Study 14 - 2007: June 11th - 17th 2007

Who Speaks for God??

“Jesus answered, “What I teach is not my own teaching, but it comes from God, who sent me. Whoever is willing to do what God wants will know whether what I teach comes from God or whether I speak on my own authority”. John Chapter 7:verses 12 to 13 (Good News Bible).

Have you ever been playing golf when your partner has offered you a lesson to try to help you with your game? “Keep your head still” is one advice I have heard on a number of occasions that you wonder if they really know what they are talking about. Then again Gary Player the great South African golfer has said that he once got some advice from a rank amateur playing in a Pro-Am that helped him get his game back in order. I have sometimes I have been grateful for advice while other times I know the advice given is wrong.
How do you know when the advice given is right or wrong? For many of us it is not easy to tell.

In answering this question, it comes down to the credibility of the advice given. We can test this advice against all the other advice that we know. Keeping your head still is helpful only to a certain point in the golf swing. If you look at how a professional finishes his swing their head after impact moves slightly forward with the body in the direction of the target. Our balance at the end of the swing is on the front foot, so our head needs to follow our body.

What about all the religions and the many voices calling out for our attention and wanting to give us advice about life? How do we respond? How do we know that Jesus came to represent God? This is a question of our reading today when Jesus was confronted with religious leaders who did not believe his teaching was from God?

Again I believe it comes down to integrity and truth. I hear many times people say, it does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. This has to be one of the worst sayings there is, because you can be sincerely wrong. That thought has led many to follow the most corrupt and foolish people ending in suicide, family break-up and loss of freedom because they never questioned what was said.

Jesus invites us to question what he says, to test it out against what others have said. For Jesus it is about being sincerely right and truthful when it comes to speaking about God.

I remember Nicky Gumbel who produced the famous Alpha Course on Christianity said that he read the life of Jesus just to dismiss him as a credible witness to truth. However, after reading the life of Christ in the bible, he said there was a point he came to when he knew Jesus and his words were true. This was not out of coercion, or need to belong, but out of the conviction that Jesus spoke the truth and the words of God. This had to do with the credibility of what he read and his openness to it. Even some atheists acknowledge that the teachings of Jesus are the greatest words on ethics and morals that have been spoken.

For the religious leaders, Jesus was a threat to what they believed about God. Jesus healed a man and asked him to carry his mat home on the Sabbath, so in their minds he broke the law they held sacred. Their law permitted no kind of carrying on the Sabbath (See John Chapter 5: verses 7 to 10). Because of this they didn’t believe his teaching came from God. But Jesus shows how laws can be a burden to the detriment of helping people. Whoever is looking for God will not be disappointed in Jesus.

Prayer, Lord, help us in life to have integrity and sincerity in all we do. Thank you that Jesus shows us what you are really like. Amen.