“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12).
Jesus speaks to us to reveal Himself to us, to transform us into His image. In one sense this means that He speaks as we are able to hear and understand, in another sense it means that He challenges our understanding and hearing. Some things we may see more quickly than others, other things about Him and His ways may take more time and experience. This is true of us as individuals, as husbands and wives, and as congregations.
One element of revelation and teaching we must always keep in mind; Godly teaching will always be grounded in the Bible and the Bible will always be focused on Jesus. Always, always, always we want to see and hear Jesus.
In the previous reflection I listed some passages to illustrate the idea that Jesus speaks to us about things as we are able to bear them. They also demonstrate that He speaks more than once over time about a matter, and that it may take us a while to grasp, in some measure, just what He is saying. Our lives are about relationship with the Trinity, they are not to be about scoring 100% on a Bible knowledge test.
Here is an overview of the passages:
Mark 7:14 – 23: Jesus says, “There is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things that proceed out of the man are what defile the man.” As Mark, the author of this Gospel, retrospectively pondered what Jesus said, he made an editorial comment, “Thus He declared all foods clean.”
This is especially interesting if we consider Mark’s association with Peter. Why? Remember this when we arrive at Acts Chapter 10.
Had the disciples “heard” what Jesus was saying, there would likely have been much more for Mark to record, but they didn’t hear Him. The idea that the dietary laws of Moses were to be superseded by Jesus’s Message would have been, and would prove to be, a watershed in their thinking and practice – for this was about more than clean and unclean animals, it was also about circumcision and the entire way of life under the Old Covenant.
The disciples could not bear the full understanding of what Jesus saying, but He was planting a seed.
Then we have John 4:7 – 42, what we know as the Woman at the Well. Here Jesus is not only sharing the Good News with a Samaritan woman and her village, but He is also saying that true worship is not about a place, that it is not even about Jerusalem, but rather about worshipping the Father in Spirit and in truth. When the disciples find Jesus speaking to the woman “they are amazed.” If they were amazed that He was speaking to a woman, I imagine they were further amazed when He spent two days with the unclean Samaritans of the village.
The disciples were seeing Jesus treat the Samaritans as a clean people, yet were they really “seeing” what was happening?
Then we come to Acts 10:1 – 11:18, Peter’s vision of the clean and unclean animals and his visit to the house of Cornelius the Roman centurion. Time has passed since Mark 7 and John 4. Jesus has been crucified and has risen from the dead. The Holy Spirit has come on the Day of Pentecost. Peter has been used by Jesus in many ways. Peter and John have even been to the Samaritans with the Gospel and laid hands on them to receive the Holy Spirit.
Yet, Peter still has not heard and seen all that Jesus has been saying, for he still considers some food clean and some unclean, more importantly, he still sees some people clean and some unclean. But Jesus keeps speaking, Jesus keeps teaching, Jesus keeps revealing. While it takes the sheet being let down three times, and while it takes the Voice of God to make things explicit, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy,” Jesus keeps speaking – for Acts 10 is a kairos time, it is the season for the floodgates to open for the peoples of the earth to hear the Gospel.
Then in Acts 11:1 – 18, upon Peter’s return to Jerusalem, the Christians of Jerusalem have to process what has happened. They need to deal with what Jesus has said to Peter and with Peter preaching to the household and friends of Cornelius. While the initial reaction was one of acceptance, when we arrive at Acts 15 we see that not everyone was happy about this new Way of life. Some disciples could bear what Jesus was saying and doing in His People, others could not.
Galatians 2:1 – 21 relates Peter’s visit to Antioch in which he succumbed to the pressure of legalistic Jews and once again treated non-Jews as unclean people – in spite of what he had experienced in Acts Chapter 10! In this instance rather than give Peter another vision, Jesus gave Peter Paul’s rebuke in front of the church.
What I hope we will see in the above passages is that Jesus kept speaking to His People over the course of years about there being no unclean people, which also meant a change in covenants – this was a radical message that took years to assimilate – after all, when we are raised a certain way, when we have been taught to think and act certain ways, it is a challenge to change – even with the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit – after all, we are living in jars of clay.
Jesus kept speaking to His People about “things to come,” expanded ways of seeing people and the Gospel, renewed ways to live life in community.
The last passage I listed is Ephesians 2:11 – 4:16. Here Paul, we might say, codifies the above passages, he puts them in a teaching framework with many facets – but they all flow from one thought, God has made one New Man in Christ, there is no longer Jew and Gentile, we are One Temple, One Body, One People. (We see this throughout the Epistles, but I’ve chosen this passage to make my point.)
As we see in Galatians, there was ongoing resistance to this, as there is today. In fact, much of the professing church in the West fails to recognize this, we keep taking a sword and splitting the Body of Christ into Jew and Gentile – how sad that we undo what Jesus Christ came to do on the Cross. Jesus has One People and only One People – His People, His Bride, His Church, His Temple.
If you have never thought of these things before it may take you some time to ponder them, which is a good thing. We are to see the Bible holistically, not piecemeal; we want to see the entire picture, to watch the whole movie.
I want us to see a few things.
Jesus speaks to us as we are able to bear what He says, and He does so over time, in fact over a lifetime. This includes challenging us, it means at times He puts us in whitewater; Jesus upsets our equilibrium when necessary. It is good to have trusted friends to work through these things with in such times, it is good to have a Paul around to speak hard things to us. When our frames of reference are removed, when we are knocked out of our boats, it is good to have someone to throw us a life preserver with the name Jesus on it.
The idea of “things to come” is about seeing Jesus, it is not primarily about future events. I will return to this in another reflection, but this term has been misused to focus on future events and thus distracts us from Jesus and our mission. The emphasis of John 16:12 – 15 is the glorification and unveiling of Jesus Christ in our lives, it is about us in Him as the daughters and sons of the Father – it is not about reading spiritual tea leaves.
I am bemused when I see believers in knots about what they are supposed to do in this life. We are to know Jesus and love Him, more today than yesterday. Jesus says that the work of God is that we believe in Him whom the Father has sent. If we are not doing that work, then we are unqualified to do any work. Then we are to be on mission, to make disciples and teach them to obey all that Jesus has commanded us. And of course we are to be living in koinonia as His People, building one another up in Him.
Our passage portrays a life of a continuing unveiling of Jesus Christ, of Jesus being glorified as we live in koinonia in the Trinity. This, above all else I think, is worship. Worship is our Way of Life in Christ, it is 24/7 and beyond, not relegated to time or place or whether or not there are music and lyrics – ought not our lives to be the lyrics and music of the cosmos?
Our daily expectation, as individuals, couples, and as a People, is that Jesus will be speaking to us, the Holy Spirit will be unveiling Jesus Christ to us.
Now, if this is true, then we shall always have something to share with one another. We shall have Jesus.
Yes?
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