What Animal Would You Be? John Ch. 10

Posted on June 7, 2017 by dkoop

If you could be any animal, what would you be?  Would you be an eagle or some kind of bird?  Would you be a lion, tiger, a bear or some powerful predator?  Or would you be a dolphin, whale or other aquatic animal? Why is it that no one ever says they want to be a sheep?

How about mascots?  What were your school’s mascots?  The mascots of the schools I attended were: the bulldogs, the hawks, the cougars and the Aggies.  A domestic sheep is not the mascot of any sports team that I know of!

However, a sheep is the animal that God uses to describe us.  I did some reading about sheep this week and there is nothing romantic or complimentary about sheep. They are stupid and stubborn.

Have you -ever seen a trained sheep? At the circus, come see the dancing elephants, funny monkeys and trained sheep?  No way.  They are also dirty; they easily wander off and are slow to learn from their mistakes.  They are easily frightened and confused-known to plunge off cliffs in their fear and confusion.  They are defenseless and dependent.  They need guidance and protection.   Would agree that a sheep perfectly describes us as humans?

An Aggie that lived in the Austin area had gotten sick of all the Aggie jokes ( I can relate.)  One day he decided to wear a longhorn shirt, after buying a new shirt, he set out for a drive in the country where he came across a herd of sheep. He decided to stop and talk with the shepherd. After a few minutes of chitchat, he said I have a proposition – “If I could guess the total number of sheep can I have one?” The shepherd agreed but was absolutely shocked when he guessed correctly – 382. He kept his promise and allowed the Aggie to pick one out to take home. After the Aggie picked out his sheep and put it in his truck, the shepherd said he had a proposition for him, If I can guess your real school, can I have my dog back?
Throughout the Bible the Lord calls us sheep.  In fact, the words sheep and shepherd are used over 500 times in the bible making it major topic!  Though it may not be complimentary to be called a sheep because we too are dirty, defenseless, dependent and dumb, I hope you find it comforting today to know we have a good shepherd.
One of the most powerful images that Jesus uses to describe himself is of “The Good Shepherd” Jesus as our shepherd conveys the idea of being taken care of , being kept safe and being guided through life.

And that’s what this week’s post is all about. As we continue our journey through the Gospel of John, we’ve arrived at John Chapter 10. And in this chapter we’ll learn that Jesus calls himself our Good Shepherd. As we study these verses together we’ll learn exactly what that means.

One more thing, this was written only to those who are connected to the flock.  It was written for those here who have made the Lord Jesus Christ their shepherd.  I know that we have some people who are checking out Christianity.  You are testing the waters and may be contemplating a faith decision.  Pay close attention because what we are going to talk about can, and will, happen once you establish a personal connection with the Good Shepherd.

The first truth about Jesus our shepherd is that

Jesus Calls Me

1 “I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber! But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.3 the gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

In Christ’s day, sheep were kept two ways. The first way was in cities and villages. Usually there was a large holding corral where shepherds would bring their flocks to secure them at night – it was a public pen able to hold several flocks under the care of a porter whose duty was to guard the gate during the night and to admit the shepherds in the AM. The shepherds would walk into the pen, call their sheep and the sheep would respond to the voice of their shepherd who would lead them out to pasture.

The second way was how a shepherd would tend his sheep in the country. A shepherd would herd his sheep into a low walled enclosure of piled rocks with a small opening. At night, since there was no gate, just an opening, the shepherd would lie across the opening to keep the sheep in and the wild animals out – he would literally become the door. Jesus refers to both of these in this text.

To see sheep coming to their shepherd’s voice watch this:

My dad raises cattle and he says, “these cows put you through college.”  When we would go out to check on them and feed them some bales of hay or range cubes, dad had a special call “whooooooo!”  or something like that, you see I can’t do the same call, but when his cows heard his call they came running.  They know the call of the one who feeds them and cares for them. The same is true with sheep.  When the cows had a baby calf, the calves would just follow their mothers to the call until they learn to hear the call for themselves.  Some of you may have followed your parents to church or to a relationship with Jesus until the day you heard His voice for yourselves.  This is what happened with me when I was 11 years old.  I heard Jesus calling me and I came to him.  Some of you may not have had the privilege of growing up in a home where you parents took you to church or told you about Jesus but you heard the voice of Jesus too.  Some of you here today still have not responded and you need to.

Jesus still speaks to us today.  We can hear His voice.  I have never heard the audible voice of God.  Years ago I didn’t hear God audible say, “Darrell, go start church.”  I have never heard God speak like that.  But as I pray I listen and God speaks to my spirit so that I hear and know what I should do.  He speaks through the Bible.  He speaks through Christian friends.  He speaks through private worship and public worship.  He speaks through events.  And as believers we have got to stay sensitive to God’s voice.

In the next post we will see that Jesus not only calls us he also leads us and protects us.

Darrell

www.RidgeFellowship.com

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Seeing Clearly – John 9-Part 3

Posted on June 2, 2017 by dkoop

Did you know that you were born into this world with the eyes of your soul-glued shut? You were born spiritually blind. You couldn’t see who Jesus Christ was. And when you can’t see Jesus, you can’t really see who God is. And when you can’t see God, lots of things don’t make sense in this world. Why am I here, on this planet? What is my purpose for existing? What am I doing here? And where am I going? And what will happen to me fifty or a hundred years from now, when I’m not here? When you can’t see Jesus Christ, you can’t see the answers to these questions. Maybe for some of you, you can remember how that felt, to be wandering through life with the eyes of your soul-glued shut – trying the best you can to find your way, but without any success.  We see that Jesus is the light of the world and opens our eyes spiritually.

In the last post we looked at attitudes that will blind us, and then the first step to find our way out of the dark.    Here are the last two:

  • Follow Jesus Instructions

6 Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and smoothed the mud over the blind man’s eyes. 7 He told him, “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing!

As I thought about this passage, I began to wonder why the man obeyed Jesus. There is no record in the text that Jesus promised the man that if he allowed Jesus to put mud on his eyes and go wash, that he would receive his sight. Now I’m assuming that the man didn’t go to the Pool of Siloam by himself because he was blind.   But if he did, the journey to the pool would mean great risk. Jesus and this man were probably near the temple inside the walls of Jerusalem. The Pool of Siloam is outside the walls. It would have been a relatively long journey for the man. The man was usually very careful and slow in his journeys, but his excitement about the possibility of seeing would have caused him to move a little faster than was safe for him. He did not know what he might face along the journey. At times there were bandits outside the wall. People would see him along the way and laugh at him. “Ha, ha! Look at the blind man. Somebody is making fun of him by putting mud on his eyes! What a joke!” But he didn’t let them stop him. He got a lot of bumps and bruises along the way, but he made it to the pool of Siloam.
Now the pool of Siloam was built by King Hezekiah 700 years earlier. It had the purest and best tasting water in the whole city of Jerusalem. But that’s not why Jesus sent him there. He sent him there because he wanted to know “Will this man obey my exact instructions? Is he teachable? Is he open to the leading of the Spirit of God in His life? Will he do what I tell him to do even if it sounds far fetched?”

The first step toward having a better life starts with a willingness to obey Christ in all the little details of life. This man was willing. And so he washed and he could see again

He was willing to do whatever Jesus told him to do. In our darkness we want healing from the hurt, and we want it now. We’ve endured the dark long enough. But Jesus comes to us and says, “I’m sorry. I can’t give you more light yet. I can’t take away the blindness yet. You haven’t done what I told you to do yet. Your faith isn’t strong enough to cause you to obey me.” For instance Jesus says “the greatest is the servant” (Matt. 23:11) yet we won’t serve in the church body for Christ ministry today, we let others do that.  He says, “give, and it will be given to you pressed down and overflowing” (Luke 6:38) Yet only a small percentage in churches across the US give financially that the ministry of Christ can continue.  Just two examples that many Christians ignore.  I see it all the time.  People think they can ignore things like that everyone else pick up the slack.  But they are tests of the amount of faith that we have in Jesus Christ. We have faith that He can bring light to our darkness, that’s great. But do we have enough faith to do what He asks us to do? “But I don’t want to do anything! I just want to sit here and let God heal me!” It doesn’t work that way. We will not get out of the dark by being selfish and disobedient.

  • Tell Others What Jesus has Done for Me

When you start to obey Christ, and when he starts doing powerful things in your life, people are going to start asking questions. Like, “What’s going on with this person? What do they seem so different? Why do they seem all of a sudden so alive? So animated? So happy?”

The man said, 25 “I don’t know whether he is a sinner,” the man replied. “But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!”  In other words, “I don’t know much about Jesus. I don’t know much about theology. I don’t know much about religious rules. But the one thing I do know is that this man changed my life! I am better off today than I was yesterday because this man gave me my life back! He did something for me that I thought could never happen to me in a million years!”

Everyone who has Christ in their life has a story to share with the world. Just because you don’t know the Bible as well as you wish you did doesn’t mean that God can’t use you to give a powerful testimony. We can all look back on our lives and say, “I’m better off today than I was four years ago because I asked Jesus to be my Savior. I’m better off today than I was before because I started reading my Bible. I started praying. I started coming to church. Anyone who has a personal encounter or relationship with Christ can do the same thing this formerly blind man is doing!

Now I want to imagine something with me. Here is this man, born blind (now put on a blindfold). Jesus comes along and heals him, removes the darkness from his life. (Remove blindfold)

Within one day of Jesus touching his life with the power of God, he comes in contact with four groups of people all wearing their own blindfold.
Imagine with me that each time this man came in contact with these people he believed what they said about himself, the about the miracle, about Jesus etc. and began to wear the blindfold of each group.

1. So he hears the disciples prejudice about his life and agrees and puts of their blindfold.
2. Then gives in to the skepticism of the neighbors and – puts of their blindfold
3. The words of Pharisees become too strong and so he surrenders to religion and puts on their blindfold
4. And finally he doesn’t want to see his parents hurt and expelled and wants to keep them happy so he puts on their blindfold.

After putting on four layers of different colored blindfolds you cannot see through it.
The end result, now he is blind again.

This is the story of many of us today. God has saved us and changed our lives. Even since then we have seen his power at work in and through us. Yet we still struggle to live in the light because we allowed ourselves to pick up the blindfolds of other people, and limit what God has done and can do in our through us. We need to stand up like the man in this story as the pressure was being applied to put on a blindfold and say – There are a lot of things I don’t know about yet but I know this: I was blind and now I can see!
Darrell

www.RidgeFellowship.com

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Is Religion or Fear Blinding You? – John 9, Part 2

Posted on June 1, 2017 by dkoop

Are you blinded by religion?  What is religion?  Religion is an institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.    Religion can keep me from seeing and experiencing Jesus.   In the last post we looked at two attitudes that may blind us which were prejudice and skepticism. Today we’ll look at two more: religion and fear.

  • Am I Blinded By Religion?

16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man Jesus is not from God, for he is working on the Sabbath.” 18 The Jewish leaders wouldn’t believe he had been blind, so they called in his parents.

What happened when the Pharisees were confronted with the man who was born blind but now sees?

– They debated the fact that the man was blind at all.
– They said Jesus must be a sinner because he healed on the Sabbath.
They were trying to make the blind man feel like some ungodly force, some unholy entity had brought about his healing. They were discrediting his sight as though he had no reason to be so jubilant about his miracle. They were so hung up on their doctrines that they were blind to what their doctrines were doing to real people. They were blind to the guilt they were heaping on a man that Jesus had just made whole. They were hurting the man. Where he had just been physically healed, they were emotionally and spiritually wounding the brother. And they couldn’t see it.

It is easy to sit back and point the finger at the Pharisees for using their tradition and religion to remain blind to the work of God. However, I contend that the same thing can happen to us. We can make the same mistakes the Pharisees made.

We can rely on our traditions and heritage to get us through. Jesus condemned the Pharisees and Sadducees many times in His preaching and teaching. Why? Because they were more concerned with their traditions and religion than they were with God.

Traditions in and of themselves are not all wrong. It is when we make manmade traditions as binding and the Scriptures.  What are some of the traditions that we have that could cause us to make the same mistakes the Pharisees made? How church services are performed, Music style, decorations, Service Order, dress code, to name a few.

We cannot allow our tradition and religion to blind us. God can and will do things differently than what we may think of believe and if there are no Scriptural errors that are made, we should see the power of God working and praise Him for it.

How, much more enjoyable would it have been for the Jewish leaders to praise that work. In the same way, we should learn to celebrate the work of God, even when it is done differently than what we are used to.

  • Am I Blinded By Fear?

20 His parents replied, “We know this is our son and that he was born blind, 21 but we don’t know how he can see or who healed him. He is old enough to speak for himself. Ask him.”
22 They said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who had announced that anyone saying Jesus was the Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue.

When the Pharisees wanted answers they were not getting from the man himself, they called his parents in. How did they respond? Well, they wanted no part of it. Why, because they were afraid.  What were they afraid of? Being thrown out of the synagogue.

Before we are quick to judge here, we should understand that things were different in the Jewish culture. In our culture, if someone is removed from the church, they can go to the church down the road. However, in the Jewish culture, once you were removed from the Synagogue, you were out. You couldn’t go down the road to the other Synagogue. Not only that, the other people were not allowed to speak or do business with someone who was removed from the Synagogue.

It is no wonder the parents were afraid. Imagine for a moment what it must have felt like for them. On one hand your son who was blind from birth can now see, on the other hand, if you acknowledge that this was from the power that was in Jesus, your were removed completely from you community.

Fear is a crippling agent. Fear keeps up from experiencing the work of God completely. Not only in our personal walks with Jesus Christ, but in our corporate walk with Jesus as well.

What would happen if God’s people and God’s churches stopped being fearful? Lives would be changed because we would no longer fear rejection or persecution because of the message of Christ.  Churches would be living on the edge of faith, using every dollar they have to make a difference for the cause of Christ.

Are you blinded by prejudice, skepticism, religion or fear?   It’s happens easily.  Now let’s see how we can find our way out of the dark.

HOW TO FIND MY WAY OUT OF THE DARK

One of the most important factors necessary for this man’s to get out of the dark was his dependence on Jesus, he wanted to see, he wanted to change so he had to allow Jesus to touch him in the most sensitive part of his body and do whatever He wanted to do there even if it did not make sense.  He had to allow Jesus to smear mud on his eyes. If you desire to get out of the dark, then you have to be willing to come to Jesus and allow Him to touch your life in those most sensitive areas that no one else is allowed to touch. It may be humiliating. It may be painful. But you must allow Jesus to touch you. You see, it is those areas of your life that you have been resisting his touch that have been creating the pain for you. If you don’t allow Jesus to touch there, He can’t heal you.  First of all,
·       Believe in Jesus

35 When Jesus heard what had happened, he found the man and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 The man answered, “Who is he, sir, because I would like to.”  37 “You have seen him,” Jesus said, “and he is speaking to you!”  38 “Yes, Lord,” the man said, “I believe!” And he worshiped Jesus.

Jesus goes looking for the once blind man who had been excommunicated from the synagogue and when he finds him he asks him, not whether his eyesight is better, but whether he believes in the Son of Man. You see the discovery he’s made, that Jesus is a prophet sent from God, needs to be grounded in the reality of who Jesus is. He’s the Son of Man, the one who in Daniel 7 is given all authority and dominion, who in John’s gospel is the one who will be lifted up, and who will judge all the earth. And it’s important that he doesn’t just acknowledge that the son of man exists but that he puts his trust in him.

The response of the man is to not only acknowledge his belief in Jesus, but to worship him. His eyes have been opened to the whole reality of who Jesus is. His worship, in fact, is a sign that here is not just a prophet, but truly the Son of Man, the one whom all peoples will worship on the last day.

Notice how the man’s spiritual sight improves as the story goes on. In verse 11, he refers to Jesus as “The man they call Jesus.” In verse 17, he calls Jesus a prophet. In verse 27, he is someone who has disciples. In verse 33, he is a man from God, and finally, in verse 38, he refers to Jesus as Lord. So Jesus didn’t just give the man his sight. He gave this man INSIGHT. Seeing the truth with your heart is even more important than seeing the truth with your eyes.

If you believe and trust and keep following Jesus, coming to church, keep reading your Bible, serving, and giving;  the eyes of your heart will open more and more. And like the man who was born blind, you will clearly see Jesus for who He is.

In the next post we’ll look at two more ways to find our way out of the dark.

Darrell

www.RidgeFellowship.com

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What’s Blinding You? John Ch. 9

Posted on May 31, 2017 by dkoop

Have you ever had to wear a blindfold for any length of time?  Do you ever take your vision for granted?  I know I do.

I did think it was interesting that in the movie Ray, about the blind musician Ray Charles, the actor that played Ray Charles Jaime Fox insisted on being blind every day. The actor didn’t just wear dark glasses and pretend to be blind. Instead, when he woke up early in the morning, he would eat breakfast, and then he would put on some sort of blindfold that would cover his eyes, and he wouldn’t remove it, not even for a break or for lunch or dinner – he wouldn’t remove that blindfold until the very end of the day. As a professional actor, he wanted to feel what it was like to be blind. Can you imagine doing that, even for one day?

I can’t imagine what it would be like to be blind. To not be able to see the face of Niki, the woman I love. To be unable to read the books in my library, to not be able to drive my truck or watch the Aggies play ball (even if they lose!) Or to see my children grow up. To be unable to watch a beautiful sunset, or my favorite TV show. Or to be able to walk down the street without someone helping me. I can’t imagine living life completely in the dark. Can you?

But there’s something else out there perhaps even worse than physical blindness. I’m talking about spiritual blindness. Not knowing where your life is going. Not knowing if you’re right with God. Not knowing if you’re going to go to heaven when you die. Spiritual blindness is much more tragic than physical blindness in the end.

I believe that there are spiritually blind people all around us.  Some people cannot see how much God loves them. Some people cannot see how much God wants to forgive them. Some people cannot see any hope for tomorrow.

Maybe you are getting ready to make some decisions about the direction of your life, and you are blind to the pain that those decisions will bring to you and the people that surround you. Right now, you’re stumbling along, and you’re getting all bruised up because of all the things and people that you’re bumping into along the way.
Do you believe that Jesus can take away your blindness? Jesus is the Light of the world. He can cause you to see. But that depends on another question. Do you want Jesus to take away your blindness? Let’s take a look at how a miracle happened in the man that Jesus encountered that day.  In John Chapter 9 Jesus heals a man that was blind. There are different types of blindness. There’s physical blindness, and there’s spiritual blindness. In the passage we’re looking at today, we see Jesus healing a man’s physical blindness, and in the process we discover the spiritual blindness of some of those looking on.   Blindness in the Bible is a metaphor for Spiritual Darkness.

 Are we open to seeing God at work in every circumstance or are we blinded by our past experiences, our pride, our sin, our hard heads? It’s easy when you’re strongly convinced of your particular position to close your mind to anything that falls outside the familiar.  It is possible to have our sight and yet be blind to what is going on around us. In our text I want us to see 4 things that keep us from all the Christ intends and keeps us in the dark spiritually.

WHAT IS BLINDING ME?

 1. Am I Blinded By Prejudice?

 1 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 2 “Teacher,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it a result of his own sins or those of his parents?” 3 “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “He was born blind so the power of God could be seen in him.

What did the disciples say when they walked up on the man? “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

This was a common belief among the Jews of that day. Many Jewish people believed that if someone was born with a handicap, then someone in your family must have sinned. Either you sinned in the womb, or one of your parents did. I have told you before about the rabbinical teachings of Jewish Rabbis to elaborate on the Old Testament laws.  Such as “a married man should not look a woman, and even if he looks down at her heel, there’s a chance that his children could be born handicapped. Another tradition says that if you sleep with your wife during the uncleanness of her monthly period, there’s a chance that any future children will be born with a handicap.

You and I know that these ideas are crazy. But the rabbis taught things like this.  They even believed that a baby could sin while it was inside the mother’s womb, and if it sinned bad enough, it could be born handicapped.  And the disciples were brought up on teaching like this.

So, for the disciples to ask that question was not out of the ordinary. However, in order to ask a question like that you have to think a few things about yourself.

If sin caused things like that, then you must be all right with God because you are all right.
If someone had something wrong with him or her, then they must not be all right with God.

What happens when we begin to think that way? We begin to think that we are better than other people.

We may not believe that when someone has something wrong with them today that God is punishing them or their parents. We have been educated to know that sickness and disease are not always a punishment for personal sin, but sometimes a natural cause of sin in general. However, I do think that we are sometimes blinded by judgment. The Disciples saw in the blind man a theological debate, and Jesus saw in the blind man someone in whom the work of God could be made known.

Are you tempted to be prejudiced?  When you hear that some homosexual men die in their 40’s because of aids, are you tempted to say, “That is what they deserve.”  When you see a teenage mother struggling to raise her child alone, are you tempted to say, “Well, she should have waited until she was married.”  When you see the effects of alcoholism on the lives of people, are you tempted to say, “They don’t deserve any better!”

It is so much easier to sit back and debate the theological ramifications of bad decisions that other human beings make. It is much harder to see how you can make a difference in the lives of people who are hurting because of a bad decision they or someone else has made for them.  It is easier to judge then to heal.

We should not let prejudice blind us from the fact that we are to be instruments of healing and not finger pointing.  What would happen if instead of judging the homosexual man who is dying of aids, we would do everything we can to make sure that his last days on this earth are spent with Christian people who love him and are concerned for his soul? What would happen if instead of condemning the teenage mother, the church would offer help and encouragement and ensure that she knows of the love of Jesus?  What would happened if instead of shaking our heads in disgust at the alcoholic, the church and its people would be a safe haven and a source of encouragement and hope for those who are struggling with that disease?

What would happen? God’s people, instead of judging the world, would see the world and its people as a place in which the work of God can be done.

  1. Am I Blinded By Skepticism?

8 His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each other, “Is this the same man—that beggar?” 9 Some said he was, and others said, “No, but he surely looks like him!” And the beggar kept saying, “I am the same man!” 10 They asked, “Who healed you? What happened?”

What happened when this man returned to the people who knew him?

– Some didn’t believe it was him
– Others demanded him to tell how this happened

The neighbors and those around were skeptical of what had happened.  In their defense, it would have been hard to believe what they were seeing.  They remembered this man as being blind and begging at the Temple gate, and now he is up walking around. I am sure some of them wondered for the rest of their lives, “Was he really blind, or has been doing this in order to be a beggar?”

How many of us struggle with skepticism? I will be the first one to raise my hand. I am skeptical of what some people claim. There are people who claim to have healing powers from God, to that I am skeptical. There are people who claim to have a special revelation from God, to that I am skeptical.

However, the one thing in which we should not be skeptical is the power of Jesus to change lives.  Take a look around your world. Odds are there is someone that you don’t think can ever be reached by Jesus.  What would happen if God’s people everywhere would stop being skeptical of the power of Christ? Would we reach out to our neighbors, would we be more involved in missions giving, praying and going?  I believe millions of lives would be changed forever.

It is time that we as God’s people believe that  Jesus can change lives! We should keep reaching out to our community, to our world through missions and to that relative, neighbor or coworker  that we don’t think will ever respond to Jesus.  Jesus can change lives but we may not see it because of our prejudice and skepticism.    In the next post we will look at two more attitudes that may be blinding us.

Darrell

www.RidgeFellowship.com

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