I think the best thing I heard this weekend had to do with Vegetable soup.
As we grow up, we are handed a bowl of vegetable soup. That bowl is everything we’ve learned from our family, our culture, our life experiences. It’s everything we believe and think and know about life. Most people just chow down and eat their soup, memorize the recipe, and teach that same thing to their kids, if they can find the same ingredients.
God calls us out of that bowl of soup. We’re supposed to open up His Word (that is, Jesus) and seek and find out what really isn’t supposed to be in there. If your family recipe has beef in the soup, but God’s recipe doesn’t, take it out and sit it on a plate. You family comments to one another about women’s bodies, but God says to tread women with the purity of a sister? Take that out of your soup! Keep going and you may find that all you are left with is broth.
The amazing thing is, plain broth with God is better than the most stuffed with stuff soup of the world any day of the week. And as you eat that broth of God’s holiness, He’ll toss some stuff back in there from His recipe that is a lot better for you than that big pig shank of worldliness that the world may have dropped in your soup.
John 7:18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
I remember when I learned that no one in a desperate situation can be trusted. That was also when I learned not to ask people “can you do such and such?” because the guy I was asking would think, “my child hasn’t eaten in 4 days and this guy is going to pay me to do this, so I can figure it out.” Desperation brings out some of the worst things in people. I remember seeing women at the Shoe Carnival push and shove other women, over 40 even-I’m not talking about rowdy teens! over a 6 pack of socks! (if that can be referred to as desperation. I guess they felt like they were, nonetheless.)
I think of that same thing as I read about Jesus talking about people seeking their own glory. Here I am on the weekend before a big election and the news is nothing but people seeking their own glory. And what crazy foolishness God lets people get into when they are focused on their own glory! What silly things we do when we try to get people to like us! And the more diverse the people, the crazier our antics!
The fact that Jesus was not seeking His own glory but the glory of God must have been so absolutely foreign to the Pharisees. To imagine them doing something that would make someone else look good, at their expense, seems impossible. Jesus taught the truth without any care of his reputation or standing with other people. He was free from the bondage of acceptance-shopping, so He could treat everyone equally, rich or poor, powerful or weak, intellectual or simple.
I know I’ve written about this before, but Jesus didn’t need other people to tell Him who He was. He knew who He was, and He knew what God thought of Him, and that was all that He needed. That’s how we know that God does not show favoritism, because Jesus showed us what a person is like that needs no approval, and does not judge people on their outward appearance, or what they are tricked into thinking of our outward appearance.
1. In this conversation what did Jesus say or do?
2. In this conversation what did the words or actions of Jesus explain to us about the Father?
1a. Jesus spoke a blessing right off the bat to Nathanael even though He surely knew Nathanael’s comment about nothing good coming from Nazareth.
1b. I picture Jesus sitting around talking and Nate coming up, “Now here’s a honest man!” He says. Nate has just been brought to the Ultimate Judge of all Judges, the Righteous Judge, who Moses wrote about in the LAW, and His first words to Nate are not condemnation. If you heard that you were about to meet the ONE that Moses and the Prophets fortold, wouldn’t you be nervous or skeptical?
1c. Jesus told him that He saw him before Philip came. Only Jesus and Nate know what was going on right then, but it was definitely more than what John wrote here. Jesus didn’t embarrass Nate or correct him or flatter him. It almost seems like an inside joke like “I know what you did” or something, and the effect was a great confession. Jesus knows just the right thing to say.
1d. In a humble way, Jesus says “you guys are going to see more than just this. You are going to see heaven open up and the messengers of God go to and fro on me.”
2a. He didn’t have a bunch of pent up rage against Nathanael, He didn’t show up with condemnation and judgement. He didn’t hold a grudge or take personally Nate’s Nazareth comment.
2b. Jesus does another “call it like I see it” on Nate. Nate might not have felt at all like he was honest or true or even an Israelite. His reply to Jesus may have not been b/c Jesus knew about how honest he was, but b/c Jesus knew how tricky (kniving sp?) Nathan was, and Jesus showed him such mercy. Like if Jesus said to the alcoholic, “here is a true family man, who cares very deeply for his family.” That might not be where his addiction takes him, but apart from his great weakness, that is where his heart is. Maybe Nate was wishing he was honest, and Jesus sees that in spite of his actions.
2c. Jesus saw Nathan, where he was, what he was doing, what he was thinking, how he was feeling, and treated it all with great care. Jesus is not in a rush to condemn or humiliate us publicly. It is not his goal to shame us. He would rather show us great things.
2d. Jesus gets called “Son of God” and “the King of Israel” but doesn’t call Himself those things. He isn’t so concerned with the words we call Him by. (I’m thinking of Jehovah’s witnesses that harp on calling God Jehovah and nothing else)
2e. The angels of God come and go on Jesus. He is the way for things to come from the Father, and He is the way to go back to the Father. Jesus is the path to the Father, and He is the Place where God comes to Earth.
In Jacob’s dream he said “God was in this place and I didn’t know it.” Nate sees Jesus in this situation and realizes that this is the place where God is: Jesus.
Right now, I’m reading “Forgotten Ways” by Alan Hirsch, I just started “Organic Church” by Neil Cole, I’m reading “The Horse and His Boy” by C.S. Lewis with my kids, Jeremiah for my Wednesday Donut Bible Study, and selections from John for some discipleship.
I think the first two will fall by the wayside when I close on my house tomorrow.
It’s time to quit reading and start doing.
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