10/25/2017
Have you found Jesus, and now you are attempting to reach out and bring others to Him? Well, are you certain you really know who He is? If you think you have sought and found Him, I wonder, because we don’t find Him through searching... God draws, or calls, us to Him. And, is there a great mystery in this? Let’s read these two passages.
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—”
John 6:44-45 ESV
And then:
“Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."”
John 14:6-7 ESV
So if we can’t come to Jesus unless the Father draws us, and we can’t know the Father except through Jesus then how can we ever be saved? Is this a mystery without solution, a conundrum, a paradox? I am laughing right now because I intentionally baited you by cherry picking these particular passages and taking them out of context to create this endless loop. This type of scriptural presentation is something we must be careful to avoid in our teaching, lectures, and sermons, but has allowed me to make this point today.
Taken in context these scriptural references present no endless loop whatsoever. There are mysteries here, but not the one I previously presented. We are drawn by the Holy Spirit to know Jesus and through Him we come to know the Father. The mystery in the first scripture reading from John 6 is in how God leads us to Jesus, because it is so different in every life. What were the circumstances in your life that brought you to the feet of Christ? Then once there, what did you see in Him that touched you and saved your soul by proclaiming Him the Son of God? Perhaps the words of Paul can help us understand...
“To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”
1 Corinthians 9:22-23 ESV
Jesus appeals to each of us in a very personal way. To some He appears weak and vulnerable, but to others his strength is beyond our ability to fathom. Whatever the appeal, He leads us to sit at His feet and learn. Some will remain there and others walk away; which of those will you, or I, ultimately be? While there we learn of the Father, and how to live and conduct our lives in Him. Oswald Chambers makes a wonderful observation about the criticality and magnificence of our remaining at the feet of Jesus when he writes these words:
“Never choose to be a worker, but when God has put His call on you, woe be to you if you turn to the right hand or the left. He will do with you what He never did with you before the call came; He will do with you what He is not doing with other people. Let Him have His way.” - Oswald Chambers
Then there is the second scriptural reference I used to establish the feeling of an inescapable loop as I built a seemingly unsolvable mystery for you... John 14: 6-7. The mystery is not the loop I initially baited you into contemplating, but there is great mystery in these words that seem so straight forward.
These two verses have been studied and quoted from memory as often if not more than any others. Verse 6, which reads “Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”” Is interpreted in many ways; volumes have been written on this verse as commentators have expounded upon it, but boiled down to its essence, I believe it to say this to us... Jesus is our path [way] to God, and then by saying He is the truth, He is defining His own character for us. Jesus is the truth in the Word, the truth in righteousness, the truth in holiness, the truth in purity, the truth in sinlessness, He is the truth in perfection, and the one true lamb without blemish, which makes Him the truth in sacrifice, and redemption. These to name a few of His traits, and to answer to the mystery of His being the truth.
Then thirdly He says He is the life. In this I believe He is saying that He has purchase eternal life for us by His very sacrifice. So unless we believe that, and take it to our very hearts, then there is no other way to the Father... the law has been fulfilled and perfected in Him, and no longer stands on its own as a means of coming to God without Jesus Christ being the Messiah and the Lamb of God. Thus He said “It is done.”
Finally in verse 7 He sets it up for Thomas when he chided Him by saying “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." The Father and the Son are together, they are indistinguishable, they are one. This is a great mystery for us as creatures of flesh and bone, and akin to the great mystery of man and woman becoming one flesh in marriage. Yet, mystery or not, the truth is revealed to us Doubting Thomases.
So the mystery is there, but is not as I originally presented it. The true mystery is in our understanding Jesus Christ, and that when we see Him we see the Father; when we know Him, then we know the Father, and that perhaps in visualizing it as a hand within a glove, we can grasp the concept of God within the flesh of the man Jesus Christ.
Then there was my challenge regarding our searching for Jesus, and that mystery is solved by our very summons to Him by God Himself. Oswald Chambers resolves that for Himself in this way:
“It is not that you have got God, but that He has got you. Here, in this College [fellowship], God is at work, bending, breaking, molding, doing just as He chooses. Why He is doing it, we do not know; He is doing it for one purpose only - that He May be able to say, this is my man, my woman. We have to be in God’s hand so that He can plant men on the Rock, as He has planted us.” - Oswald Chambers
God drew us, and he did so for reasons, and in ways that remain a mystery to us, but draw us He did. So here we are in the midst of a fallen world, holding onto the hem of Christ’s robe while at the same time reaching out as the emissaries of God to draw others to Jesus. It is precarious in that we seem to be fluttering like a moth about the flame. We are holy and yet dabble about the circumference of sin, plucking from it those who God presents to us. To this point, I will close with this Quote by Oswald Chambers...
“A Christian worker has to learn how to be God’s noble man or woman amid a crowd of ignoble things.” - Oswald Chambers
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for drawing me to your Son Jesus Christ. I thank you for the mysteries of faith that are founded in my inability to understand you. Lead me Father to Jesus, and allow me to abide there as He teaches me of you, and then on that day when He stands beside me before your throne open my eyes that I might see the solution to the questions that confound me now. Your ways are far above mine Father, but I trust in you, and in one day having my eyes opened so that I no longer see as through a glass darkly, but in the brilliant clarity of Jesus... in the crispness of your child. In Jesus let me see you Father, and in Him let me know you... draw me ever closer; reveal your mysteries to me in due time.
Rich Forbes