Reflective Bible Study

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!

As we continue moving through John’s gospel, our last episode ended with Jesus secretly going up to the feast, alone, without either His disciples or His brothers. Part of the reason for this was because the Jews were openly looking for Jesus in order to arrest Him. However, as we will discover in our passage for this episode, Jesus had a hard time staying out of the spotlight.

Our passage for this episode is found in John’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read it from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 14, John tells us that:

¹⁴ When the feast was about half over, Jesus went to the Temple and began to teach. ¹⁵ The people were amazed and said, “This man has never studied in school. How did he learn so much?”

¹⁶ Jesus answered, “The things I teach are not my own, but they come from him who sent me. ¹⁷ If people choose to do what God wants, they will know that my teaching comes from God and not from me. ¹⁸ Those who teach their own ideas are trying to get honor for themselves. But those who try to bring honor to the one who sent them speak the truth, and there is nothing false in them. ¹⁹ Moses gave you the law, but none of you obeys that law. Why are you trying to kill me?”

Pausing briefly, the way Jesus opens His response to the question of where His knowledge came from is powerful. First, Jesus acknowledges that what He is teaching is not His own ideas. Instead, Jesus is teaching ideas from God. However, Jesus then makes an amazing statement. In verse 17, Jesus tells this crowd: “If people choose to do what God wants, they will know that my teaching comes from God and not from me.”

This statement is powerful, and it is a promise we can apply in our own lives and our own world today. If we choose to do what God wants, we will know whether Jesus’ teaching is from God or not. The reverse is also true. If we choose to ignore or reject doing what God wants, we will ultimately discount Jesus, His teaching, and everything about Him.

With that said, how do we know whether we are doing what God really wants?

If this is an open question in your mind, we don’t need to look any farther than a few weeks ago in our podcast episodes, and into the previous chapter in John. Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, while challenging the crowd He fed, Jesus shares the answer to the question about what God really wants. In John, chapter 6, verse 29, Jesus tells the crowd plainly: “The work God wants you to do is this: Believe the One he sent.”

According to Jesus, believing in Him is the clearest way to discover whether His teaching is from God or not. In other words, Jesus invites us to try life His way and when we accept Jesus’ challenge, we will discover personally whether Jesus’ way is best.

This is the best strategy to take, because it is a personal strategy, and it opens the door for God to show up in our lives. The worst thing someone could do is ignore Jesus on the recommendation of someone else who has chosen to ignore Jesus and ultimately miss out on the rewards because they didn’t try Jesus’ way out for themselves!

However, the people, or at least some of those in the crowd, are a little confused at Jesus calling out the plot to kill Him. In verse 20, John tells us that:

²⁰ The people answered, “A demon has come into you. We are not trying to kill you.”

²¹ Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. ²² Moses gave you the law about circumcision. (But really Moses did not give you circumcision; it came from our ancestors.) And yet you circumcise a baby boy on a Sabbath day. ²³ If a baby boy can be circumcised on a Sabbath day to obey the law of Moses, why are you angry at me for healing a person’s whole body on the Sabbath day? ²⁴ Stop judging by the way things look, but judge by what is really right.”

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.”

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?”

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. 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’?”

In this extended time teaching in the temple, I am amazed because Jesus takes one of the groups of people and turns their hesitation into belief. While Jesus shares some challenging things, this group rightly concludes that it would be unlikely for anyone to come afterwards who will do more miracles or be a more positive influence in the world than Jesus was.

While I could share more, the big challenge I see in Jesus’ message is that we should trust Jesus even though there will likely always be unanswered questions. Some of our questions are simply unanswerable, and when we face a question that does not have a good answer, the easy temptation is to doubt because we don’t understand. However, we are called to have faith that every question we have will be answered at the right moment, and it is possible that the right moment for some questions will be when we stand face to face with Jesus after He has returned and brought us home to heaven.

The big thing for us to remember and focus on is doing what God wants us to do, and that is believing the One He sent, and testing Jesus’ teachings out in our own lives to know personally whether what Jesus shared is from God or not. When we have personally walked the path God created us to walk, we’ll discover who Jesus truly is and we’ll get a glimpse of the amazing future God has prepared for us when Jesus returns to bring us home!

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 believe in Jesus and trust that His sacrifice on the cross is enough to pay the penalty for your sins. Choose to take Jesus at His word and trust that He will give you the answers to your questions when the time is right.

Also, pray and study the Bible for yourself and try God’s way in your own life. Choose to pray and study the Bible for yourself and test God’s truth by applying it into your life in order to know whether Jesus’ way is really the best way to live. I’ve done this in my own life and determined that Jesus’ way is both better today, even with the challenges it brings, and the rewards for following Jesus are better than we could even imagine. This is what I have discovered in my own journey, and I challenge you to take the journey for yourself instead of taking anyone’s word for it.

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

As we continue moving through our year focusing in on Jesus’ parables, we come to a series of three short parables that only Matthew’s gospel includes. These three parables are shared just with the disciples, and they are shared after Jesus responds to the disciples asking for explanation of one of Jesus’ other parables. For this episode, we’ll focus on the first parable in this set of three parables, because while the three parables are all short and similar, each is distinct enough to warrant an episode dedicated to it.

Let’s read the first parable and discover another way Jesus describes God’s kingdom to the disciples. Our passage is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will read it from the Good News Translation. In verse 44, Jesus tells the disciples:

⁴⁴ “The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man happens to find a treasure hidden in a field. He covers it up again, and is so happy that he goes and sells everything he has, and then goes back and buys that field.

As we read this one-verse parable, two phrases jumped out to me. The first phrase is how the parable opens. This translation draws a casual connection to the discovery of this treasure. It describes, “A man happens to find a treasure in a field”. Reading this translation makes me think that the man was strolling through the field, and he trips over something hard and realizes that it is the corner of a treasure chest. The way this is described makes me think that the man was not looking for treasure, but that he at least had his eyes open enough to recognize the treasure was there when it tripped him.

When reading the opening statement of this parable from multiple translations, no clues are given to the intentional nature or the casual finding of this treasure. Instead, the parable simply describes someone simply finding treasure hidden in a field. From this detail, and from the fact this is a parable Jesus shared, we can conclude that the treasure that is found is something that we all can find in our lives if we are paying attention. This “treasure in a field” is something that we may have been seeking out, or it may be something we find at a time we are not expecting to find it. Regardless of whether we are actively looking, or whether we stumble onto it, what matters is not that we found it, but what we will do when we have found it.

After the man found the treasure, he has three options. He can bury the treasure and walk away; He can steal the treasure, have the money, but also have the guilt associated with the theft; or He can sell as much as is necessary to buy the field that contains the treasure, which is the legally correct option. If I sold a home to you, and buried in the walls of the home were diamonds and blocks of gold that I was not aware of, when you discovered them, they would legally be yours. I might be upset at myself for not finding the treasure, but it would legally be the property of the owner of the home.

According to the details of the parable, the man doesn’t take any chances that he will not have enough money, so even if he only needed to sell a portion of his stuff, he sold everything because the treasure is that valuable in his eyes. This is the second idea that stood out in my mind as we read this parable.

This man wants this treasure legally, and he does not want any of the guilt associated with simply stealing it. This man knows that a treasure that has been wrongfully gained is not a treasure in the end. The treasures we can have and enjoy the most are the ones that don’t come with guilt or other negative traits.

The man buys the field because he knows that with this treasure, he can gain the life he has always wanted. While we might be tempted to think that simply having money can get us the life we most desire, the truth of this parable is that the kingdom of heaven is represented by this treasure that is hidden in a field. In other words, the treasure that can bring us true fulfillment in our lives is the kingdom of heaven treasure.

If we read this parable from the New American Standard Bible translation, it tells us that “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

The amazing truth of this parable is that the kingdom of heaven is something that we simply must open our eyes in order to discover. The kingdom of heaven is something that we might miss if we are not paying attention, but it is something we can discover if we keep our eyes open for it.

And not only this, the kingdom of heaven is something that is worth selling everything we have in order to acquire it. The kingdom of heaven isn’t a treasure that can be stolen. Instead, it is a treasure that is worth giving our lives for. This is because all that this life offers us is pain and sin that ultimately leads to death. While life may have its good moments, our lives one hundred, or even two hundred years from now will have ended in death – unless we have given our lives for the kingdom of heaven.

When we give our lives to Jesus, He promises to keep us safe through the death we face, and bring us out on the other side into a new, perfect, eternal life that has all the best parts of this life without any of the pain, sin, and death.

The kingdom of heaven is the ultimate treasure, and the first step in finding this treasure is seeking Jesus. Jesus is the way to this treasure, and He is the only way to eternal life!

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

As always, be sure to intentionally seek Jesus and God first in your life. Place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus as you choose to open your eyes to discovering God’s kingdom. As Jesus’ return moves closer, be sure you are actively seeking Him in your life so that when He returns, you will be ready.

One of the best ways to get and stay ready is by praying and studying the Bible for yourself. Regular prayer and Bible study helps draw you close to God and it helps you accept God’s Holy Spirit into your life. With the Holy Spirit working in your life, don’t be surprised to discover that God is using you to bring about His kingdom in the world today!

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