Blog Archives - WELCOME TO THE JOY OF TROY

September 10, 2021

9/10/2021

More on True Fruit Bearing

        If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you....This I command you, to love one another. John 15:10-17, RSV.

    Certain topics Jesus just couldn't seem to stay away from in His all-important final words to His disciples as they progress toward Gethsemane and the cross. Two of those words are "commandments" and "love." Jesus makes it absolutely clear that if we are abiding in Him we will obey His commandments. And He is equally adamant that anyone who abides in Him will be loving to others.

    In reality those two results are really one. As we noted earlier, all of the commandments are based on the principle of love. One of the tragedies of the Pharisees is that they too often separated the two. And some church members do the same. They are obedient to all of God's commands, including the Ten Commandments, but they are all too often mean toward others both inside and outside of the church. But being connected to Jesus is more than outward obedience. It is a loving relationship with Him that spills over daily in love to those around us, even to our enemies and those who misuse us (Matt. 5:44).

    Being connected to Jesus means living a life of self-sacrificing love, even to the extent, if necessary, of devoting our lives to the welfare of another. Jesus, of course, was originally speaking of the need of His warring disciples to get their act together by stopping their jostling for supremacy and letting love for one another fill their hearts and actions.

    But his words are for me also. And I need them. My natural tendency is to love myself and use others toward that end. But Jesus calls for a reversal of that pattern. If I am truly abiding in Him, I will devote my life to being a blessing to others.

    People have developed many descriptions of what it means to be a true Christian. But Jesus provides the best and most authoritative. We must have His love flowing out of our hearts that we might have true joy and be called His "friend" in the truest sense of the word.

September 9, 2021

9/9/2021

The True Branches

        I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. John 15:5-8, NKJV.

    There are only two kinds of branches (that is, only two varieties of church members)--the fruitful and the barren. Those who are barren are cut off from the true vine. And those who remain get pruned by the hardships of life as God shapes them into ever more fruitful disciples.

    Of course, none of us like to get pruned. But God uses the challenges of life to refine us as Christians. As Paul puts it in Romans, "we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (Rom. 5:3-5, RSV).

    There is nothing that happens to us that God does not use to prune, cleanse, and shape us for His purposes and glory. In that we can be thankful, even though the process might be uncomfortable.

    Pruning is what happens when the caring gardener prepares His vines to produce even more fruit. Some aspects of our lives get sheared off so that God might direct our energy to increase our productivity in bearing more and better fruit.

    But what is the fruit? It comes in two varieties. One is the making of further disciples. God uses Christians to witness to His love and win others to the ways of Jesus.

    A second form of fruit bearing is the development of Christian character. "The fruit of the Spirit," Paul tells us, "is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22, 23, RSV).

    Both types of fruit are intertwined in a person's life. After all, it is the beauty of a Christian's character that leads others to Jesus. And both types of fruit result from the work of the Holy Spirit. We can do nothing apart from Jesus and the Spirit. But with Them we naturally produce the sweet clusters of the vine.

    Help me today, my Father, to stay connected to Jesus that I might be ever more fruitful.

September 8, 2021

9/8/2021

The "True" Vine

        I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. John 15:1-4, NKJV.

    Most readers of the New Testament miss the full force of this passage. But that was not the case with the disciples. Being Jewish they saw the magnitude and meaning of Jesus' claim to be the vine.

    Again and again the Old Testament pictures Israel as the vine of God's vineyard. "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts." claims Isaiah, "is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant" (Isa. 5:7). And Jeremiah quotes God as saying to Israel, "I had planted you a noble vine" (Jer. 2:21, NKJV). "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt," says the psalmist (Ps. 80:8). As a result, the vine had become a symbol of Israel, so much so that they reproduced it on their coins when they were a free people. Thus to be part of the vine meant to be an Israelite or Jew.

    But the Old Testament teaching regarding the vine didn't end with the identity of Israel as God's vine. The downside of the symbolism is the fact that Scripture consistently associates with Israel the idea of degeneration. The point of Isaiah is that the vineyard had run wild. For Jerimiah the nation had turned from the "noble vine" that God had planted into a "degenerate plant of a strange vine" (Jer. 2:21). And for Hosea "Israel is an empty vine" (Hosea 10:1).

    Those word pictures provide the background for Jesus' shocking claim that "I am the true vine." The implication of that claim, of course, was that being born Jew did not automatically make a person a part of God's vineyard. To the contrary, Jesus is telling His Jewish hearers (and us) that to be a part of the true people of God we must be connected intimately to Him.

    That thought will lead Jesus into a discussion in John 15:6-10 of what it means to abide in Him as branches tied closely to the true vine.

    Before we examine those verses we need to meditate again on the way to eternal life. That path is not being born Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, or even Adventist. At its core it is being connected to Jesus as our Savior, Lord, and Friend. Being part of the Vine means that our lives and goals are totally in line with His.

September 7, 2021

9/7/2021

More on the Helper

        These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid. You heard that I said to you, "I go away, and I will come to you."...Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. John 14:25-29, NASB.

    More and more emphasis falls on the gift of the Holy Spirit as the farewell discourses proceed toward Gethsemane and the cross. In our Scripture reading for today Jesus tells us several more things about the One He will send to stand by every disciple's side after He has ascended to the Father.

    The first thing Jesus explains about the Helper is that He will teach us all things. It is the Spirit who leads God's followers deeper and deeper into spiritual truth. That is why it is important to pray and invite His presence as we open our Bible for serious study. The same divine Person who inspired the prophets to write the Bible will unlock its meaning ever more fully to those dedicated to its study.

    A second thing Jesus reveals about His gift of the Helper in John 14:25-29 is that He will remind us of what Jesus has said. That means several things. One is that in matters of faith the Spirit constantly brings into our consciousness the words and acts of Christ and His apostles. It is those teachings that form the basis of hope and the context in which followers of Jesus evaluate all their conclusions about the meaning and goals of life.

    A third aspect of the Helper's guidance is that He keeps us on the right track in our conduct as we navigate the corridors of life. When we face difficult moral choices, it is the Helper who flashes the teachings of Christ through our minds to inform us of the best way to go.

    We can thank God for all of those benefits of the Helper in our lives. But perhaps the most personal and precious is the gift of peace, which infuses our lives when we trust in God because of the accomplished victory of Jesus. Biblical peace is more than the absence of conflict. It is also that sense of well-being that God implants in our hearts and minds through the Spirit.

    It is that sense of boundless peace that Jesus was seeking to leave with His followers in John 14. And it is what He desires to infuse in my life. But more than that, He desires me to be His Spirit-inspired agent of peace in my family and workplace today.

September 6, 2021

9/6/2021

Hope in the Face of Discouragement

        I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. John 14:18-20, RSV.

    By this time even the dullest of the disciples knew that something terrible was about to happen to Jesus, and, by extension to them. After all, their well-being was totally tied to Jesus. They had given up all for Him. And now all He could talk about were foreboding topics that led nowhere but to death on a cross. That was hardly their view of Messiahship. And it was certainly not their understanding of the "benefit" for giving up all for this charismatic teacher. At no time since they began to follow Him had things looked so dim and hopeless.

    It is in that context that Jesus said that He would not leave them desolate. "Desolate" is an interesting word. It translates the Greek orphanos, from which we get the word "orphan." Thus the New King James Version is quite correct with its translation that "I will not leave you orphans." With that thought Jesus is right back to John 14:1 with its "Let not your heart be troubled." "I am coming back for you," He asserted in verses 2 and 3. But that coming back would be at His second advent at the end of time.

    John 14:18, however, presents a much immediate coming. In a little while the world (those who cared nothing for Him or His message) would see Him no longer because of His death and burial. But "you," He tells the disciples, "will see me." And they did after His resurrection. As a result, they would not be orphaned at two levels. First, He would see them again after three days in the grave. And second, through the gift of the "Helper" or "Comforter" He would be with them as they faced the world without His physical presence.

    But His promise is better than merely not being left desolate. "Because I live,: He promised His followers, "you will also." One of the highest points of the gospel of Jesus is that He will share His victory over death with each of His followers.

    These snapshots of discipleship are important for me in my own Christian walk. There are days when I feel desolate, hopeless, and forsaken. That's the bad news. But the good news is that I am not the orphan I feel like. I have a heavenly Father, a risen Lord, a powerful Helper, and the guarantee of life everlasting. I may be tempted today to let discouragement get the best of me. But what I need is to turn my eyes again to the realities I have in Jesus.

September 5, 2021

9/5/2021

Jesus' Greatest Gift to Us

        And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. John 14:16, 17, RSV.

    With this passage we have arrived at another great theme of the fourth Gospel. More than in any book in the Bible, it is in John's Gospel that we find the most explicit and detailed understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus will return to the topic repeatedly in chapters 15 and 16 as He seeks to prepare His disciples for leading His church after His death. The emphasis on the Spirit will climax on the day of Pentecost when the disciples are more fully empowered to carry out their task of taking the message of Jesus to the ends of the earth.

    The gift of the Holy Spirit is absolutely central to the Christian life. Not only are true Christians born of the Spirit (John 1:12; 3:3, 5), but every act of their lives is guided by what Ellen White calls the "divine" "third person of the Godhead" (Evangelism, p. 617). "This promised blessing," we read in The Desire of Ages "brings all other blessings in its train" (p. 672). As Jesus prepared His disciples for His soon departure, it is no accident that He repeatedly taught them about the gift of the Spirit. It was their greatest need. And it remains the greatest need of those followers of the Lamb who live in the twenty-first century.

    In John 14:16 Jesus does not give the promise of the Holy Spirit in isolation. In the previous verse He had told His followers that if they really loved Him they would keep His commandments. Given the perverseness of human nature, that is no easy task. In fact, fallen humans cannot obey them in the spirit of love without divine aid. Thus it is that the next words of Jesus are the promise of "another Counselor." "Counselor" is not a very meaningful translation of parakletos, which literally means "one called to the side of." The most helpful rendering in English is "Helper" (NASB). The parakletos is someone brought in to help when a person needs guidance and strength and direction. Jesus has performed those functions for His followers up until now. But His departure is at hand. So He promises them "another Helper."

    Here we need to pause for a moment to think seriously about our own needs. It is all too easy for us to assume that we are self-sufficient--that we can make a success of our Christian experience through our own will and strength. But with such a perspective we are just as deceived as the disciples. Our greatest need is the divine parakletos.

September 4, 2021

9/4/2021

Loving Jesus

        If ye love me, keep my commandments. John 14:15.

    With the idea set forth in this verse we have arrived at a theme that the apostle John will drive home again and again: namely, if we truly love God, we will keep His commandments, and if we truly love Jesus, we will obey His commandments.

    One thing to note is that the commandments of God and Jesus are not different. After all, another great theme in the fourth Gospel is that Jesus and the Father are one. While They are distinct persons in the Godhead, They belong to the same united Trinity and share the same principles--so much so that Jesus could teach that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father (John 14:9). In Scripture the commandments of God and those of Jesus are exactly the same. And at the foundation of all of them is one principle. Jesus identifies it concisely in John 15:12, in which He says: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (RSV). and in verse 17 He again says, "This I command you, to love one another" (RSV).

    Earlier in His ministry Jesus had asserted that the greatest commandment of the law was to love God with all our hearts and minds, and that inextricably connected to that injunction is the need to love our neighbors as our own selves (Matt. 22:36-40). Thus we can sum up the commandments of both God and Jesus in one great principle: love. Out of it flow all of the more specific laws, including the Ten Commandments. But it is the caring, outreaching principle of love that must be the motivating force undergirding true obedience. Jesus demonstrated that love in not only coming to earth, but in His daily life as He related to others.

    Of all the New Testament writers, John is the most persistent in his call for Christ's followers to keep the commandments. In the first letter he writes that "we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says 'I know him' but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1 John 2:3, 4, RSV). And in the book of Revelation John makes it clear that God will have a commandment-keeping people at the end of time (Rev. 12:17; 14:12).

    Like the disciples of old, we need to take Jesus at His word. Obedience in the spirit of love was absolutely central to Him.

    Help me, Father, not only to obey Your word, but to do so in the spirit of love.

September 3, 2021

9/3/2021

Say Goodbye to the Postmodern Jesus

        Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me." John 14:5, 6, RSV.

    Thomas may have had his faults, but at least he was honest. Again and again Jesus had told His followers what would soon take place. He had just finished explaining that He was going to the Father to prepare a place for them. And earlier He had noted that He had come from heaven and would be returning. Yet somehow they had not yet understood.

    If they were confused as to His destination, they were doubly puzzled about the way to it. They still did not expect the path of the cross, even though Jesus had openly told them about His crucifixion several times. Here Jesus was at the end of His life and still the disciples were bewildered. They had been so blinded by their own view of truth that they could not understand His plain words. Fortunately one of their number was willing to open his mouth and express his doubts. He was too honest to wander in the dark without seeking clarification.

    I say "fortunately," because in response to Thomas' question, Jesus provided the world with one of His greatest and most profound statements: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me." Later a wiser Peter will say much the same thing in Acts 4:12, in which he asserts that "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (RSV).

    In effect, Jesus is saying to Thomas, "Since I am the truth, the life, and the way, follow Me and you will be OK. I am the only way to life eternal." The statement is plain enough, but, interestingly, it is violently rejected by many even in the church today who view it as arrogant, exclusive, and "unchristian." For them Jesus is just another man, like Muhammad or Buddha. The theory is that all religions lead to the same place. Such are the fruits of the eighteen-century Enlightenment having come to full fruition in postmodernism.

    But even a cursory study indicates the uniqueness of Jesus and the fact that all religions are not heading to the same place or even in the same direction. Postmodernism has confused "bigheartedness" with the issue of truth.

    When Jesus says He is the only way, He means it. And if we take His hand and follow his words and walk His life we will arrive at His heavenly destination.

September 2, 2021

9/2/2021

Good Reason for Untroubled Hearts

        Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. John 14:1-3.

    Tough times are coming. But don't worry.

    It is in the context of those two short statements that we need to understand today's Scripture reading and all of the counsel in Jesus' farewell discourses (John 13:31-16:33).

    The events soon to overtake Jesus will flatten the faith and self-confidence of the disciples. But what comes out of the experience will be a more informed faith that is the genuine thing rather than the shadow of it that they possess on their final evening with Jesus.

    The words of John 14:1-3 have comforted Christians for 2,000 years. And they will continue to do so until the end of time, because all of us face the death of loved ones, financial reversals, broken marriages, disease, aging, and the other realities of a disoriented world reeling under the effects of sin.

    It is not only at funerals that we need to hear the precious promises of our passage for today. We require them every day.

    "Let not your heart be troubled." Why? Because we have a Lord who died for us, got the victory over death, is ministering in heaven at this very moment on our behalf, and is coming again to take us home with Him. When we are walking with Jesus we can have peace no matter how bad it is around us.

    "In my Father's house are many mansions." Unlike the exclusiveness and scarcity we face on earth, Jesus' future kingdom has rooms for all who desire to be there.

    "I go to prepare a place for you." Mark the "you" as personal as you read this promise. (He is preparing a place for me! In that I can rejoice.)

    And "I will come again," so that "where I am" you can be also. I don't know exactly what heaven will be like. But I do know that its central feature will be being with Jesus. One of the greatest things about heaven is that we will always be with Him. Nothing can ever separate us from Him--forever, and ever, and ever.

    You see, my friend, you and I have no reason for troubled hearts.

September 1, 2021

9/1/2021

Good News for Messed-up Disciples

        And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, "You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." Peter answered him, "Though they fall away because of you, I will never fall away." Jesus said to him, "Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times." Peter said to him, "Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!" And all the disciples said the same. Matt. 26:30-35, ESV.

    If Jesus' prediction that one of the twelve would betray Him shook the disciples, His new announcement that all of them would desert Him that very evening should have knocked them flat and woke them up at the same time.

    But that is not what happened. They either didn't understand what Jesus was telling them in plain words or they chose not to believe Him.

    Here we have a problem that we modern disciples can (or should) identify with. Whether we are willing to admit it or not, each of us tends to pick and choose those aspects of the Lord's teachings that we want to believe and emphasize. And the real problem is that we often ignore or skip over those areas of His counsel that we need to hear the most.

    Be that as it may, today's passage presents several important truths. First, Jesus indicates once again that He is not stumbling toward the cross blindly. He knows what He is doing. And He even knows that He will rise again to meet His followers in Galilee.

    A second truth in the passage is that Jesus' support group are stumbling in a massive way and have no knowledge of either what He is doing or how they will react. They are excellent examples of false self-confidence and total misunderstandings. Still visualizing Messiahship in terms of a conquering King rather than a suffering Servant, they have yet to grasp the very purpose of Jesus' sufferings. Such a misconception will disorient them in the time of crisis.

    A third thing to note is the absolute grace of Jesus. In spite of their cockiness, failures, and betrayals, He will meet them in Galilee. There is grace supreme.

    And in that grace you and I need to revel, because we also are messed-up disciples. Here is a promise worth remembering: Jesus doesn't reject us when we fail Him. He did not abandon His first disciples, but continued to work with them. So it is with us. No wonder the Bible calls the message of Jesus the "good news."