Bible Stories with Kayle!

It was such a wonderful evening that I decided I would sit out on the back patio and read my Bible for a while. It has been a long time since I have been able to sit and read my Bible in the sun. I have been doing it in the cold, dark dungeon of a basement in this house, wrapped in many layers of blankets and clothes. It has it's advantages in feeling cocoon like, but still... It's nice to be in the sun, in fresh air and listening to the little birdies and the water from our little pond.

I started in on John today.

Something that I have started to do while reading the good old Bible is to write down the things that stand out to me. So instead of thinking, "Wow, that's neat" or getting a question in your head about what the real language is (the original Greek or Hebrew, verses the translated English) or just wanting to chew on something more and pretending that I would remember and then move on only to forget about it, I stop what I'm doing (apparently write a horrific run-on sentence) and jot a note down in this rad YWAM Daily Prayer Journal that I was given this year.
So here's the notes for today. You may find them as interesting as I did...

John 1:5, "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

Seems fairly straightforward until you notice that the translators had a little trouble with that word "understood" and also said it could be translated to say "overcome". Whenever I see this in the Bible, it really interests me and out comes the concordance. Turns out that word for "understood" or "overcome" is a wild word that I can't even begin to pretend to pronounce or spell but the meaning is quite interesting.

Here's a good illustration of what the word "understand" is translated from: "in a good sense, of Christ by his holy power and influence laying hold of the human mind and will, in order to prompt and govern it". Now that's a little bit more powerful then "understood".

The darkness has not overcome the light in the way that Christ, by His holy power and influence has layed hold of my soul in order to give me leading and govern my very being. It turns that little verse around to really show the real power of Jesus in a rather unique and beautiful way, don't you think?

Another little chunk that I had a chuckle about was John 1:35-38. This is when Jesus gets his first two disciples! Mr. Baptist John is already making a scene dunking people and confusing the pharisees. He's telling everyone that Jesus is about to come on the scene and I often wonder why they believed the guy. This is after something like a 400 or so year period of silence from the last prophet. Now this guy is sticking people in water and saying the messiah is about to come. And they all believe him. Makes you think that we are missing something from the awe and wonder of the story... if we read it without the Holy Spirit...

Anyway, John's there with two of his disciples. We can assume that John was baptizing. All it says was that he saw Jesus passing by and you have to imagine the scene. I suppose John was a little surprised to say the least, and this is not the only time that the gospels record Jesus just passing by rather nonchalantly, seemingly with no intent to stop. Another great moment is when he's walking on water, and I think it's in Mark and it says that he was walking past the boat, "as if to pass them by" and he scares the crap out of all his disciples.

As if God doesn't have a sense a humor.

Anyway, Jesus is out for a stroll and John looks up from dunking someone and says, "Oh my, there's Jesus." How John knew that this man was Jesus and not any one of the other men around once again makes you wonder what has been left out of the text or possibly what the writers just assumed was so obvious that they didn't have to include it in their works.

It says that the two disciples overheard John mention that Jesus had just walked by and they begin to stalk him. Of course, this is all happening within the space of two sentences, but just imagine the picture that is being painted for us in scripture. These two guys are probably freaked out and who knows what they are saying to each other. Somehow, they believe John's rather random comment of "There goes the messiah over there" and just start to follow Jesus. Jesus probably was wandering around for a while until he notices these two guys mirroring his every step. Verse 38 once again provides great comedic value and says that Jesus simply turns around to figure out why the heck these two guys are following him around and says rather point blank, "What do you want?"

I love that. We can read over those couple of verses and totally miss out an entire story that is filled with wonder and awe and is honestly pretty funny.

If you read the next few verses these two disciples start freaking out and are totally convinced that they have found the messiah. Remember, this is a pretty outlandish statement at the time. This is what the entire weight of the bible is all focusing on. Thousands of years of prophecy and journey and wars and events all leading up to this moment - the Son of God, coming to earth to right a cosmic wrong, defeat a great evil and set free the whole of humanity back into their rightful destiny as God's perfect creation.

And he just walks on by...

What made them believe right at that moment? Imagine the presence that Jesus walked in for people to just know.

They bring Simon to Jesus and the first thing that Jesus says is, "I know your name and it's Simon, but I'm not going to call you that. Instead I'm going to call you rock." And you'll notice from that moment on Jesus only calls Simon by his prophetic destiny, which was to be a rather significant rock for the rest of humanity.

Interesting way Jesus chose to introduce himself.

Another interesting little verse is John 4:1-2. I don't really know what to think about it right now, but the author decided that it was important to note that Jesus wasn't baptizing anyone. His disciples were the ones baptizing people. Interesting to just think about what that means... Because I don't really know right now.

Then a little while later in chapter four we read verse 29. This is after Jesus had his conversation with the woman at the well and she runs back to town. It says she left her water bucket, which makes you think that she really did believe what Jesus said about the living water and never being thirsty again and then she tells all the townsfolk to meet the man who told her every single thing she did in her life. Makes you think that they probably left a few details out of the story again. I'm betting that conversation went on a heck of a lot longer then a rather confusing interchange about this lady and her relational past.

Can you just imagine this lady sitting there while Jesus relates the entire contents of her life. Before all this she half way mentions that there is word that the messiah is coming back. Imagine as veil after veil is pulled from her eyes and she slowly begins to realize that this is the messiah actually talking with her! Imagine the awe and the excitement as the ever increasing revelation exploded in her soul. And I just love how it says that she left her water jar... she wasn't thirsty no more...

Jesus drops a major bombshell at the end of Chapter 5, which is going to cause a great deal of wonderful meditation to go on for me at least. It's verse 45 and he says, "Do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set."

Wow. That is one loaded verse. Jesus is laying out the only two covenants we get to engage here on earth. Jesus, being the covenant of grace (which is an incredible thing to honestly think about - just what exactly is grace and what does that mean for you and me) and the other covenant being the law, which in order to get that to work for you one has to keep it all perfectly. We've all already blown that one pretty good.

It's neat to change words and idea's around a little. So let's do this, "Do not think grace will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is the law, on which your hopes are set."

Jesus is basically saying, "repent!" which literally means to change the way you are thinking. "Repent, change the way you have been thinking about your salvation for the last thousand years. Don't measure yourself against the law. Don't set your hope on the law. Set your hope in me! Accept the new covenant of grace, for when you get to heaven, grace will have nothing bad to say about you to the Father - only nice things, so set your hopes in me."

I like that. Jesus only has nice things to say to the Father about you.

Now how would your life change if you honestly believed that?