Ignorant of the Law

Posted on by korgrocker

“When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” “We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded. “Have you been led astray, too?” the Pharisees mocked. “Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him? This foolish crowd follows him, but they are ignorant of the law. God’s curse is on them!””
John 7:45-49 NLT

The arrogance of the Pharisees, and the others who made up the religious leadership, is breath-taking. With their words they sealed their own fate and accused those in the “foolish crowd” of being ignorant of the Law even when it pointed, through prophecies, to the coming Messiah. Worse, they then cursed the people in the name of God. A very sad situation that ultimately led to Jesus’ execution at Calvary.

There are men and women today, in positions of church leadership, who claim to know better than ordinary “foolish” people. In fact, every generation since Jesus walked on this planet has had more than its fair share of people who preach a message based on their own construction rather than God’s intent. They may even use Scriptures, like the Pharisees, to justify their position. But in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul contrasted the “wise” of this world with the “foolishness” of the message of the cross and the people who are being saved by it. He wrote, “The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Paul went on to quote a verse from Isaiah 29, “As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent””. And Paul, a lapsed and repentant Pharisee, then wrote, “This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful” (1 Corinthians 1:25-27). 

The wisdom and knowledge of the Pharisees and the other religious leaders was ultimately exposed for what it was by the ordinary people in the crowd who came to believe in Jesus. The “wise” religious leaders journeyed on to their ultimate fate. I can just imagine one of these arrogant leaders standing before God trying to explain why they refused to believe in His Son, Jesus. Perhaps they even angrily shook their fists in God’s face, accusing Him of letting them down. A quote from C S Lewis (the Great Divorce), “But, beyond all these, I saw other grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey to the bus stop—perhaps for them it was thousands of miles—and come up to the country of the Shadow of Life and limped far into it over the torturing grass, only to spit and gibber out in one ecstasy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy”. But perhaps God will lovingly say to them that by sending His Son He was fulfilling the intention of the Law. Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose”. And then, before God, the light suddenly dawned on those arrogant men as they, too late of course, realised their error. 

Paul was a very learned man, and considered a Pharisee above all others, but he wrote in Philippians 3:7-9, “I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith”. 

We pilgrims believe in Jesus. We have faith in Him and His words of eternal life. The message of the cross has led us astray, away from the “wisdom” of the world into the Kingdom of God. There is no better place to be.

Dear Father God. The message of the Cross is fundamental to our faith in Jesus, and we are eternally grateful for Your plan for the salvation of mankind. Amen.

Jesus, the Sent One

Posted on by korgrocker

“While Jesus was teaching in the Temple, he called out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I come from. But I’m not here on my own. The one who sent me is true, and you don’t know him. But I know him because I come from him, and he sent me to you.” Then the leaders tried to arrest him; but no one laid a hand on him, because his time had not yet come.”
John 7:28-30 NLT

Jesus didn’t just appear in this world as part of the normal reproduction of human beings. He was born in humble circumstances as a male baby, the first-born of a Jewish peasant girl. He went through all the stages of growing up as a boy did in those days. However, when He reached the age of twelve, He knew His mission in life. He stayed behind in the Temple one Passover and His parents found Him there. We read in Luke 2:49, ““But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”” A reminder perhaps to His parents of that fateful day when Mary had a visit from an angel. We read in Luke 1:35, “The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God”. Jesus was born as a baby with Mary’s and God’s DNA. He was both human and divine. 

So, Jesus informed the crowd around Him at the Temple that, although they knew most of His humble origins, He had in fact been sent by His Father in Heaven. This statement of truth, however, was lost on the religious leaders who instead wanted to eliminate Him. After all, they couldn’t have someone claiming to be God’s Son around them, because if they believed Him, the consequence would be that there would be a tremendous upheaval to the political and religious life in Israel. We then have the intriguing statement that the leaders “tried to arrest Him”, but failed. The problem to them was that they were afraid of the crowd around Jesus – any attempt to arrest Him might cause unrest and threaten their authority. They needed to get Him on His own somewhere so that they could carry out their dark deeds. But there is perhaps a hint that Jesus’ Father in Heaven might have sent a few angels to protect Him, because John wrote, “His time had not yet come”. There would come a day when Jesus would be arrested but this wasn’t that time.

Jesus had been sent from God. It wasn’t a sudden appearance – that would happen at His Second Coming – but the first time round, Jesus had to come as a human being because in that way He would act as the bridge between God and mankind. We have a sinless, human and divine Saviour, who in spite of all the opposition, left us with a timeless message of love and hope, a message finally coming to fruition on a cross at Calvary. 

Dear Lord Jesus. Thank You for coming to this world in the way You did. Through Your sacrifice at Calvary we now have a way back to God, forgiven of our sins. Amen.

Sowing and Reaping

Posted on by korgrocker

“You know the saying, ‘Four months between planting and harvest.’ But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest. The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike! You know the saying, ‘One plants and another harvests.’ And it’s true. I sent you to harvest where you didn’t plant; others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest.”
John 4:35-38 NLT

Jesus once again used an analogy that would be well understand in that culture – the process involved in the growing of crops. But Jesus was using a natural analogy to represent the spiritual world, a world where the harvest is not grain but souls.

As Jesus pointed out, there was a delay of four months between sowing seed, and harvesting the resulting crops, and this was a time of anxiety for the farmer, because any adverse weather events could ruin the crops and destroy his livelihood. In extreme times, even famine could result. The farmer also had to withhold some of the seed so that he had something to sow in the ground the following year. In my early years, “Harvest Festivals” were held both in my school and in the local churches. These were times when we brought food items to school or church and sung hymns such as “We plough the fields and scatter, the good seed on the ground”. And all in celebration of the importance of the natural sowing and harvesting process. In those services we thanked God for His blessings, for providing us with the food we required for our very existence. 

Jesus told us the parable of the soils, which we can read in Matthew 13. But the fruit of the process, when good soil was found, was a multiplication of the seed originally planted. In Matthew 13:8 we read, “Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” Near where I live, the farmer often plants a field of barley, and sometimes I select an ear of grain and estimate the crop yield. God’s blessings are there for all to see, though we take His multiplying provision for granted most of the time. But Jesus was using the analogy of sowing and reaping to illustrate a spiritual principle to His disciples. He equated the variety of soil conditions with people’s hearts.

Jesus said to His disciples, “wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest“. The “seed” had already been planted in the hearts of the people by others, the prophets and the religious leaders, and Jesus said that the people were ready to hear the message that would produce in them a spiritual harvest. And in the following years, the disciples saw the establishment of the first century church. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 resulted in 3000 people being added to the church. That is harvesting!

So today, we pilgrims have an opportunity. There is still a spiritual harvest waiting for the reaping. I meet people who know about God, who even recognise and believe in His existence, and who are just waiting for someone to help them bring to life that knowledge and introduce them, perhaps once again, to the Saviour Jesus Christ. But I meet others who have no ideas about God at all. Their spiritual knowledge seems to come from social media and occasional encounters with news reports about other religions. They perhaps wonder about the churches dotted around our country, perhaps seeing more and more of them closing, perhaps having a perception that they are only relevant to elderly people. These are the people who may be good soil, just waiting for a seed to be planted, a seed coming straight out of God’s unlimited storehouses. Once planted, we can see the outcome as the Holy Spirit encourages the growth. Sometimes we may have the opportunity to be harvesters. Sometimes others will have that privilege.

The church I attend meets every Sunday morning in a leisure centre, and often people passing by in the corridor outside will look in, in apparent wonder and puzzlement. They sometimes stop for a few moments, perhaps receiving a seed that will start within them the process of germination. God is always at work.

We pilgrims are engaged in the farming business. Spiritual agriculture is our calling. The church goes through seasons of growth and decline as the years go by. But we are in the thick of it, sowing and reaping whenever we have the opportunity. There are never a lack of opportunities. We just need to pray for boldness and have our messages of hope ready and waiting.

Dear Father God. We pray today for divine encounters, enabling us to plant seeds whenever we have the opportunity. And lead us, we pray, to those who are just waiting for someone to introduce them to You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Ancestors

Posted on by korgrocker

“Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” “But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? And besides, do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?””
John 4:10-12 NLT

The dialogue between the woman and Jesus continued, with the woman bringing in the importance of ancestry. But the content of the exchange is interesting – Jesus is talking about the “living water”, the Holy Spirit, and the woman still has the pool of water at the bottom of a well in her head. So superficially they might have been talking about water, but the two scenarios were totally different. The woman’s sceptical thoughts burst out into the accusation that because Jesus didn’t have the necessary accoutrements to bring the water to the surface, he therefore couldn’t access it. And anyway, she accused Him of making a claim to be greater than the man, Jacob, who found the well in the first place, many years before. 

Such misunderstandings in a conversation are common. The act of being able to articulate our thoughts to another person is a skill we acquire from childhood, but knowing the other person is an important factor in a conversation, because over time both people get to know what the other person thinks about, particularly when they talk about subjects that are familiar to them. This can be observed between a married couple who have been together for many years, for example. Amusingly to an observer, they will even finish each other’s sentences. Up to this point in the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman the connection between physical water and spiritual water had not been made.

How do we pilgrims communicate the Good News about Jesus, and all that He did for mankind? At Jacob’s well, Jesus used a common commodity important to the people in that culture to start a conversation. He could have sat by the well ignoring the woman, which would have been her expectation because of the hostile relationship between Jews and Samaritans. But the poor woman had to carry water in a heavy pot daily some distance back to the village of Sychar. If there was anything that would have grabbed her attention it was the possibility that she could be relieved of that burden. 

So we pilgrims pray that God will reveal something about who we are speaking with to form a relational bridge over which the Gospel can be delivered. Something to grab their attention and open up the conversation. I find that dog walkers are always ready to talk about their pets. Someone tending a planter outside our community centre will often respond to a question or comment about the plants or shrubs. But sometimes God will reveal something supernaturally about the person – but more of that in a future blog.

Paul wrote in Colossians 4:3, “Pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. That is why I am here in chains”. Paul didn’t hold back at all, and ended up in all sorts of trouble because of his zeal to share the Gospel with whoever he met. In the UK at the moment, street preachers are being arrested for sharing the Word of God on our streets, wrongly as it turns out but there is increasing hostility to the Gospel in our secular society. It won’t be long until this becomes a crime, along with other demonstrations about the Kingdom of God. We have a window of opportunity to start a conversation with a stranger at a modern equivalent of Jacob’s well. In a coffee bar or restaurant. In a supermarket. At the petrol station. In the office or classroom. And we pray for the communication skills that will transform the ordinary into the supernatural.

Father God. We pray that through Your Spirit we will have the words we need to say at just the right time. and we pray for the people we meet, that Your Spirit will go before us, opening hearts and minds. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

A Miraculous Sign

Posted on by korgrocker

“But the Jewish leaders demanded, “What are you doing? If God gave you authority to do this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.” “All right,” Jesus replied. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” “What!” they exclaimed. “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can rebuild it in three days?” But when Jesus said “this temple,” he meant his own body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said.”
John 2:18-22 NLT

Of course, the Jewish leaders, the Temple mafia, weren’t too happy about Jesus clearing out the merchants from the Temple courts. After all, He was removing a lucrative source of income from them, because as the ordinary people were overcharged for the sacrificial animals and money changing, the profits made their way into the leaders’ pockets. The leaders were facing into a conflict of interest in a way. They knew that the Temple’s integrity was being compromised, contradicting God’s requirements, but they also enjoyed the profits from the market place. Perhaps they tried to rationalise their actions by claiming that they were providing a service to those who had travelled to Jerusalem to offer up their sacrifices. But in the end they decided to ask Jesus from where He had received the authority to do what He had done. A miraculous sign from God was their requirement. The miracles of healing the sick weren’t enough. Neither was the teaching Jesus performed in the Temple. Perhaps they were looking for a written message, much like the writing on the wall that we read about in Daniel 5:5, “Suddenly, they saw the fingers of a human hand writing on the plaster wall of the king’s palace, near the lampstand. The king himself saw the hand as it wrote.” But Jesus provided a cryptic answer, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, the Jews took Him literally, without realising that Jesus was referring to His own “temple”, His body. 

We pilgrims have the authority to do God’s work. In Matthew 28:18-19, we read, “Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”. Jesus has delegated to us, His followers, His authority to preach the Gospel, making disciples (of God) and seeing miraculous signs confirming the message of Good News (Mark 16:20). We don’t have to do this in the churches that are dotted around our country. There are no sacred buildings around as copies of the Jewish Temple. We exercise the authority given to us in the workplaces, the schools, cafes and supermarkets. In fact anywhere, where there is an opportunity. And we don’t need a sign from Heaven to confirm the authority we have. That sign happened on a Cross at a place called Calvary.

Dear Father God. Who will we pilgrims meet today, who will need to hear the message of Good News? Please lead us to the place where You want us to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Very Person

Posted on by korgrocker

“Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” “Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” “Come and see for yourself,” Philip replied.”
John 1:45-46 NLT

Apparently in Galilean circles, Nazareth wasn’t the best place to live. It obviously had a dubious reputation, according to Nathanael’s reaction. I suppose we can all look around our localities and think of places where a few people had in the past tarnished their reputations. And in some places local authorities engage in practices where they house problem tenants all together in a particular area, generating unfortunate outcomes. But perhaps Nazareth was just a poor village or town lacking the benefits of living in more affluent areas in Israel. We read in Luke 4 the account of where Jesus  ” … went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures” (Luke 4:16b). Initially his fellow villagers were impressed by what He said. “Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”” (Luke 4:22). But in Jesus’ subsequent words He obviously struck an area of sensitivity, from their reaction to His challenge. And those in the synagogue were intent on doing Him harm as we read in Luke 4:28-30, “When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way”. So perhaps Nathanael’s words, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” had some validity. 

Nathanael was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, and he had another name, Bartholomew. But apart from this introduction and one or two other verses we know very little about Nathanael. He seemed to have a friendship with Philip, or perhaps the two of them were related, but tradition has it that Nathanael preached the Gospel in Persia and India and died a martyr’s death. But in this early account in John, we know that Philip introduced Nathanael to Jesus as the “very person Moses and the prophets wrote about” or, in other words, the Messiah. 

Again, we pilgrims have the privilege of being able to introduce others to this “very Person”. It was Saint Francis of Assisi who was credited with the saying, “Preach the Gospel and if necessary use words”. We reach others by the way we live as well as by the words we say. Any disconnect between the two will put people off from meeting the “very Person”, Jesus Himself. 

Father God. Our life reflects our relationship with You. We pray for the resources we need to be Your messengers in our communities. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Finding the Messiah

Posted on by korgrocker

“Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of these men who heard what John said and then followed Jesus. Andrew went to find his brother, Simon, and told him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means “Christ”).”
John 1:40-41 NLT

Andrew was one of the two disciples who spent time with Jesus the day when John the Baptist pointed Him out to them. “There is the Lamb of God“, John said, and that was enough to introduce Jesus’ first disciples. The second disciple who responded to Jesus’ invitation, “Come and see”, that day is uncertain – some say John, the beloved disciple and the author of John’s Gospel, others say the second man was Philip. But come what may, those two men were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. And Andrew couldn’t wait to look for his brother Simon (later Peter), to tell him the good news of their discovery. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall that evening when Jesus had a conversation with Andrew and the other disciple. It must have been powerful enough to confirm His identity in the minds of the two men.

But here we are, two thousand years later, considering the events of long ago. The words of John, the Gospel writer, literally stand out fresh and relevant to us 21st Century pilgrims, because the Messiah is still to be found. Notice the sequence of events. Someone pointed Jesus out to two men, who then followed Him to confirm what they had been told. They then went and told someone else. That process is called sharing the Gospel, and is something we pilgrims do whenever we get the opportunity. 

After the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, another two disciples were making their way home, downcast and despondent about all the events that had taken place. But a conversation with Jesus was just what was needed for them to realise that they had found the risen Messiah! “They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?”(Luke 24:32). Right at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, two disciples spent time with Jesus. Did their hearts burn within them in the same way as they did for the two disciples after Jesus’ mission to Planet Earth had been completed? 

We modern day pilgrims may be, as the two Emmaus disciples were, nearing the ends of our journeys, but there is still time for the risen Messiah to impact our hearts with His words of eternal life. Are we listening? Are our hearts burning within us as well?

Dear Lord Jesus, our wonderful Messiah. You, the risen Christ, are the same today as You were yesterday. We worship You today. Amen.

Disciples (1)

Posted on by korgrocker

“The following day John was again standing with two of his disciples.”
John 1:35 NLT

When we read about the ministry of John, there is little to suggest that he did anything other than baptise people for the forgiveness of their sin, and introduce Jesus to the world. We read in Mark 1:4, “This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven”. John seemed to be a preacher with one message, but, more importantly, he made a declaration about the One to come, who would baptise with the Holy Spirit, and who we later find, would Himself be baptised by John. But we read nothing about John‭‭ making disciples until we read he was joined by “two of his disciples”. 

What is a “disciple“? It is a word mainly used in a religious sense, but means no more than a follower. Someone who voluntarily hears and applies the teaching or lifestyle of another person. We pilgrims, believers in Jesus, are disciples of the Master Himself, and we read His Word and apply it to our own lives, as well as assisting Him in His ministry to the world, something that has not ceased ever since He came to Planet Earth two thousand years ago. We have read the Great Commission, those verses at the end of Matthew’s Gospel – “Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age”” (Matthew 28:18-20). 

We should note, though, that we are not making disciples of ourselves. We are pointing those we share our testimonies with to Jesus Himself. He is the One to follow, not ourselves. We may assist in that process of course, but Jesus is the Master. A quote from “gotquestions.org”, “A Christian disciple is one who puts Jesus first, obeys the Lord, produces good fruit, loves others, and makes more disciples. Such a one is sure to make an impact in this fallen world for the glory of God.” We pilgrims are disciples of Jesus and Jesus alone, so we should be careful lest we get distracted by a charismatic leader, who might be saying things that we want to hear, and we become his or her disciple instead. Thereby leads the road to disappointment and even a spiritual shipwreck. 

Dear Lord Jesus. Only You are the One to follow. Only You are the “way, the truth and the life”. We are so grateful. Amen.

John Testified

Posted on by korgrocker

“John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’”“
John 1:15 NLT

John knew who Jesus was, that day on the banks of the River Jordan. And it wasn’t just his knowledge that Jesus was his cousin. It was the reality that God had sent His Son to this world, and John recognised Him as its Creator. He exists eternally, and for a brief few years He walked amongst His people embodying “grace and truth”, discarding eternity for time, a throne for humanity. John testified about “Him“, Jesus the Son of God, the Messiah they had all been waiting for. Did anyone else at that time know who Jesus really was? Or was it only John? There was certainly much in the way of expectation, going back hundreds of years, but no Messiah had emerged onto the Israel landscape. Had there been false messiahs and false prophets in the years before Jesus? He Himself warned about such a phenomenon, as we read in Matthew 24:24, “For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones“. Whatever the people were expecting, however, a baby in a manger would not have even occurred to them. And a man like themselves would have been difficult for them to accept, as Jesus found out when He was teaching in the Nazareth synagogue. “When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. … Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”” (Luke 4:16,22). But Jesus knew how difficult it would be for the people to accept Him as Messiah. Jesus said to them, “But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown” (Luke 4:24). If Jesus had burst into the Middle East, leading a huge army, then they would have accepted Him as their Messiah, but an itinerant preacher and teacher who could do a few miracles would not have been on their radar.

“John testified about him”, we read. But how did John know that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah? Later on John had doubts, because after he had been imprisoned by Herod, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?” (Matthew 11:3). But on the banks of the Jordan, John had no doubts. The Holy Spirit within him left no room for any other possibility. The crowds there heard his message, his testimony about Jesus. 

In the world around us, in our communities and societies, there are many who could possibly relate to John and his message. In those days, people went to the Jordan, perhaps encouraged by their friends, who told them about this wild prophetic character with his Messianic message. Today, in the frantic information glut that surrounds us, the message of a Messiah quickly gets drowned out. But we pilgrims have a message about the Son of God and what He has done for us. There was that time when we were re-born into God’s family. And since then there have been occasions where the Holy Spirit has helped us sort out the life problems that we call sin. Like John we have a testimony. We experienced a life-changing event that put us on the road to eternal life with God Himself. The world around us is desperate for good news. We have it, and lots of it. We pray for opportunities when we can share what God has done for us. We won’t necessarily find crowds like John. But we will find opportunities to tell our stories of a Messiah, Jesus Himself. And what a wonderful story it is!

Dear Lord Jesus. As we follow You, day by day, please lead us to those who are waiting for Your message of Good News. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Other John

Posted on by korgrocker

”God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.“
John 1:6-9 NLT

John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin, and was born to elderly parents, as we read in Luke 1:7, ”They had no children because Elizabeth was unable to conceive, and they were both very old”. But John’s dad, Zechariah, had an angelic encounter and was told he was going to have a son, ”But the angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer. Your wife, Elizabeth, will give you a son, and you are to name him John” (Luke 1:13). Zechariah received some amazing information about his coming son in the following verses, such as “he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth” and “he will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah”. Luke also wrote that John would “prepare the people for the coming of the Lord”.  John’s coming was foretold by the prophet Isaiah, “Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! (Isaiah 40:3).

The Jews in those days were very much aware that there had been no prophetic voices for 400 years, ever since the prophet Malachi. No messages from God. No encouragement that He was even there. And to make things worse, the people were oppressed by the occupying Romans. The fiercely independent Jews longed for the day when they had their own country again. John lived his adult years in the desert eating “locusts and wild honey”, and then there was the day when he emerged into history dressed like an Old Testament prophet in coarse camel hair and a leather belt. His message was simple, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2). And, in true Old Testament prophet style, he denounced the religious leaders for their hypocrisy and self-righteousness. But John’s mission was also to introduce Jesus. He said, “I baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God. But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matthew 3:11). Later on in Matthew’s Gospel we read that the people thought John was a prophet, and some even the coming Messiah. John’s life was tragically cut short by the wishes of an evil woman; he left this world violently, as many of the Jewish prophets did. But his ministry had achieved what God desired – he introduced Jesus, the Messiah. What a privilege!

What do we pilgrims learn from John? His zealous commitment to share the Good News of Jesus was total. It didn’t matter to him what others thought, he just did what God had commissioned him to do. The message for us pilgrims is the same. We are commissioned to tell the Good News about Jesus. Of course, we can’t all step into John the Baptist’s shoes, though some of us will be called to a special role to fulfil God’s plans. But we are all called, like John, to a life dedicated to God. We don’t know, but the next person we share the Gospel with might become the next Billy Graham. We all have our own unique places in our towns, our cities, our communities, and we pray that God will lead us to the next divine encounter, where another child of God is born.

Dear Father God. Lead us to divine encounters we pray, so that we can share the Good News of Jesus. Thank You. Amen.