Thursday: Our Witness of Jesus
Daily Lesson for Thursday 14th of November 2024
Again and again, as John presents witnesses to Jesus, his point is to bring us to a sweeping conclusion: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:30-31, NKJV).
Imagine having been there, in person, in the flesh, and having seen Jesus do many of these miracles. We’d certainly believe, wouldn’t we? We’d like to think so; but, in some ways, we have even more reasons to believe in Jesus than did those who actually saw the miracles.
Why?
What are some of the things that we have today that those living at the time of Jesus didn’t have that should help us believe? (See, for example, Matthew 24:2, Matthew 24:14, Matthew 24:6-8.)
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And that’s because we have not only the powerful accounts in John’s Gospel, but also the great advantage of seeing so much of what Jesus and other Bible writers predicted would come true, such as the destruction of the temple (Matthew 24:2), the spread of the gospel around the world (Matthew 24:14), the great falling away (2 Thessalonians 2:3), and the world continuing to be a fallen and evil place (Matthew 24:6-8). All during the life and ministry of Jesus, His following remained a small and harassed group of men and women who, by all human standards, should have vanished from history a long time ago. How could they have known, as we do, that all these things would come to pass? And they have. In fact, our own faith itself exists as a fulfillment of Jesus’ own prophecy that the gospel would go to all the world.
And, today, about two thousand years later, as followers of Jesus, we also have the privilege of bearing witness to Jesus and to what He has done for us. It is not by the reasoning of Nathanael, Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, or the teachings of the Pharisees that we can know Jesus as the Messiah for ourselves. It is by the reading of the Scriptures under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit that we accept Jesus as the Savior of the world.
And then, each one of us, in our way, and out of our own relationship with God, can have a story to tell. Our story may not be as dramatic as seeing the dead raised or someone blind from birth healed, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we know Jesus for ourselves, and in our own way bear witness to Him, as did those in John’s Gospel.
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There is a very real danger that we seek to prove God's existence by finding evidence of the supernatural. We want to see miracles because there is no natural explanation therefore they must come from a supernatural God.
C A Coulson in his book "Science and Christian Belief" reminds us that God is not just supernatural, he is also the creator of the natural world and this implies that the evidence for Jesus should be found in the natural world as well. He asserts that it is wrong to think of God just in terms of supernatural unexplainable events.
He gives a beautiful illustration about an underground physics laboratory he was responsible for having built at Kings College, London University. During the construction process nobody could see the building - all they had to work with was a set of plans and elevations that described parts of the building. Some of the drawings had nothing in common, while others showed the detail of intersections such as walls and floors.
He likened the finished building to the invisible God, and the drawings to the natural world and disciplines that describe parts of God in terms we can understand. His main idea is that the evidence for God must extend beyond the supernatural into the natural world as well. In particular, he does not want to confine God to the unexplainable. (sometimes known as the "God of the Gaps")
With this thought in mind, Jesus is the important link between the supernatural and the natural world. He gives us a picture (plan in Coulson's illustration) of God in terms we can understand. The extension of this idea is that we too, by God's grace and through the Holy Spirit, also provide an understandable picture of God to others in our natural world.
The witness of Jesus is why the 4 gospels are sometimes called the Gospels of Christ. By my reading I have witnessed Christ stilling the waters, proof to me that He is our Protector. Raising the widows son from the dead was none other than miraculous. Raising Lazarus from the dead is evidence He is our Restorer, of soul and body. He restores us spiritually when we connect with Him on a routine basis. We witness Jesus feeding the 5 thousand, He is our Sustainer. Similar to ADRA helping thousands in disaster relief, providing for those they are able to help after the hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, floods, and the like. Where am I going with this? He has overwhelmed us with His witnesses in the 4 Gospels.