Reflective Bible Study Gospel Adventure

Bad Preacher, Good Preacher: Luke 3:1-18

Published May 21, 2024 in Written Journal Entries

Focus Passage: Luke 3:1-18 (NLT)

¹It was now the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, the Roman emperor. Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea; Herod Antipas was ruler over Galilee; his brother Philip was ruler over Iturea and Traconitis; Lysanias was ruler over Abilene. ²Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests. At this time a message from God came to John son of Zechariah, who was living in the wilderness. ³Then John went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan River, preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. ⁴Isaiah had spoken of John when he said,

“He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!
    Clear the road for him!
⁵The valleys will be filled,
    and the mountains and hills made level.
The curves will be straightened,
    and the rough places made smooth.
⁶And then all people will see
    the salvation sent from God.’”

⁷When the crowds came to John for baptism, he said, “You brood of snakes! Who warned you to flee God’s coming wrath? ⁸Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. ⁹Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.”

¹⁰The crowds asked, “What should we do?”

¹¹John replied, “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.”

¹²Even corrupt tax collectors came to be baptized and asked, “Teacher, what should we do?”

¹³He replied, “Collect no more taxes than the government requires.”

¹⁴“What should we do?” asked some soldiers.

John replied, “Don’t extort money or make false accusations. And be content with your pay.”

¹⁵Everyone was expecting the Messiah to come soon, and they were eager to know whether John might be the Messiah. ¹⁶John answered their questions by saying, “I baptize you with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to be his slave and untie the straps of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹⁷He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.” ¹⁸John used many such warnings as he announced the Good News to the people.

Read Luke 3:1-18 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!

Before Jesus stepped onto the scene, a man named John the Baptist began a ministry to help prepare people for the coming Messiah. John’s ministry was so effective, powerful, and challenging that some people even wondered if John was actually the Messiah himself.

However, when John learns of this rumor, he answered it by saying, “I baptize you with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to be his slave and untie the straps of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.” (v. 16-17)

Interestingly enough, John wraps up another challenge in his answer that he is not the Messiah. In John’s challenge we see an interesting idea: Jesus is going to come and separate people. If John’s ministry was challenging and it divided people, Jesus’ ministry would only amplify the division.

I wonder if in some ways, John’s ministry was easier to latch onto. John gave clear requirements and clear expectations, and it seemed like John challenged people before he accepted them. When Jesus came, He took an opposite approach. Instead of challenging people first, Jesus seemed to love, heal, and accept them first, before then challenging them.

Jesus’ ministry was even more dividing because it showed the people who believed in hierarchy and social status that Jesus was stepping over the line. Jesus came as a representative from God, but it seemed like He was more interested in spending time with those “at the bottom of the social ladder” than with those at the top.

While we have plenty of examples of Jesus interacting with people of all social statuses, the most dividing thing He did was accept those at the bottom in an unconditional way. John the Baptist’s ministry was very conditional: Repent, be baptized, and change the focus of your life. If you do this, then you will escape the coming judgment.

John was the New Testament’s “Fire and Brimstone” preacher. Jesus came as a loving teacher. In an odd sort of “good cop, bad cop” illustration, John takes the role of “bad preacher”, while Jesus takes the role of “good preacher”. Both ministries were effective, and perhaps John chose His role to help people gravitate more towards Jesus when Jesus ultimately steps into the ministry scene.

This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!

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Flashback Episode — Loved, Healed, and Forgiven: Mark 8:22-26

Published May 20, 2024 in Audio Journal Entries

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While moving through Mark’s gospel and comparing what Mark included in his gospel versus what the other gospel writers include, not much of Mark’s gospel is truly unique. However, the miracle that we will be focusing on for this episode is one of the few events that made it only into Mark’s gospel. I wonder if this is because this event was kept relatively secret, or if something within the event prompted the other gospel writers to exclude this event from their own respective gospels.

Whatever the reason for only Mark including this miracle, I am glad that he did. Of all the miracles Jesus did, this one may be the most fascinating one in my mind. So without any further delay, let’s read it.

Our miracle and passage are found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 8, and we will be reading from the New International Version. Starting in verse 22, Mark tells us that:

²²They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. ²³He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

²⁴He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

²⁵Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. ²⁶Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into the village.”

This miracle is fascinating in my mind. This is the only miracle that I can recall where it takes Jesus a second try to get it right. While other miracles are attributed to faith, and at least one of the gospel writers suggested that the lack of faith in a situation could cause a miracle to not happen, this is the only miracle where the man is healed, but only after a second attempt by Jesus.

However, was this really a second attempt, or was there something happening behind the scenes that made the second try of this miracle distinctly different?

Looking at the details in this miracle, one set of details is easily overlooked. These details form the foundation for this situation. First, the man is brought to Jesus when Jesus has entered Bethsaida. Jesus then leads the man outside of Bethsaida. Finally, Jesus tells the man to go home and to not return through Bethsaida. Putting together these details points us to the high likelihood that the blind man was not from Bethsaida. It is possible this man lived close by, but it is also possible that those in this village searched out someone they knew Jesus could help, and then convinced this man to come to Jesus.

Another detail worth paying attention to is that this blind man was brought to Jesus. This detail is important because it shows more initiative coming from this group of people than from the blind man himself. Related to this detail is the detail that the group of people were the ones begging Jesus for the miracle, not the blind man.

With all these details put together, we can conclude that this group of people were more interested in seeing a miracle than on giving God the glory, or even on helping this man who was blind. Instead of seeing an opportunity for God to help someone in their presence, this group wanted to see Jesus perform for them. Oddly enough, knowing that faith is needed for a miracle to take place, I believe that if Jesus had attempted the miracle in the presence of this group of people, not only would Jesus have let the spotlight shine on Him, but also this miracle likely would have worked the first time. This would have been because those bringing this man to Jesus had the faith necessary to see him be healed.

However, Jesus wanted to heal more than this man’s eyes and He wanted to help this man without stealing the focus off of God. Jesus wasn’t interested in getting an audience or on gaining popularity. Instead, Jesus wanted to help people on an individual level as much as possible.

Up to Jesus asking the blind man a direct question after they are away from those who brought him to Jesus, we do not see or hear anything specific about this blind man. From the details leading up to this miracle, we don’t get the picture this man had faith or hope that he would ever be able to see. We are left to wonder if this man was born blind, or if he was blinded because of something that had happened earlier in his life.

However, when Jesus asks the man if he can see anything while they are alone, we start to get answers for some of our questions. This man responds to Jesus’ first attempt by telling Jesus that he can see people, but they look like trees walking around. If this man had never seen anything, I don’t believe he would know what a tree looked like. Instead, this detail makes me think something happened earlier in this man’s life that caused him to lose his eyesight.

This then leads us to another interesting conclusion. In this culture, people believed that sickness and disability happened because God was punishing people directly, or perhaps indirectly in the case of parents sinning and children being punished. If this man had eyesight then lost it, it is quite likely that he believed God was punishing him for something in his life that had happened.

If you believe God is punishing you, you don’t believe God would want to heal you. In the case of this man, I bet he was doubtful, skeptical, and probably reluctant to even be brought to Jesus. It is likely that this man told those people when they found him that God wouldn’t be interested in healing him because God was too busy punishing him instead.

This makes Jesus’ first attempt a successful attempt at healing this man. However, with the first attempt, while Jesus only partially heals this man’s eyes, Jesus healed this man’s hope, and I believe this man went away believing He had been forgiven. With a restored hope, this man had enough faith necessary for Jesus’ second attempt to fully heal his eyesight.

In our own lives, when bad things happen, it might be easy to let doubt tell us that God is mad at us and that He is causing the challenges we are facing. However, if we believe God is mad at us, then there is no reason to have any hope that our lives could be better. If God is truly mad at us, there is no hope, and if God was very mad at us, we wouldn’t be alive. If God had rejected humanity, Jesus wouldn’t have come to this planet.

However, Jesus did come. Jesus did heal someone who likely believed God was directly punishing him. Jesus gave His life as a substitute for our lives, and through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have the promise of a new life with God.

Jesus came to show us what God is really like. Jesus came to show us God’s love for us. And Jesus came to demonstrate for us that even if we are in open rebellion towards God, He still loves us and He wants to forgive us when we repent and return to Him.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to have faith and hope that God loves you and that He wants the best for you. When bad things happen, choose to see these things as a wakeup call from a God who loves each of us and not as a divine punishment from a cruel spiritual dictator. God loves us and He wants the best for our lives.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Through prayer and Bible study, we can open our hearts to God and let Him into our lives. When God is in our lives, we will know how much He loves us and we will be fully equipped to show His love to a world that needs to see God’s love more than ever!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Flashback Episode: Year in Mark – Episode 21: In a miracle that only Mark included, discover some things we can learn from a miracle that didn’t work entirely the first time around. Or maybe it did and what Jesus healed first is something a little less visible on the surface.

Join the discussion on the original episode's page: Click Here.

Gathering Fruit for Eternal Life: John 4:1-45

Published May 17, 2024 in Written Journal Entries

Focus Passage: John 4:1-45 (HCSB)

¹When Jesus knew that the Pharisees heard He was making and baptizing more disciples than John ²(though Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), ³He left Judea and went again to Galilee. ⁴He had to travel through Samaria, ⁵so He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from His journey, sat down at the well. It was about six in the evening.

⁷A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

“Give Me a drink,” Jesus said to her, ⁸for His disciples had gone into town to buy food.

⁹“How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked Him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

¹⁰Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would ask Him, and He would give you living water.”

¹¹“Sir,” said the woman, “You don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do You get this ‘living water’? ¹²You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are You? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”

¹³Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. ¹⁴But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again—ever! In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up within him for eternal life.”

¹⁵“Sir,” the woman said to Him, “give me this water so I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”

¹⁶“Go call your husband,” He told her, “and come back here.”

¹⁷“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.

“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said. ¹⁸“For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

¹⁹“Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that You are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹Jesus told her, “Believe Me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

²⁵The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will explain everything to us.”

²⁶“I am He,” Jesus told her, “the One speaking to you.”

²⁷Just then His disciples arrived, and they were amazed that He was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do You want?” or “Why are You talking with her?”

²⁸Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the men, ²⁹“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Messiah?” ³⁰They left the town and made their way to Him.

³¹In the meantime the disciples kept urging Him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³²But He said, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”

³³The disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought Him something to eat?”

³⁴“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work,” Jesus told them. ³⁵“Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, for they are ready for harvest. ³⁶The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so the sower and reaper can rejoice together. ³⁷For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.”

³⁹Now many Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of what the woman said when she testified, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰Therefore, when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. ⁴¹Many more believed because of what He said. ⁴²And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.”

⁴³After two days He left there for Galilee. ⁴⁴Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. ⁴⁵When they entered Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him because they had seen everything He did in Jerusalem during the festival. For they also had gone to the festival.

Read John 4:1-45 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!

During a brief transition within John’s gospel, we can find a perplexing concept and a profound idea that Jesus shares with His disciples. While the disciples are in a Samaritan town buying food, Jesus strikes up a conversation with a Samaritan woman. But even though Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman is interesting itself, what I find perplexing and profound in Jesus’ words happens during a brief conversation after the woman leaves and before she returns with those from the town.

It is in this transition where we find the disciples urging Jesus to eat something. They were probably really hungry when they went into the town, and I can only imagine how hungry they felt Jesus would have been since they probably had eaten and snacked all the way back to the well.

But Jesus responds, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” (v. 32)

This confuses the disciples. Did Jesus find food while they were gone? Did someone else come by the well and offer Him something to eat?

Sensing their confusion, Jesus responds to the questions they are asking amongst themselves. Jesus tells them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.” (v. 34)

It is in this statement that we see Jesus pointing us towards a pretty important concept. What we focus our attention on grows. If we focus on our hunger, we will only become hungrier. But if we focus on our mission, then only that will matter. It will not matter if we are tired, hungry, or stressed out. Those things are minimized in our minds as long as our focus stays on the mission.

And Jesus continues by pointing us to a truth about the only mission with eternal significance: “Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, for they are ready for harvest. The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.” (v. 35-38)

The big truth I see in Jesus’ message is that when our eyes are open to what God is doing in the world, we will see opportunities everywhere to help others and to bring people to Him. God has been working in people’s lives long before we were invited to be involved, and we are able to benefit from what they started.

When we partner with Jesus, we are able to gather fruit destined for eternal life. That’s the only mission with results that will last forever!

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Our Redeemer-Judge: John 8:12-30

Published May 16, 2024 in Audio Journal Entries

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As we continue moving through John’s gospel, we come to another place where Jesus challenges the crowds, and from the context of this event, this crowd included a number of Pharisees. It is fascinating in my mind when reading this event to discover that the challenge the religious leaders bring to Jesus looks like a valid challenge on the surface. However, for these religious leaders’ challenge to be valid, they would have to reject much more than they would like to admit.

With that said, let’s read about what happened and about the challenge these religious leaders give Jesus.

Our passage for this event is found in John’s gospel, chapter 8, and we will read it from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 12, John tells us that:

¹²Later, Jesus talked to the people again, saying, “I am the light of the world. The person who follows me will never live in darkness but will have the light that gives life.”

¹³The Pharisees said to Jesus, “When you talk about yourself, you are the only one to say these things are true. We cannot accept what you say.”

¹⁴Jesus answered, “Yes, I am saying these things about myself, but they are true. I know where I came from and where I am going. But you don’t know where I came from or where I am going. ¹⁵You judge by human standards. I am not judging anyone. ¹⁶But when I do judge, I judge truthfully, because I am not alone. The Father who sent me is with me. ¹⁷Your own law says that when two witnesses say the same thing, you must accept what they say. ¹⁸I am one of the witnesses who speaks about myself, and the Father who sent me is the other witness.”

¹⁹They asked, “Where is your father?”

Jesus answered, “You don’t know me or my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father, too.” ²⁰Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the Temple, near where the money is kept. But no one arrested him, because the right time for him had not yet come.

²¹Again, Jesus said to the people, “I will leave you, and you will look for me, but you will die in your sins. You cannot come where I am going.”

²²So the Jews asked, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he said, ‘You cannot come where I am going’?”

²³Jesus said, “You people are from here below, but I am from above. You belong to this world, but I don’t belong to this world. ²⁴So I told you that you would die in your sins. Yes, you will die in your sins if you don’t believe that I am he.”

²⁵They asked, “Then who are you?”

Jesus answered, “I am what I have told you from the beginning. ²⁶I have many things to say and decide about you. But I tell people only the things I have heard from the One who sent me, and he speaks the truth.”

²⁷The people did not understand that he was talking to them about the Father. ²⁸So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, you will know that I am he. You will know that these things I do are not by my own authority but that I say only what the Father has taught me. ²⁹The One who sent me is with me. I always do what is pleasing to him, so he has not left me alone.” ³⁰While Jesus was saying these things, many people believed in him.

In this passage, Jesus makes some very bold claims. And the religious leaders present were quick to challenge Jesus’ claims based on the detail that they did not see anyone else validating these claims.

This challenge is one of the better challenges the religious leaders could think of, because any secondary witness validating Jesus’ claims could immediately be challenged, judged, and likely discredited. Because of this, I suspect this is why Jesus didn’t remind them of John the Baptist, who made the same claim about Jesus. I also suspect this is why Jesus didn’t pull out the secondary witness of the scripture, because it would cut to the heart of their belief, and this wasn’t likely the right time for that.

Instead, Jesus counter-challenged the religious leaders on the detail that His secondary witness is God the Father, and that only those who knew Him would also be able to recognize the Father. Jesus subtly dismisses the religious leaders’ challenge by giving them a secondary witness but also telling them that they are unlikely to ever know Him.

Jesus emphasizes that without faith in Him, specifically faith in Jesus, everyone present, and we could also say everyone at any point in history, will die in their sins. Only through Jesus is a made way for us to trade our sins away. Jesus offers to take the punishment for our sins and in return, He offers us the life that He deserved – a life that can begin today and extend into eternity.

However, in this event, and in what Jesus shares, He makes a powerful set of claims that are easy to miss. In verses 15 and the first part of 16, Jesus tells those present that: “You judge by human standards. I am not judging anyone. But when I do judge, I judge truthfully, because I am not alone.”

This truth is powerful, because it tells us that Jesus did not come as a judge when He came to earth in the first century. Instead, while Jesus doesn’t claim the role of judge at that point, He does foreshadow that He will judge in the future. This verse brings out the powerful truth that: Our redeemer is also Our Judge.

If you have ever been worried or uneasy about God the Father judging you and that somewhere in your past is an unconfessed sin that could forever separate you from God forever, you should take that worry to Jesus, and understand that Jesus is not only your Redeemer, He is also the Judge. We don’t have a Judge who is unfamiliar with what life is like as a human living in a sinful world. Our Judge understands our lives better than we might be willing to accept, and our Judge gave His life to redeem us.

God loves us so much that Jesus came to take our place. Jesus not only became our Redeemer on the cross, Jesus also happens to be our Judge. This means that Satan’s accusations against us can simply be brushed aside by our Judge when we accept the gift of His sacrifice on our behalf, and let His perfect life cover our sins.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose today to accept Jesus’ gift in your life. Choose to place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in what Jesus accomplished for humanity on the cross, and ask Him to take your sin-filled past and give you His life in exchange. This prayer is one that Jesus is more than happy to answer!

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God and Jesus each and every day. Choose to pray and study personally in order to make your relationship with God personal, and don’t let anyone get in the way of your relationship with God!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or run from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Year in John – Episode 20: When some religious leaders challenge Jesus about some of His claims, discover in Jesus’ response a powerful truth about who ultimately will judge, and why this truth is one of the biggest promises in the entire Bible!

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