Freedom is Good News Part 46

“Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” (John 15:7)   This is where we left off in our previous article as we were talking about producing fruit, and remaining in Jesus Christ.  So the first thing I must remind us, is that we are in the midst of a parable.  Keep this firmly in your mind and understand that we may not leave the parable to seek things outside the parable.  Do you want to produce fruit?  Ask that you may produce fruit! What does this fruit look like and what purpose does it serve?

The look and purpose of fruit is explained by Jesus in the next verse, “This is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”  Wow!  So the fruit we are to produce is to bring glory to the Heavenly Father.  Do you need anything to help you produce this fruit?  “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”  God does not leave us empty or without help.  His promise is real.  If our desire is to bring glory to God, He will pull out all the stops and provide us with whatever we might ask in our effort to bear much fruit.

I believe this is the heart of what we have been looking at the past two weeks.  I do have a few branches on my grape vine (in the backyard) that were pruned off last year.  They were not producing a thing.  But the reality here is that our Savior, the One who shed His blood for me, has asked me to produce fruit that will bring glory to God the Father and also show that I belong to Jesus and may call myself His disciple.

I have said it before and I will say it again, we can do nothing of ourselves to earn salvation!  It is a free gift of God.  But when God who owns the entire universe gives you the greatest gift, the gift of His Son, His only Son whom He loves, and then invites you to be as His Son was – totally obedient and totally faithful – shouldn’t we strive to do so?

We have been looking at John chapter 15 in this study but in chapter 17 Jesus makes a most remarkable statement.  Chapter 17 is the true Lord’s Prayer.  It is given only hours before His death on the cross and in the prayer Jesus talks again about glory, “Father, the hour has come.  Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. …. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”  Did you catch that?  Jesus brought glory to God by completing the work God gave Him to do!  Jesus completed the work of salvation for you and me.  And God was glorified!

What is the work He has given to you?  Maybe you don’t care.  Maybe you are not interested.  That is between you and God.  But if you are interested and you want to bring glory to God then perhaps we need to consider this subject.  And we shall!!

Until next time…..

Freedom is Good News Part 32

Figures of speech; we use them all the time, to emphasize a statement, to help explain a difficult idea and some times we use them to introduce a mystery into our conversation.  It is not always the best thing to blurt out the answer to every question but sometimes we should desire to get people to think about some conundrum we might have.

I have, in my bookcase, a 1000 page book by the 19th century biblical scholar E. W. Bullinger that deals with the use of “figures of speech” in the bible.  I have on another shelf a translation of the bible that is less than 1000 pages.  Wow!  Someone wrote a book explaining one aspect of the bible and it took him more pages that the bible itself!

Well, the bible is full of these figures of speech.  Bullinger tells us that there are 217 different types of figures of speech.  I’m not sure I understand them all.  But I do know a simile, metaphor, allegory or parable when I see one.  And I believe we all know that our Savior used many parables when He walked the face of the earth.  I have heard people say that He used them to make plain to His listeners some difficult idea.  But He was once asked why He used parables and He gave a very curious answer.  This is found in chapter 13 of the gospel of Matthew.  There are seven separate parables in this chapter and after He spoke the first one it says this in verse 10: “The disciples came to Him and asked, ‘Why do you speak to the people in parables?’  He replied, ‘The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance.  Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.  This is why I speak to them in parables.’”

Well that says a lot!  There were some people that were not supposed to understand what it was He was saying.  The Rabbis in Jesus day were known for not giving an answer but rather posing a difficult question and thereby forcing their disciples to think.  

I believe we have it too easy these days when we are handed answers to our own questions and are not taught to think.  Perhaps that is why we sometimes think the bible is hard to understand.  We just don’t want to think too hard.

I would like to take some time in future articles to consider some metaphors, analogies and parables and so come to what I call a living parable that the Apostle Peter used in his second letter.  This “living parable” is not just good news, it is great news!  Bear with me as we look at some “figures of speech”. 

Until next time……