November 2–John 14-15

“If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also”(14:3).

Our Lord was alone with the disciples. They were in the upper room. Tender moment. Important. He had much to tell them, much they (we) needed to understand.

In the next hours, He would be arrested and crucified. He had predicted it often over the previous few weeks. They were understandably anxious.

There was a bright light in that gloomy moment. A clear promise. He would return. “I will COME again” He promised in 14:3.

Many comings, actually. Wave after wave, from the ocean of His love. Jesus promised the disciples a future shaped by His continual comings! They would not be orphaned. He would come to them.

In the days that followed, repeated comings is exactly what they experienced! Christ came to the disciples after the resurrection. He came to Mary. He came to Peter. He came to the team gathered behind locked doors (possibly in this same room they first heard His promise). He met them in Galilee. He came to them, again, on Pentecost in the person of the Holy Spirit. The church exists because Jesus came to these believers. He keeps this promise, even now!

Soon, our Lord will COME AGAIN in glory. It will be the final fulfillment of this promise. Joyful truth! The reason we rejoice in the certainty of His coming is that we have seen this dependable pattern.

Friend, as you face the dangers and questions of this present hour, do you expect Christ to come to you? We are taught to seek Him, but do you realize that He seeks you?

Would you be less fearful if you knew that on the stormy sea, the Lord will come? Would you be a bolder witness if you knew that soon the trumpet will sound and (in ultimate fulfillment of this promise) He will come again in undeniable glory?

“I will come again.” Write it on your heart, dear saint. This is the promise of the Faithful and True. You are not alone, and you will not be. He will come to you.

“Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me; buried, He carried my sins far away; rising, He justified freely forever; one day He’s coming–O glorious day!”(J. Wilbur Chapman).

“He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come Lord Jesus!”(Revelation 22:20).

November 1–John 13

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. . .and began to wash the disciples feet”(v. 3-5).

If I am to understand Jesus, I must consider His focus. “The lamp of the body is the eye; so if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light”(Matthew 6:22). As humans, we have God-given capacity to concentrate, to focus our attention. Our eyes have great power for good.

On the last night of His earthly life, Jesus displayed the power of this principle. Hours away from betrayal and brutality, His eyes were fixed on unseen realities! He saw an unseen world in which the Father had given all things into His hands. He saw the world from which He came and to which He was returning. This focus on unseen things gave Him motivation to do hard things. Wash feet. Carry a cross.

The word that John used in v. 3 is helpful. Most translations read “Jesus, knowing. . .”, but orao (pronounced “horao”, the root of our English word “horizon”) actually meant “to stare, to focus.” In this moment Jesus was literally staring at certain facts. He was not scrambling to control events. He was not obsessed with problems. His eyes were focused upward, looking at eternally true realities.

I am often distracted and deceived by material things. If I am not careful, my eyes are fixed and focused on the physical and social and political world.

I find no help in it. The longer I obsess, the more anxious I get. Like the Lord, my strength and joy and wisdom come from a steady vision of unseen things. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills” (Psalm 121:1).

Friend, where are your eyes today? At what are you staring? Will you learn from your Savior the secret of keeping your eyes on unseen things? As you do, peace and strength will come!

“Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for me; place in my hand the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free. Silently now I wait for Thee, ready my God, Thy will to see; open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit Divine!”Clara H. Scott).

“Therefore, we do not lose heart. . .while we look not at the things which are seen. . .but the things which are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:16, 18).

October 31–John 11-12

“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live again even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25).

Martha was a busy woman. Strong. Opinionated. Hard working. She was also an immature believer. Strange irony. Mature and competent in the things of the material world, she was, at the same moment, immature and underdeveloped in the things of the Spirit.

When Lazarus died, her immaturity became apparent. Captured by the “if onlys”, she was grieved and hopeless. Despite her real faith (note her sincere confession in v. 27), she seemed unaware of the deeper implications. Jesus did not scold Martha for her grief. Our Lord also wept. He did, however, insist that she grow deep in her faith. Certain and stable in her confidence.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus told her. Note the clear echo of the I AM statement of Jehovah in Exodus 3. In Jesus we meet the very Life from which death cannot separate us! To HAVE Jesus is to POSSESS life. Permanently! It is a truth that Martha’s immature heart did not yet grasp.

Later in the story, when Martha resisted the actual, physical raising of Lazarus, Jesus challenged her again to grow deep into the realities of faith. “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” To believe is to open your heart to the coming and certain victory of God. Immature believers are depressed, anxious. Timid. Mature believers are confident, certain of the coming glory.

As we read today, many will be celebrating Halloween. What a sad mixture of ghosts and witches and zombies and super heroes will be presented to our children. How much GRANDER is the true truth of the RESURRECTION. Soon, the world will be made new by the power of the Savior! Radiant, redeemed people in resurrected bodies will live on a new earth! May God help us narrate THIS GREATER STORY to our children, to set their imaginations afire with the glory to be revealed.

Dear ones, God calls us to maturity. He insists, with each passing year, that we His children, His disciples, become more certain, more joyful, less fearful!

“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”(2 Peter 3:18).

“Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

October 30–John 9-10

“It was neither this man sinned, nor his parents. But so that the works of God might be displayed in him, we must work the works of Him who sent me as long as it is day”(9:3-4).

Jesus SAW the world with different eyes. He SAW people and circumstances through the lens of Spiritual reality. He UNDERSTOOD His duties (ours) against an eternal plan. The secular world calls this “vision”.

When the Lord and His disciples encountered a man blind from birth, a question came. Who sinned to cause such a situation? Christ’s answer revealed a different perspective. Rather than focus on the problem and its cause, Jesus SAW opportunity. Not, “what went wrong?” but “what can we do that is right?” Brilliant!

G. Campbell Morgan believed most translations incorrectly punctuate this sentence. (I have used his preferred punctuation above.) First sentence–“It was neither this man sinned, nor his parents.” Period. Not a claim of sinlessness, still a declaration that this illness was not caused by any action/choice of either party.

Second sentence (the next two ideas combined into a single thought)–“But so that the works of God may be displayed in him, we must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day.” See the difference? The focus of Christ was on the opportunity to do good, to glorify God. He saw potential, not problem.

Good news! Life is about GOD, His goodness and authority and love. Rather than seek safety, or to assign blame, our greater pursuit should be to ask the Father, “How are You at work in this?” “What are the opportunities for YOUR GLORY to shine in this situation?”

Powerful blessing from Christ! Those who walk with Him learn a new way to SEE the world, a new motive for SERVICE in it.

“The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer” (Thomas J. Watson).

“Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art. Thou my best Thought, by day or by night. Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light” (Ancient Irish Hymn, translation by Eleanor Hull, 1912).

October 29–John 7-8

“I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more”(8:11).

Dramatic story! Perfect balance of the mercy and moral strictness of God’s heart. In Christ, the woman (all sinners) receives both grace and a clear call to repentance.

She was caught in adultery. Forced into Christ’s presence for His judgment. Brutal treatment. Dehumanizing. He protects her. Challenges the consciences of the witnesses. Chases them off.

He also challenges her conscience. Calls her to repent. “No more,” He commands. Sexual immorality is lawlessness toward God. God’s mercy does not make us morally lazy. “His kindness leads toward repentance,” says Romans 2:4.

This story is often misinterpreted. Some attempt to use it as proof that Jesus advocated unconditional acceptance of all sinners. Amnesty without moral firmness. In our culture, the story is used to declare that, “it is wrong to say that anything or anyone is wrong.”

Not true. If we all are disqualified as judges (and we are), Christ isn’t! When the church calls people to repent of sin, accompanied by the offer of mercy, we are not being judgmental, we are being faithful to the word of Christ. We speak the voice of the ONE who commands with righteous authority.

As a sinner, I have no standing to criticize other sinners. As a forgiven child of God, however, I am to speak the word of Christ. “I do not condemn you.” (Judicial mercy) ” From now on sin no more.” (call to repentance and faith). May the Lord sound out BOTH parts of His truth through us.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, has set you free from the law of sin and of death. . .so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit”(Romans 8:1-2, 4).

October 28–John 5-6

“When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?”(5:6).

It is a strange question, isn’t it? Almost seems insensitive. Wasn’t the man’s presence at the pool sufficient indication of his desire?

He had come with many others to the pool of Bethesda. The popular superstition was that an angel occasionally stirred the waters and the first, but only the first, to step into the pool after this angel visitation was cured.

As Jesus began a conversation with this needy man, He probed the condition of his heart. He caused the man to consider his own ambitions and desires.

For Christ, healing the body is the easy part. The true work of God is the healing of the soul, and the truest measure of soul-health is ambition or hope. What is it you want, dear one? What do you wish for?

“Do you wish (Greek, thelo, to will, to intend) to get well?” the Savior asked as He began the gracious and necessary Spiritual probing. Is it health you want, or just an end to your suffering? Do you want to be Spiritually whole or are your dreams low-focused on only the physical?

If I’m honest, sometimes I don’t hope anymore. Don’t dream, or even ask for help. I get comfortable (weird word) in my illness. In an effort to manage disappointment, I stop believing that wholeness is even possible.

The Bible says that God works within us, “to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). Part of God’s healing, the most permanent part, is to cause us to desire His will! To want Him! To desire health in the sense that Heaven means it. Wishing to be well, wanting it, is actually a huge step of faith.

This, and only this, is true healing. Note the warning in v. 14. If your body is healed and your soul remains unreconciled to God, the miracle has done you no good.

What do you WANT, dear one? The deep work of Christ is to create a new hunger in our hearts. To shatter our obsessions and distractions with this world. To cause a deep desire for union with Himself.

Do you wish to get well, dear one?

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. . .As for me, the nearness of God is my good” (Psalm 73:25, 28).

October 27–John 4

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water”(4:10).

Our Lord with the woman at the well. Unforgettable story. Timeless truth.

Grace was (is) a standing offer. It is the reason Jesus came, the offer He gladly verbalized. God will pour new, infinitely clean life into those who ask Him. Life doesn’t have to be dry and barren. “Ask and it shall be given,” says the Savior.” “How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

Christ is living water. Jesus is, in the Spiritual, what water is in the physical. Absolutely essential! Life-giving. Refreshing. Cleansing. Where Christ is received, life flows and flourishes. “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God” says Psalm 46. The name of the river is Jesus. He is the gift of God.

We must ask! God forces His help on no one. Communicated to lost people through personal conversation (as in our text today) or public preaching and teaching, the gospel must move a man to a humble place. “I need help! God offers help! I will ask Him!” Only pride or fear prevents us from doing so. In this familiar story, Jesus began His conversation with the woman with his own request for her help. It was an example for her. Asking for help won’t kill you, not asking likely will.

We must repent. The offer of God’s kindness is not unconditional. As Jesus gently moved this woman toward faith, He deliberately touched the subject of her sin. Over many years, she had five husbands and now lived with another outside of marriage. Could the Lord not have left this subject unmentioned until later? No. Salvation is disruptive. “If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God you found” (Thomas Merton). Repentance and faith are two sides of one coin.

Many are ready. The Lord stayed in Samaria for many days. He answered questions. He taught truth. SO many people. SO much interest. All in a place where no one could have predicted it. He later described the scene with these words. “The fields are white (ready) for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal” (4: 35-36). In the providence of God, there are people in your life, or about to be in your life, who are ready to receive God’s help, if only you will verbalize the offer. In most cases, you will have no part in making them ready. Even so, you will be rewarded for telling them God’s offer.

The offer is for everyone. “His disciples marveled that He talked with a woman” (4:27). Had they paid attention, they would have not been surprised. All the days of His public ministry, Jesus signaled a new, fresh, creation-order place of honor for women in His kingdom. Mary sat at His feet. Mary Magdalen was sent to tell the news of the resurrection. “There is neither Jew or Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female,” said Paul years later (Galatians 3:28). Scripture does not deny the existence or the value of these categories. It does, however, boldly declare that none of these factors hinder or help a person in his/her relationship with God. We are all equal before the Father. All invited. All welcomed who come. What matters is living water, not the cup that holds it!

Friend, do you know the kindness of a generous God? Will you ask for His help? Will you lift up your eyes to a field that is ready for harvest? Will you communicate God’s offer of grace?

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water’ ” (John 7:37-38).

“I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

October 26–John 2-3

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’ ” (John 3:6-7).

Unforgettable night. Light shining in the dark!

Christ’s cleansing of the temple offended His enemies in the capital city. Opposition began to coalesce. Can you feel the tension?

Despite the anger the other Pharisees felt toward Christ, Nicodemus was honest enough to recognize Spiritual authenticity. He saw the signs Jesus was doing. With an open mind, he went for a visit.

He came at night. Concerned for what others might think? Probably. Cautious by nature and training, Nicodemus was, nevertheless, admirably humble and respectful toward Jesus.

He was not, however, prepared for the frontal assault of truth that came from the Savior. It caught Nicodemus off guard.

“You must be born again!” said Jesus to this widely respected, older man. Sweeping aside all that was admirable in Nicodemus (his religion, his public duties, his knowledge, success and reputation), Jesus insisted that the ONLY door into God’s Kingdom is a new birth.

“A birth from above,” is the literal translation. In order to participate in the kingdom of God, Nicodemus needed to be reborn by (in) God’s Spirit. An act of supernatural power! A moment as real as physical birth.

Struggling with the demand, Nicodemus wanted to know HOW this could actually happen. He couldn’t imagine it. (None of us can, either.) Jesus refocused him on a better question, WHO is capable of giving such a new life? Like the wind, the invisible and powerful Spirit is our HOW. God does this work. God gives this gift. Our part is to believe in (into) His Son. See 3:15.

How can a person be reconciled to God? How can he/she be included in God’s kingdom with a right relationship to the King? Church attendance? Mental assent to Biblical truth? Moral life? No! Membership in God’s family begins with an act of supernatural power. God gives a new life and we are born into His family.

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God. . .who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God”(John 1:12-13).

October 25–John 1

As “the disciple that Jesus loved,” John had a unique relationship with Jesus. In some ways, he was closer than any other. He was our Savior’s friend.

Years later, as an old man, inspired by Spirit, he wrote down his memories. We call it , “The Gospel of John.” Do you hear his testimony, dear one? The faith of a friend?

Scholars call John 1 “the prologue” to his gospel. A SUMMARY of all that will follow, the central convictions of his heart after years of reflection.

Jesus is Infinite, Eternal God. With insight that only the Spirit could provide him, John takes us back into eternity past. He introduces us to a beautiful Person. John calls Him, “the Word.” With God in fellowship, distinct from the Father in being, but equal in essence, the Word was (is) God. In Him was life and light. While the word “Trinity” does not appear in Scripture, passages like this press us toward the concept. Jesus is Infinite, Eternal God.

Jesus is truly, fully Man. “The Word became flesh,” says John in 1:14. He was born. Local. Limited. One man, in one place, at a particular moment in history. Like us in all ways except sin. Headaches and hunger. Joy and weariness. Jesus lived with perfect balance the assignment the Father gives to us all, material man with a Spiritual center.

Jesus is the unique Son of God. In Christ, the disciples saw, “the glory of the ONLY begotten from the Father.” There never was (or will ever be ) anyone else like Him. In the gospel that follows, John selects specific moments (signs, miracles) as evidence of this truth.

John’s friendship with Christ changed him forever! Through a long process of discipleship and sanctification, John’s eyes were opened to the highest, noblest ideas of all time!

As John gives witness to his friend, will you join him? His invitation is as broad as the world. Inclusive. Merciful. He wrote his testimony that we might have faith and be friends of Christ, too.

“Jesus, what a friend for sinners. Jesus lover of my soul” (J. Wilber Chapman).

“These things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name”(John 20:31).

October 24–Luke 24

“Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? (39) See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself” (24:38-39)

If I am honest (please, God), I am often troubled. Even now, after years of following Christ, doubts and fears rise in my heart.

When it is so, it is always because I have forgotten or drifted from the first principle of New Testament life. Christ is with me! He, all of His competence and care and wisdom, is with me! True of every believer. The mind focused on Christ experiences peace. See Romans 8:7.

In Luke 24, in the hours after the resurrection, Jesus taught His disciples (us) this new powerful path.

Jesus was with the disciples even when they were unaware of it. On the road to Emmaus, neither their eyes nor their feelings gave evidence to this reality, but it was true, nevertheless. We walk by faith and not by sight. As with the Emmaus travelers, the Lord is near. Do you believe? Will you?

Jesus was with the disciples in the Scripture. With deliberate intent, Jesus led these men back to the Bible. He challenged them for being “slow to believe it” (24:25). The written word, by the very design of God, has powerful ability to cause the believer to know the Savior’s presence. The disciples gave testimony to this truth. “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” (24:32).

I know this experience! When I seek Him in Scripture, Jesus is present with me. Using the Bible, the Spirit sets my heart on fire with hope and enthusiasm. “Is not my word like a fire?” says the Lord in Jeremiah 23:29.

“They returned to Jerusalem with great joy, (53) and were continually in the temple praising God” (24:52-53). Will you consider? By the end of the chapter, these men were filled with joy and hope and courage and power, when none of it was present before. What gave them this new life? They learned that their competent Lord was (is) with them? To focus on this truth was (is) a door to a different life.

What if you fixed your heart on Him, dear reader? What would life be if you lived out of this new equation? What would the impact be in attitude or courage if you jettisoned every other focus, every other concentration of mind, for this truth?

“Why are you troubled?”, says the Savior to His disciples, ancient and modern. “I am with you!”

“Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated, ‘God with us’ “(Matthew 1:23).