ken castor

Ken Castor ~ Hub video ~ Believing God

Jesus is who Jesus is. Do we still want to follow him? At hub, Ken Castor explores who Jesus is what our response to him should be; based on John chapter 8.

I AM the bread of life (part 3)

This is wild.  The day after Jesus feeds the thousands with bread and fish, the same people demand a miraculous sign from him.  "Moses gave us manna every day, year after year! What are going to do for us?!"   First of all, Jesus replies, Moses didn't give you manna.  God did.  Second of all, you should be asking for the true bread that gives eternal life, not a perishable gift.

Spoiled kids.  They demand, "Oh yes, give us that kind of bread.  That sounds good."

"I am the bread of life," Jesus says.  "It's me.  I am the bread that comes down from heaven.  You must eat me every day!"

This made the people angry.  First of all, he is just a man.  How can he say he came down from heaven?!  Second of all, who would want to eat him?

Jesus hit the point home once more: "The one who feeds on me will live forever."

It's interesting that people grumble after hearing this.  Even Jesus' disciples are a bit gruff... and many of them desert him... Just like their ancestors deserted their faith in God in the desert.  It really doesn't matter how many miraculous signs we see, even everyday- if our appetites and desires are fulfilled completely, we tend to reject God.  Just like the frustrated crowd who had their bellies filled by Jesus... we want more stuff.  So we grumble at God for not just dropping it from heaven.  Our grumbling sadly gets in the way of our acceptance of Jesus as the daily bread that gives us a truly full, everlasting, life.

I AM the bread of life (part 2)

So what did Moses have to do with Jesus?  Did Moses really talk about Jesus?  Did Moses look forward to the day when Jesus would be on the earth?  Jesus says that Moses did.

The immediate difficulty here is that Moses never did say anything specific about Jesus that we have recorded in the Bible.  But the correlation between Moses and Jesus is remarkable.  And it is also worth noting that Moses looked forward to God's redemption and salvation of Israel through sacrifice.  The whole of Leviticus, in fact, points to Jesus... as does Exodus... and Deuteronomy... and Numbers... and Genesis.  Moses was close to God and it would seem in reading his experiences with The Great I AM that Moses was aware of God's desire to act personally to save his people.  Moses was a witness to God's character and God's love and God's action for his people.  Even in this general way, Moses was a witness to "God saves" (which is the meaning of "Jesus"). 

But it seems that Jesus has something even more specific in mind.  Perhaps he was referring to his transfiguration- a mysterious encounter where Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus in front of three of disciples (Mark 9).

On top of this we see the correlation between how God used Moses to lead the people to freedom and how God used Moses to provide daily bread in the dessert.  The manna (which means "What is it?") that God gave everyday to the Israelites was a sign of God's provision for the people (Exodus 16:15).  The future expectation of Israel was that the Messiah would come and "restore the manna to Israel (Nehemiah 9:15, Psalm 78:24).  One ancient Jewish writing says "As the first Redeemer brough down teh manna... so will also the last Redeemer cause the manna to come down" (Midrash Qoh. 1:9)

In Exodus 16, the people were grumbling about the difficult conditions they found themselves in.  Some wanted to go back to Egypt!  So they directed their complaints at Moses and Aaron… but Moses and Aaron made it clear that their complaints were really against God.  So in response, God gave them manna and to test them – to see if they would really follow him. 

So, when the people are hungry in John 6, Jesus feeds them... thousands of them... with practically nothing.  It's interesting that shortly after this, the people grumble against Jesus and demand a sign.  "Do something spectacular," they demand, "like Moses did!"

Notes:

• Grumbling at God was characteristic of those wandering in the wilderness… In a span of three chapters in Exodus, they grumbled about the water God gave them (Ex 15:24), about not having enough bread (Ex 16:2), about not having enough water (Ex 17:3), about their hardships (Num 11:1), and even against the manna (Num 11:4-6).  God considers the grumbling as a rejection of Him. 
• Eating God’s word is a frequent metaphor in the Bible.  Eg. see Isaiah 55.

I AM Jesus

This is a Power Point movie we used at the Hub on Sunday night.  It shows the ways Jesus links his own identity with God by using God's Name, I AM.

i am study

We are offering study guides for our current I AM series at the HUB.  Follow this link to download the first four weeks of the series.

I AM the bread of life (part 1)

The first major I AM statement Jesus makes is in John 6:35- I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE.  This does not mean that Jesus is a loaf of sliced wheat bread.   The context and background of this statement is incredibly rich...  Infact, look back at John 5 to know what's going on:

Jesus is ticked.  The religious leaders in Israel were trying to kill him for healing a man on the Sabbath (the day set aside to rest with God).  Their biblical hero, Moses, told the Israelites that God didn't want them to work on the Sabbath.  Healing somebody takes work.  Plus Jesus was claiming equality with God... that his Father in heaven never stopped working so he doesn't either.  In other words, Jesus considered himself above the Sabbath.  So the religious leaders began harassing him and began conspiring to kill him.  And Jesus didn't like that very much.

So Jesus launches into a speech about how God is his witness.  He says that he is totally in line with God and that the religious leaders are totally missing it.  He says that all of Scripture points to him.  He says that they don't truly love God... so there is no way they could love him.  Then he goes for the jugular... he says that even Moses accuses them of failing to honor God.  Look at John 5:45-47:

Yet it is not I who will accuse you of this before the Father.  Moses will accuse you!  Yes, Moses, on whom you set your hopes.  But if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me because he wrote about me.  And since you don't believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?

What does Moses say about Jesus?  Did Moses really write about him?  What's the background here?  (more in the next I AM post...)

I AM.1

Moses asked, "So when they ask me who sent me, what should I tell them?  I know you are God... but what if they ask me your name?  Who should I say you are?"

God answered, "Tell them I AM WHO I AM.  This is what you should tell them.  I AM has sent you... This is my name forever."

The name God chose for himself is a wild name.  No one is quite sure just how to translate it.  In Hebrew the name comes from the word "to be".  We use the letters YHWH to show the word, but no one is quite sure how it should be pronounced.  Along the way somebody threw in some vowel sounds and some German pronunciation and we came up with "Jehovah"... but this probably isn't accurate.  Most hebraic scholars through history have come to believe that YHWH should be pronounced "Yahweh".  It has been such a sacred name, that in ancient Israel and in many Jewish and Christian circles today, the word would never be spoken out-loud.  In fact, in most of our Bibles today, instead of spelling out YHWH, translators have agreed to print "LORD" instead.

So when Jesus starts using this phrase to describe himself, he really stirred up some strong opinions in people.  Sometimes people would marvel at him... Many times people wanted to kill him for being so brazen.  Crowds began wondering who he could be to say such things about himself.  They started asking him, "Who are you?  Where do you come from?  Who has sent you?"  Often, Jesus would answer, "I AM." 

Bold.  In many posts to come I'm going to reflect on these I AM statements from Jesus.  I've started a new category for these posts, because I expect there will be many of them over the months ahead.  Feel free to leave questions, insights, observations, objections, etc in the comments below.