Jesus the Love Apprentice

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Thank you Ps. Josh/ whoever introduces me

POV

King Jesus was an apprentice.

WIIFM

At the end of this, it is my hope that you will have some better perspectives to some of life’s biggest questions.

Instruction

We are going to be looking to a few scriptures today so I hope you have your bibles or phones handy.

We are starting in Jn 5.19-21

John 5:19–21 (NASB95)

19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

20 “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.

21 “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.

So from this passage we have some observations:

King Jesus clearly saw himself in an apprentice type role.

He did not have to say this, it could have been understood, but He went out of His way to make this clear because as stated earlier He is making the Father known to us and He typically does this in light of His relationship to Him as Son.

King Jesus clearly states the reason why the Father shows a living example, it is because it is loving.

We know from 1John that God is Love, meaning that God is not just “loving” but embodies the epitome of love, therefore this method is the most loving, most effective method for teaching/training.

King Jesus clearly sees the reason for what He is doing as raising the dead to life.

I want to unpack these a bit in a Story

Story

King Jesus said, I only do what I see the Father doing, so let us take a look at Gen 1

Now Hebrew is a strong visual language ripe with allegory and metaphor.

Genesis 1:2 NASB95

2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

The earth (which didn’t exist yet) was tohu w bohu (enunciation) and darkness was over the surface of the Tehome.

*For you Bible nerds, when the Spirit of God hovers over the waters, they are no longer the death chaos waters of the Tehome, but become the neutral waters Mayim that bring life.

If you are a primitive desert nomad and do not have a definition of nothing, how would you talk about it? The pre existing state of all things?

Well you might use the language of an empty desert or the seemingly bottomless death trap that is the ocean deep.

So you have darkness, craziness, emptiness, and formlessness. Not ideal environments for life.

Systematically we see Yahweh address each of these issues and every time we get closer to life, we see that Yahweh says it is Good. (Doesn’t happen on day 2 because it is not a net gain for life)

When we finally see Humanity it now becomes very Good.

It is easy to look at Gen 1 and just see some factual information or trying to look at it as the answer to combat whatever new piece of scientific evidence that somehow threatens to destroy faith as we know it and we miss the point of what the author is trying to communicate. That is who is this God? What is He like?

We see here the exact characteristic that King Jesus was talking about.

Our Father has, from the very beginning, been a life giving God. It is who He is.

Love by it’s very nature overflows and is others focused.

As the Father has been eternally loving the Son through the Spirit, He would by very nature of desire want to overflow that love to other beings, thus we see the need for God to be by nature a creating God, so that even more people could be adored by the Son and in turn adore the Son and the One who sent the Son.

But why does this all matter?

Because this answers these fundamental life questions:

Why am I here?

What am I supposed to be doing?

How am I supposed to do it?

You are here because you are loved, you were created because you are loved.

Because you are loved you are meant to experience and express love in the most profound ways to others and back to the One who first loved you.

How do you do that? By following the example that King Jesus showed us, just like He followed the example that our Father showed Him.

POV

King Jesus was an apprentice, for our benefit, so that we could be His apprentices.

WIIFM

By now, I hope that you have another perspective on some of life’s most fundamental questions.

Action

So here are three things I want you to do.

Ask yourself have you positioned yourself close enough to Jesus that you can apprentice under Him?

Ask yourself have you allowed others to be positioned closely enough to you, that they can see King Jesus through you?

Ask yourself, is there anyone in your world right now that God has put in your heart to love and you could do more in that area?

If any of these are problem areas, have you asked for help?

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Closing Prayer

Altar Call