Reflective Bible Study

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!

On the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, He shared a supper with His followers. During this supper, Jesus tells His followers that one of them would betray Him, and He singles that person out. However, in spite of how clear this all is described, we discover that the disciples still did not understand what was happening until it was too late.

Let’s read what happened when Jesus singles out the betrayer, and see what we can discover. Our passage picks up right where our last episode’s passage ended, and it’s found in John’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will be reading from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 18, Jesus continues speaking to the disciples while eating supper, saying:

¹⁸ “I am not talking about all of you. I know those I have chosen. But this is to bring about what the Scripture said: ‘The man who ate at my table has turned against me.’ ¹⁹ I am telling you this now before it happens so that when it happens, you will believe that I am he. ²⁰ I tell you the truth, whoever accepts anyone I send also accepts me. And whoever accepts me also accepts the One who sent me.”

Let’s pause reading here because I want to draw our attention onto two big ideas. First is that Jesus knows He will be betrayed, and He is clearly aware of who the betrayer is. Jesus states clearly that He knows who He has chosen, and this statement implies that Judas Iscariot may have been brought into the twelve disciples through an invitation Jesus gave, but something was missing after the three years that kept Judas from being “chosen”.

However, we can get a clue about Judas Iscariot in the second big idea. Jesus finished this section off by saying that whoever accepts Him also accepts the One who sent Him. Earlier in John’s gospel, we discover in one of the most famous verses, that God – and this refers to God the Father – loved humanity so much that He gave us His Son, so that those who chose to believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. By accepting Jesus into our hearts and lives, we are also accepting the One who sent Jesus, and this is God the Father, and His Holy Spirit.

However, did Judas Iscariot accept Jesus?

Let’s continue reading to see if John tells us the answer. Continuing in verse 21, John tells us that:

²¹ After Jesus said this, he was very troubled. He said openly, “I tell you the truth, one of you will turn against me.”

²² The followers all looked at each other, because they did not know whom Jesus was talking about. ²³ One of the followers sitting next to Jesus was the follower Jesus loved. ²⁴ Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus whom he was talking about.

²⁵ That follower leaned closer to Jesus and asked, “Lord, who is it?”

²⁶ Jesus answered, “I will dip this bread into the dish. The man I give it to is the man who will turn against me.” So Jesus took a piece of bread, dipped it, and gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. ²⁷ As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered him. Jesus said to him, “The thing that you will do—do it quickly.” ²⁸ No one at the table understood why Jesus said this to Judas. ²⁹ Since he was the one who kept the money box, some of the followers thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the feast or to give something to the poor.

³⁰ Judas took the bread Jesus gave him and immediately went out. It was night.

In this last portion of our passage, a number of things stood out in my mind as we read it. However, the first big thing is the answer to the question I asked earlier. Verse 27 started by telling us that “As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered him.”

This verse gives us the key piece of the puzzle when asking the question about whether Judas had accepted Jesus or not. If Judas had accepted Jesus into His heart, God would have been present there, and if God was present there, Satan could not have entered Judas. Instead, we discover that even after three or more years being a disciple of Jesus, Judas Iscariot was well aware of Jesus’ miraculous support from God, but he had not taken the step towards letting his belief rest on Jesus and He had not spiritually let Jesus into His heart.

In last week’s passage, John told us about Peter and his response to Jesus’ foot washing. I believe that John is subtly contrasting Peter with Judas here, because Peter was all in. While Peter initially wasn’t willing to accept Jesus’ gift of foot washing, when Jesus explained the necessity of it, Peter wants Jesus to wash more of him than just his feet. While Peter stumbled in many ways, we can see from his actions that He was passionate about Jesus.

On the other hand, we don’t discover much about Judas Iscariot, except that most of the gospel writers tell us repeatedly that He would be the one who betrayed Jesus. John tells us that Judas was a thief, and that Jesus challenged Judas’ condescending remarks towards Mary about her gift.

But another interesting observation I had when reading this is that Judas had the choice whether or not to accept the bread from Jesus. While Judas was on the path of betrayal, he could have refused the bread Jesus was handing him. While the other disciples seem clueless that Jesus is exposing the traitor, Judas would have clearly understood what accepting the bread meant.

If God had been in Judas’ heart, Judas would have politely refused, and we would not have the first part of verse 27 in our Bibles. Verse 27 begins by telling us: “As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered him.”

If we remove the first conditional statement in this sentence, the second one disappears. If Judas refused the bread, Satan would not have entered Him, and it is possible this would be the beginning of Judas letting Jesus into His heart. Judas had the choice whether to accept the bread from Jesus, and Judas accepted both the bread and the role of betrayer in one instant. After Judas had accepted this role, Satan entered him and the last stages leading up to the cross begin.

Judas Iscariot was not forced to accept the role of betrayer. God did not predestine him to this role. Jesus did not invite him to be a disciple on the condition that three years later, he would betray Him. Judas chose the role of his own free will, and simply because God saw this happen, and because it was predicted before the events took place, everything hinges on Judas’ choice to accept the bread.

This means for you and I that even though God knows us so well that He knows what we will choose, we still have the freedom to choose when the moment comes. When we face temptation, regardless of our past, we can choose a new path moving forward. While our past lives might be full of sinful decisions, Jesus came to take care of our past when we choose to accept Him into our lives, accept the One who sent Him, and to turn away from the sin in our past. Jesus came to give us a new life with God, and God is inviting us to grow 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 when faced with the choice, always choose to do God’s will, to make the decision that will please God, and/or to choose to love and help others. Trust Jesus that our past has been dealt with when we make the choice to accept Jesus into our lives, and to move forward with Him.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, be sure to always pray and study the Bible for yourself and grow closer to God each and every day. Intentionally strengthen your personal relationship with God and let Him lead you into the truth He wants to teach you through His Word.

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