How should Christians interact with the world? Here in Lancaster County we have some unique examples of Christians who have chosen to separate themselves from the world, at least in part. Our plain neighbors have largely been successful for centuries in creating a separate culture within the larger culture.
Yes, most Lancastrians have stories about how Amish culture is incrementally changing. From my Amish neighbor girls with their handheld Nintendo game system, to the other neighbor up the street with his 20 solar panels, to the person who often drives his buggy down our road late at night with rhythmic bass pumping out of rather loud speakers. Those and other examples aside, there is no doubt that the Amish hold to a version of Christianity that is against the world.
While there is nothing wrong with speaking PA Dutch, wearing a particular kind of clothing, avoiding electricity (or at least the electrical grid), and using horse and buggies instead of cars, do the Amish have to live that way to be faithful Christians? Of course not, we would say. We have a very different viewpoint about what it means to be faithful Christians in the world.
In our continuing study of the life and ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of John, in John 15, Jesus is just hours, maybe minutes, away from being arrested and taken from his disciples. That arrest will confront them with the reality that the world around them might think about them negatively because they are Jesus’ followers. How, then, should they interact with the world? Likewise, how should we interact with our world, admitting that our world is vastly different from that which the disciples lived in?
Read John 15:18-16:4 and next week we’ll discuss it further.
The theme of my denomination this year is “A Dynamic Movement of God.” This theme comes from the denomination’s vision statement which was created in the early 2000s.
While we definitely want to participate in the movement of God, let us not believe that we can manufacture a movement of God. Many Christians claim that they have figured out how to create a movement of God. The famous preacher on TV, the popular author of church growth books, the large church down the road all have strengths and their weaknesses. They might help us in some way. They might not. Bearing fruit for Jesus is not something that occurs by following the pathway of so-called success that others are promoting.
Instead, as we saw in the previous post, Jesus calls us to remain in him. He alone is the power, and therefore he is all we want. This is why I have been writing in my weekly Monday email to my church’s Leadership Team that we as a church need to look to the Holy Spirit to guide us. What is the Spirit saying to us? How is the Spirit at work in our community? We strive to remain in the Spirit, to hear how he is guiding, and how he is at work, so that we can join him.
Otherwise, we are resting in our own power, which Jesus says is fruitless. Look at verses 6-9,
“If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.”
As we learned in the post here, Jesus earlier that evening taught the disciples, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples that you love one another.” Now in John 15:8 he says there is another way that we show we are his disciples, by remaining in him, and he will enable us bearing much fruit. He reminds us that it is a remaining in his love.
Jesus once taught, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouths speaks.” When we are remaining in him, his power is flowing through us, and his Spirit is transforming our hearts, so that the feelings, thoughts, and deeds, the fruit of Jesus naturally flows out of our lives.
Bear the fruit of reproducing, multiplying. Invite others to follow Jesus. That is remaining in his love.
Bear the fruit of allowing the Holy Spirit to continually transform your hearts and minds so his Fruit is overflowing out of your life. That is remaining in his love.
Remaining in him is not the same as going to worship services, reading your Bible, and other traditional Christian activities. Those practices are not wrong. But remaining in Jesus is a work that goes deep, transforming our hearts and minds. Jesus wants our hearts to become more and more like his, so what naturally flows out of our lives are the good fruit of the Spirit. This is why we pray in humble dependence on him, “Lord I need you, I can’t do this without you.”
Jesus’ disciples have been listening to him talk about how his father is like a gardener cutting and pruning his followers. Those disciples could easily be wondering…am I about to get cut off? So Jesus says in verse 3, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”
Jesus is saying that the disciples there are truly his followers. Their belief is genuine. Immature, perhaps, but genuine. Think about how Jesus includes Peter in this statement, even after he has already told Peter that he would deny Jesus three times before morning. Jesus is giving them hope, knowing they will turn away from him. Jesus is affirming his disciples. They have all sorts of room to grow. Given the tumultuous events they are about to experience, his arrest, beating and crucifixion, the disciples need to know that they are clean, pruned, ready to bear fruit. But there’s one more vastly important teaching they need now. Look at verses 4-5,
“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
Remain. That’s what they need. Remain in him. The branch remains in the vine because the life-giving power necessary for producing fruit flows from the vine into the branch. Jesus has the life-giving power to produce fruit for his Kingdom. We don’t have that power. Only he does. This is why we pray “Lord, I need you. We need you. We can’t do this without you.”
We must remain in him. But how do we remain in him? To remain in Jesus is to be connected to him, and to stay connected to him. That doesn’t mean we have no doubts. Doubt is normal. In fact, doubt and faith are not opposites, but mutual parts of a healthy relationship with God. If you ever have doubts about Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, you are a quite normal believer. We will likely all go through periods of stronger faith and weaker faith through the years. Having doubts and weaker faith doesn’t mean you no longer remain in Jesus.
Investigate your doubts, talk about them, pray about them. Embracing doubt will almost always result in stronger faith. It is when we ignore our doubts that they can build to full-blown loss of faith.
But Jesus is not just talking about belief. He is talking about beliefs that show themselves to be faithful by remaining in him. What actions can we do to remain connected to Jesus? I would suggest that we can look to Jesus himself to discover the actions he did to remain connected to the Father.
Jesus lived a life that was very fruitful. He habitually practiced his faith out of the overflow of his heart. His love for God the Father flowed out into making disciples, treating others with love and forgiveness and grace. He lived in community with his disciples and friends. He invited and welcomed all people, especially those on the outskirts of society.
Jesus regularly left the disciples and the crowds to spend time alone with God. This is not just prayer, if we think about prayer as speaking our requests to God. That is an important part of prayer. Jesus will talk about this practice of asking in just a moment. But there is more to prayer.
Jesus also talked about how he listened to what the Father said. Listening prayer is vital. Listening prayer means we spend time with God and we are silent, but in our silence we are active, actively hearing, listening for God the Spirit to talk with us. We rest in him. We are still. We invite God to speak to us. We ask him, “Spirit, how are you doing?” because that’s what friends ask, because they care, and then we listen for their response. Last week we heard that the Spirit is communicative, and so listen. We listen not just to learn content. We listen so that we can follow his guidance.
We also listen through meditation on the Word of God. Primarily the Word of the God is the Bible. To meditate is to think deeply about what we read. Biblical meditation is not an emptying of the mind, but a filling of the mind with the thoughts of God, as written in Scripture. Again we meditate on Scripture not to feel amazing when Jeopardy has a Bible category and we run that board. No, we meditate on Scripture to see how we might more fully follow the wisdom of Scripture. Remember how Jesus said in John 14 that if we love him, we show it by obeying his commands? We read Scripture to learn his commands, which are in our best interest, and then we strive to do what he said.
That’s exactly what Jesus did. Jesus practiced remaining in the father by doing the work of the mission of the Kingdom. He proclaimed Good News, he made disciples, he healed the sick, he loved all, he forgave, he confronted injustice. He lived a simple life. On and on. We strive to do what he did, asking him to empower us.
Another way to understand fruit-bearing is that of making disciples. A fruit tree drops fruit on the ground. The fruit contains a seed. The seed grows into a new tree which produces more fruit. This process of multiplication, of reproduction is one of the ways to understand Jesus “bear more fruit” teaching. In other words, we remain in him, asking him to empower us to invite other people to follow him, and we help them grow as his disciples.
Another way we remain in him, which he clearly demonstrates for us, is a sacrificial lifestyle. We give generously to his Kingdom mission. That giving is not just financial, but it also includes our time and our abilities. Jesus gave it all. We can give sacrificially because we are connected to his life-giving power. He will sustain us!
Change comes in all shapes and sizes. If you want to lose weight and build muscle, lifting weights regularly can help. But how do we change our emotions, our struggles?
Paul writes in Romans 8:29 that we are to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. Sanctification is the process whereby Christians, disciples of Jesus, look more and more like their master. That is a major element of the process of discipleship, learning from Jesus how to live so that our lives look more and more like his life. I am not talking about beliefs. I’m referring to the choices and actions of our lives. Sanctification involves pruning which is intended to help us live more like Jesus lived.
A Christian is one who answers Jesus’ call, “Follow me,” and hour by hour, day by day throughout their lives, learns to live like Jesus lived, and then actually lives that way. But this is not simply an outward process. As I mentioned already, sanctification starts inwardly; as the Spirit of God enters our lives he helps us desire to live more like Jesus and do life the way Jesus did.
Once we give our lives to God, whether it is a moment of decision or a long process, the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives recreating us, making us into new people. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come.” We are connected to Jesus, like branches on a vine. We learned last week that we Christians have the amazing privilege of taking on the qualities of Jesus, by his Holy Spirit who lives in us.
With God’s Spirit in us, we have so much more than hope of eternal life. This is part of how we experience what Jesus taught us John 10:10, that he came so that we might have abundant life. What he was referring to is the transformation of our inner lives so that they would become more and more like his inner life. Just as astounding love and goodness flowed freely from him, so too he wants that kind of life, his kind of life, to flow freely from us. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Then to top it off, he adopts us into his family, signifying the intensely close relationship he wants to have with us. So not only does his Spirit live within us, but also we are relationally situated in his family.
As we think about sanctification, perhaps the most important question we can ask ourselves is this: do we see evidence of sanctification in our lives? Read through Galatians 5 and familiarize yourself with both the anti-fruits of the sinful nature, in verses 19-21, and the Fruit of the Spirit in verses 22-23.
When we surrender our lives to God’s Spirit, we begin to practice the habits we see Jesus practicing, and little by little that practice shapes us so that what naturally flows out of our lives is the fruit of the Spirit, things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. Likewise, anger, jealousy, rage, lust and other such traits gradually decrease in our lives.
Gardeners, do you only prune a plant once? No, it is a regular part of the life of the plant. Likewise, pruning in the life of the follower of Jesus is a regular part of following him. Ask yourself: Are any of the anti-fruits of the sinful nature still flowing from your life? It might be a pervasive critical spirit, it might be a manipulative intimidating approach to relationships, it might be a hair-trigger temper, it might be lust or pornography, gossip or complaining. And are there any Fruits of the Spirit that should be flowing from your life, but are not? Any pruning that needs to take place?
If so, confess it to the Lord and repent. If there is a part of your life that you have regularly struggled with for many months or years, I highly recommend that you talk with someone about it. We are meant for community, to follow Jesus together. Some sins are deeply entrenched, and we need help. Nothing is too difficult for the Spirit, but remember free will. Oftentimes those sins are such a part of lives that they flow from us freely, and we struggle to give them up. We might even enjoy some sins. Talk about it with God and with others. Get help. Some may benefit greatly from professional counseling or anger management or an accountability partner.
As they were listening to him talk about pruning and cutting, Jesus’ disciples could easily be thinking about the sins and struggles in their own lives, wondering…am I about to get cut off? In the next post, as if reading their minds, Jesus has an answer for them. A very important answer.
What is Jesus is talking about in John 15:1-10 when he says he wants us to “be even more fruitful”? In the previous post, I suggested that Jesus is not talking about American metrics of success like “bigger is better” or “winning is everything.”
Jesus doesn’t say how much fruit. He doesn’t say how big the fruit is. Jesus wants us to bear fruit for his Kingdom, and he wants us to be pruned so that we will be more fruitful. Pruning, therefore, painful though it may be, is a good thing, because it means we will be more fruitful. In this post, then, we’re going to talk about the two different actions Jesus refers to in his analogy: cutting and pruning.
Cutting is the act of removal because the branch is dead or diseased. It’s not producing fruit. In John 15, verse 6, Jesus talks about cutting branches there too: “If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”
People who do not remain in him are cut off. Therefore, it is vital we learn what it means to remain in him. The image of getting cut off is not fun to talk about, is it? No one wants to hear that is even possible. In the theological tradition of which I am a part, we call this apostasy. Apostasy refers to people who choose to no longer remain in Jesus. It is our free will choice.
I was listening to a podcast recently in which a Bible scholar was talking about how he grew up as a committed follower of Jesus, but over the years, through a series of circumstances, study and decisions he made, he no longer believes in Jesus. He is a dead branch. A dead branch is already cut off from the life-giving vine. The Bible scholar is still a Bible scholar. That is his profession. He teaches the Bible simply as a work of ancient literature. But the Bible scholar does not believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, and thus he does not follow Jesus. This man chose to cut himself off from Jesus.
Again, the idea of separation from Jesus is uncomfortable. In John 15:1-10, though, what Jesus emphasizes is not the possibility of being cut off, but the hope and possibility of bearing fruit. And bearing fruit requires pruning. The word Jesus uses for pruning is the standard word for cleansing in the New Testament. For example this concept is mentioned in 2 Corinthians 7:1 “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”
Do you see how this relates to a vine? Pruning doesn’t destroy a branch. Pruning makes branches healthier. Think about how this relates to followers of Jesus. In John 15, Jesus is talking to his disciples, people who love him and want to follow him. Jesus is prepping them for what life will be like and how they can continue to follow him and thrive when he is gone. This pruning will need to happen in an ongoing way, as it does in the garden.
Pruning is a life-long process that is sometimes called “sanctification.” “Sanctification” is not a word that we use in common conversation. The word “sanctified” is translated by numerous English words such as “set apart,” “sanctuary,” “hallowed” or “made holy”. It is defined as “to cause someone to have the quality of holiness.”
I suspect the most famous use of this word is in the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” What Jesus is suggesting is that God is holy, set apart, and therefore we want to set him apart in our hearts and minds. The set-apartness that Jesus is going for here is that God should be our priority, our focus, because he is the one and only true God, the all-powerful, all-loving one. He deserves to be our focus because is worthy of it.
When I think about that, I start to wonder, “How in the world could I ever be made holy like God is holy?” It doesn’t seem possible. As matter of fact, it is not possible. The biblical writers are not suggesting that we can become holy in the same way that God is holy. God is completely other. That means there is no one like God, and there is no possibility for anyone to become everything that God is. But that reality, the reality of God’s otherness, does not preclude the possibility that we can become more and more like God.
In the next post, we’ll talk more about how Jesus’ analogy of pruning can help us become more like God.
Before each worship service, my church has a brief prayer time before each worship service. The host, worship leader, singers, and preacher gather in a small circle to pray that the Holy Spirit will work in and through us, because we desire our worship services to be meaningful, formative.
When we pray, there’s a passage of Scripture that is always on my mind. Every week. I don’t mention the passage of Scripture each week during that short prayer, but I’m thinking about it when I pray, “Lord we need you.” Every time our serve teams meet we begin with a prayer time, and I’m thinking about it, “Lord we need you.” Every time our Leadership Team meets, we begin with prayer, and I’m thinking about it, “Lord we need you.”
Whether it is about how to continue becoming the church family that God wants us to be, whether it is about supporting the advancement of God’s Kingdom in our community, making disciples, worshiping God, building healthy relationships in our church family, or any aspect of the life and ministry of our church family, I think about that passage of Scripture, the one that leads me to pray, “Lord, we need you.”
That passage is what we’re studying on the blog this week: John 15, verses 1-10. In this passage, Jesus teaches a parable/analogy that we can learn much from.
In the last sentence of John chapter 14, we read tat Jesus and the disciples have just left the Upper Room where he washed their feet, served them the first communion, and revealed that Judas would betray him and Peter would deny him. Then he told them he was leaving them, but he would send the Holy Spirit to them because God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit wanted to make their home with and in the lives of all his followers. Now Jesus has a parable/analogy to help his disciples understand how important this teaching is about God making his home with us. Look at John 15:1-2,
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”
Jesus is not referring the English ivy along my driveway. Some vines like English ivy grow and grow, but they don’t produce fruit, and thus there is no need for pruning, unless you don’t want them to cover everything. Jesus is saying that he is like a vine that has the capability of producing fruit, and thus the branches on the vine must pruned. That means there is also a farmer, God the Father, who does the pruning.
You should see the peach tree in our back yard. I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to caring for that peach tree. But this past year it clearly needed to be pruned. Growth was too high, too wild, and last year’s peach crop was poor. So I got my pruning shears, and I started cutting. I did not do research about how to prune. I just started trimming.
I had a rough goal of thinning out the branches. Peaches had already started growing on the trees, so I plucked off the tiny peaches, leaving only the big ones. There were still a ton of big ones, thankfully. But in the end, if you would look at our peach tree, I think you would laugh. Branches are sticking out in all kinds of crazy directions.
My peach tree does not look like a peach tree at Cherry Hill Orchards. Located near me in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Cherry Hill has rows and rows of beautifully trimmed peach trees. Why does my tree look so different from theirs? Because I’m not a pruner like the pruners who work for Cherry Hill Orchards.
Thankfully, God is not a pruner like I am pruner. God knows what he is doing. God is like the pruners at Cherry Hill. Jesus says God cuts off branches that bear no fruit, and he prunes the fruit-bearing branches to make them even more bountiful. The point here is that Jesus wants to bear fruit. Jesus wants his life to produce more life. God’s act of pruning is consistent with his love.
But the image of a pruner cutting off branches and pruning still might cause us to squirm a little bit. We might be thinking, “Is God going to cut me off from the vine? Is he going to prune me? Will I have to change something about my life?” Those are scary questions. I’d much rather not ask those questions because I’m not sure I want to hear the answers. I myself often wonder if I am serving God sacrificially enough. I know I have some struggles, some selfishness, some sins. Am I in trouble?
Notice that Jesus wants us to bear fruit and to be pruned so that we will be more fruitful.
When Jesus says this, at first glance it sounds very familiar. In our American context we so often evaluate worth based on a very specific definition of success, “bigger is better,” winning is everything, getting more people involved, more money, more likes, more views, more buildings. You are deemed worthy if you are leading or even you are just a part of something that is growing in that so-called successful way. Is that what Jesus is talking about?
One of most discouraging books I ever read is The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins. I found the book discouraging because it tells the sad story of the Christian church in places where the church started and thrived. The book’s subtitle says it all, “The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia—and how it died.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to think about the church dying. Our American mindset tends to be one of victory and dominion, not failure. Yet, we need to think about the reality that in the very places where the Christian church started and thrived the church is now mostly non-existent. In fact, Jenkins says, people in those places, in our day see Christianity as something being sneakily and dangerously imported from the West!
Why did Christianity die in the places where it was born and thrived for a millenium? In Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and many other places in the wider Middle East, Islam systematically decimated Christianity. That is a generalization, of course, and there are other factors at play, which Jenkins does an excellent job of describing. Largely, though, Islam wiped out Christianity in the Middle East.
When you think about that you might wonder, as I do, why God allowed that to happen. Was it the Christians’ fault? Like Israel in the Old Testament, did the Christians rebel against God and thus God allowed them to face the consequences, very similarly to how he allowed Babylon to invade and decimate Israel? We can’t answer that question. We’ll never know until that day in eternity when we can ask Jesus. What we can conclude, however, is that God doesn’t promise us worldly success, at least as “success” is so often defined in our American culture. The lack of a promise of success can be hard for us to swallow.
Instead, I find it much more helpful to attempt to answer the question, “What is success in God’s eyes?” We’re going to try to answer that question next week on the blog. Jesus, in John 15:1-10, teaches his disciples a powerful parable that gets at the heart of success and how to achieve godly success. Over the years, as I’ve studied Jesus’ many teachings, this one, in my opinion, is a top five most important. I look forward to talking about it with you starting Monday.
In the previous post, we learned about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, so that we can grow a closer relationship with the Spirit. But Jesus has more to say about the important work of the Spirit. Here’s what Jesus teaches in John 16, verses 8-11,
“When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.”
Here Jesus describes the role of the Spirit in the work of his mission. The Spirit will help the world see that they have done wrong. But while people have done wrong, there is a possibility of righteousness for those who believe in Jesus.
For certain, Jesus is speaking in broad strokes here. He is not describing precisely how the Spirit works. But know this, the Spirit is at work in the world for the purpose of helping people come to Christ.
Jesus continues talking about the role of the Holy Spirit in verses 12-16,
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.” Jesus went on to say, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.”
In these verses we see the communication that happens between the three persons who are the one God: Father, Son and Spirit, in totally equality and communication. Amazingly, Jesus says, the Spirit will guide us into the knowledge of this truth.
Years later the Apostle Paul would reflect on this when he would write in 1 Corinthians 2:12, “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.”
What we see in these three passages in John 14, 15, and 16 is a very active God the Spirit who lives with and in followers of Jesus, communicating truth. The Spirit is our helper, comforter, advocate. He convicts us of sin, and he helps us to remember the commands of Jesus.
Think about the author of the article I mentioned in the first post in this five-part series. The author was a seminary professor who admitted that he had allowed his relationship with God to become cognitive, centered in his mind. He called that overly-cognitive faith self-destructive. He was focusing on God the Father and God the Son, which is only two-thirds of God. He was leaving out the Holy Spirit. We need all of God.
I wonder if you have grown up in a Christian tradition like that professor. Or maybe you are familiar with a Christian tradition that embraces the Holy Spirit. The reality is that there can be extremes either way. On one pole is the extreme of avoiding or being afraid of the Spirit, while on the other pole is an extreme focus on the Spirit, not relating enough with God the Father and God the Son. Jesus tells us something different in the passages we have been studying this week in John 14-16.
Jesus teaches that we can trust God the Father. We can trust God the Son. We can trust God the Spirit. We can trust God who is three in one. Evaluate your relationship with God. Is there one person of our Trinitarian God you are most comfortable with? Is there one you are less comfortable with? Explore that. Ask Father, Son and Spirit to help you relate to each of them equally, knowing that it is God the Spirit who lives in you. He is God making his home with you. Ask him for his help in following the words and ways of Jesus.
What does it mean to have a relationship with the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is invisible and how do you have a relationship with an invisible being? Are you supposed to hear something? Feel something? In John chapter 15, verses 26-27, Jesus describes a relationship with the Spirit like this:
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.”
In the original Greek, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the “Paraclete” (which we learned about in this post), and the “Spirit of Truth” but this time he adds a bit, saying that the Spirit with testify about Jesus. To testify is to serve as a witness. This is language that we commonly use in courtroom settings. The Spirit, Jesus says, will talk about Jesus. The Spirit communicates to his disciples. Specifically the Spirit communicates about Jesus. The Spirit has a main topic of conversation with followers of Jesus – the topic is going to be Jesus and His ways.
Just as the Spirit is to communicate about Jesus, Jesus wants the disciples to testify, to talk about Jesus. They have been with Jesus, and they have stories to tell. This is instructive for you and I. Christians are people who have experienced the work on Jesus in our lives, and that work of Jesus in us gives us much to talk about. We also have the Spirit in our lives, so we can hear from the Spirit’s testimony about Jesus. We have our testimony and the Spirit’s testimony. That’s a lot. We have stories to share, and we can greatly encourage people by sharing those stories!
Still Jesus isn’t done talking about the Spirit. Here’s what he says in John chapter 16, verses 5-7:
“[N]ow I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
Jesus sees that his disciples are not happy. They are filled with grief because he has told them repeatedly that he is leaving them. He tries to assure them that it is good that he is going away. How can it possibly be good? He is their teacher and Lord. They don’t want him to leave. But he has a good reason. If he goes, the Advocate will come. The Holy Spirit.
As mysterious as we might think the Spirit is sometimes, Jesus is saying that it is better for us that the Spirit is with us. How could that be? Think about it this way. Jesus is God who chose to contain himself to a human body. The Spirit is God who is uncontained by a physical body. That means there is no way Jesus could be with each and every one of his followers everywhere all the time, but the Spirit can be.
While there’s no doubt it would be amazing to talk with and touch the living, breathing Jesus, the Spirit is with us and in us. The Spirit resides in every single follower of Jesus. That is a deeper and closer connection than we could have with Jesus.
This is why Jesus said in verse 7 that it is good for us that he is leaving, and he is right. His leaving means that we can have a close connection with the Spirit! We can grow a relationship with the Spirit. That’s a powerful thought. How is your relationship with the Spirit?
In the next post, we’ll learn more about growing a relationship with the Spirit who lives with us and in us.
What does it mean to have a relationship with the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is invisible. Can you feel the Spirit? Hear the Spirit? In John chapter 15, verses 26-27, Jesus describes a relationship with the Spirit like this:
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.”
In the original Greek, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the “Paraclete” (which we learned about in this post), and the “Spirit of Truth” but this time he adds a bit, saying that the Spirit with testify about Jesus. To testify is to serve as a witness. This is language that we commonly use in courtroom settings. The Spirit, Jesus says, will talk about Jesus. The Spirit communicates to his disciples. Specifically the Spirit communicates about Jesus. The Spirit has a main topic of conversation with followers of Jesus – the topic is going to be Jesus and His ways.
Just as the Spirit is to communicate about Jesus, Jesus wants the disciples to testify, to talk about Jesus. They have been with Jesus, and they have stories to tell. This is instructive for you and I. Christians are people who have experienced the work on Jesus in our lives, and that work of Jesus in us gives us much to talk about. We also have the Spirit in our lives, so we can hear from the Spirit’s testimony about Jesus. We have our testimony and the Spirit’s testimony. That’s a lot. We have stories to share, and we can greatly encourage people by sharing those stories!
Still Jesus isn’t done talking about the Spirit. Here’s what he says in John chapter 16, verses 5-7:
“[N]ow I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
Jesus sees that his disciples are not happy. They are filled with grief because he has told them repeatedly that he is leaving them. He tries to assure them that it is good that he is going away. How can it possibly be good? He is their teacher and Lord. They don’t want him to leave. But he has a good reason. If he goes, the Advocate will come. The Holy Spirit.
As mysterious as we might think the Spirit is sometimes, Jesus is saying that it is better for us that the Spirit is with us. How could that be? Think about it this way. Jesus is God who chose to contain himself to a human body. The Spirit is God who is uncontained by a physical body. That means there is no way Jesus could be with each and every one of his followers everywhere all the time, but the Spirit can be.
While there’s no doubt it would be amazing to talk with and touch the living, breathing Jesus, the Spirit is with us and in us. The Spirit resides in every single follower of Jesus. That is a deeper and closer connection than we could have with Jesus.
This is why Jesus said in verse 7 that it is good for us that he is leaving, and he is right. His leaving means that we can have a close connection with the Spirit! We can grow a relationship with the Spirit. That’s a powerful thought. How is your relationship with the Spirit?
In the next post, we’ll learn more about growing a relationship with the Spirit who lives with us and in us.
Recently my son and daughter-in-law attempted to purchase their first house. They were married not quite two years ago, and in the meantime both got great jobs. So they were looking to move out of their one-bedroom apartment. It was a wonderful apartment to be able to save up for a down payment, but now they were hoping for a bit more room for themselves and their dog.
As they searched, they prayed, we prayed, and many other people prayed. They put in offer after offer on houses for sale, and every time the sellers chose other buyers. In the housing market of 2023, this is par for the course. A home will go on sale, and in no time a seller will have a slew of overs, often many above asking price. My son and daughter-in-law resigned themselves to the fact that it might not be happening for them. Maybe you’ve been in a similar situation. There are plenty of difficulties in life that test our patience and can lead us to give up hope. What do we do when we are struggling to keep hope alive?
In this devotional we’re finishing the book of Jeremiah, and I have to admit that the life and ministry of Jeremiah has been difficult to study. The entire context of the book is the devastating end of the nation of Judah. There have been visions of hope here and there, but for the most part we’ve watched Judah rebel against God, and God tearfully allow Judah to face the consequences of their decision to break covenant with him. It seems like hope is lost. How will Jeremiah end? To get to the end, we’ll need to cover four chapters, 49-52. That’s a lot in one devotional, but I think we can do it. Here’s how: we’ll be able to briefly summarize chapter 49, and then we’ll peek ahead to chapter 52. Finally, we spend the bulk of our time studying chapters 50-51.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been studying the final section of the book of Jeremiah, a section of prophetic poems about the nations around Israel. We come to chapter 49, a series of short prophetic poems about Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar & Hazor, and Elam. The short poems of chapter 49 convey a similar message found in the long poem about Moab in chapter 48 (post here): the nations are arrogantly self-deceived, and Babylon will destroy them. In the end, God says, of the five nations, he will restore the fortunes of the Ammonites and Elamites, and he will protect the orphans and widows of the Edomites. God is a God of restoration, a God whose heart beats for the vulnerable. As you and I desire to follow after God’s heart, then we hold out hope for restoration, we passionately pursue justice for those on the margins.
Now let’s temporarily skip over chapters 50 and 51, and have a short glance at the final chapter of Jeremiah, chapter 52. The book of Jeremiah finishes with a historical recounting of the fall of Jerusalem, a census of the exiles, and a few words about the fate of Judah’s exiled king, Jehoiachin. Most of chapter 52 is a retelling of Jeremiah 39, as well as passages in 2 Kings 24 & 25 and 2 Chronicles 36. Feel free to read it as a reminder of the fall of Jerusalem, but this post, we aren’t going to cover it.
We’re clear to return to Jeremiah chapters 50 and 51, the final prophetic poem, a long message for the Babylonians. This prophetic poem is very similar to all the previous prophetic poems, in that its message is that a nation will be attacked and destroyed. What is surprising is that every other poem it was Babylon who did the attacking, and now we read that Babylon will be attacked and destroyed. Additionally this poem is unique in that it contains numerous messages for Israel. We’re going to pay special attention to what God says to his people Israel.
In chapter 50, verses 1-3, we learn that the great attacker, Babylon, will herself be attacked by a nation from the north. That northern nation is likely Persia, another regional superpower. In the rest of the poem, God will refer to Babylon’s foe as “an alliance of nations” (9) and “the kings of the Medes” (51:11, 28).
For now, God points out that Babylon’s gods will be put to shame and filled with terror. In other words, Babylon’s gods will be shown as false, powerless. God’s reference to Babylon’s gods is important, especially for people in the Ancient Near East. When two nations waged war against each other, that battle was very much seen as a contest between each nation’s gods. When Babylon swept through the region defeating everyone in sight, including Judah, both the victorious Babylonians and their many defeated foes had strong evidence to conclude that Babylon’s gods were more powerful than any other god, including Judah’s God.
This is perhaps at least partly why the people of Judah, often seemingly easily, fell prey to worshiping the false gods of the Babylonians. Maybe their God wasn’t as powerful as their ancient stories suggested. Maybe Babylon’s gods were more powerful. In chapter 50, verses 1-3, God corrects that false impression. Those seemingly all-powerful Babylonian deities will be revealed for the shams they are. That should be extremely instructive for the people of Israel and Judah, whose God is Yahweh, the one true God. So it makes sense that God would, though this is still a poem for Babylon, now have a few words for the people of Israel and Judah.
In verses 4-7, God says that when Babylon is attacked, when her gods are put to shame, then the people of Israel and Judah will together tearfully seek God. That word “together” is eye-popping. This would be the first time in centuries that the people of God will be together. Israel fell apart in civil war after the reign of Solomon, and ever since they were divided. Now God envisions them repenting together. An astounding unification will take place.
But what is so important about this passage is not just the joy of a reunification of Israel; what is so important is why they are unified. Together they will turn toward Zion (another name for the holy city of Jerusalem), and they will bind themselves to God in an everlasting covenant. This is a powerful image of a new covenant between God and his people.
God depicts the people as sheep who are lost, led astray by their shepherds. This metaphor is what we have heard from Jeremiah frequently. The Jewish leaders, kings, priests and prophets, led the people away from God. The leaders and people sinned against God, choosing not to believe that God was their true hope. But a new day is coming, a day of restoration. God gives the people a vision of hope in a new covenant.
Then the poem turns again to the destruction of Babylon in verses 8-16. But in verses 17-20, God has more to say to Israel. Though his people are like scattered sheep, he will bring Israel back to the land of Palestine, where they will have safe, bountiful pasture. In those days, there will be no more sign of Israel and Judah’s sin, because God will forgive the remnant.
In these verses, God’s action is featured. He not only restores Israel, he also forgives their sin. What we are hearing from God is astounding hope. Restoration, forgiveness, safety, peace, flourishing. Israel can hope in God because he is active, intentional and good.
A pattern has begun to emerge. Have you seen it? I hinted at it earlier when I said that this prophetic poem is unique in that while it is a message of destruction to Babylon, God also embeds within the poem a message of hope for Israel. We’ve seen two cycles of this pattern thus far. Now watch how the pattern continues.
Cycle three begins when God’s poem spells doom on Babylon throughout verses 21-32. After that curse on Babylon, he pronounces more blessing on Israel in verses 33-34. God points out the oppression of his people Israel and Judah, and he reminds them that he is their Redeemer, the Lord Almighty. He will vigorously defend them and bring rest to their land. There is hope!
Cycle four is found in verses 50:35-51:4, as God prophesies more judgment against Babylon, and as he gives assurance to Israel and Judah in 51:5. God is honest with Israel and Judah, reminding them that their land is full of guilt. They chose disobedience and rebellion. But he, the Lord Almighty, the Holy One, will not forsake them.
Cycle five in the pattern of destruction for Babylon and hope for Israel begins in chapter 51, verses 6-9 which describe how God will break Babylon, and concludes in verse 10 as describes the people of God declaring how he vindicates them in Zion/Jerusalem.
Cycle six, up next in chapter 51, verses 11-18, is about Babylon’s downfall, while verse 19 declares God as the Portion of Jacob, the Maker, the Lord Almighty (we’ve heard that title for God three times in the poem). God describes Israel as the tribe of his inheritance.
Cycle seven begins in verses 20-35, where God describes more of the destruction of Babylon, and it finishes in verse 36 as God declares he will defend Israel’s cause and avenge her.
The eighth cycle starts in verses 37-45 where God says Babylon will be destroyed, and it concludes in verses 46-48, where he says Israel should not lose heart or be afraid. There is always hope! God will punish Babylon, and there will be great joy in all heaven and earth.
Two more cycles to go. Number nine is short. In verse 49 God refers to Babylon’s downfall, and in verse 50 he tells Israel to remember him, though they are in exile far away. They should think of Jerusalem. In other words, keep hope alive.
Cycle number ten is different. In verses 51-58, God concludes the poem with a message of destruction. This time there is no message for Israel. The focus is entirely on Babylon, which leads to the chapters powerful conclusion.
In verses 59-64 the book concludes with a brief historical note saying that Jeremiah instructed this poem (all of chapters 50-51) to be read in Babylon. Then in a final act of prophetic drama, the scroll on which the poem is written is to be tied to a stone and dropped into the Euphrates as a metaphor of Babylon sinking to its death. It was an ancient mic drop of epic proportions!
Through the repeating cycle of prophecy about Babylon’s destruction and Israel’s restoration, God drives home the message. He is not done. Sure, the people can look around them and assume that the great history of Israel is over. But with God, what appears to be the end is not necessarily the end. With God there is always hope.
My son and daughter-in-law knew that with God there is always hope. They lived in that hope as they kept putting offers on houses for sale. We all kept praying. Then a couple months ago, we got a text on our family group chat: “We got a house!!!” Sixteen people put an offer in on the house, and my son and daughter-in-law were picked! There’s wasn’t even the most lucrative offer. God blessed them with a delightful home. I’m not saying that every situation turns out like that. Many don’t. But know that no matter what you are going through, we have a God who is a God of hope, restoration, forgiveness and flourishing. Place your hope in him. He is with you.
Engaging Scripture 