Reflective Bible Study

On the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, immediately following Judas Iscariot leaving to get the soldiers and mob to arrest Jesus, we read in John’s gospel that Jesus wanted to teach something new to the remaining disciples. Now that the final pieces were in motion leading to the cross, Jesus begins sharing more openly and plainly with the disciples now that they only have hours left together.

Let’s read our passage for this episode and discover the first thing Jesus wanted to teach these disciples. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will be reading from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 31, John tells us that:

³¹ When he [Judas Iscariot] was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. ³² If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

³³ “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

³⁶ Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”

Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

³⁷ Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”

³⁸ Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!

In this short passage, Jesus both challenges Peter and He gives a new command to these disciples. Both of these sections in our passage are worth focusing in on, so in the time we have together let’s start with Jesus’ “new command” and see how far we can get.

I’ve heard it said that this new command is not really all that new. Loving God and loving our neighbor basically summarize both this command as well as all the other commandments in the Old Testament. With this line of thinking, Jesus doesn’t really say that this is a new command, but that He is reminding and reemphasizing a familiar command that was already given. It’s possible that the original Greek language supports this interpretation, however I don’t know this for certain since Greek is not one of my language specialties.

However, while this reminder and reemphasis angle on Jesus’ command makes sense on one level, what if this really was meant to be a new command? What if Jesus wanted to elevate the standard that His disciples would model?

In the original summary of all the commands, Jesus taught that loving God and loving our neighbor were the two commands that all the other commandments can be categorized into. Every other commandment could be grouped as either being an example of loving God, loving our neighbor, or some combination of both. But what if there was a group that was missing, or a group that would be easy to exclude?

When looking at how Jesus described loving God and our neighbor, we have a religious expert ask for clarification regarding how to define the idea of neighbor. From this question, Jesus shared the well known parable of the Good Samaritan, which concluded with the least likeable character being the most helpful – and the one who modeled loving a neighbor the best. From the Good Samaritan parable, we learn that loving our neighbor not only covers the neighborly commands of the Ten Commandments, but also that it covers helping strangers who are in need.

But what about those we know but we don’t really like or get along with? What about those people who seem to get under our skin and those people who know how to push all of our buttons?

In my own mind, it is in many ways easier to love and help a total stranger who is in need than to help someone I know who repeatedly keeps messing up or abusing the system. It is also easier to help a stranger than someone who I don’t agree with.

Jesus’ eleven remaining disciples were about as diverse as you could imagine. While no Samaritans were included, we have fishermen, a tax collector, and a zealot – who was someone intent on overthrowing the Roman government. In the broader group of followers, there were former prostitutes, Samaritans, and even some political and religious leaders. Jesus’ followers included people from any and every section of society.

In the command Jesus gives to His disciples, I see Him challenging His followers to love others simply because they are part of the human family. While loving our neighbor is a part of this, this also means loving those who are clearly acting, living, and believing differently than we do. This challenge is a challenge to love others because Jesus loved us, and not because of who the other person is or could be. We love others because Jesus loved us, and because God lives in our heart.

However, as I read our passage, I find it a little humorous that Peter seems to completely miss Jesus’ new command. Giving Peter the benefit of a doubt, the best we could give Peter is that he agrees but pushes this new command to the sidelines.

Peter, like many of the other disciples, is troubled by Jesus telling them that they cannot go with Him. Peter correctly assumes that Jesus could be referring to death, but Peter believes that He is devoted enough to stay by Jesus’ side to the very end.

However, while Jesus is present in Peter’s life, this is true. A little later this very night, when the soldiers arrive to arrest Jesus, Peter is the first to jump to Jesus’ defense. However, after Jesus was arrested, Peter begins to doubt and the doubt leads to denial. Peter wants to learn and know what happens to Jesus, but he also wants to maintain a level of anonymity while being nearby.

When we look at the story of the cross and how it breaks Peter’s life, we discover that we all share similarities with Peter. We all are willing to do a lot more than what ultimately happens, but when Jesus enters our lives, as we see Jesus do through the Holy Spirit after His resurrection, a Jesus-filled-Peter becomes an unstoppable force for God’s kingdom.

In our own lives, we are forgiven like Jesus forgave Peter, and we are called to love each other because Jesus has loved us. Jesus loved us not because of who we were or what we would become, but because of who God is. In our own lives, God has called us to love others because it is who we are when He is in our lives, and not because those we love will do anything differently. This is probably the greatest and most challenge command in the entire Bible – and God modeled it perfectly through Jesus!

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

Be sure to always seek God first and to intentionally love others like He loved us. We see God’s love for us through Jesus coming and dying on the cross in our place. He has called us to love others because He first loved us.

Also, be sure to always pray and study the Bible for yourself and discover who God is and what He is like through the pages of the Bible. God wants a personal relationship with you and the best foundation to have for a strong relationship with God is a strong prayer and study life. Don’t let your relationship with God be filtered through or dependant on someone else’s 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 walk away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

One of the reasons why Jesus may have caused division among those living in first-century Judea is that He fit many of the descriptions that they had for who the Messiah would be, but not all of the ones they had in focus. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, there was a growing divide between those who believed Jesus to be the Messiah and those who simply thought He was a good man and a God-supported prophet.

Our passage, which comes from the gospel of John, is one of the best examples of this division among the people. To set the stage, and transition from where we were last week, Jesus had told His brothers that He wouldn’t go up to Jerusalem with them for this festival because He knew there were people in Jerusalem who wanted to kill Him, so they left him behind. But then a day or two later, Jesus does go up, secretly, and part way into the festival, He stands up and begins preaching in the temple to everyone’s amazement.

It is at a break in Jesus’ message that our passage in John picks up. We will be reading from the gospel of John, chapter 7, using the New Century Version of the Bible. Jumping in at verse 25, John tells us:

²⁵ Then some of the people who lived in Jerusalem said, “This is the man they are trying to kill. ²⁶ But he is teaching where everyone can see and hear him, and no one is trying to stop him. Maybe the leaders have decided he really is the Christ. ²⁷ But we know where this man is from. Yet when the real Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from.”

Pausing briefly here in the passage, we see the crowd of people talking and discussing amongst themselves. They are trying to reconcile what they see in Jesus and what they believe to be descriptive of the Messiah.

Jesus knows this, and picking back up in verse 28, John tells us Jesus’ response:

²⁸ Jesus, teaching in the Temple, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. But I have not come by my own authority. I was sent by the One who is true, whom you don’t know. ²⁹ But I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”

³⁰ When Jesus said this, they tried to seize him. But no one was able to touch him, because it was not yet the right time. ³¹ But many of the people believed in Jesus. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miracles than this man has done?”

Pausing again, we see the strong case for Jesus being the Messiah shared in the verse we just finished. Jesus performed so many miracles and He healed so many more people than anyone had ever done before, it would seem illogical for God to not have sent Him as the Messiah. I imagine that many of those present thought that if Jesus wasn’t the real Messiah, then His entire ministry would outshine the real Messiah when God’s actual Messiah would arrive. God allowing a ministry leading up to His Messiah to outshine His Messiah doesn’t make much sense in my mind.

There was no question in the minds of everyone present that God’s Spirit was working powerfully through Jesus. There was no escaping this fact. What they were trying to wrestle through was how Jesus did not fit the mold that they believed the Messiah would take.

On hearing the crowd rationalize Jesus as the most likely to be the Messiah based on the sheer quantity of miracles, we pick back up in verse 32 and learn that:

³² The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Jesus. So the leading priests and the Pharisees sent some Temple guards to arrest him.

John tells us that this was likely the final straw for the Pharisees in the crowd. Not only had Jesus just implied equality with God and that He was sent directly from God, but the crowd was starting to rationalize that He may be the Messiah after all, simply because it was unlikely that God could support anyone more than He appeared to be supporting Jesus.

Whether Jesus said what He said next while guards were standing around, or if He continued preaching before the guards arrived to arrest Him, we pick back up in verse 33 where John continues by telling us:

³³ Jesus said, “I will be with you a little while longer. Then I will go back to the One who sent me. ³⁴ You will look for me, but you will not find me. And you cannot come where I am.”

³⁵ Some people said to each other, “Where will this man go so we cannot find him? Will he go to the Greek cities where our people live and teach the Greek people there? ³⁶ What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and ‘You cannot come where I am’?”

We’ll stop reading here for our episode today because I want to draw out a key idea that is shared in this last portion of the passage.

Jesus has just finished describing that He won’t be around much longer, because He is getting ready to return to the One who sent Him. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus had described the One who sent Him as “the One who is true”. In the minds of the people, the only One who is 100% truth, or, using another word, we could say righteous, is God in heaven.

It is amazing to me that when Jesus said the initial statement about being sent by the One who is true, the people wanted to seize Him, likely to kill Him, but just a few verses later, when Jesus describes returning to the One who sent Him, the people completely miss the point that Jesus has just described returning to God in heaven.

Those present are stuck trying to rationalize Jesus’ words thinking He is traveling to some other part of the world, but then they confuse themselves with this train of thought because they know they can travel to every part of the world that He can.

But in Jesus’ words that confuse and challenge those present, we find a powerful spiritual truth: Jesus has told everyone that many will look for Him but won’t be able to find Him. This would be incredibly true on a physical sense, but what about spiritually?

In this statement, I see a challenge to everyone who calls themselves a follower of Jesus, a disciple, or a Christian. If you are someone who claims to follow Jesus, then it would be good to be constantly looking for Him. Sure, technically Jesus is in heaven, but knowing this truth, it is extra important for us to then look for Him there.

While we cannot physically go to heaven before Jesus has returned to take us home, through prayer, we are able to spiritually enter heaven and present our needs, wants, desires, hearts, and lives before Jesus. I believe there is a spiritual angle on what Jesus told the crowd, and it has to do with the state of our hearts and our attitude.

If we choose to pray filled with sin, pride, unforgiveness, or hostility in our hearts – and we are not bringing these issues to God to ask for help with them – then I believe we will be seeking Jesus but unable to find Him. It is only when we shift our attitude and the longing of our hearts to one that desires, wants, and needs Jesus’ help that our prayers will lead us directly to Jesus. This idea then challenges us with the truth that the state of our attitude and heart may keep us from finding Jesus when we seek after Him.

With this said, as we come to the close of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Before you sit down to pray or study your Bible next, pause briefly and assess the state of your heart. Are you coming to your study time in a way that is pleasing to God, in a way that is humble and selfless, or in a way that is self-serving or prideful? Before picking up your Bible or continuing to seek God, be sure you have the right attitude and motives for doing so, because searching for God will be fruitless if you are not interested in being spiritually fruitful.

Next, when you do have the right motivation and attitude, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself, and not simply be studying it through the lens of a pastor, writer, or podcaster’s perspective. While Bible study guides can be helpful, they can also limit what God wants to share with you because they can limit what parts of the Bible you focus on. Prayerfully studying the Bible for yourself, and learning how to best do so, is the best way to grow fully into the person God created you 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 give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

On the night Jesus was betrayed, He shares a supper with the disciples and while this supper was officially the Passover meal for Jesus and His disciples that year, Jesus takes this special, yearly meal, and He gives it new significance. This special meal, called the Last Supper, is one of the most symbolic and significant traditions Christianity has kept while moving forward through history.

Let’s read what Jesus does and how He turns this Passover celebration, and points it to His mission. While we could read this event from several of the gospels, let’s read it from Luke’s gospel. Our passage is found Luke, chapter 22, and we will be reading from the Good News Translation. Starting in verse 14, Luke tells us that:

¹⁴ When the hour came, Jesus took his place at the table with the apostles. ¹⁵ He said to them, “I have wanted so much to eat this Passover meal with you before I suffer! ¹⁶ For I tell you, I will never eat it until it is given its full meaning in the Kingdom of God.”

¹⁷ Then Jesus took a cup, gave thanks to God, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. ¹⁸ I tell you that from now on I will not drink this wine until the Kingdom of God comes.”

¹⁹ Then he took a piece of bread, gave thanks to God, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in memory of me.” ²⁰ In the same way, he gave them the cup after the supper, saying, “This cup is God’s new covenant sealed with my blood, which is poured out for you.”

What Luke has just described is the foundation of the Last Supper that is celebrated at various times depending on the church. I’ve visited churches that celebrate this as a part of their weekly meeting, and I have visited churches that celebrate the Last Supper only once a year.

There are churches who celebrate this meal with little tiny wafer crackers and half-an-ounce glasses of grape juice, while other churches celebrate this with a larger meal and/or different forms of wine. When the Bible speaks of wine, it simply means that it is juice from grapes, and it makes no distinction here whether this juice was fermented or not. In other places in the Bible, new wine likely refers to fresh grape juice, while old wine likely refers to grape juice that has fermented.

However, what is it about the bread and the wine that makes it special?

Well, first, Jesus tells the disciples that He will not drink this wine again until the Kingdom of God comes. This is an interesting thing to say, because it tells us that Jesus is waiting in Heaven for His return before drinking this drink again. This points us forward to the second coming as being something we should look forward to, and it tells us that Jesus is looking forward to sharing this special drink, and probably this very special meal that will go with it, when He returns the second time.

Between today and when that special meal will happen, we have symbols in both the bread and the wine that we can remember.

The first symbol Luke tells us is the bread, which Jesus gave thanks for, broke it, and gave it to the disciples. Jesus’ body was given as a sacrifice for others; Jesus’ body was given as a sacrifice for you and for me. When we eat the special bread that is prepared for this occasion, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice that took our place. We deserved death while Jesus didn’t. He died our death so that we could live His life.

The second symbol is the symbol of the cup with the wine in it. This wine represents Jesus’ blood, which is poured out for us. On the surface, this second symbol sounds very redundant to the first, because both symbols point to the death of Jesus. However, I believe when we look at what Jesus’ blood represents, we see a greater picture of what He did for us.

In the Old Testament, the blood represented the life of a person or an animal. It was partially for this reason that Jews were instructed to not eat or drink an animal’s blood. When we take this symbolic meaning and see that Jesus poured out His blood for us, we could just as easily say that Jesus poured out His life for us. This is significant because the symbol of the wine draws together both Jesus’ life and His death, and it leads us to the clear conclusion that everything Jesus did, said, or gave was for others. Jesus gave Himself both while He was alive as well as through His death for you and for me!

While the bread symbolized Jesus’ body and Jesus paying the price for our sins, the wine symbolizes the life Jesus lived and the life that He offers to each of us when we accept Him into our lives and our hearts! Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life, and He offers to give us His perfect life and His perfect record in exchange for ours. Jesus also offers us a new life with Him in a new heaven and a new earth when sin and death have been destroyed!

This is definitely something I am looking forward to, and I imagine you are looking forward with me to the day Jesus returns and we share the first “Last Supper” together with Him for eternity!

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 always intentionally place Him first in your life. Be sure to remember what Jesus has done for you, through His sacrifice, through the life that He gave, and through the life that He offers to each of us. Remember that our reward will last longer than any trial or challenge we face today and that is one reason we keep moving forward with God!

Also, as I always challenge you to do, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn first-hand what God wants to teach you. Pastors, authors, speakers, podcasters, or anyone else for that matter can have ideas worth thinking about. However, with all the conflicting ideas present in the world today, test everything with what you read and study in the Bible. The Bible is the safest foundation to have when times, cultures, and traditions seem to change with each generation.

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!

When we imagine Jesus traveling throughout the countryside healing, teaching, and preaching to the crowds, in our minds, we always see the rag-tag group of disciples traveling with Him. We don’t ever get the picture that the disciples were anywhere but with Jesus.

However, in an odd turn of events, the gospel of John gives us a glimpse into a brief moment where Jesus was not with His disciples, but instead, He was with His brothers. While I don’t know what the context for this event was, it is interesting in my mind that John chose to include this event in his gospel.

Our event can be found in the gospel of John, chapter 7, and for our time together, we will be reading from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 1, John tells us that:

¹ After these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him. ² Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. ³ Therefore His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. ⁴ For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” ⁵ For not even His brothers were believing in Him. ⁶ So Jesus said to them, “My time is not yet here, but your time is always opportune. ⁷ The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil. ⁸ Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.” ⁹ Having said these things to them, He stayed in Galilee.

The big thing I find fascinating in this passage is what Jesus’ brothers imply through their words. In verse 4, Jesus’ brothers challenge Jesus by saying, “no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly”.

In essence, while Jesus’ brothers probably realize that Jesus is significant, and they probably grew up with the knowledge of Jesus extraordinary birth, and they also probably grew up hearing from Mary and Joseph that Jesus was the Messiah God had promised, none of these extraordinary things from Jesus’ past or present made sense to them when Jesus was not willing to be open or public about who He was.

In Jesus’ brothers’ minds, Jesus was going about the role of Messiah in the completely wrong way. If He was to be rallying people together in an effort to overthrow the Romans, staying out of Judea was not a practical plan, because, while Judea included people who wanted to kill Him, it also contained some of the people who were most likely to join a rebellion. In Galilee, which had a much higher concentration of Gentiles than other parts of the country, Jesus wouldn’t have had as much support, nor would He be as visible to the Jews that Jesus’ brothers likely believed He came to exclusively save.

But the error Jesus’ brothers make is that Jesus wanted to be known publicly. It is this error that catches many Christians and believers off guard, because while Jesus was famous because of the counter-cultural message He was sharing, and because He was able to heal almost anyone from almost anything that was bothering them, Christians today might incorrectly assume that fame was part of Jesus’ goals.

However, Jesus counters this very point by saying in verse 7, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it”. In these words, Jesus separates those present into two groups: Others and Himself. In this statement, Jesus also gives the counter-cultural message that the world hates Him.

Not everyone living in the first century hated Jesus, but a significant number of people living in the first century did. Probably the biggest source of hate towards Jesus both then and now is that His perfect life and selfless character conflict with the sin inside all of us. To reconcile this, we have to either accept Jesus’ offer of His new life, or try and fail to live up to the standard that He set through His life, or give up and not even try at all.

Jesus is hated because He calls evil by its true name, and His perfect life was modeled after the idea of loving the sinner while rejecting the sin. Jesus saw people as special, regardless of their past choices and sinful lifestyles. This love resonated with some, while it repelled a majority of others.

The majority of people who rejected Jesus did so because He either said things they did not agree with or feel they could live up to, or because they routinely built themselves up by putting others down.

Any fame Jesus received through His counter-cultural message and through the miracles He performed was not because He was trying to build a name for Himself. Instead, everything He did was because God directed Him to do so and because He wanted to give the glory to God. None of Jesus’ miracles were intended to bring glory or praise onto Himself; but every one of Jesus’ miracles was intended to focus the glory onto God who had worked in a mighty and powerful way.

In our own lives, for those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus, Christians, or disciples, we are to reflect Jesus in our daily lives, and the only way we can truly reflect Him is if we are focused on Him, if we regularly spend time with Him, and if we intentionally love others like Him. The only way we can hope to accomplish anything for God is by doing what Jesus did and living like Jesus lived: Jesus depended on God for direction, guidance, power, love, humility, and He gave up self at every opportunity He could. When tempted, Jesus always pointed the focus elsewhere, and He never directed glory towards Himself.

Jesus’ brothers did not understand this because His brothers didn’t understand what God’s Messiah would be like. Similar to most everyone living in the first century, Jesus’ brothers believed He would be the military leader who would overthrow the Romans.

Only after Jesus’ death and the mold for their idea of who the Messiah would be was broken, do His closest followers, friends, and family realize that God’s Messiah came in a different way than they had imagined.

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

Continue to place God first and seek to do His will. Commit each day to living as selflessly as Jesus lived and loving others like Jesus loved. Know that you cannot succeed without God’s help, so lean on Him for the strength to reflect Jesus each day.

Also, prayerfully study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow more like Jesus. The only way for you to truly be like Jesus is to learn and discover who Jesus was, and who Jesus is. While you could take a podcaster’s or pastor’s word for it, it’s much better to study and learn personally, because God wants to know you personally and not as a “friend of a friend”.

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!