⁶ If you don’t remain joined to me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and dries up. Branches like those are picked up. They are thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain joined to me and my words remain in you, ask for anything you wish. And it will be done for you. ⁸ When you bear a lot of fruit, it brings glory to my Father. It shows that you are my disciples.

Let’s pause here for a moment to focus on what Jesus has just described. In a simple word picture, Jesus tells us that God the Father is like a gardener, Jesus is like a vine, and all of Jesus’ followers are like branches on this vine. However, while this illustration is easy to understand, it gets challenging. Jesus describes God-the-Gardener looking over each branch and trimming the branches that are bearing fruit, and cutting off the branches that are not.

In gardening, this makes perfect sense, but when you or I are represented by branches, the emphasis here is that being fruitful is the only way God will let us stay connected with Jesus. Being connected is one thing, but staying connected is another. This illustration challenges us with the dual ideas that in order to be fruitful in God’s eyes, we must be connected to Jesus, and in order to stay connected to Jesus, we must be fruitful, otherwise God-the-Gardener will cut us off.

Jesus ties this illustration to the illustration about prayer that we focused in on earlier in this conversation with His disciples, and He shares how He is happy to answer prayers and requests of those who are joined to Him, and in this context, those who are joined to Him are those who are being fruitful.

It’s worth pointing out here, before we move forward, that if you don’t believe you are being fruitful in your life, the most important prayer you can pray is one asking for help to be fruitful. I believe God is happy to help Jesus’ followers be fruitful, and this is why we also see God-the-Gardener trimming the branches that are being fruitful. Trimming fruitful branches clears distractions away and it helps focus the branch on its task of bearing fruit.

God touching our lives is not optional. Either He will trim us to help us be more fruitful, or He will cut us off if we are not fruitful. Being fruitful brings glory to God and it shows that we are Jesus’ disciples.

Continuing in verse 9, Jesus switches focus slightly to tell His followers:

⁹ “Just as the Father has loved me, I have loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love. In the same way, I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that you will have the same joy that I have. I also want your joy to be complete. ¹² Here is my command. Love one another, just as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than the one who gives their life for their friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I do not call you slaves anymore. Slaves do not know their master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends. I have told you everything I learned from my Father. ¹⁶ You did not choose me. Instead, I chose you. I appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit that will last. I also appointed you so that the Father will give you what you ask for. He will give you whatever you ask for in my name. ¹⁷ Here is my command. Love one another.

Let’s stop reading here and focus on what Jesus has just emphasized. While many commands Jesus gives are important, Jesus tells His followers that the one command they should remember and emphasize above all the others is loving one another.

Yes, love for God is crucial too, but many hateful things are done in the world today through the filter of “loving God”. If we are to accurately represent God to the world, our lives must display a love for all humanity. This means that if you are white, you love those who are black, and it also means that if you are black, you love those who are white. This means that you love everyone from every other racial background, and you love everyone else regardless of who they are. Love starts with God, it was shown through Jesus, and we are called to carry this banner of love forward.

Loving others does not mean we agree with everything they are doing. Jesus did not agree with people who wanted to persist living in sin. However, loving others means that we respect others because God has given them life. Because God has given someone breath, we can trust that He has a plan for them and that He loves them.

Jesus loved people and He called them out of sin.

Jesus had no issue spending time with sinners, because we can read about plenty of examples where He spent time in the homes of a wide variety of people.

Jesus has called His followers to model this love for others, and the example Jesus gives us for love is the love He showed for us, a love that placed humanity ahead of himself.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to love others, and when we love others, we are being like Jesus, and we are being obedient and fruitful in the eyes of God.

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

Always seek God first and place Him first in your life. Show that Jesus is first in your life by obeying Jesus’ command to love others. Other faiths demonstrate hostility towards those who don’t believe the same as they do, but Jesus has challenged His followers to show love towards everyone, regardless of who they are. We are to love others because we are representing God’s character, and God loves us so much that Jesus came to die the death we deserved.

Also, be sure to always pray and study the Bible for yourself and grow your personal relationship with God even stronger. While getting ideas from other people can be helpful, don’t let your relationship with God depend on someone else’s relationship. Intentionally grow your personal relationship with God through regularly praying and studying the Bible.

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

As I read the gospels, I am amazed at how Jesus interacted with people. On one hand, Jesus loved everyone, and He actively helped those who were hurting, sick, and/or needing encouragement. On the other hand, Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say to others, and in every case that I can think of, Jesus’ harshest words were reserved for those who felt they were spiritually superior to others.

However, in the event we are looking at in this episode, I am extra amazed at the audacity Jesus has one Sabbath afternoon. It would seem from reading this event, Jesus doesn’t shy away from speaking the truth to someone, regardless of whether it would be socially acceptable or not, regardless of whether it was framed in a positive or negative way, and regardless of whether He was a guest in that person’s home.

Let’s read this passage, and discover what happens. Our passage comes from the gospel of Luke, chapter 11, and we will be reading it from the New International Reader’s Version. Starting in verse 27, Luke tells us that:

³⁷ Jesus finished speaking. Then a Pharisee invited him to eat with him. So Jesus went in and took his place at the table. ³⁸ But the Pharisee was surprised. He noticed that Jesus did not wash before the meal.

³⁹ Then the Lord spoke to him. “You Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish,” he said. “But inside you are full of greed and evil. ⁴⁰ You foolish people! Didn’t the one who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹ Give freely to poor people to show what is inside you. Then everything will be clean for you.

Let’s pause briefly, because Jesus has just been invited home by one of the Pharisees who had been at the synagogue that morning. Perhaps, this invitation was because this Pharisee wanted bragging rights with his friends that Jesus came and ate with Him, or perhaps this Pharisee was simply wanting to be nice to a traveling guest.

However, regardless of the reason for the invitation, Jesus accepts it, and then before the meal has even begun, Jesus begins challenging this man regarding his traditions.

But Jesus doesn’t stop with talking about hand washing and being clean. Continuing in verse 42, Jesus continues challenging the Pharisees present by saying:

⁴² “How terrible it will be for you Pharisees! You give God a tenth of your garden plants, such as mint and rue. But you have forgotten to be fair and to love God. You should have practiced the last things without failing to do the first.

⁴³ “How terrible for you Pharisees! You love the most important seats in the synagogues. You love having people greet you with respect in the market.

⁴⁴ “How terrible for you! You are like graves that are not marked. People walk over them without knowing it.”

Jesus’ words and challenges in this passage are shocking in my mind. While I am not shocked that Jesus had these words to say to the Pharisees, it seems crazy in my mind to think that Jesus would wait to be the guest in a home before thoroughly insulting the host and many of the guests.

While Jesus was speaking truth, I am amazed that He chose this time to do it, and that He challenged them in this way. Perhaps, a more diplomatic sharing would not have reached this group of people, or perhaps Jesus spoke the way He did because He wanted to wake these Pharisees up to how they had let their traditions become their expectations for others.

Whatever the case, not only were there Pharisees present, there was another group of people, and they too were offended by what Jesus was saying. Continuing reading in verse 45, Luke tells us that:

⁴⁵ An authority on the law spoke to Jesus. He said, “Teacher, when you say things like that, you say bad things about us too.”

⁴⁶ Jesus replied, “How terrible for you authorities on the law! You put such heavy loads on people that they can hardly carry them. But you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

⁴⁷ “How terrible for you! You build tombs for the prophets. It was your people of long ago who killed them. ⁴⁸ So you show that you agree with what your people did long ago. They killed the prophets, and now you build the prophets’ tombs. ⁴⁹ So God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send prophets and apostles to them. They will kill some. And they will try to hurt others.’ ⁵⁰ So the people of today will be punished. They will pay for all the prophets’ blood spilled since the world began. ⁵¹ I mean from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah. He was killed between the altar and the temple. Yes, I tell you, the people of today will be punished for all these things.

⁵² “How terrible for you authorities on the law! You have taken away the key to the door of knowledge. You yourselves have not entered. And you have stood in the way of those who were entering.”

⁵³ When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law strongly opposed him. They threw a lot of questions at him. ⁵⁴ They set traps for him. They wanted to catch him in something he might say.

How Luke chose to end this passage does not surprise me, and with what Jesus had challenged the Pharisees and teachers of the law by saying, I am not surprised that these two groups hated Jesus.

I wonder if the Pharisee-host for this meal kicked Jesus out after He said these things, or I wonder if Jesus left before the food was served. If Jesus chose to stay for the meal itself, I wonder if there was awkward silence for the rest of the time Jesus was present. Part of me wonders if Jesus accepted this invitation because He saw it as an opportunity to offend everyone who would be there.

But regardless of the reaction these leaders had towards Jesus’ message, when we look at the message itself, we can see an amazing theme come to light. With everything Jesus describes about both groups, we see the theme that these two groups had used their God-given position to make life more difficult for those around them. These two groups were incredibly detailed and focused on the wrong things.

Instead of being focused on the blessings and love God had for His people, these leaders made God’s love conditional to obedience, and then they increased the standard of obedience past anything that God would have required. When someone failed and broke this high standard of obedience, then these leaders were quick to judge and condemn the person, and they were the first to make an example of how this individual who had broken their high standard was now outside of God’s favor.

Jesus’ challenge to these leaders was that they were given their positions in order to help others. They should have been emphasizing God’s love, His forgiveness, and all humanity’s unworthiness, because there are more examples of God’s grace in the Old Testament than His judgment.

Pride had infected the hearts of these leaders, and because of that, their message and view of God was distorted and they could only see the rules and punishments God gave in the past, and their focus on this minority of examples warped the picture of God they taught to others.

Jesus reserved His harshest words for those who kept people from seeing God’s love, and while these words spoken to this group of religious leaders was harsh, it was Jesus’ best chance to get through to them that their focus on life and their picture of God were flawed.

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

Continue seeking God first in your life. Choose to begin building your foundation with Him on the truth that God is 100% love. Use love as a filter for your reading and studying the Bible, because God does not deviate from this character trait.

Also, choose to always pray and study the Bible for yourself – and specifically pay attention to times where God might not appear loving in the Old Testament. If I claim that God is 100% love, but you discover something in the Bible that makes God appear unloving, wrestle the situation out with God for yourself. The only way you can grow into the person God created you to be is by growing personally with God. Pastors and podcasters can inspire ideas, but only personal study with a prayerful, humble attitude can grow a relationship.

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!