Look at the Lamb (Day 7)

Day 7 – Nick

So here we are, 1/3rd of the way through John’s eye-witness gospel account of the life of Jesus. If you’re tracking with us, thanks! If you haven’t been, you still can!

*Next Week* we have great guest articles from one of my closest friends Olau Thomassen, my brother-in-law, John Bagg, who heads up WEC International in the UK, and my very wise Mum

When you fill your mind with Jesus, watch what happens!

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Summary of Chapter 7

Verses 1-13: There continues to be a strange paradox between the disciple’s half-hearted devotion to Jesus as their Lord, Teacher and the Messiah of Israel, and their refusal to fully submit to His timing and leadership. Sound familiar? It’s bizarre to me: on the one hand, (when Jesus had given them the option of leaving along with the rest of the deserters), Peter replies with resolve that, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life…’ (6:68), but on the other they were trying to boss Jesus’ schedule, specifically around the imminent Feast of Tabernacles. This theme of spiritual blindness isn’t a motif for one chapter, it’s a theme for the entire book.Continue reading “Look at the Lamb (Day 7)”

Look at the Lamb (Day 6)

Day 6 – Katie

Summary of Chapter 6

Verses 1-15: Jesus’ ministry continues and word begins to spread around the people that the man they thought was Joseph’s son was doing wonderful things. People become fixated with Jesus for His miracles and signs and trek miles to see more. Visited day after day by crowds, Jesus continues to show love and patience, even after retreating to a hillside and being followed yet again.Continue reading “Look at the Lamb (Day 6)”

Look at the Lamb (Day 5)

Day 5 – Ant

Summary of Chapter 5

Verses 1-14: The healing of a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. What a surprising question Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?”. A really important question because sometimes we like to stay just where we are rather than face the challenges that becoming well will bring! Perhaps Jesus was asking the man, “Do you want to remain as you have been for the last 38 years!” Even in our “unwellness” there can be a “comfort” that we don’t wish to be disturbed!Continue reading “Look at the Lamb (Day 5)”

Look at the Lamb (Day 4)

Day 4 – Nick

Summary of Chapter 4

Verses 1-26: This is the chapter, and the exact passage, that often pops up during worship training days and seminars – and so it should! Jesus gives the reading world a crash course in the radically changing nature of worship that He was actually in the process of orchestrating. Continue reading “Look at the Lamb (Day 4)”

Look at the Lamb (Day 3)

Day 3 – Nick

Summary of Chapter 3

Verses 1-21: I’m guessing that Jesus’ clearing of the temple courts in chapter 2 would have been during the heat of the day and the penetrating Jerusalem sunlight. By contrast, chapter three opens at night-time when darkness and cold temperatures would have been the silent backdrop. Think! Nicodemus would have been able to actually see Jesus’ breath in the cold air as He taught about the limitless life of the Breath of the Spirit and the ‘blowing’ of the Wind of the Kingdom.Continue reading “Look at the Lamb (Day 3)”

Look at the Lamb (Day 2)

Day 2 – Mairi

Summary of Chapter 2

Verses 1-12: This is the well-known Sunday school story of the wedding at Cana. Jesus has been invited with his disciples when the unthinkable happens and the wine runs out. Jesus requests 6 large jars of water and, in an act of extravagant generosity, miraculously turns all 150 gallons into the very best wine for the celebrating community. Upon seeing this incredible display, these verses culminate with the disciples believing in Jesus.

Verses 13-22: Yet another well-known passage immediately follows. Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Passover feast and, angered by the money-changers who have overtaken the temple, he throws over their tables and drives them out. Following this dramatic scene, Jesus speaks prophetically to the Jewish leaders about his body becoming the future temple following his death and resurrection. While the reader can clearly see the blindness that conceals their understanding, these Jewish leaders struggle to make sense of his words. With a hind-sight sort of feel John recounts the disciples remembering these events in light of prominent passages of scripture.

Verses 23-25: Amongst more miracles and the first believers, this chapter ends with John echoing key elements from chapter one – Jesus knows all about man because he is God.

Continue reading “Look at the Lamb (Day 2)”

Look at the Lamb (Intro & Day 1)

Introduction to Look at the Lamb

In John Stott’s The Incomparable Christ, Jesus was studied with reference to His four different portraits painted from the varying eye-witness accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Whereas some point questioningly to the differences of the gospel ‘portraits’, as ‘discrepancies’, Stott instead likens the rich variations captured by each portrait to the way that light is refracted beautifully through a diamond – i.e. we should be in awe of the variety, and grateful, not suspicious.Continue reading “Look at the Lamb (Intro & Day 1)”

New Series Look at the Lamb

Starting tomorrow for the next 21 days, why not track with Mairi and me through the 21 chapters of John’s 4K Ultra HD focus on Jesus?

Taking a chapter a day and briefly reflecting on what John saw and recorded of Jesus, “Look at the Lamb” will encourage love and desire for God.

It’ll be kind of like an online bible study for three weeks leaning in to what John the Baptist shouted in 1:29: to *behold* the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Dip in and out or track with me for the full 21 days but let’s look again, a little bit harder, at our beautiful Jesus

Earthly Use

I’d like to debunk a myth that says, and even warns, that it’s possible to be ‘so heavenly minded to be of no earthly use’.

In Philippians 3:14 Paul smashes that notion by saying,

“I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus”

Called. Heavenwards.

The ineffective and unsatisfying way of ‘doing’ church/life/ministry is with an attempt of delicately balancing earth and heaven like a some kind of home-improvement project (a little bit of heaven, here; a little bit of earth, there), as though the ‘reasonable balance’ was something we map out for increasing our effectiveness or that’s simply left to our own personal preferences; or that perhaps too much thought of heaven, of Jesus, is going to render us imbalanced, irrelevant and bunkered away out of touch with a hurting world.

I don’t see that in Paul’s writings and I don’t think being ‘too heavenly minded’ is possible because a fixed gaze on heaven primes our faith in its King. (See Colossians 3:2 ).

What I do see is Paul longing for his prize, his goal, his home and his Saviour. The utter marvel and mystery of ‘following Christ’ at all, with any fruitfulness, with any closeness of proximity, is possible only because of the call towards heaven from God, not of a learned skill of balancing the two realities of heaven and earth towards approved ‘usefulness’.

Paul wrestled with where he wanted to be such was his love for God, (See Philippians 1: 22-24) but he wasn’t trying to decide where his mind lived like a schitzophrenic symptom with one foot in the grave. Above all he cherished his heavenly citizenship, yet he was extremely effective and ‘useful’ while he remained.

*This is not a call to monastic passivity or chilled bean-bag worship vibes…it’s a reorientation towards a mentality that fuels our missional effectiveness.*

Paul was ‘all in’, really ‘all in’ in a way that I’m certainly not familiar with either personally or corporately.

He had a goal and he had a Goal.

He loved people to the point of often writing and speaking through tears but, without question, he knew he was called to be with Jesus.

I think this is the personal/corporate key:

*The extent of Paul’s tears for people and the degree of his longing to fully be with God are directly linked – they correspond perfectly.*

As he pressed on to ‘win the prize’ he was focused in this one direction which only made him increasingly fruitful while he remained on earth.

Like Paul, let’s give ourselves to going fully hard after God, fully hard after the kingdom, fully hard after the King.

And then see how much earthly use we’ll be!