God's Kind of Work

Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."

Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, "I am the bread that came down out of heaven." They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I have come down out of heaven'?" (John 6:29, 41-42)

In these verses I see one of the main symptoms of a root that causes unbelief. It is in our nature to think that what we already believe is more likely to be true than what is unfamiliar to us. This penchant is reflected in the old adage, “A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush.” That might be true when trying to catch birds, but it is disastrous when it comes to our relationship with God.

The root problem of sin in this world primarily revolves around deception, not around bad behavior. Sinful activities are really just symptoms of a much deeper problem, not the problem themselves though they do reinforce the inner distortions. We get stuck when we keep focusing on the external activities that we call sins while failing to perceive the much deeper issue of distrust and unbelief in the real truth about our Father's heart toward us. Yet it is this underlying distorted internal picture of God that initiates all of our external malfunctions that we call sin.

Jesus came to reveal the real truth about how God feels about sinners. He also came to offer us a way to be restored into a life-receiving relationship of trust which is the only way we can continue to exist very long. Our current state of probation is totally an act of grace on God's part keeping us alive and able to think and breathe while making up our minds whether or not we are going to embrace the real truth about Him or whether we will cling to the familiar lies about Him we have inherited. What we do with this freedom in the life that God has granted us will determine our ultimate fate for eternity, not because God is waiting to punish those who reject the truth about Him but simply because the inevitable results of staying disconnected from life is to die. The natural consequences of sin is death.

But we have this built-in tendency to give more credibility to what we have thought and believed and heard all of our life than to believe something that contradicts our own system of logic and our deeply embedded feelings. These Jews had naturally drawn assumptions from their awareness of Jesus' upbringing and family. They had only viewed Him as just one of the many kids growing up Jewish just like them. Other than His unusual resistance to acting like everyone around Him when it came to getting into trouble, He didn't appear to be anything but just another normal man growing up like them.

So when Jesus began to speak of Himself in terms of an identity with God in ways that sounded very much like blasphemy, the shock of these bold statements forced people to polarize in their opinions about Him. Either these radical statements had to be accepted as true or they could not be ignored as the very height of arrogance and irreverence. Religion was a major factor in the Jewish culture and for someone to make such bizarre claims about the God of their religion as Jesus was making was a direct affront to nearly everything their culture stood for. Jesus' views of the sacred writings and prophecies about the Messiah were radically different than what was promoted by all the teachers of the law. And the way everyone had been taught to believe about the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies was incompatible with what they saw in the demeanor and teachings of this lowly peasant.

Long cultivated religious views and humanistic concepts and desires tend to blend over time so subtly that they become transparent. Without the Holy Spirit to separate the true and the counterfeit, we will always end up mingling truth and lies together and create an amalgamation that we insist is the truth. But because we are starting from a position of natural deficiency and a foundation of false ideas about God and reality from birth, it is impossible for us to come to a knowledge of the real truth about these things without outside intervention by the Spirit of Truth. That means that new ideas and concepts are always going to clash with our preconceived opinions about what is right and wrong, what is real and what is counterfeit.

When we come face to face with real truth as it is revealed in Jesus, we are always going to confronted with the fact that truth must necessarily come from outside our own narrow view of reality. Because we start out as deceived sinners and rebels by our inheritance of a fallen nature from Adam, we are going to have to have a new nature with new principles and capacities implanted into us before truth will start to make much sense to us. But when we resist outside truth in favor of the familiar and the seemingly logical, we will be offended by the claims of truth just as these Jews were scandalized by the brash claims of this obscure man who grew up poor among them in a town of ill repute.

These very people had just finished asking Jesus how they could work the works of God. Jesus told them plainly that what God wanted along that line was a trusting belief that what Jesus was revealing was the real truth about God. Believing this new truth about God as revealed in the life and relationships of Jesus is the ultimate issue that all of us face. As soon as we begin to quibble and try to twist the life and teachings of Jesus about His Father to fit our darker preconceived opinions about God, we are going to find ourselves offended just as these Jews were in Jesus' day. They believed that they knew better than to be hood-winked into thinking that this man could be anything much more than just “one of the lads”. As a result, they were offended and grumbled among themselves that the claims of Jesus were too bizarre to be believable. Yet in doing so they were rejecting the very truth Jesus had just said about how to work the works of God. They refused to believe in the one He had sent.

I am in the same danger of failing to work the works of God by believing the truth about God if I allow the familiar to take precedence over what seems strange or maybe even impossible. When I try to rationalize the words or promises of God and mingle them with preconceived religious opinions, no matter how much tradition stands behind them, I will fail to enter into the kind of belief that can link me to a God who is starkly different than anything I have ever imagined before.

But if I am willing to think outside the box of what is familiar and accepted by society and the religious establishment, when I allow the seemingly common things of life to be illuminated with a strange new light that empowers me to see everything from a totally different perspective, then I will begin to know what it means to work the kinds of works that God desires for all of His children to experience. And as I work the work of believing rather than trying to act religious, I will discover the kind of living that Jesus came to reveal, the natural life of a child growing up reflecting the family characteristics by close association and reflection of the inner qualities inherent in the family. Then the outward actions and reactions will simply be expressions of inward reflections of the Father rather than attempts to appear righteous by focusing on trying to manage the symptoms.

Father, I want to be more focused on knowing Your heart and experiencing Your presence and reflecting the real truth about You as revealed in Jesus. Thank-you for already beginning this new kind of work within my heart. Thank-you for the fresh revelations of Your incredible beautiful ways and character that You give me so regularly. I give You my heart, my loyalty, my rights to myself today. Fill me with Your thoughts, with Your desires, with Your perspective in every encounter I have today with others. Make my life a reflection of Your disposition toward Your children today and use me to attract others to want to know You more intimately because of what they see in my relationship with You.

Come to Me

I find it helpful some times to search through the Bible for certain words or phrases to see how the Word may bring light and even definition and clearer sense to my mind. Many talk about the need to allow the Scriptures to define its own terms, but how much time do we really spend doing that very thing? It is extremely helpful to clear up much confusion if we actually took the time to allow the Bible to define itself as much as possible, and the rewards in terms of increased clarity and understanding can be enormous.

This morning as I was re-reading the passages in John 6 where I have been studying for some time, I noticed repetition of the words, come to me. I decided to take a little time and scan through the whole Bible to see all the texts that refer to this phrase in relationship to God and see if something interesting might emerge from that collection. Following are all the verses that I found initially and indeed I do see some compelling connections between these verses and some obvious links to other lines of important concepts connected to this phrase.

I have arranged the verses to highlight some of the more obvious connections between concepts within them to help highlight these interconnections. See what you think.

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day....

And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father." (John 6:44, 65)

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe. "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out." (John 6:35-37)

Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive.... (John 7:37-39)

And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, "Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all." And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them. (Mark 10:13-16)

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30 NRSV)

There are so many fascinating links and tantalizing directions from these verses that I can't begin to explore them all immediately. But I want to just point out a few of the ones that seem to jump out at me initially.

I used to struggle with these verses that talk about the Father seeming to pick and choose who might come to Jesus and who would not. It seemed to have the strong scent of being arbitrary which is one of the main lies about God that bothers so many people deep inside. But when I put all these verses together this morning I suddenly noticed how they help explain each other more clearly.

The Father employs the Spirit to do the drawing of people's hearts to Himself and obviously the appeals of the Son for people to come to Him are open invitations to everyone who is willing to respond to the Spirit's pull deep inside. It is not a case of God arbitrarily determining who is going to be lost or saved, invited or rejected, but rather a well-coordinated effort on the part of all the Godhead to attract as many as are willing to come embrace the love and joy that they so much want to experience with us.

I also notice the various groups of people who are appealed to to come to God in these verses. The children are invited to come, and those who try to make God out to be unattractive or stern and forbidding are themselves rebuked strongly for misrepresenting God to the tender minds of the children.

Those who carry heavy burdens are urged to come for rest. Most likely these are people who are much older and who have accumulated over the years much emotional baggage that is causing them to feel very tired inside and outside as well many times. Until one truly begins to experience the incredible freedom and joy of really knowing Jesus personally and having guilt and shame and fear lifted from their hearts, they have no clue of how really heavy their burdens are and how much energy is being sapped out of their lives by all the internal baggage they are carrying around.

This is particularly true of people who claim to believe these invitations and teach the 'truth' to others but still have failed themselves to enter into the kind of rest that God longs for all of us to live in all the time. Just because a person is religious and can quote and teach Scriptures to others is no indication that they are really enjoying the kind of rest that results from abiding in God's love. Many who talk about this, teach it to others and profess it still do not really grasp the real meaning of these invitations to experience true rest.

And finally, those who are hungry and thirsty are strongly urged to look to a better source from which to derive more satisfying fulfillment. Our lives are consumed with attempts to get satisfaction from all kinds of sources, to quench a hidden thirst that never is quenched by anything we can get from a tap or a bottle. Our hearts ache with a deep hunger for friendship, for feeling cherished, for a sense of value and importance that nothing ever seems to really address. We dull the ache many times with pleasure or find temporary relief in artificial recognition from various gimmicks the world offers us. But in the end we find we are even more hungry and thirsty and our addictions to the offers of this world only intensify in our vain pursuit for happiness.

All of heaven is bent on helping us to realize the true nature of our deep hunger and thirst. Until we begin to sense that physical things and social activities will never meet these deep longings we will remain highly vulnerable to deceptions and will remain in blind addiction to the methods we believe can ultimately bring us satisfaction. But none of the world's solutions have any real power to make us truly feel alive and thriving the way we were meant to live. Only our original Creator can fill the empty tanks we all carry around with a fuel that will cause us to experience true satisfaction and joy.

The first verse in this list really exposes the pivotal issue in whether we will experience this real life or not. It all lies in the power of our choosing to respond positively to these invitations of Jesus. God is fiercely protective of our experience of freedom because He can only have a healthy universe if all are free to choose to love Him without any compulsion or coercion. Accordingly, only those who freely choose to embrace these offers of real life to meet their deep hunger and thirst and receive His Holy Spirit can be trusted to live with God in intimate closeness throughout all of eternity. Those who reject His offers in favor of clinging to false sources of nourishment will find that the results of sin really is death in the end.