Pledge of Allegiance

David Stockton
Series: John
Chapter 2

(Starting at 1:50)

John Chapter 2. Let’s read this and let the word of God just wash over us to quiet everything else in our minds and hearts and see what John the Apostle is saying about Jesus in this chapter:

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

This is the word of the Lord. This is John writing as he’s thinking back, as he’s accounting the life of Jesus and the interactions he had with Jesus in the flesh, in the body, in Israel at that time. And John is at the end of his life. He’s been through a lot. He’s probably around 85-90 years old. He’s writing up close to the end of the first century. He’s recounting and writing to us, trying to give an account for why he believes in Jesus.

There is debate as to who he was writing to or who he had in mind. To me it seems that he might have had Hellenistic people in mind. Both the Greco Roman world that he was probably interacting with up in Ephesis and the way that he starts out calling Jesus the Logos, which is a Greek word. It’s more than a Greek word, it’s a Greek concept. It has a lot of depth and meaning in the Greco Roman world. So you can check last week’s message if you want to know more about that.

He introduces Jesus as the logos and he goes on to talk to us about this guy John the Baptist. John the Apostle, which we’ll call John A, then you’ve got John the Baptist, exhibit John B. John the Baptist  was this really neat individual who, in his day and age was able to exemplify walking in the world but not of the world. I mean, in some drastic ways. John was wearing camel skins. He was eating locusts and honey. He lived out in the wilderness as far as we know. He was baptizing people. He was calling people to come out of the religious system of the day. He was calling people to come out of the greed, out of their selfishness, out of all of the different things that are sinful. He was calling them out and saying, “Please come and return to God.” 

And amazingly, this wild haired, wild guy had a lot of people coming out to be baptized by him, to hear what he had to say. Jesus called him a prophet later on. His prophecy, the words that he spoke, were able to cut through the confusion of that day and really land in people’s hearts. It was drawing people out of the worldly systems, out of all of that into kind of a more fresh beginning with God. Even these people that were steeped in religious things in the Jewish world. 

I’ve been praying that we’re going to have a lot more John the Baptists rise up in our time, in our day, as we have so much noise, dissension and actual pain and confusion. We really need the prophetic voice to come on strong and cut through it all and speak to our hearts so we’ll know how to be in the world but not of the world—how to navigate this challenging dynamic that we’re in, with all of the political tensions, with all of the shouts and screams. Even with deciding how we’re going to navigate these racial issues and this racial pain. And other things as well.

I love the John Baptists. We talked about him last week as well. He was a fighter. He stood up in the face of injustice, oppression and immorality. His intense morality and simplicity gave his message intense credibility and clarity. I’m praying for some more of that in our day and age as well.So now we’re moving on to John Chapter 2. I want to spend a little time unpacking a few things here, but really focus on verse 11. 

I was a camp counselor one summer, actually a counselor in training. They gave us camp names. They called me Spelunk. Spelunk is obviously referring to cave exploration because I had done a little of that in my time. It’s always fun to go exploring in caves. You through maybe a little hole, crawling through and it’s not that good; but then it opens up into kind of a bigger cavern. And you can go and there are lots of different places to explore. There are lots of places that, as you go through it, it opens up into these broad things.

As you’re reading the book of John, he has so many phrases that you could spend the rest of your life just chewing on and diving into. So, as we read here in Chapter 2, it’s just like that. 

As we go on, I want to talk to the kids for a second, that are still awake, that haven’t left the room, that may be upside down on your couch by now—I totally understand that. No problem. But, kids, if you would draw me a picture of what it looks like to explore a cave, a spelunker. Someone who is going into a cave, exploring. That would be a fun drawing for me to see this week. Thanks for the ones that have been coming. Make sure you put your address with them so that I can make sure something shows up in your mailbox. There you go kids: Spelunking. That’s what you’re going for today.

So let’s dive in and do some exploration in John 2. Here are some phrases. He starts out chapter 2 with “On the third day.” Now, for those of us who know about the resurrection of Jesus, for John, who obviously did, that phrase “on the third day” is such a big deal. He uses this phrase and we don’t know if he’s talking about the third day that he had been with Jesus as one of his disciples. We don’t know if this is three days later from when he had that interaction with Nathaniel. Or we don’t know if he’s just kind of saying, “Hey, on the third day Jesus always does cool stuff.” We’re not sure. Again, loaded question. We don’t have time to unpack too much.

He talks about going to a wedding in Cana. A wedding in this day and age is a very big deal. A wedding for the Hebrew people is a very big deal. There’s a year-long lead to a wedding. There are all these traditions, all these things that happen, it’s a real communal thing, getting people together. When you are a people who are being oppressed, when you are a people who have no privileges, no rights as Roman citizens, it was a really big deal to have these moments where people could come together and have this special time of rejoicing and feeling human in the midst of all of this. So this was a wedding that Jesus was invited to and it was in Cana.

Now we don’t know where Cana was or anything like that. It’s a town that didn’t make the cut in a lot of ways for our maps. It was such a small village and very insignificant in a lot of ways. But here it is that John is mentioning Cana as a place where Jesus did something really cool. I just love that about Jesus. I love how different he is than our day and age. Anything we do cool we make sure and post it and make sure everyone knows how we cool we are and all these things. But when Jesus was doing the first miracle, the first time he was really revealing to humanity who he was, he was doing it in a way that very few people were going to know about it. In fact, really just his family, his village and his disciples.

That’s the emphasis we’re trying to make as we go through all of this. What are we going to do to heal the world, to bring real change into our world? I think the Jesus model is to just first take care of the ones that God has given you. I think that’s the most important thing. In addition to that, make sure you’re taking care of the ones he’s asking you to give yourself to. Not just the ones he’s given you, but the ones he’s asking you to give yourself to.

So that’s what Jesus was doing here. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him… so there’s this other phrase. Jesus had this interaction with his mom. She said, “They have no more wine.” We don’t have time to dive into it. But I wonder what made her think Jesus could do something about this. What in the thirty years of her living with Jesus made her think Jesus could do something about this, that we don’t know about? The only thing we know Jesus did between zero and thirty was he spent the night at church one time and was asking some questions when he was twelve. So I just think it’s so interesting to think about their relationship there and what is being implied in this.

His answer to her is, “Woman, why do you involve me?” He’s basically saying, “Hey, you’re not really in line with what I feel like my Father is telling me to do here.” And he says, “My hour has not yet come.” He knew there was a timing to his life. He knew there was moment where he was supposed to step out. But at this point he knew it wasn’t time to do that. And yet still he does in a small way show his glory to those that were there.

And then a bunch of things go on. But I want to focus in on verse 11. Verse 11 says, “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory and his disciples believe in him.”

So again, John is writing, end of his life, probably trying to speak into the Greco Roman world that he was feeling like an evangelist towards, or feeling a mission to go and preach to. And he was sharing about what sign Jesus gave him in his process of believing, and the disciples as well. 

This is the first of seven signs. In the gospel of John there are seven signs. There are seven miraculous things that Jesus does that are sometimes included in the other three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Sometimes they are not. But here they are: 

• The changing of water into wine. 

• The healing of the royal official’s son.

• The healing of a disabled man.

• The feeding of the five thousand.

• The walking on the water.

• The healing of the man born blind.

• The raising of Lazarus.

• And, obviously, the resurrection would be another sign as well. 

These are the signs that John gives us in his gospel. And I feel like John’s probably letting us know these are the most significant moments in his journey of faith as he was interacting with Jesus and coming to a full understanding of who this man, this small town man really was. And that, ultimately, he was the Son of God, or as we talked about, he was the logos. He was God’s who plan, agenda, politic. He was everything. He was there in the beginning.

So John went from a place of just interacting with this person who was kind of John the Baptist for all he knew, to ultimately seeing Jesus as God in the beginning. Forever. And writing about that.

So this was the first sign. This was a significant sign for John. And I like what he says here. He says that Jesus revealed his glory in this way and his disciples believed in him. John’s trying to do something significant there. We know that the whole theme of the book of John , again, we talked about it last week, John chapter 20 says that “Jesus performed many other signs [than the seven or eight that I’ve given you], in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written so that you may believe in him. So that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Life in his name.

Basically John is writing this whole book so that you and I will believe in him, will believe in Jesus. So that’s our whole goal. As we read this, we will continue to believe in Jesus. Those who don’t believe in Jesus, or don’t have any kind of connection with Jesus, that after reading this, they’ll take start to take Jesus seriously and they’ll begin a relationship with him. For those of us that have a relationship with Jesus, that this will foster and build and nourish our faith so that we’ll continue to believe in Jesus, even against all of the other shouts that come our way and all of the other things that are trying to demand our affections, our attention, and our belief.

I want to start to unpack what it means to believe. All of my life I was raised in a Christian home. My parents believed in God and believed in Jesus and they had their own reasons and they would share some of those testimonies with me from time to time. I remember one time actually it was interesting, but it was really significant because I know who my dad is. My dad was this big, strong guy. My dad did not like to rely on other people, did not like to make other people have to help him. He was very strong. He was very stout and he helped a lot of people all over. It was a very tough thing for him to allow someone to help him.

He told me a story about when he and my mom were first dating. They actually went to this Christian conference of some sort. There was someone there speaking and he had spent time growing up in a home where his mom and dad were very Pentecostal, like, “Hey, Jesus is the best.” And telling people about Jesus and really believing in miracles. But my dad had grown up and became maybe a little jaded in that direction. He had spent a lot of time living in the world. Then when he met my mom and my mom started actually came into full faith in Jesus, he started to think more about it again.

He said they went to this conference. At the end of it, they were going to pray that people could receive the Spirit of God. He was watching people being slain in the Spirit. Please don’t get caught up in “slain in the Spirit,” this is not the point of this message. I don’t see it in the scriptures and all of those things, so I’m not trying to make it a proponent of when the Spirit shows up. I’m just telling you a story that my dad told me of an experience in his life that helped him believe.

So he and my mom went forward. He, again, was this big, strong football player guy and there was this little lady that was praying for people. It wasn’t that everybody was falling over when she prayed for them. But he was just standing there, and when she prayed for him, he fell over. Again, this is not the important thing. Please don’t get caught up on this. But for my dad, it was the Lord showing up to my dad in a significant way saying, “Hey. I am here. I am real. And I do have a plan for you.” It was something that helped my dad believe. It helped my dad go, ‘Okay.” And my dad never talked about being slain in the Spirit and didn’t start thinking this important. But he did really start thinking it was important to believe in Jesus.

I think it’s interesting, however we come to this concept or this phrase “believing in him.” We all come with baggage. Some of us come with stories in our life of Jesus’ faithfulness that have been passed down for generations and maybe even shown up in our own life. Awesome. Wonderful. Hallelujah. That’s great. Some of us come to this message and this moment right now—you’ve never seen Jesus do anything. In fact, the times you’ve prayed, or the times you’ve tried to lean in and say, “Okay, God, I need you,” nothing has happened and nothing’s shown up.

So we all come to this phrase differently. I understand that. What I’m trying to do is just to show you the way John is sharing this is what’s helped him believe. And yet I need to unpack this word believe a little bit for us Faith is a hard word to conceptualize and make practical and embody. Belief is the same thing.

So believing in him. I want to start out to tell you what I think John the Apostle is trying to communicate when he says that “I began to believe in him.” A picture of that, I think, comes where, in the book of John, John never uses his name but he refers to himself as “the disciple that Jesus loved.” And he refers to himself as “the one who leaned against Jesus’ breast,” particularly on that night of communion he was kind of leaning on Jesus.

When I would try to encapsulate what John the Apostle would define faith as, I think he would define it as complete trust—or trust over time is another phrase that I have heard. It’s the idea of just kind of leaning on Jesus because you know he’s got you. And John, for whatever reason, it’s interesting because he was originally called one the of the Sons of Thunder. There was something about him and his brother James that was just passionate and wild, and maybe abrasive ,and maybe explosive. They were fighters. They wanted to call down fire on people at some point. But as we see John who has spent time with Jesus and been formed into the image of Christ, later in life we see John as this one who just wants us to love one another. He writes so much about how important it is that we care for one another, that really the law of God is fulfilled when we love each other. 

So here one of the Sons of Thunder has been totally formed into this trusting, caring, compassionate person. I just love what Jesus can do in our lives. That’s what John is saying. We need to trust him. He leaned on his breast. Totally at ease because of Jesus’ sovereignty. What I want to do is to bring to us that concept today. Where are we? Are totally at ease in the knowledge of Jesus’ sovereignty when our world is getting shaken, or our own souls are getting shaken, when our community is getting shaken, when our nation is getting shaken, when our health is getting shaken?

What Jesus wants to prove to you and demonstrate to you is that he really is sovereign. You can completely trust in him. It’s not a blind trust, but a trust over time and time and time again. Jesus showing up. It’s the substance that shows up for the things you’re hoping for, as Hebrews would say. 

So that’s John’s definition. It’s a complete trust. When John is referring to this miracle that happened at Cana in a small town, small village way, he’s saying that that was the beginning of my complete trust in Jesus. I think that’s where we need to start walking with Jesus and seeing where our complete trust is these days.

Secondly we have Paul. Paul the Apostle wrote most the New Testament. He’s actually called the Apostle of Faith like John would be called the Apostle of Love. When Paul defines faith, it’s more of a pledge of allegiance in a lot of ways. It’s Independence Day weekend, where we celebrate the freedoms that we have as Americans, and those who have brought us to this point, and the fight to continually maintain these freedoms for all people. It’s good and right. We have this pledge where we make our kids do, where they put their hand over their heart and they pledge allegiance to this country and all that.

For Paul, faith is really a pledge of allegiance. He refers in Romans 10 that we need to confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and we need to believe in our heart that he rose from the dead. In some ways, to sum that up, Paul is speaking about this confession of our mouths and this pledge, believing in our hearts that we confess that he is sovereign over creation. He is Lord. We believe in our hearts that he is the only one that can save us from death. Or the only one that can give us God-life. That is who we believe in for the resurrection.

So for Paul it really is this kind of allegiance. It’s not just a moral or intellectual ascent of like, “Oh, I say the right things, now I’ve got it.” But it’s this pledge of allegiance. “For the rest of my life, for the rest of my days, for the rest of my breaths, I’m going to do what is in the best interest of Jesus and his kingdom.” It’s basically coming out of one kingdom and pledging allegiance to another kingdom. 

It’s basically, “Denying the citizenships of all of my life, that I’ve always been, all the identities that I’ve ever had prior,” and now saying, “There’s one identity, one citizenship that I really am pledging allegiance to, and that is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, both now and forever.”

There is this author, Matthew Bates, that I’ve been reading a little bit about. I like what he says. He breaks it down into three different sections. He says faith, or believing, is a mental assent. There is a reality there. There is sworn fidelity. That’s this kind of allegiance concept of really kind of changing where we did have allegiance and making a new allegiance and being faithful to it consistently over time. And he also talks about embodied loyalty. I like that because now it’s the word becoming flesh. Now it’s faith and works. It kind of brings the whole thing together. Where our faith should cause our feet and hands to do different things. Our faith should cause us to go different places and be with different people that, maybe without faith in Jesus we wouldn’t have.

I like that. Mental assent, sworn fidelity, embodied loyalty. Mental assent. We need to take care of what we read and listen to and watch and fill our minds with. Absolutely. We live in the information age, not the truth age. Don’t forget that. Our saving faith comes by the hearing of the Word of God. That’s what Romans teaches. As we take in information, knowledge, understanding, it creates faith. It might create faith in Jesus, or it might create faith and allegiance to other things besides Jesus. Sometimes those allegiances can be a challenge where the Bible teaches we can’t really serve two masters. So we have to watch what comes in because it can produce faith and allegiance in a wrong direction.

Sworn fidelity. We need to take care what we pledge allegiance to. No one can serve two masters. There are powerful political forces clamoring for our attention and devotion. We need to make sure our allegiance to Jesus is not compromised or in competition with anything else. 

As I was praying this morning about this message, the image of Revelation 18 came to mind. In there, again, I don’t want to go real deep into it, but in there you have this call from the angels of God at the end of this kind of shaking that’s gone on in the world. And it says, “I want you to come out of her.” And it’s talking about the whore of Babylon. The world system. The world’s order or whatever it might be. It’s this call to the people of God at that time to come out of her. She is going to be ruined and exposed and destroyed. And you need to come out of her. Speaking to this challenge for Christians that we need to be in the world but not of the world. We need to serve this world and care for this world and try to bring healing to this world, but we’ve got to make sure we don’t get caught up in worldly ways in the process, or become worldly in the process.

Embodied loyalty. Your calendar, your phone usage app, your banks statements, your family—they are all proof to see where your loyalties lie. For most of us, it’s not that we are loyal to bad things, even though it’s tricky these days. You know, the devil shows up as an angel of light, we’re told. And marketers can make things look so good these days that we do have to watch out what we’re becoming loyal to.

The other thing I want to address is that, not only are we loyal to bad things, but sometimes we’re just so passive to God things. God’s callings on our life. God’s guidance. We need to make sure our faith actually is embodied in some way. It shows up on the ground. It shows up in practical life. It shows up in this world. It shows up in our relationships with those around us. It shows upon the way that we use the resources that we have. It shows up in those places.

So there you have mental assent, sworn fidelity and embodied loyalty. So just to wrap up how it’s working its way in my life right now. I was sitting in a direction team meeting. We’re obviously trying to figure out what to do as a Living Streams organization. I’m always trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do as just a follower of Jesus, as well. We just spent some time listening. I could picture Jesus there, like, in front of me, looking at me. And he was just kind of ready to say something. I was, like, “Jesus, just say it. Just say what you want me to do and—bam—we’re going to do it. We’re going to go all out. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. We’re just doing it.”

And I really had a sense—I wrote about it in my weekly email—this is what Jesus said, “I don’t want to tell you what to do. I want to see what you’re going to do. I’ve invested in your life. I’ve taught you my ways. I’ve given you my Spirit.” It was almost like he had this joyful anticipation. Like a father who in some ways knows his children are going to do something great, like he’s excited to see. He was just, “I just want to see what you’re going to do.”

I felt that message was helpful because it freed me up from feeling like I might make a mistake. It made me start wanting to do things that I know Jesus is going to think is beautiful. That’s really my challenge to each one of us. Twofold: 

1) we’ve got to figure out how to make sure we’re not getting caught up in the world, or secular humanism, or some sort of Marxist approach. We’re going to have to make sure and not get caught up in this world and the world systems. We’ve got to realize where we are already caught up in the world systems and we’ve got to figure out how to pull out, how to come out and be separate—being in the world but not of the world. 

2) At the same time, we’ve got to figure out then how we can serve this world, how we can walk in this world in a way that gives our Heavenly Father a lot of joy. I’ve shared some of those ideas. We’ll share some more of those ideas at the Congregational Meeting July 9 at 6:30. Don’t miss it.

That’s really what it’s all about. As we sit here as Americans. As we sit here as whatever ethnicity we might have, whatever political party we have. I think it’s really important to make sure that, above it all, first and foremost, every day our affection, our devotion and our allegiance is to the One who conquered death and showed us how to live. To really be there first and foremost. And then to go into this world and engage in society’s pain. Absolutely. Do the things that really do help bring changes in our world like John the Baptist did and like we need to today.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

God's Politic

David Stockton
Series: John
Chapter 1

(Starting at 2:22)

I’d like to try to give some context to our cultural moment that we have here. I’d like to begin to show us what God’s politic, or God’s agenda or vision or what God wants to see happen in America. Then I also want to try to keep us from being puppets pulled by the strings of the devil, the world and the flesh. This is always a challenge for us, but it seems to be very challenging right now as we’re all disrupted and uncomfortable and kind of grasping in some ways what we’re supposed to do. We have these powerful internet trolls or powerful marketers and we have people that really are trying to put forth deceitful schemes right now. We need to be very aware as believers. Like Jesus taught us, “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” So I wanted to keep us doing that.

With that being said, we’ll jump into these three different sections. First of all, our cultural moment. We humans, every single one of us, no matter what ethnicity, no matter what socio-economic part of the scale we’re on, we are all closet critical theorists. Basically, critical theory is this: It’s the reflective assessment and critique of society and cultural in order to reveal and challenge power structures. 

That’s the philosophical term for what a critical theorist is. And it’s true that we’re all doing that. In other words, we all have an opinion on what is wrong in society and whose fault it is.That’s basically what critical theorists do. And so we’ve all been closet critical theorists all this time. But as this disruption of COVID and the social unrest and racial unrest—all this stuff is stirring up so much in us. We’re not so much closet theorists anymore. We’re coming out and we’re shouting. We’re feeling these things and there’s emotion attached to all of them. We’re posting them and hearing other people’s posts and it’s really causing this major stirring within our soul. We know things are not right. We know things don’t feel right. And so we want to know what we can do or whose fault it is and all of that. Just be aware of that. That’s not a new reality. That’s something that we all kind of have all the time. It’s something that philosophers have been studying for a long, long time. It’s just our moment to manage this. Our moment to decide how we’re going to handle disruption, discomfort, the challenges that the world has faced all over the place for a lot of years.

Every week I’m on this call with pastors from around the Valley. Ever since COVID hit and we had to start to shut down our churches, we started getting together to really kind of encourage each other and talk with each other. It’s been a really beautiful thing to see the churches in Phoenix and some other parts rally together. It’s been very encouraging. This last week one of the guys was talking about critical theory and some of that. He was saying that what he has seen is that everyone in our churches seems to be falling into three different camps. 

The first camp is the people denying that COVID is a real thing or that it’s something that shouldn’t disrupt our lives at all. It’s not real. It’s not a big deal. There are some people in that camp saying that racism isn’t something new or something we should really alter or change. It’s just going to always be there. So there’s this kind of a denial camp. A lot of people aren[t really saying it, because it’s really unpopular. Some people are definitely in that camp.

Then you have the people who are admitting there are some things that are really wrong. There are systemic realities that are wrong, both that COVID has revealed and the horrors of racism that have popped up have revealed; but also our political unrest as we’re going toward another election. All those things have stirred all those things. So we admit there is a problem. And we’ve decided to pledge our allegiance to one specific solution. Whether it be political. Whether it be some sort of human rights solution. Whether it be some sort of medical thing. Depending on how you apply it. And we feel that we’ve found something of an agenda, something of a social movement that we can jump into, we can pledge allegiance to and we can run with it. So that’s another camp of some of those people.

And then there’s another camp. And this is where I think a lot of people in the church might be finding themselves in. We admit there’s a problem and we want to do something to help. We want to figure out what to say, what to do. And yet we really don’t feel like anything we’re hearing, anything we’re seeing really does solve the problem. Whether it be how Trump wants to do it, or Biden wants to do it, or Black Lives Matter wants to do it, or some other agency wants to do it. Nothing really seems to really encapsulate what we feel is a good solution. 

So we’re challenged in that regard. And I’m not saying good or bad on all of those entities. I’m sure there are a lot of people trying to do good things. But we’re just left feeling a little uncertainty. We’re left feeling a little unsure. We’re left feeling a little lacking in all of the different movements and things that we see. That’s where we’re at. 

That’s what brings us to the book of John. What I love about the book of John is John was writing this book toward the end of his life. He’d been there and he’d done that. He had tried a lot of things. He’d seen a lot of things. And now, he’s probably around 90 years old as he sits to pen this gospel account of the life of Jesus. The other three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke had already been in circulation. The Church was not brand new. The Church was a few decades old at this point. It was established in Jerusalem and some other places and it was starting to get established in farther reaching places. John, who had walked with Jesus—literally in the flesh for three years—and had seen the Spirit of God come and fill the Church and begin to overcome obstacles and do miraculous things, and see people’s lives changed, and see it take root in the Roman Empire against all odds and against persecution and oppression in major ways.

John was both a Jew and a Christian, which, basically, there was nothing worse you could be in the Roman Empire during his time. And yet, John was continuing to go through his life and continuing to let the message, the gospel of Christ, filter into his life; continuing to develop and form into the image of Christ. He took seriously his own spiritual formation, even now that Jesus was gone. He took seriously the evangelism that Jesus was calling him to. And he was going around the world telling people how to love one another and sharing about the love of Christ.

And this was John. He had experienced very, very severe persecution. Church history tells us he was actually dipped in boiling oil as they tried to kill him. But he survived that. They didn’t know what else to do with him so they exiled him to Patmos, a prison island. And he survived that as well. Now he’s just old enough to where they thought he couldn’t do any damage. So he’s brought back and he’s able to sit down and pen these words to tell us what he would say Jesus’ life and message really were all about.

As he says in John 20:30 and 31:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

This is why he wrote these words. So that we would understand and see that Jesus is the answer. He’s God’s solution to anything we could ever go through. And that, if we find ourselves in him, if we follow in his way, if we receive what he has to give us, it will create life in us. The kind of life that death cannot overcome. The kind of life that doesn’t just feel like existence and going through the motions. The kind of life that gets us free from all the strings, all the puppet strings of this world that are trying to control us and tell us how we’re supposed to live, or what life really is.

So, for you kids, real quick, as we go forward. This idea of a puppet on the strings. This is the image I want you to draw and send to me. So draw a puppet and draw the strings trying to control he puppet and move the puppet. 

Because that’s a reality in our world. We are controlled by something. We think we’re Americans and nobody controls us. But we have marketers telling us what to do and what life really should look like. We have the social media and all the other media telling us what’s important, what’s valuable and what’s not. We have all these things, even in our own soul, dividing us and telling us which way to go and what to do. So what we really want to do is figure out how not to be a puppet attached to those strings, but people who are living the life that God has called us to live. Because that’s really what the world needs. It needs for each one of us to figure out what he’s designed us to do and then live into that fully.

So that’s what John’s going to teach us about here as we get into this. So let’s read, John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Here’s some important words as he uses this word Word to describe Jesus. He could have used a lot of different words but this is what he says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. And then he goes on:

He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. [John the Baptist] He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John is writing this. We have seen it. We have touched it. We watched it day in and day out. The glory of God made flesh in the person of Christ.

(John [the Baptist] testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

Here it is. John is writing at the end of his life, after he’s seen it all, done it all, experienced all of the world, experienced all of the life of Christ inside of him. He sits down to write. And he says, “What am I going to call Jesus? What word can I use to describe who he is or what God did in his life?”

And he uses this word logos. And it is an extremely powerful word. It has so much depth and connotation both in the Greek world, the Roman world and we have the word word for it. Which is kind of a let down in a lot of ways. Basically, in the Greek world, as John was writing this, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos ordering it and giving it form and meaning. This is basically what all of the philosophers were trying to figure out. What is behind everything? What is really what causes everything? What is the motivation for everything? What is the purpose of everything? They kept trying to peel back the layers and all the noise in society. All of the guesses. All of the thoughts. All of the assumptions. They were continuing to try to peel everything back to get to the core. The true reality of the cosmos. And that was the word that they used.

So John is grabbing this word that is so intense and powerful and provocative and only really belongs to a certain segment of philosophical society. And he grabs it out of there and he says, “Hold on. This is who Jesus is. In the beginning was God’s appeal. God’s politic. God’s agenda. God’s plan. God’s design. It was there in the very beginning and it was with God. And it was God somehow.”

Then, at some point, he says, “And then that plan, that design, that theory, that vision, whatever it might be, it became flesh and walked among us.” And John is saying, “And I got to see what it looked like and felt like and sounded like as I walked with Jesus.”

God has an agenda. God has a politic. God has a plan. God is very, very intricately involved in every single thing that happens in our world. There is nothing he does not allow. There is nothing he does not control. And it’s very hard for us to process this. That’s why in the prophets it says, “Your thoughts are not my thoughts.” They’re too high for me. They’re too confusing for me. I don’t understand your purposes and intentions all the time. 

But what Jesus is, and why we’re going to spend this year maybe, or at least the next few months, in the book of John is because I want us to get a really clear picture of what God’s agenda is, what God’s message is. And there’s no better place to look than Jesus Christ. He is the whole thing. He’s God’s plan. He is God in the flesh. He is the glory of God, which is really what we long for. All of the discomfort we have, we’re longing for the reign of Christ ultimately. Because his reign is truly good. It’s truly glorious.

Everything that we do ends up being human. It ends up being temporal. It ends up being good for some and bad for others. That’s all we can come up with. And yet God has come in the flesh. God has dwelt among us. God has now left his Spirit to be among us so we can know the plan of God. That’s what he says at the end there:

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

We can know God’s plan, God’s politic. And it’s found in the logos. It’s found in Jesus Christ. 

We’ll skip down to this next part. What do we do? How can we keep from being this puppet on the strings of society or the gravity in this world that’s pulling us into superficial and artificial busyness to where we think we’re helping, but we’re not really helping. We think we’re doing something but the next thing we know we’re wanting to run over here. And then that person says “This is better.” And we’re kind of in between all these things. And we all know with the internet you can get any kind of substantial media or substantial video or information to support whatever side you might be on in any spectrum of any discussion. And you watch something one day and it really compels you to go this way. Then you watch something the next day and it compels you to go this way. It’s exhausting and frustrating.

So how can we be people that are not puppets on a string? That’s where I want to talk about John the Baptist. We’re going to talk a lot about Jesus and how he reveals to us God’s plan and what he did. It’s going to be fun. But John the Baptist is the next person that John the Apostle introduces here. I think there are some key things coming from the way John introduces us to him that will help us know how to move forward. Or how to apply or how to get involved in the agenda of God in our world. 

The first thing is that we need to realize that you nor no other human is the answer to the world’s problems. Now this is made clear in John 1:19, where it talks about John. It says: 

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

Here’s the deal. Here’s what we have to begin with. We have to start at this place where we realize humanity cannot accomplish the work of God in and of themselves. And I know this feels a little funny, because sometimes it’s confusing. And the second point I’ll make will make sense a bit. 

But I want you think of the tower of Babel. The tower of Babel. The flood had come and wiped out people. People were freaked out. They were unsure of what to do. They were nervous. Over time they began to have this idea that we could really come together and we could build this tower and maybe it would help us to ascend to know what God knows. Or maybe it would help us to have this thing that was high enough that, if the flood waters come then we’ll be above it and God can’t even wipe us out. In some ways there is something in humanity that, basically, we think we know better than God.

And really, it comes from a place where we’ve been let down by God because of pain in our life, or struggle. And eventually we begin to say, “Okay, God. Forget you. I’m going to figure this thing out on my own.” 

And we become self-reliant. And it’s a subtle way that it comes in. Even in the Garden of Eden, that’s where it began. The serpent came and said to Eve, “Do you really need God? Does God really know what’s best for you? Maybe you should decide for yourself what’s best.”

We’ve got to find a way to humble ourselves as a nation, as a city, as a people. To humble ourselves before God and say, “All right God. We’re not going to say another thing. We’re not going to make another move until you speak and you lead us.” 

This is the way that John the Baptist did it. John the Baptist went outside of society. John the Baptist was eating locusts and honey. John the Baptist was trying to find out what God wanted him to do. And then he was compelled by God to do the things that he did. And then when they asked him “It seems like you’re doing something good here, John. You’re drawing people back.” 

He said, “Look, Im not the answer. I’m just here to help people connect with God. Because God is the answer.”

And I think that’s really important for us as we go forward. 

Secular Humanism. Any humanistic effort is going to fail. It’s going to fail. It only is the work of God that’s going to produce the kind of goodness and beauty we want to see in our world.

So, first of all, realize it’s not us.

The second thing that we need to do is realize that God loves to share his glory with the world. He loves to share his glory with the world. He wants everyone to know him and his plan. And he loves to do it through you and me. So this is where it flips a little.

First, realize that it’s not you. It’s not in you. It’s not something you can come up with to solve the world’s problems. But God, who has a solution, who can actually solve the world’s problems has decided that his favorite tool is you. The favorite way that he wants to move in the world and express his glory and help people know his plan and actually experience the goodness of his plan is through. It’s through the Church.

The scripture that supports that comes from John 1:33. It says:

‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down [this was John saying this] and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’

John is saying, I could baptize you in some water and it could be this sign of you saying no to what society has you doing and kind of you getting freed of the puppet strings, so to speak. And it’s you now being governed by God. It’s you submitting to God. I can do that for you. But it’s not really going to empower you in any way. But he’s saying there’s one coming, the one who you see the Spirit come down on. He will baptize you with the power, with the Holy Spirit, with the presence of God that will help you actually overcome your own sinful nature. That will help you overcome the sinful nature of those around you. The sinful nature of your parents or those who have hurt you. He’s going to give you the power.

So that’s the second thing. We need to realize that, first of all, the power is not in us. It’s not something that we can achieve if we just work hard enough. It’s something that we have to find God’s power to do. So first of all, it’s not in us. And like John, we need to realize that Jesus has given us the power. And if we come to Jesus, he has the power. And he loves to use us. To fill us with his Spirit so we can go forward and speak the word of God that actually brings healing. And do the things of God that actually help people and lift people up, instead of just create by-products of other oppressions in some way. It’s so important for us to realize. And John was a master of this.

And the third thing that we have to remember is that the Word became flesh. I think this is so amazing. That our God, the God who made us, the God who knows everything about us, the God who was rejected by us, the God who has been betrayed by us—he came. And he became one of us. He became flesh. He didn’t just say what we should do. He didn’t just tell us from afar. But he came and entered into our pain and struggle—entered into our own sin. He took all of humanity’s sin upon him on that cross. He became flesh. He associated himself with us in order to really set us free and to show us how much God loves us. And God has a plan for us.

So, for us, we need to do just like what John the Baptist did. John 1:35-37:

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” 

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 

I love this about John. First of all, John the Baptist is like, “Look, this is not in me. I don’t have the answers. I’m not the answer. Don’t look to me. We need to look for the one who has the power. The Holy Spirit.” And so he would say, “This is what we need to do.” 

But he knew that the Spirit was able to empower him to do some good. And so he did baptize. He did disciple people. He did speak the word of God. He did speak out against oppressive and abusive leaders. Absolutely he did those things. He let the word of God become fresh. And he didn’t try to bring people to himself. But here he says to his disciples, “That’s the one that you should follow.” 

And so they left him. They were following him and then they left him and followed Jesus. And this is Andrew and a guy named Peter. John was not holding on tightly to everything. He was doing the work of God. Speaking words out and meeting people where they were at and helping them find God. But he didn’t try and hold all that in together. But he continued to just point people to Jesus. Point people to Jesus. Point people to Jesus.

This is such an important factor. Some of the experience I’ve had—and this is one of the things we felt like God told us to do when we went to live in Belize. We needed to go and stir up the pot and try to help people find Jesus, and help disciple people. But then we needed to leave as well. Part of that strategy we felt the Lord was saying was we needed to make sure people connect with God and not with us.

It’s been so encouraging to see these guys like Orelle and Kenny and then the people they’re hanging out with—the work that they’re doing. It’s completely disconnected to us. Because they have now connected with God the Father. They don’t need what I can help them with. They need Jesus himself. They need his power in their life.

It’s so important that we connect people to God, we connect people to his strength and his life. And we need to make sure we’re not connecting them to us. 

So this is a little funny when you have a church. But we want to be a sending church at Living Streams. We’ve said this before. Living Streams, you have never needed us. You’ve never needed me. Not one day of your life have you needed me. You’ve got to connect your life to God. You’ve got to find a way to be in relationship with Jesus, follow him, hear his voice. Then walk in the power that he gives you in the direction that he leads you. This is so important. 

In some ways, God has kind of shut down the Church world in some ways in our city and in our nation. And I think this is one of the things he is wanting to teach all of us. That it is our time. Individually. In our own spheres and circles. We need to connect to God and we need to walk in his power. The priesthood of believers that we’ve been talking about. You have been sent, we’ve been talking about. That God really does want to share his glory with the world. And the way he wants to do  it is through you. In your own families. In your relationships. In your friendships. In your workplaces. In missionary endeavors. Whatever it might be. 

It’s funny because, at the beginning of the service I was thinking about saying, “Hey, we’ve postponed a couple of weeks. We’re looking at July 12. But if you’re really in a place where you want to be with God’s people and you really need that, I know Church for the Nations down the street is open, Bethany Bible is open, I know New City shut down for a couple of weeks. North Phoenix is postponing just like us. But go to places. We’re all in this together. No one needs to be connected to one individual or one church. We need to be connected to Jesus and go where he is sending us. 

For me, Living Streams is where God has called me to be and to care for people. I hope he’s called you to be that way too. But, ultimately, we need Jesus. We need to be led by him. And right now the world is shouting a thousand different things that we should do. We need to find a way to quiet ourselves, and get with Jesus, and make that connection stronger than any other connection. And there’s only one person that can do that for you. And that’s you. 

As a little bit of response time for you, whether you’re alone or you’re in a group, we’re going to put a little slide up and we’re going to pray these things. Take a moment to still our heart and then pray through these and write some of those things down and then share them with the group that you’re in, or maybe text somebody if you’re alone. 

But take some time and really allow God’s word to kind of wash over you, and then God’s Spirit to speak from within you and give you some guidance for this week. So in the quietness of your own space, take minute and pray through these things.

Take a moment and ask Jesus to quiet your mind and help your soul be still.

Then take a couple of minutes to ask Jesus these questions:

Where have I been prideful and relying on my strength or wisdom instead of God’s?

What things have I pledged time or allegiance to that may be limiting what God wants to do through me?

Now ask Jesus to tell you what action he wants you to focus on this week.

(Listen for his still, small voice, and don’t be suprised if it is something simple)

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.