Alive To God

When Jesus came to Jerusalem one Passover, He found that the temple caretakers had lost their vision. What was to be a place for worshipers to pray on holy ground, became an opportunity for the caretakers to prey on the pilgrims.

What should have been a quiet place for reflection and prayer was full of noise and distracting commotion from the buying and selling of animals in the courtyard.

At a wedding at Cana in Galilee, Jesus miraculously turned water into wine. But John inserts a significant piece of detail that I’ve often overlooked: “Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing 20 or 30 gallons apiece” (John 2:6 NKJV).

The details of “waterpots of stone” for “purification of the Jews” points directly to rituals the Jews relied on to be pure before the Lord. Since John used metaphors throughout his book, we can do the same here. We just need to keep to John’s emphasis given in 20:31, lest we be unfaithful to the word.

The Bible reveals the state of our hearts. We may come to the Scriptures initially skeptical of Jesus, as Nathaniel did in v. 46 (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”). But when the Lord reveals His grace, He turns us around.

When Philip approached Jesus accompanied by Nathanael, Jesus told Nathanael that he was an Israelite without deceit. When Nathanael asked how He knew him, Jesus said He saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him (vv. 47-48).

John the baptizer’s goal was to turn people to Jesus, not to build up a large following of his own. His job was to be the voice in the wilderness prophesied in Isaiah 40:3 to prepare the people for Christ’s coming. “The two disciples heard him [the baptizer] speak, and they followed Jesus” (John 1:37).

These two disciples paid attention as John turned their allegiance from him to follow Jesus. This is the goal of all those who earnestly want to be witnesses of Jesus. People notice and hear you, and follow Jesus, not you. What kind of life is this where people turn from you to Christ? A holy life. First we ourselves need to be with Jesus.

The Pharisees were doing their job when they investigated this man who was in unusual garb and preaching an unusual message. They were expecting a Prophet like Moses (Deut. 18:15, Acts 3:20-23), Elijah the prophet (Malachi 4:5), and the Chosen One (Isaiah 42:1) as God promised, before the coming of the Lord.

“Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ” (John 1:19). He said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23). (Luke 3:4-6 gives the fuller quote in his parallel passage.)

After 400 years of prophetic silence after the close of the Old Testament, God raised up a prophet called John and gave him unusual clarity about the coming one. The God of ages past had entered history and visited His people through the Son. John the baptizer testified of this encounter.

“John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, “He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me” ‘ ” (John 1:15). John the baptizer testified of the Son, that He had existed before the baptizer did, although the baptizer was born first (see the sequence of John-then-Jesus birth order in Luke 1-2). The infant John had leaped in recognition of the baby Jesus that was in Mary’s womb when she visited him while he was in his pregnant mother Elizabeth in Luke 1. 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). John opened this first chapter with the Word, the one who is God and also Creator. He was with God in the beginning, showing that He, being divine, was separate from God in His own right. This idea opens the door to the trinity, which John will unfold over time in his gospel.

With this verse, John gives us a surprising twist–that the Word that was God and was with God, the Creator of all things back in the beginning of space, time, and matter–this Word visited us in a human body and lived among us for a time.