Missions Paul

Is the dove remaining on the lamb?

John 1:29-34

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰ This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ³¹ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptising with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.” ³² Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. ³³ And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptise with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

Since the first person he had baptised, John had been looking.

“How will I know it is Him? How do I know if the Spirit has come down? Is the next person the One? Will it be today?”

There are no indications in the gospels that anyone other than Jesus and John had seen heaven open, the voice from God and the Spirit fall in the form of a dove upon Jesus.

When Jesus met John, something happened in the water that left John in no doubt. Just as the dove was released by Noah several times and finally came to remain on dry ground (Genesis 8) so the Spirit remained on the One who had been sent by God to represent safety, hope, a new day and covenant, peace and a future for the world.

And here is the key: when you have seen the significance of the dove then you will have revelation of the lamb.

John is announcing a new and better Noah story and is now clearly laying out as he will do throughout his gospel leading to the culmination of Jesus’ death on the afternoon when the Passover lambs were being killed in the Temple, Jesus the lamb.

The Christian and the Church needs more than ever to realise that the dove remains on the lamb.

When the dove remains on the lamb then the Holy Spirit is at work.

The outpouring that we all long to see can only come with this combination. Anything else is man-made.

Give me someone who knows they are sent to bring hope not despair, whose words convey peace and the promises of God. Give me someone who is kind and gentle and yet is strong enough to lay their own life down in surrender to God and to others. Give me that person in the pulpit and the pew and I will paint a picture of an outpouring of the Spirit.

Let me ask 3 questions that contain their own answers:

1. Where is the Spirit? (Where are the miracles? Where is the growth of the Church with souls saved and lives transformed?)
2. Where is the Lamb? (Where is the sacrifice? Where are the acts of kindness in the public place, the pew and the pulpit?)
3. Where is the dove? (Where is the deep, abiding, remaining sense of being sent to herald a new day? Where are the messengers of safety?

“How will I know? Will it be today?”

It can be.

 

 

Do it again Lord

John 1: 26-28 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. ²⁷ He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” ²⁸ This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”

It was an insurmountable problem.

It represented the deepest psychological challenge.

A story 1,000 years ago before John the Baptist and yet still carried in the hearts of the Jews even to the present day.

An event right on the spot where John was baptising.

The crossing of the river Jordan.

• It was the sign of God establishing them as a strong nation.
• It was a reminder that God was a miraculous God in their generation. He had opened the way for the previous generation at the Red Sea and He was doing the same for the next.
• It showed to the whole world that God was powerful amongst His people.
• The result of this was that God’s people would walk in fear of Him for the rest of their lives and for the generations to come.

The Jewish leaders have sent a contingency to John the Baptist to question his credibility. They don’t like what he is doing and they are certainly not recognising him.

In the place of the historical signs of God, miracles, presence and power and where commitments were made to Him come generations later cynical, doubtful, argumentative, political nonsense.

John is Baptising in the ideal spot. The glory of God was coming again to this very place. John knows he is not even worthy to be a servant of him.

But they will not know him. They have not understood John and they will not recognise the One greater than him.

This is a sobering lesson for the Church today.

We want a move of God. But if He moved would we recognise Him? Would we be caught up in division and derision?

Some don’t even recognise a new minister never mind a new move.

Some won’t sing a new song so they are never going to worship at the heart of a move of God.

Some won’t say hello to the person next to them in the pew so they are never going to welcome strangers that get saved.

Let us join together and pray “DO IT AGAIN LORD” and believe that He will move again in 2020. But get ready and be open because you might miss Him.

Don’t limit what you can do

John 1: 24-25 “Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptise if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

The leaders in Jerusalem had sent a team of investigators.  Word had reached them that crowds were going out into the wilderness to meet a man who was then baptising them in what was a lifestyle changing ceremony. They were keen to clamp down on such things for they were the protectors of the faith. They didn’t want any loose cannons.

Their problem was that there was nothing in their Scriptures that foretold of a ministry of baptism. Neither had John gone to them first to get their support of his ministry.

Humility may have been in his mouth (he denied being anyone important) but his behaviour was suggesting that he was indeed someone special.

There is no limit to what God can do in anyone that He has sent (v6).

This year God can put His greatness on you and use you powerfully for Him and the enemy of your soul can come and question on what grounds you have the ability, the confidence and the credibility to do this. Who are you going to listen to?

Those who don’t have anything to say will always be jealous of those who do.

Those who have no one following them will always be spiteful towards those that do.

Let this year be a year when you do things that are beyond you. Accustom your life to the voice of the enemy just don’t pay any attention to it.

I am only a voice

John 1: 19-23

¹⁹ Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. ²⁰ He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.” ²¹ They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” ²² Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” ²³ John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

As we start this New Year, nothing remarkable happened probably overnight. You woke up in the same way as you did last year. You are you.

You still cannot fix those impossibilities. You couldn’t last year. That hasn’t changed. You are not the Messiah.

People may think you are a certain person. Your gifts and abilities may impress and show that you could definitely be him. But you know who you are and you are not that hero for people, you are no Elijah.

You may be conscious of the hope that surrounds you. People genuinely thinking a move of God is going to happen and they think you are instrumental in that happening. You will soon disappoint for you are no Moses.

Leaders are speaking of you, those who work in the House of God, (the Priests and the Levites) are messaging you wanting to know who you are. “Show us your CV?” “Who has credentialed you?”

They do so because though you know who you are not, you have been behaving strangely.

“I am only a voice,” this is not what you are saying.

You are not just a voice amongst the voices in this world oh and how noisy the world we live in.

No. You are THE voice.

Now of course you are not John the Baptist either. But you have the same attitude as John. You have the attitude of the voice calling “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3)

As John said those words they were taken right back 700 years previously when Isaiah spoke of the things to come. They knew every word and every promise of hope. Someone special was coming.

Today raise your voice (Isaiah 40):

“The glory of the Lord will be revealed” v5

“The Word of our God stands for ever.” v8

“The Sovereign Lord comes with power.” v10

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the week.” v29

“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” v31

Raise your voice for Jesus has come and He is coming.

Grace and Truth

John 1: 15-18 “ (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶ Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”

The last day of the year, 2019. How shall we end it?

We end it by thanking God that grace and truth is greater than the religious rules and duties.

What got you through the year was not the law but it was grace and truth.

A grace that is never exhausted.

A grace that is not interrupted and has no limitations.

The law can be understood and mastered by knowing its parameters.

But grace is an adventure.

No one can say where grace will take you.

This grace is an ever deepening experience of the presence and the blessing of God.

Grace is undeserved, unmerited, but it is not blind, it can see what is wrong. It can see the brokenness, the sin but it refuses to back away because truth is holding it there.

Truth is not a law, it is not a matter of facts; it is not a set of rules nor is it justice.

Truth is a person. I am the way, the truth and the life.

Truth can see the wrong. But truth says someone needs to pay and Jesus Christ says I AM THE ONE WHO HAS PAID THE PRICE, THE TRUTH.

Grace will deliver you and Truth will redeem you.

Grace will rescue you and Truth will stand for you.

Grace will sustain you and Truth will defend you.

In 2020 we will again need Grace and Truth.

The Christmas Prologue 9: He is here with you now, yes, even in the hell of the pain.

John 1: 14 “John 1: 14 ^“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

We end the Prologue today. These powerful 14 verses of John’s gospel.

John in this opening of his gospel is keen to compare the story of Moses, their hero, with that of Jesus.

There are so many parallels in the gospels of Jesus and Moses, but Jesus is greater.

For example:

Herod ordered the killing of all the Bethlehem boys of 2 years and under to be killed, in order to make sure Jesus was killed.

The slaughter of the innocents happened, Jesus had been born.

The King of Egypt ordered the new born males to be killed and Moses had been born.

Identical beginnings and it reveals Jesus is greater than Moses.

From the beginning of his life and at the end of his life on the cross we see a violent and terrible world. A world that He came to redeem.

For Jesus, the greater Moses, living between the atrocities of Christmas and the cross came to redeem our lives but also to show us that that gospel message can survive the most dire of circumstances.

If the gospel can survive the violence of Christmas and the vulgarity of the cross it can survive anywhere in the world and in any circumstance.

So no longer do we need to say, ‘Where are you in this?’

For as we see the total vulnerability of God to expose Himself to the atrocities surrounding His incarnation, we see He exists in pain and suffering.

What is He doing there?

He is delivering us. He is bringing us out of the hell of the pain.

He is doing it not through a law but grace. Grace upon grace. Continual grace.

The Christmas Prologue 8: Let your glory fall again

John 1: 14 ^“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Moses saw it.

Isaiah saw it. A man disappointed, a failure in terms of his prophetic success and disillusioned. Yet he is granted a vision of the Lord. John would write later and say this was the glory of Jesus (12:41). This glory was the rescuing and recommissioning of this prophet. There is nothing you go through that you cannot find Him.

John sees later in a vision in Revelation 15:8 the heavenly temple filled with a cloud of glory.

Here John writes, “We have seen …” Not everyone has seen but we have. Referring to the Transfiguration where the face of Jesus shone like the sun; where Moses and Elijah appear standing alongside Jesus affirming his Messianic role; and where John hears a voice, “This is my Son.” That voice came from a bright cloud emphasising the visible glory of God.

Where is that glory that John speaks of now?

It is on the Church and in your life.

Where the glory is people will be attracted and will gather and the Church will grow.

Where the glory is miracles of salvation happen.

Where the glory is the broken bodies on our streets become the buildings of a new incarnation of the kingdom.

Whatever you are going through then pursue the glory.

In Exodus 33: 9-10 (the glory) descended and all the people saw the pillar of cloud. John says the Word became flesh and tabernacle/dwelt among us and we beheld/saw his glory! The glory isn’t worked up from man. It descends from God.

Again Lord we cry!

“On your Church let your glory fall. On my life as I go through this disappointment may I see your glory? Restore me and use me again. Glory come! Amen!”

The Christmas Prologue 7: Word became flesh

John 1: 14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Over the next few days we are going to be reminded through John’s ending of his Prologue to the Gospel that:

• There is nothing you go through that Jesus does not understand;
• There is no place you are in that you cannot find him;
• Jesus is in the unlikeliest of places.

‘The Word became flesh’ was shocking and it was meant to be.

‘Skin and bones’, with weakness and a body which was liable to sin.

Jesus was not a strange embodiment of a man, he was man, flesh, fully human.

He knew anger when things were being sold in the Temple.

He knew physical tiredness at the well in Samaria.

He knew hunger.

He knew upset at a funeral.

He knew agony on the cross.

Never think Jesus does not know what it is like.

There is nothing you go through that He does not know the experience of.

But there is more:

The Jews are afraid of taking God’s name and so have never used it. Instead they would use titles like ‘Holy One’ or ‘Name’ and also ‘The Word’. For example in a Targum (a paraphrased translation) of Exodus 19:17 it says “And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet the Word.” The Jews were familiar with the Word as a designation of the divine.

John portrays Jesus not just as a man but so much more. He is the Word. “Jesus is not just man, He is God.”

The Word become flesh is God communicating not a set of rules but Himself.

The Word become flesh is not Jesus being an inspired carpenter or a model human being, but God himself.

Jesus’ words are above every other prophet or human being.

Jesus’ voice is God’s voice.

And today we are reminded that our God knows what we are going through because He walked amongst us.

The Christmas Prologue 6: Stability in a changing world.

John 1: 10-13 “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

John is clearly referring to the Jews and how in their rejection the Gentiles were given the same rights to be known as children of God. However, let us not look at us, but to Him and to His persistent unchanging love which is not slowed down by the negative response He gets.

He came and has kept on coming to the world He created, some don’t want Him but some do, but undeterred He keeps to His plan for us. He continually loves the unloved and the unloving of which we all were and at times still find ourselves back in those categories.

He is ruthlessly persistent in loving and wanting the best for our lives.

Here are 3 important truths to remember:

1. He does not change.

He remains everlasting, eternal, unchanging God, Father of lights with whom there is no shadow of turning. We change but He does not. We fall out of love with Him but He does not. We turn our back on Him but He does not. We want to give up but He does not.

2. He does not change His plans for you.

You may feel rejected or a failure, disillusioned or bitter, you may have changed your plans a million times, you may have even decided never to follow God again. Yet His plans for you are still the same. He cannot and will not change them. His plans contain promises that are not for your disaster but for your abundance, a future and a hope.

3. He does not change His love for you.

God loves with an everlasting love and an unchanging love. It is not conditional.

You are His. You belong to Him. No matter who you are or what you have done will never change the way He thinks about you.

In 2019 you will have seen many changes to your life. Successes but also failures. Fears and joys. Mountain tops and valleys. Heavenly experiences and hellish moments. You end this year either revived or exhausted. Whatever 2020 holds for you there will again be changes that you have to navigate through. But you will do it in the knowledge that your God will not change either His plans for your life nor His love for you!

The Christmas Prologue 5 – Know who you are and know who you are not.

John 1: 6-9 “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. ⁸ He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.”

He was just a man. Ordinary. Not the finished article and certainly not the light.

He was sent from God. He had heard a call from God to go. He had an experience of God but he certainly wasn’t the experience.

His name was John, it wasn’t Jesus.

Here is the thought today: you are important but not most important, understand and balance that well and you will fulfil the call God has for you. Get it wrong and you will be incredibly arrogant.

Let me try this again:

You are an ordinary person. Don’t think of yourself too highly because you aren’t. Take the pressure of yourself to be someone you are not. You will never keep up the fake attempt.

You have been sent by God. You are His witness. As you seek to show people Jesus. As you desire to see the light shine in the darkness then this is going to cost you. Christian witness is not safe. The cross and the bearer of it have become an abomination to many. This level of sacrifice needed as a witness is total. Your whole life. You may have lost a friend because of your witness but your fellow-witnesses across the world have lost their lives.

You have a name. You have an identity. God knows it. He is not confused by it. He has not made a mistake with you. You are meant to be here. Now thrive till you die.