LENT 2014 - DAY 7

John 1 is full to the brim with basic training information.  John tells us in the first verses of his Gospel account that John the Baptist came as a witness to bear witness about the light.  The true light was going to be revealed to the people.  He was in the world already - born just 6 months after John the Baptist - and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.

This affirmation by the disciple John is by one who knew, adored and was dearly loved by Yeshua ha Mashiach (Jesus the Messiah).  It is stated simply and clearly.  There is no mistaking the meaning.

John goes on to say that Jesus came to His own people (the Jews) and His own people did not receive Him - - and then comes the best Good News:  But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God!  The Word became flesh and dwelled among us; i.e., God became a man.  God made Himself known to man by taking on the form of man.  It is the most foundational truth of Christianity.  It is the Truth that John reiterates in his book...a story worth repeating as we will see.

The Holy Spirit told John that there would be One who came to be baptized who was the Son of God - and He was the One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.   There are major religions who say that is blasphemy.  They turn everything topsy-turvy, calling black white and white black.  They say Jesus was a good man and a prophet - but fail to give Him the honor He Himself claimed, and not just He, but his forerunner John the Baptist.  In John 1:34 John the Baptist declares, "I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God."  [And for the record, He cannot be a 'good' man and a liar.  He claimed to be God, and because He was who He claimed to be, He could not and did not lie.]

What was severed with Adam was a right relationship with God.  God came to earth in the form of man to restore that relationship.  God made it abundantly clear in establishing the sacrificial system for forgiveness in the Old Testament that sin demands a blood sacrifice.  Jesus came to be the sacrifice that sin demanded.  God sent His one and only Son to be the Lamb of God.  Fully God.  Fully human.  God Incarnate.  God-in-the-flesh.  God the creator who would die for the created because of His great love.

I also bear witness....  I know because of what He has done in my life and so conspicuously in the lives of so many others.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  The offer is there.  All we have to do is reach out and accept it.  To all who receive Him, who believe in His Name, He gives the right to become children of God!

Lord, thank You.  I am humbled again by the realization that You would come to save us!

LENT 2014 - DAY 6

I FEEL ABSOLUTELY COMPELLED TO GO BACK TO THE BASICS.  That is what I have heard football coaches say when their team isn't performing well....  Back to the basics to me means the book of John.

Of course, back to the basics also includes back to the beginning...Genesis 1:1...in the beginning God....  That's all that matters to me as a foundation.  I don't care how long God took to do what He did.  While I believe in a 6-day creation, if God used 'days' allegorically for eons, I don't care....   I just care that He did it.

Yesterday my husband brought up (again) how preposterous the story of Creation and the story of Noah are.  I agreed that we don't know enough to make complete assessments of those events.  Others will bring up questions of 'whom' Cain married, or the population growth of the earliest inhabitants according to Biblical accounting.  I don't have all of the answers - but what really matters is what we do with Jesus.  And that is what I told him.

So - - let's explore the most basic of basics:

God is plural.  From the beginning He was, and is, and is to come I AM.  In retrospect we can speak of the pre-incarnate Christ, because Messiah is God, and always was, even though He didn't acquire the name 'Jesus' until His human birth.  It is a lot to wrap our finite brains around no matter how wise the scholar, and is one of those areas where it is the child who informs the man.

The bottom line each of us has to explore is "What will YOU do with Jesus."  That is going back to basics!

John 1:1-5 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.   He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

That says a LOT!  Jesus is the Word.  He is God.  He and the Father are one....  Three personalities or reflections of one entity.

I love the visual God gave me for that when I was writing the children's musical A LETTER FROM G. O. D. - - H2O.  Ice, water, steam are all H2O, but they are viewed in 3 very distinct ways.

This is the bottom line of Christianity.  Some religions say He was only a prophet.  Others say He was only human and became God, and teach that others can do that as well - - but that isn't what He says through His Word, the Bible.  If we want to know Jesus, we have to know Him through His own confessions and claims.  That's a basic truth of Christianity.  He is identified in John as "The Word" and He speaks to us through His Word.   He speaks other ways as well, but He never tells us anything that goes against His written Word.

This brief passage of scripture tells us that Jesus is life and light.  He shines in the darkness - and the darkness cannot overcome Him.

What is darkness?  It is the absence of light.

Back to the basics!