Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.  Luke 24:5-6

"Quote" of the Week

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. -Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:19

After Jesus fed the 5,000, many came to him because they wanted to follow someone who could meet their physical needs.  Jesus responds by telling them that God has given them so much more because He has given them Him.  In John 6:51 he tells his audience,

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. 

Jesus is using this imagery here to point the Jewish people back to the time when God provided manna for them from heaven.  Jesus is using this imagery to say, “I am your provision—I am your manna.  I am the bread of life that God has sent for you.”

For more, click HERE and listen to KNOWING JESUS AS THE BREAD OF LIFE

"Quote" of the Week

He left His Father’s throne above, so free, so infinite His grace; emptied Himself of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race.  -Charles Wesley

There are some in our world today who believe that we who call ourselves Christians have been misled.  They believe that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures and as a result have misrepresented the one we claim to follow.  A well-known Indian by the name of Zakir Abdul Karim Naik is leading this attack on evangelicals.  Naik, a devout Muslim, is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation and travels throughout the country speaking on the subject of Islam and comparative religion.

One issue he spends a great deal of time on—a subject that he discusses quite frequently is the doctrine of Christ, more specifically the claims of Christ.  Zakir believes, like most Muslims that Jesus was a respectable prophet, but nothing more.  He also goes as far as to say that Jesus never claimed to be more than that. 

If that statement is true then our belief system as Christians crumble, because the deity of Christ is at the heart of the Christian message.  If it is true that Jesus did not claim to be God—if it is true that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures and have misrepresented Him, then we as believers are wasting our time following Him and reading and study God’s word.    

The truth, however, is that it is Zakir who has misinterpreted the Scriptures and Zakir who has misrepresented Christ.  It does not take much digging—it does not take much research at all to see that God is exactly who Jesus claimed to be.

"Quote" of the Week

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God." -C.S. Lewis

WE ARE A THIRSTY PEOPLE

Yesterday we were in John chapter 4 and a key truth we learned from this chapter is that we are a thirsty people.  All people without exception have this problem.  We all have a thirst that can never ultimately be quenched.  That is why we have to go on a daily basis to places where we can access water. 

We learn from this chapter that Jesus, by striking up this conversation with this woman at the well is trying to her to see that she is thirsty and in need and that her needs go far beyond the physical.  In verse 13 he says,

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

What is Jesus saying here?  Well, like with Nicodemus in John 3, Jesus is not speaking literally but figuratively and spiritually.  He is talking about providing spiritual water for this woman—he’s talking about quenching her spiritual thirst.  Notice he says, “The water that I give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

He is talking about salvation here and says, “The water you are drinking, though it is good water, it does not ultimately satisfy.  After drinking this water, you are going to be thirsty again, and you are going to have to come to this well for more.”  Jesus says, “The water I am talking about—it satisfies.  It does not quench your thirst for an hour and then you get thirsty again.”  The water Jesus is talking about is spiritual water and the thirst a spiritual thirst.

I believe John has given us this story because he wants us his readers to relate to this woman at the well, and there are a lot of ways in which we can.  One way we can relate is that we, like the woman, all have deeper seeded spiritual needs.  We all have a hunger and a thirst within us that goes beyond the physical.  We all have a thirst for lasting happiness, and try our hardest to find it in relationships, in social status, in money, in our jobs etc.  All of us think that if we work hard enough, we will finally get to the point when we will find satisfaction that lasts. 

We learn, however, by the example that John gives us here as well as all throughout Scripture that lasting happiness cannot be experienced in the palpable and temporal things of this world.  Only Jesus can ultimately satisfy our spiritual hunger and completely quench our spiritual thirst. 

To hear this sermon from John 4, click HERE and listen to “KNOWING JESUS AS THE LIVING WATER.”    .

"Quote" of the Week

I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.  I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.  –King Solomon