Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us.
Happy Ash Wednesday, and thank you for joining us.
As we continue through the gospel of John, we move into the 16th chapter.
And, I'll say two things about our passage today,
or at least the first part, if we depending on how long it takes us, a
we probably should have done it yesterday and included it with yesterday's reading.
And I might even go so far as to say it should be included in the 15th chapter.
This is an odd place structurally
to break the chapter, but a little bit of recap.
Yesterday, Jesus is warning the disciples that the times ahead
will be difficult for them and that the world has,
harbored, a
resentment, a hatred, he calls it, toward Jesus.
And so that the disciples
should not be surprised when that gets pointed at them as well.
And today he he adds to that a little bit.
So let me read just a few verses here and we'll go back and give it some context.
I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling.
They will put you out of the synagogues.
Indeed, an hour is coming when they will kill you,
and they will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.
And they will do this because they have not known the father or me.
But I have said these things to you, so that when that hour comes,
you may remember that I told you about it.
So again,
this is very much an extension of what Jesus had said.
Jesus said, you know, there will be a time when you're at odds with the world.
And now Jesus points out, for the disciples and for the church
that's listening in to these words later, how difficult those days will be.
They'll put you out of the synagogue.
And this is this is a powerful sentence, I think, Michael, they will kill you.
And that is as if that's not a strong enough statement.
They will think they're worshiping God.
By doing so, they will justify what they do
and the they hear is clearly the Jewish religious authorities.
That's the people that Jesus is fighting with in the early wave
of the evolution of the church.
That's the people that Christians are struggling with.
The Roman opposition comes later.
John likely reflects the Gospel of John, likely reflects a time where there
significant tension between Jewish
religion and Christian religion.
And I think that's a stunning statement.
They will think they are offering worship by doing so.
And so,
I suppose one of the things
this does is to intensify yesterday's words.
You know, it's one thing to think that there'll be some general conflict
and some rough patches between the world and the faith,
but this is at times Jesus says, life or death.
Again, if you know the gospel story, we're headed to the cross.
Maybe it's not particularly surprising, but I think these are sobering words.
Yeah, it is really hard for us to get our mind around.
I think the the schism of what's happening here.
But bear with me for a minute.
What Jesus is saying is that
when you consider yourself because remember, the earliest church
thought of themselves as being Jewish Christians,
that they thought of synagogue as a place that that worked with the faith, right?
That Jesus himself taught where in the synagogue.
So that was the context of being people of faith.
But here in our text, it is made abundantly clear
that that there will come a day when you can no longer
think of those things as being synonymous, that those two things
can't live in the same context.
That's a heart rending reality for the earliest Christians,
and I do think it's wise that we connect this to the why.
Why is this going to be your experience?
And that is connected to verse 27.
If you lead us off, Clint, with the idea that we should have
included these together, I think that 27 is a classic example. Why?
Because you are going to testify, because you've been with me in the beginning.
And what will that test of, testifying result in?
It's going to result in this reality in the world.
It's going to change your relationship with the people
who you've always thought to be brothers and sisters in the faith.
And I just think that that separation, the cost of following Jesus,
John is not shy about John is not saying that
that Christians are going to get there because they want it,
or that Christians are going to have sought out their own pain.
He's he's not saying that Christians are going to find themselves
opposite the world, because the gospel somehow makes us people who,
put ourselves in position of always being in paint.
No, it's that when we testify to the truth of who Jesus is,
that will create the very same division that John has exemplified
Jesus having with those religious leaders the entire way.
And and so his commandments that Jesus just gave just a few verses ago
about love, about how we're going to love one another, we're going to love,
as Jesus has demonstrated, that kind of love that that becomes
the sinew that holds it all together, that that's what keeps Christian community
strong in the midst of a world that doesn't know what to do with it.
When the world presses in with that pressure, even pressure
that's going to look to the Lord from the world's eyes is doing good.
It's actually bringing glory and praise to God.
That's the kind of thing that that Christians are going
to have to bow up under.
And the way that we'll do it, by the power of the spirit at work,
we had that yesterday and of course, the fruits of love
growing within that community, that that's the way that Christians repel
the force of the world and the separation and the pain and all these things.
We're talking about. I think
I think there are
just sort of, in a general sense of thinking about our discipleship.
My goal, I think there are probably two mistakes
that Christians make when it comes to verses like this.
And and the one is to be obsessed with them
and, and sort of look for conflict.
Right.
That the idea that, oh, someone made fun of me
for going to church, that that's persecution.
We in America are so blessed
that we sometimes take for granted the idea that we can worship publicly.
You and I, hundreds and hundreds of times have come to this church.
Never once, not a single moment spent wondering
if somebody would show up and stop us, if someone would cast us off it.
Never once fearing that it would be discovered, we put it on our sign.
We put it in the paper if it's on our website.
Right.
And and so on one
hand, we can minimize the idea
of opposition
to those things that just frustrate us, you know?
Oh, my uncle, who's not a Christian, makes fun of the faith.
Well.
Oh, okay.
But but I think that
that minimizes true persecution.
And the other mistake, and maybe the one that Americans are more often
guilty of, is to think that our situation is normative and to forget
that there are places in the world today, right,
that remain dangerous for Christians.
There are Christians who risk their lives
to worship and own and own Bibles
and read Scripture together and have worship together.
That that that is dangerous in parts of our world.
And I think an awareness of that helps
us a to keep our own minor struggles in proper perspective,
but also leads us to pray and to support
and to reach out to those who are struggling.
And I think one of the disconnects
of our experience and again, we are so blessed.
But the Scripture is written in a time that reflects the risk.
This is a life and death decision
that these people are making at times to follow Christ.
And you know, Jesus says it here.
I've told you this so that when it comes,
you may remember what I've said.
You can be ready.
And again, we believe, John, to have been written in a time
that the church is experiencing some persecution.
And so these words and these themes become massively important
in the early evolutions of the church, in which it is a risk, it is a struggle.
It costs these people something.
It is a chance that they take when they put their faith
and they live their life as, as a Christian.
And so,
I, I think
I don't know exactly what we do with these passages,
but I think they're important because they give us
they give us both,
hopefully some courage,
some awareness.
But I think also some perspective.
This is a thing that John has done now a couple times
that I find really beautiful and I really appreciate is, is John.
And look at this language explicitly in verse four.
I've said these things to you so that when their hour comes,
you may remember, right,
we know that this gospel is being given to us by John,
so that we have what we need
as people of faith to know who Jesus is
and the honesty of this gospel is to say that there's a lot of things
that the disciples did not understand when they heard them,
but in Jesus's own wording, I want this said
so that when the time comes, you will remember this conversation.
You'll remember that when I was with you, I promised an advocate.
When I was with you, I told you that the servant will not be greater
than the master, that when I was with you I said times of persecution would come,
so that when the doubt comes, when the struggle is great,
when your life is literally being asked of you,
that you might know that this request
has not been unseen, that that this cost has not been missed,
but that rather you are stepping in, in firm
view of the providence of what God has already laid out of what Jesus said
would happen, that you stand on firm ground
and that your witness is grounded in reality.
That's what John's trying to do, is it's trying to show that
Jesus is not just teaching those people in the room that night.
Jesus is looking ahead to those who will follow him
and is making very clear he is just as much Lord, when the road
is difficult as that when he's Lord, when he's with you in the room.
And I think the text goes on, you know, as we'll continue,
in this study, we're going to discover that Jesus
is going to say more about the reality of that.
But I think at this stage, we we would be wise,
I think, to hear in Jesus's words, not a call to go out
with, with, some sort of immaturity or to look for trouble.
But the reality is that we might have confidence that when trouble
inevitably finds us, that Jesus is the Lord still in that moment.
At at no level is the goal to be persecuted.
The goal is to be faithful.
And if if that faithfulness comes in the midst of persecution,
then we should not be surprised, because while all the Gospels.
While all the Gospels
include this theme, John maybe most passionately portrays
Jesus as the one who is faithful in the midst of opposition.
We've seen intense conflicts
already here, and I think maybe, perhaps more intensely
than they are portrayed at the same place in the other gospel accounts.
You know that you could argue that.
But John has wanted us to know from the very beginning
that Jesus presses on
in the face of significant opposition
so that he can be faithful to his calling
so that he can be faithful to his mission and his personhood
as the Messiah, his role as the Son of God.
And we now are going to inherit that.
And so the idea isn't to go out there and find suffering
and then pat ourselves on the back because we found it.
The idea is to be faithful and not shocked
when being faithful sometimes invites
difficulty with it, because the world doesn't love faithfulness
and Jesus lines that out here explicitly and again in a culture.
Where?
There's not a great deal of true risk
to be a Christian,
I, I think we both want to be grateful for that.
Aware of how
that might lead us to complacency,
and certainly understand that
that's not the case for everyone there.
There are brothers and sisters
who live under the reality of risk because they follow Christ.
And if that's not us in the moment we're in,
then we should be both thankful and aware
of of supporting, encouraging and praying for those for whom it is true.
I'm certainly
conscious, Clint, that yeah, we've not made it many verses here today.
I think that's okay for Ash Wednesday.
But I do think that there's there's
some wisdom in even honing in on verse three here.
Since we've got the time, they will do this
because they've not known the father or me.
And I submit to you and push back on this clip.
I submit to you that this is a very good rubric
for measuring whatever sense of persecution we might have.
If you are in a position
in which you find yourself meeting headwind because of the faith,
you might ask yourself, is this because I know the father?
And is this because I know the son?
Are you acting like Jesus acts?
Because, Clint,
you and I both know that there are people who call themselves persecuted Christians
who are acting far outside the ethic of Jesus Christ,
who are living outside the kingdom way of living, of faithfulness
that that's existed in all times and places.
That's just a reality of being human, that we're tempted to make it about us
instead about the one who calls us to the cross. So.
So I think the rubric then becomes very powerful.
Yeah.
Are we being, called to account because we are testifying
to Jesus Christ who came, gave, died, sacrificed and gave up?
Are we giving testimony to God who is Almighty
and the one whom we follow, and the one who has grace and mercy and love for all?
Or are we in some way seeking for power, for fame,
for privilege, for accumulate of all kinds, for our own benefit?
That rubric matters in the midst of persecution, especially in our context.
I think you know, you're right to point out
there are countries in our modern world today
where simply possessing the Bible,
but the collection of books that have been preserved and given to us
by the historic faith as as a way to see the revelation
of Jesus Christ simply possessing that book is on.
It is in itself enough to to cause the giving of your life.
I think for Christians who don't fear that we find ourselves tempted
by this gradual scale of what persecution is and what it isn't.
And I think the rubric of persecution is Christlike.
If it is that thing known by the father and known by the son,
if it resonates with their character, that is where Christians are called to be.
That's what to be a disciple means to be a follower.
To be a Christian means to be a little Christ.
That should be our sole focus.
Instead of taking pride in whatever
difficulty of faith we might be having, as some are want to do.
I think historically,
this idea and this word persecution has
been very serious and has had.
Sometimes life threatening ramifications.
And so when we apply that word
to lesser struggles and lesser challenges,
I think we need to certainly be conscious that we're doing that.
And I think we need to be careful in not,
undervaluing
what the church has historically spoken of.
And certainly I think what the Scripture speaks of as persecution.
We may all hit some bumps in the road because we are Christian
and probably should if we're being faithful,
but not all of them will rise to the level of what the Scripture
and and church history has typically called persecution.
And we we want to be careful so that we don't minimize
the idea that
there really have been and currently are, people
who risk their very lives more than, you know, discomfort,
more than inconvenience, more than disagreement.
The gospel has been dangerous for people, and we just want to be very careful,
including ourselves in that for lesser reasons.
I think that does a disservice to them
and us again, while simultaneously saying
that our faith should disconnect us from the world that places and right
and we should experience some differences and some discomforts
because of it, which I think we want to be careful how we talk.
About those don't oversimplify things that have depth.
And also, I would say, be mindful that the people who
lose their life for the faith are not losing it
because they're carrying an NIV Bible instead of a noise free Bible.
It's because they claim Jesus.
I mean, that's the it boils down to the one that they claim to be Lord.
And so it sometimes we get fixated on details if we're people in the faith.
But but know that simply who we call
Lord is in most cases the dividing line.
And that is that's a life oriented choice that we've made.
And, and those who make it can often
and have often found the implications of that choice.
Yeah, we have the luxury and therefore the challenge
of living out our faith in a mostly non dangerous context.
And so that that brings with it some,
some particular difficulties that we have to navigate.
That's not enough for today. We're glad that you're with us.
Hope that this conversation has been helpful, challenging, meaningful for you.
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We will be back tomorrow
and look forward to continuing on through the Gospel of John.
Just want to add, if you are not in our first press
community and you're interested in these kind of conversations,
we will be offering an Ash Wednesday devotion this evening.
It will just be online.
It won't be live.
But, if these are kind of thoughts that you're interested in
and you're not in our community, we're grateful that you listen.
And if you'd like to hear more, that will be up on our on our website.
You'll find links later on in the day.
We will see you all tomorrow.