Monthly Archives: November 2018

Daily Bible Study

November 4, 2018 Bible Study — Worshiping God In Spirit and In Truth

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 4-5.

    I find Jesus’ answer when the Samaritan woman asks Him whether the correct place to worship God is in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim interesting. First, He tells her that the Jews have a better understanding of God than the Samaritans. Here He acknowledges that the Samaritans do indeed worship the same God as the Jews (which I suspect that many Jewish teachers of the period would have denied) but tells her that they know very little about Him. Then He tells her that it no longer matters where one worships God. God is spirit, therefore He is not bound to a geographical location. Which means that we can worship God from wherever we find ourselves. Yet there are still conditions upon our worship. He says that we must worship God in spirit and in truth. John does not really tell us what that means here, but we get some idea of what he means throughout the rest of this Gospel. We must truly worship God, not the forms and rituals. One final point about this story. The rest of the Samaritans from the village came to listen to Jesus because of what the woman told them about what He had said. People today can also come to Jesus because of what we say about Him, but, like these villagers, they will not truly come to saving faith until they listen to Him with their own spirits.

    When I read what Jesus said at the end of today’s passage I thought about what Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” The Jewish leaders here did not believe what Jesus had to say because they were not truly seeking God. They searched the Scriptures for the key to eternal life, but were looking for what they had already decided was the answer. Many people today are guilty of the same thing. Even those who have chosen to follow Jesus sometimes make this mistake. On the other hand, those who truly seek God will find Christ, even if they are searching in the scriptures of other religions. Are we seeking God’s will or are we seeking to justify doing our own will? Are we seeking the truth, or are we seeking to prove what we want to believe?

Daily Bible Study

November 3, 2018 Bible Study — When We Do Not Do Good, We Sin

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 1-3.

The beginning of John’s Gospel contains a very complex understanding of God and His will for us. He refers to Jesus as the Word of God. In a way John refers to the Word as God (that is not quite right, but it is not completely wrong). When John uses “Word” here he uses the Greek word which is the root for the English word “logic”. I am going to try and unpack what I see John as meaning here. First, Jesus is the logic of God, the logic which was fundamental to the creation of the world. In his opening John both shows us that Gnosticism contains some truth and that it gets it wrong. Gnosticism gets it right when it declares that perfection is only found in the spiritual realm, but it gets it wrong by declaring that the material world is inherently flawed (this is a less than perfect explanation of this). John compares Jesus, the Word of God, the Logic of God to light. The Logic of God shines out and forces those who want to hide in ignorance to erect barriers to block It, just as those who wish to hide in the dark must erect barriers to block light. Or to put it another way, just as darkness is not a thing, is merely the absence of light, so sin is not a thing, merely the absence of doing good. When you do good, you do not sin. More importantly, when you do not do good, you are sinning.

When Jesus tells Nicodemus that we must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of God there are many aspects to what He is saying. One aspect is related to what He meant when He told His disciples at other times that they must be like little children. We must return to the innocence and trust of childhood. But Jesus is also saying that we must start over. That we must give up what we have learned and learn how to live all over again. We must allow God to transform us into a new being, free from all of the sins which we had allowed to corrupt us.

Daily Bible Study

November 2, 2018 Bible Study — Lessons We Can Learn From Jesus’ Death and Resurrection

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 23-24.

    I am not sure that my post today is going to form a coherent whole as there are several points I want to talk about from this passage which are not, in my mind, completely related to each other. I will start by mentioning Jesus’ trial before Pilate. Pilate could find no basis under the laws for crucifying Jesus. Considering how Roman law worked by this time, that is saying something. All it would have required for Pilate to order Jesus’ crucifixion was some evidence suggesting that He was fomenting revolt, or even riots. The religious leaders knew that they did not have evidence to convict Jesus before Pilate. So, they stirred up the crowds to demand Jesus be crucified. The crowds did not know why Jesus should be crucified. They had just been convinced that He should be. When the crowds are screaming for something we should examine the evidence closely because oftentimes there isn’t any. Pilate did not have the courage to stand up to the crowd. Will we?

    When Jesus was on the cross, one of the two crucified beside Him lashed out at Him. That one said, “Oh yeah, you think you’re the Messiah. You’re just another one of those people who think you are too good for me. Well look at you now, up here dying just like I am. If you are all that, why don’t you save yourself, and me too?” The other one defended Jesus. He said, “Oh come on, we both did bad things. That’s why we are here, but this guy, He’s up here because He stood up for people like you and me. The people you’re angry with put Him up here just like they did to us, except we deserve it and He doesn’t.” The first one was angry at the world and wanted to make people pay, even as he was dying. The second recognized that he had done wrong and deserved death. He chose as his last act to defend someone who did not. Which of the two will we choose to be when our lives are on the line?

    When the two disciples on the way to Emmause met Jesus they did not know who He was. They revealed that they had thought that He was the Messiah, but concluded at His crucifixion that they must have been mistaken. Even though the women had come and reported that Jesus was risen they still did not believe it. They believed in resurrection of the dead in theory, but not really. How often do we find ourselves in the same situation? Our theology tells us to believe in some aspect of God’s power, but when it comes down to it, we can’t bring ourselves to do so.