Resisting Advancing Light

He was the lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. (John 5:35)

I see here that Jesus affirmed the Jews who had allowed the testimony of John the Baptist to stir their hearts and cause joy to spring up inside of them. Even though John's message was just a starting point and was not complete, he had a very definite role to fulfill in God's plan for growing His people into a more mature experience, and those who embraced the compelling messages of John were in a position to potentially receive even more advanced insights and experience even greater joys if they were only willing to allow the presence of Jesus and His ministry to better clarify the real truth about the Father.

In this verse Jesus is saying that the Jews He was speaking to had evidently participated in the public enthusiasm resulting from John's stirring messages and words of warning. For whatever reasons they had allowed their hearts to be ignited to the point that Jesus says that they actually rejoiced in his light. But something tragic had taken place since that first introduction and now the advanced light from Jesus was not having the same effect on their hearts as what had happened in their response to John.

What I am beginning to see in the next verses is what Jesus wished for in the lives of these Jews as well as in our lives.

But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish – the very works that I do – testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me. And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me.... (John 5:36-37)

This whole passage is very focused around the idea of testimonies and what they are intended to accomplish. Jesus has already started into the list of witnesses including His own testimony. But there is more to the idea of testifying than simply putting it out there. The whole purpose of a testimony is to produce a change in the minds and lives and beliefs of those who receive that testimony. And herein lies the problem.

Last time I talked about the need to receive rather than just get. To receive strongly implies an intentionality and a growing relationship. To receive with joy introduces the element of bonding and synchronization and identification with the source of a testimony. It is not enough just to hear a testimony, to listen with the mind and to intellectually process the facts presented by it. If the heart is not stirred and engaged and transformed through the power of a testimony then the opposite effect will begin to take place. The heart will start to be hardened with unbelief and very soon the power of deception will move in to steel both the heart and the mind to reject the real truth that could have created even more joy in the life if it had been embraced.

In these last verses Jesus lists even more sources of testifying. The works that He did were also witnesses that were intended to produce even more effect than even the powerful preaching and convicting messages of the great preacher John. But just as Elisha's ministry was in stark contrast with the bold moves of his predecessor Elijah, so too the ministry of Jesus appeared so different than that of John the Baptist that many were tempted to believe that the two were actually not in agreement with each other.

It is easy to become so enamored with the powerful ministry of some bold preacher of righteousness that one is tempted to discount or discredit the ministry and teachings of another person who has a strikingly different approach and personality. Jesus Himself pointed this out in His own testimony.

Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force. For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places, who call out to the other children, and say, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon!' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. (Matthew 11:11-19)

What were the works of Jesus intending to convey for His testimony? How can we perceive the wisdom behind His deeds? Jesus states it clearly in His very next words in John 5 – that the Father has sent Me. (v. 36) But what is the point even more importantly implied behind even that? For the Father had also sent John the Baptist, but his testimony seemed to be strikingly different than that of Jesus in many ways.

This takes me directly back to the amazing truth about the life and death of Jesus that has been dawning on me for several years now. That is, Jesus came to this earth, not to run interference for us with a Father who was angry at us but to reveal the unbelievable truth that God has never held a grudge against us and has already forgiven us in His own heart and longs for full reconciliation with all of His rebellious children. Jesus came to demonstrate the real truth about how God feels about us through everything He did and said and every nuance of how He interrelated with sinners around Him. He who has seen Me has seen the Father.... (John 14:9)

And this was the core issue of contention that became the stumbling block preventing many of the religious people of Jesus' day from accepting His testimony about God. Because they had so entrenched themselves in a view of God as a stern, exacting, demanding Judge eager to dish out punishments or to reward those who performed well enough with blessings and privileges, that they felt very confused and frustrated with the witness of Jesus that portrayed a God radically different than what they had always assumed or what they thought John had preached.

Nothing has really changed yet today. I find myself many times still struggling to embrace a picture of God who is not angry with me or ready to inflict pain and punishments for my infractions of some law or rule I may have broken. That is not to imply that there are not consequences to violating principles of reality which is what God's laws really are all about. But there is a stark difference between suffering natural consequences and having a Supreme Being ready to dish out arbitrary punishments because He is upset with those who cross His will.

I am beginning to appreciate more and more the reality that God is seeking a relationship of joy with His children rather than conformance to a list of rules in a system of rewards and punishments to control behavior. Embedded in these verses is that very message. Jesus spoke of the joy of these Jews when they listened to John the Baptist and implied that He longed for them to experience even greater joy if they would only advance with the light that was being granted them.

If they had allowed the light of Jesus and the testimony of both His works and His Father's voice to their hearts to have their intended effects, they could have entered into the much greater joy of the Lord and would have been advanced from one glory to the next instead of remaining stuck at first base with the testimony of John.

It is so easy for us today to make the very same mistake as those Jews long ago. We mistake the strong messages of a preacher of righteousness as messages of threats instead of perceiving them as warnings of impending danger from natural consequences of continuing in the path we are currently following. We can get so caught up in the sensational nature and style of a preacher or teacher who stirs up our fears or excites our passions that we fail to follow on to know the God behind that initial introduction that is far greater than the messenger we became enamored with ourselves. We fall in love with the style of the temporary messenger and become addicted to the sensations, the fears, the intensity of the first emotions of conviction, but we fail to move on to believe in the gentleness, the meek and quiet spirit of the one we are directed to follow on to know. In doing so we lose the joy of real salvation.

I have observed for many years an addiction to fear messages among many religious people. It has become very popular in some places to promote the practice of fear-brokering. I grew up around such messages and today I see fanatical movements thriving on this, focusing on stirring up as much fear and anxiety as they can produce in others with the result that their ministries grow and expand their influence and receive more monetary support as they become more strident. They dig up all sorts of conspiracy stories and fan the flames of suspicion and terror, frightening poor souls who shudder under the shadow of an offended God waiting to unleash plagues of wrath upon the earth any minute. I have seen the effects of this style of 'ministry' in people very close to me and the results are very debilitating and even disgusting at times.

This does not mean that the original inspired sources of some of these messages are necessarily wrong. What is happening is that it is so easy to become more enchanted with the sensational and the power one can gain over other minds by inflaming them with fear that we lose sight of the real purpose of the original warnings intended to move people toward a greater revelation of the meek and lowly Jesus. He came reveal the much greater revelation about the true nature of the Father who seeks to draw us into joyful intimacy with Himself. As a result of these misguided people God once again gets painted in dark colors of wrath and negative connotations and sinners become even more frightened of Him rather than being melted by the kindness of God that leads to repentance. (Rom. 2:4)

Jesus in this passage wanted these Jews to get past the testimony style of John's electrifying preaching and realize that His own demonstration of the Father was far more advanced and accurate than the perception of the Father they had deduced from the preaching of John. These Jews assumed that Jesus and John were too different to be revealing the same God, but Jesus was saying that if they would believe His teaching and embrace the testimony of how He related to sinners that they would be elevated to even greater heights of joy than they had ever experienced from the sensational style of John's ministry.

Receiving With Joy

He was the lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. (John 5:35)

This morning I read in the devotional book My Utmost for His Highest, something that I have forgot reading before but that is very important. Then when I opened my Bible and read this above verse again I realized there is a connection between the two.

What I read first was in reference to the words of Jesus about asking and receiving. He says that everyone who asks, receives. I guess that like most people I have always assumed that this means that unless I ask God for things or answers to prayer that I am in danger of not getting my needs met. But Chambers points out that this is not what Jesus is talking about.

Then my mind was taken to the verses where Jesus reminds us that God blesses the wicked along with the righteous in many ways without distinction. He causes the rain and the sun and many of His blessings to flow equally to those who reject Him right along with those who are seeking Him. And it is rather evident that those who are rebelling against God certainly are not asking for His blessings, but they are getting them and benefiting from many of them anyway.

The point that Chambers makes is that there is a difference between getting things from God and receiving things from God. I then remembered too that learning to receive – that very skill itself, receiving – is one of the fundamental skills needed for completing the maturity stage of infant. It is also an area where I have discovered I have a serious deficit in my own life. Oftentimes I find it very difficult to receive graciously from others and respond with spontaneous gratitude from my heart. Due to various malfunctions in my stunted maturity growth this has been a serious problem for me and one that has damaged many of my relationships with those around me.

I realize more now that it is not too hard for me to get things from other people, but I am still not very adept at receiving properly. For to receive implies a much more intentional attitude that involves a spirit of humility, gratitude, genuine appreciation and the ability or willingness to bond more with the hearts of those whom God sends into my life to minister to me. Since I grew up with a heavy dose of an independent spirit and I tend to prefer being a loner much of the time, I find it easier to get things from others than to simply receive with joy. And of course, with my increased understanding of the true meaning of joy that I now have, that also implies that I would be willing to accept someone genuinely wanting to connect with me even then their own baggage may be getting in the way of that happening smoothly.

I know this may sound a bit vague or confusing for a person who may not be familiar with much of the language that I am using and the revised definitions for many of the words that I have been learning about over the past few years. But given where I am right now in my own journey this is coming as yet another step forward that I sense God may be nudging me to move through. This lesson of learning to receive with grace and appreciation and being willing to bond with others without so much resistance is one of the most difficult remedial tasks of maturity that I think I might be facing.

So, given that context, when I read these words of Jesus to the Jews about their temporary joyful response to the testimony of John the Baptist, I can now see a connection between their pulling back from that initial enthusiasm about his ministry and my own issues in various parts of my own journey. Even in my current business I am facing a time where I am needing to take stock of my own attitude and emotional involvement and be reminded of why I was so excited when I first got started a few months ago. I am feeling compelled to return to my earlier levels of trust, of rest in God, of enthusiasm and joy that had such a powerful influence on my own testimony and energized it to be compellingly attractive to others who were initially apathetic or even as skeptical as I was when I first looked at this.

I find it intriguing that Jesus says here that these Jews had once been very excited about John's testimony and had actually rejoiced for awhile in his light. That means that they had not always been as critical and doubtful and negative as they had now become and that Jesus was trying to remind them of their first experience with the light and encourage them to go back to their first flush of emotions that the light had produced in their own hearts.

This also alerts me to the reality that God is interested in my feelings and emotions along with the accuracy of my beliefs. I have been raised to avoid emotions to a great extent which has seriously stunted my growth spiritually and has created enormous obstacles in my heart that I now find myself trying to work around or for which I need healing ministry. It is not that I want to switch from basing my relationship to God from a solid foundation of biblical truth to an emotional-based religion of feelings. But I have learned that if my connection with God does not include my affections and my passions and an awakening of strong emotional impulses from deep in my soul, then the chances of my religion lasting through times of severe crisis intact is dramatically threatened.

I don't see Jesus here criticizing these Jews for their excitement about John's messages and ministry and chiding them for not believing the facts he had presented to them without getting so emotionally worked up. Jesus is here appealing to those memories from their past and seeking to reignite those passions and those dampened fires of emotion once again and to allow them to be fueled even more by going further than what John had been able to do for them. Jesus was seeking to connect them with the Source of passion from which John's fire had started. Jesus' identity and reality was the reason that John was so wildly enthusiastic and had gotten the interest of so many people around him. But there was another step for people to take besides just responding to John's ministry. It was time to shift gears so to speak and to go even farther into the glorious light and become even more energized and joyful than they had ever experienced before.

But it was at this point that they had to make a choice that involved receiving. Those who had chosen to receive the testimony of John and embrace it with joy and, most importantly, put down roots into the truth about God and allow John's passionate messages to work conviction and transformation in their hearts – it was those who would be prepared to take the next step and begin to advance more securely in the greater light of truth that Jesus had come to convey.

The same is true with us today. It is not enough to just grasp the initial joy of hearing the gospel for the first time and then clinging to the early revelations we have been given as if that were all there were to knowing God and truth. There are innumerable examples of the tragedy this produces as people refuse to move past some point of revelation in their experience and admit that their earlier insights and beliefs may have been valid to start with but were incomplete and immature in their complexity. There is a desperate need for growth both in the arena of doctrinal accuracy and clarity as well as a deepening of the connection of our heart and affections and emotions through an intimate bonding with the heart of God on a very personal level.

All of us get things from God all the time. All of us are even recipients of messages from the Holy Spirit continuously. But clearly very few people seem to recognize that voice or are able to discern what it is trying to convey to them. It is not hard at all to get things from God since God is constantly pouring out blessings on an ungrateful world all the time. Most of the things we get from God go unnoticed and largely unappreciated. It takes a much more deliberate choice and personal involvement to move from getting things from God to actually receiving things from Him.

To receive from God instead of just getting things from Him implies an intentionality, a growing relationship, a deepening appreciation for His goodness and a submission to His authority in our lives with joy. And given that this is one of my weakest areas I feel almost like an outsider even as I write about these things myself. I am beginning to see the sense in all of this but I still feel like I am making observations more from the outside than from much experience. I am seeing something that I need to do much more myself even as my own mind begins to grasp the significance of what I am learning here.

Father, dramatically deepen my appreciation, my joy, my willingness to receive from You. Cleanse me of this horrid spirit of resistance to Your love and Your promises to always care about me, to be with me all the time and to provide for me. I am so often racked with doubt and fear and foreboding that is hard to shake off. Sometimes I can see the light of Your glory and passionate love more clearly and it feels so refreshing and energizing. I long to live in Your presence with confidence all of the time, not just taste it occasionally. I want to live a life of bold assurance in Your love for me and to feel my heart released to sing and dance and celebrate Your love with joy and abandon.

Right now all of that sounds terrifying to me and my fears of what others would think about me rush to the surface to prevent me from being embarrassed. But those fears are all based on lies about You that I suspect infected these Jews that You so longed to engage with in this chapter. Father, deliver me from their handicaps and train my heart to allow You full access to every part of my mind and heart and life. Teach me Your ways and fill me with much more of Your joy; cause me to rejoice with abandon and without reservations – and deliver me from evil, for Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen.