John: Who Is This Man?

More than nineteen hundred years ago there was a Man born contrary to the laws of life. This Man lived in poverty and was reared in obscurity. He did not travel extensively. Only once did He cross the boundary of the country in which He lived; that was during His exile in childhood. He possessed neither wealth nor influence. His relatives were inconspicuous, and had neither training nor formal education. In infancy He startled a king; in childhood He puzzled doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature, walked upon the billows as if pavements, and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His service. He never wrote a book, and yet all the libraries of the country could not hold the books that have been written about Him. He never wrote a song, and yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all the songwriters combined. He never founded a college, but all the schools put together cannot boast of having so many students. He never marshalled an army,

It's ten months until November and I confess I am already tired of the faces I am seeing and the facts I am hearing about all the candidates for President. With the single exception of my own choice, they are a very unimpressive lot! There may be a peacock among those turkeys, but if so I have not found yet which one it is. Yet, faced as we are with so many conflicting claims, it is really hard to know truth from error.

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says,

Everything that occurred during the Feast of Tabernacles was designed to remind the Israelites of the time their forefathers spent in the wilderness. For the duration of the feast they dwelt in booths made of tree limbs. This reminded them of how they had lived in tents in the wilderness. On each day of the feast a pitcher of water from the pool of Siloam was poured over the altar in the temple to remind them of the days in the wilderness when God had given them water out of a rock. With exquisite sensitivity Jesus enters into the meaning of that symbolism and uses it to point to himself, in the words in Chapter 7 of John's gospel, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink.... 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water,'" (John 7:37-38 RSV).

I grew up on the great words of American freedom. As a boy in school I was required to learn Patrick Henry's wonderful address, delivered at the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg before the Revolution. I still get chills up and down my spine when I remember his words,

We have reached the conclusion of the remarkable words of Jesus in his dialogue with the Jewish leaders in the temple courts in Jerusalem at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. This marvelous eighth chapter of John is described by Dr. William Barclay as "a chapter which passes from lightning flash to lightning flash of astonishment." Have you ever been out in an electrical storm when the lightning was just overhead, every flash illuminating the whole sky? Here Jesus is making various claims about himself, and each is one lightning flash after another, increasing in intensity. To these angry Jewish leaders he makes claim after claim, each one more astonishing than the last, each one forcing them to either fall down and worship him or stoop down and pick up stones to stone him!

Our Lord's encounter with a man who was born blind, and the question put to him by the disciples concerning the man's blindness, is a wonderfully helpful passage. It helps us face the question that all of us have asked at one time or another, either about ourselves or someone else: Why does God permit such suffering to occur? On television the other day I saw a handsome little boy who had been born without arms or legs, and it was hard not to ask that question. Why would a God of love permit handicaps to helpless children, or permit horrible accidents to those who are already well-developed, perhaps beautiful young people? That is what we are confronted with here in this account in the ninth chapter of John.

No part of Scripture is better loved than the 23rd Psalm. Many Christians have read it in times of pressure and of danger. The Lord is indeed our Shepherd. He leads us in paths of righteousness; he makes us lie down in green pastures; he leads us beside still waters; he takes us through places of danger and darkness. What a comforting thing it is to know we have such a Shepherd.

We are resuming our studies in the Gospel of John after a lapse of almost three months. Strikingly, John also resumes his account in Verse 22 of Chapter 10 after a lapse of about three months in the life and ministry of our Lord. If you look carefully at the early verses in Chapter 10 you will find that they took place in Jerusalem in connection with the Feast of Tabernacles (which is held in early October), while the opening words of our text today are, "It was the Feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem." That Feast, which we call by the much more familiar term "Hanukkah," is celebrated when we Christians celebrate Christmas, in late December, so there is a gap in time between Verse 21 and Verse 22 of approximately three months duration.

I want to talk this morning about the hardest problem to handle in the Christian life. It would be interesting to poll the congregation here as to what you think that would be. Your answer might be different than mine. For me, the hardest problem I have to handle as a Christian is what to do when God does not do what I have been taught to expect him to do; when God gets out of line and does not act the way I think he ought. What do I do about that?

One of the strange delusions of our day is the quite unwarranted belief of many that medical science is making great strides in conquering disease and in eliminating or reducing the aging process. It is true, of course, that people do live longer than they did 25 or 30 years ago, and we are grateful for that. It is also true that science has virtually eliminated certain diseases that once were great killers among us; hardly anyone dies of tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria or smallpox anymore. On the other hand, however, deaths due to heart disease, cancer, etc., are skyrocketing. The striking fact that no one refers to at all today is that in spite of this apparent progress, the death rate remains exactly what it has always been -- a flat 100%!

One of the great controversies that has raged in the church for many centuries is the disagreement between Christians about whether we really have free will or not, whether we are able to direct our destinies by our own choices or whether we are in the grip of an inexorable fate that determines what is going to happen to us whether we like it or not. If you want to put this rather theologically, the question would be, "Are we predetermined to be Arminians, or do we have a choice as to whether we are Calvinists or not?"

This morning we heard from one of our missionaries about a woman whom she had met in Poland. This woman's husband had been imprisoned for his faith by the Polish authorities and he had later died in prison. His wife had gone through severe trials and was presently living in very difficult circumstances, yet, as she talked with our missionary, her heart was filled with joy, peace and strength. We will be looking at the secret of that kind of inner strength, a manifestation of genuine Christianity, in our study in the Gospel of John today.

John's account of our Lord's so-called triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem is very brief:

Many have noted that the Gospel of John does not have an account of the struggles of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. There are gnarled, ancient olive trees still growing in that garden today, and some of them may date back to the days of Jesus. One old tree may mark the exact spot where he knelt in prayer and great drops of bloody sweat dropped from his brow. Yet there is no account of this struggle in John's gospel. That seems strange, especially since John was one of the three disciples (the others were Peter and James) whom our Lord took with him on that evening. Perhaps, due to the fact that all three fell asleep and missed much of what occurred in the garden, John does not include an account of it.

One of the striking characteristics of our day is the passionate concern which we frequently see expressed over who is to blame for certain disasters that have been part of our recent national history. We have just seen the conclusion of separate libel suits by two famous generals, one an Israeli and one an American, over two widely debated disasters which occurred. We find this apportioning of blame at every level of life -- in the home, in government, even in the world of sports.

At times I grow tired of the ugliness of our world. Sickening reports of violence, rape, murder, drug traffic, pornography and child abuse are flung at us constantly by television and newspapers. It's enough to make you want to either fade out or blow the whole mess up. In our local paper last week there was a story that President Reagan, Constantin Chernenko of the Soviet Union and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain were each given one wish they could have fulfilled. Reagan wished that a flood would cover Russia; Chernenko wished for an earthquake to swallow the United States; but, asked what she wished, Margaret Thatcher replied, "Well, if those two wishes are granted I would like a nice relaxing scotch and soda!" Many would probably join her in that wish.

I am fascinated by the discourse of Jesus in the Upper Room. There are truths here that simply stagger the imagination. Surely this is one of the greatest revelations ever to fall from the lips of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew records that, early in his ministry, our Lord said, "I have come that I might utter things that have been kept secret since the foundation of the world." Surely some of these truths are found here in the Upper Room Discourse. Take Verse 1, for instance:

One of the social phenomena of our times is the seminars in human achievement that are being offered every weekend. In many parts of the country this very weekend select groups of people are meeting, hoping to find some secret power that will develop all their hidden abilities, and bring them to a new level of life and experience. Here is an advertisement which appeared recently,

In the 15th chapter of John's gospel our Lord uses the beautiful symbol of the vine and its branches. We who live in California are surrounded by vineyards. Thus we are particularly well situated to understand something about the culture of the vine, how it grows, and how it produces fruit.