of John's distinctive phrases. By it he means as a rule the official
leaders of the nation, whom in common with the other writers he also
designates by their party names, Pharisees, Scribes, Chief Priests, and
so on. Among these the name of Caiaphas stands out, and later Annas.
Then there are _the crowds_, the masses of people that flock together in
any new stirring movement. There are Galilean crowds, feast-time crowds
including the great numbers of foreign pilgrim Jews, city crowds, and
country crowds. They gather to John's preaching. They gather in great
numbers in Jerusalem, and on the Galilean visits. They are easily
impressionable, swayed by subtle crowd-contagion, stirred up and played
upon cunningly by the opposition leaders.
They appeal greatly to Jesus, like unshepherded sheep. And the sick and
needy ones, so numerous, draw out His pity and warm touch and healing
power. They believe quickly, and almost as quickly are turned away and
desert the cause they had so quickly and warmly rallied to. Fickle,
unthoughtful, easily-swayed, needy crowds, but with the thoughtful ones
and groups here and there who are really helped and who stick. These
crowds are always in evidence.
And there are _the disciples_. There is the inner group of chosen ones
who companion with Jesus, sharing His bread and bed, and close witnesses
of His gracious spirit and unfailing power, with impulsive heady Peter
and faithful steady John always nearest by. What a schooling all this
was for them! And there are other disciples, not of this picked circle,
but on most intimate personal terms with the Master, some of them, like
thoughtful cautious Nicodemus, like the Bethany group of three, and Mary
the Magdalene. And there is the larger, looser, changing body of
disciples, mingling with the crowds, sometimes deserting, but no doubt
with many thoughtful devoted ones among them. These are the leading
persons figuring in John's story, grouped about the person of Jesus.
But these are simply interesting incidentals giving local colouring to
John's story. We pass by them quickly now to a few things that take
great hold of one's heart, that stand out biggest, and give the real
action of life to the story.
Tapestry Threads.
As we unravel the fabric of John's Gospel there are three threads that
stand out by reason of the distinctness of their colours. There's a
thread of clear decided blue. There's a dark ugly black thread that
gets blacker as it weaves itself farther in. And then there's a bright
yellow glory-colour thread that shines with brighter lustre as the black
gets blacker.
Trace the blue first, the thread of a simple glad acceptance of Jesus,
and trust in Him. It deepens in its fine shading of blue as you follow
it, true blue, the colour true hearts wear. From the very first Jesus is
accepted by some, by many. And this continues steadily through to the
very last. Some doors open at once to Him. Then under the influence of
His presence and gentle resistless power they open wide, and then wider.
It is fascinating to trace the simply told story of growing faith, until
one's own faith gets clearer and steadier and has more warm glow to it.
To adapt Tennyson's fine lines, as knowledge grows from more to more
there dwells in us more of the deep tender reverence of love, until all
the powers of mind and spirit chord into one symphony of unending music.
And the wheels of our common life move always to its rhythmic swing.
See how _the crowds_ crowd to Jesus, and open up to the appeal of His
words and acts and presence. Many of the pilgrim crowds of that first
Passover believe, impressed by Jesus' spirit of helpfulness and His
unusual power.[47] And the Galileans among them give Him warm welcome as
He comes up into their country.[48] It is a great multitude that follows
eagerly up on the east coast of the Galilean sea, hail Him as the
long-expected prophet of their nation, talk of plans for making Him
their King, and earnestly cry out, "Lord, evermore give us this (true)
bread."[49]
Even in the midst of the bickering discussions at the Tabernacles Feast
many of the multitude believed on Him, some as the long-talked-of
prophet, some as the very Christ Himself.[50] And as He talks to His
critics of His purpose always to please the Father, still others are
drawn in heart to Him and believe.[51] And at this same time, as the
criticism gets uglier, many make bold to speak out on His behalf[52]
though it was getting to be a dangerous thing to do. As He feels
compelled to withdraw from the tense atmosphere of Jerusalem, and goes
away into the country districts beyond the Jordan the people come
flocking to Him with open hearts.[53]
The Lazarus incident made inroads into the upper circles of Jerusalem,
many of the influential social class with whom these dear Bethany
friends seem on close terms, and who had been out there during those
stirring days, believe on Jesus, and many of the common people, too, are
won by that occurrence.[54] That tremendous raising of Lazarus had much
to do with the great acclaim of the multitudes as Jesus rode into
Jerusalem on the kingly colt.[55]
It is without doubt a sincere homage that these multitudes from far and
near, and the home crowds, render, with their palm branches and
garment-strewn roads, and spontaneous outburst of joyous song.[56] And
now as John put his bit of a knotted summary on the end of this part of
his story, he points out that even among the members of the Jewish
Senate there were many real believers.[57]
But a crowd is a strange complex thing. It doesn't know itself. It's
easily swept along to do as a crowd what would never be done by each one
off by himself. And this works in good ways as well as in bad. Jesus
drew the crowds and was drawn by them. He couldn't withstand the pull of
the crowd. The lure of its intense need was irresistible to Him. Yet He
knew crowds rarely.
He was never blinded by their enthusiasm. His keen insight saw under the
surface, though it never held Him critically back from helping. He
quickly notes that the belief of those first Passover crowds has not
reached the dependable stage.[58] He is never held back from showing the
red marks in the road to be trodden even though many of His disciples
balk at going farther on such a road, and some turn away to an easier
road,[59] so revealing an utter lack of the real thing. And even where
there's real faith of the sincere sort it is yet sometimes not of the
seasoned sort that can stand the storms.[60]
These crowds seem of close kin to more modern crowds. One touch of a
crowd rubs out centuries of difference and shows one family blood in us
all. Yet keep things poised. It was out of these crowds that there came
the disciples and close friends to whom we now turn. There's gold in the
crowds, finest twenty-four carat gold. It's all a matter of mining.
Skilful mining gets out the gold. This wondrous Lover used the
magnetic-current method of mining, the love-current. The strong warm
current, the fine personal spirit current, drew out to Him the fine
grains of gold in these human crowds.
Growing Faith.
Now we climb the hill where _the disciples_ are. The crowds are in the
bottom-lands. Many have started up the hill. Jesus always woos men
uphill. You can always tell a man by where he is standing, bottom-land,
hillside, higher-hill-slope, hilltop. We turn now from the crowds that
believed to those whose personal acceptance of Jesus drew them into the
inner circle.
The first three incidents trace the beginnings of faith in those first
close disciples who came to be numbered among the picked inner
twelve.[61] The first story is one of the rarest of John's many rare
stories. It is characteristic of the real thing of faith that beginning
with two they quickly number five. The attachment of the two to John,
the Witness, reveals them as of the earnest inquiring sort, after the
very best. John never forgot that talk with Jesus in the gathering
twilight by the Jordan. It sends Andrew out for Peter, and John likely
for James, while the Master gets Philip, and he in turn Nathaniel. That
reveals the real stuff of faith. It has a mind whose questionings have
been satisfied, a heart that catches fire, and feet that hasten
out-of-doors for others. That's the real thing.
Their faith takes deeper root at Cana. A new personal experience of
Jesus' power is a great deepener of faith, the great deepener. This is
the only pathway from faith to a deeper realer sturdier faith. A man can
get a deeper faith only by walking on his own feet where Jesus leads.
Their faith grows imperceptibly but by leaps and bounds. It grows down
deeper and so up stronger and out farther by their _companionship with
Jesus_ through those brief packed years. What a school that was! the
school of companionship with Jesus, with lessons daily, but the chiefest
lesson the Teacher Himself. What a school it _is_! The only one for
learning the real thing of faith: still open: pupils received at any
time.
If we would shut our eyes and go with them as they company with Jesus
through those wondrous days and events and experiences we may get some
hold on how their faith grew. They actually saw the handful of loaves
and fishes grow in their hands until thousands were fed. Their own eyes
saw Jesus walking on the water.
It was out of their very hearts that they cry out through Peter's lips
in answer to Jesus' pathetic pleading question and say, "To whom shall
we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."[62] And without doubt
Thomas acts as spokesman for all when Jesus announced His intention of
returning to the danger zone, and Thomas sturdily says, "Let us _also_
go, that we may die with Him."[63]
But you are thinking of that terrible break of theirs on the betrayal
night, are you? Well, perhaps if we call to mind with what an utter
shock the events of that terrific twenty four hours came, intensified
the more by the unexpectedness and the suddenness of it; and then
if--perhaps--we may call to mind the more recent behaviour of some
modern disciples who have had enormous advantages over them in regard to
that terrific experience it may chasten our feelings a bit and soften
the edge of our thought about them.
But dear faithful John never faltered. We must always love him for that.
How humiliating for us if not even one had stood that test. And how
their after-contact with John must have affected the others. John pulled
the others back and up. And how their faith so sorely chastened and
tested came to its fine seasoned strength afterwards.
These very events of the early days now come back with new meaning to
them. Jesus' words at the temple cleansing, and the kingly entry into
Jerusalem, shine now in a new light and give new strength to their
faith.[64] But John himself brings us back to this again in that long
talk of the betrayal night. So we leave it now. But blue is a good
colour for the eyes. It reveals great beauty in the bit of
tapestry-pattern John is weaving for us to trace these true blue
threadings.
But there's more here, much more, that adds greatly to the pattern.
There are faithful disciples _and precious intimate friendships_ outside
the circle of these future leaders. Take only a moment for these as we
push on.
There's that night visitor of the early Jerusalem days. Aristocrat,
ruler, scholar, with all the supercautiousness that these qualities
always grain in, Nicodemus actually left the inner circle of
temple-rulers who were as sore to the touch as a boil over John's
drastic cleansing, and comes for a personal interview. His utter
sincerity is shown in the temper of his remarks and questions, and shown
yet more in the openness of Jesus' spirit in talking with him. For this
is a trait in Jesus' dealings,--openness when He finds an opening door.
It _must_ be so, then and now. He can open up only where there is an
opening up to Him. Openness warms and loosens. The reverse chills and
locks up.[65]
It is in another just such situation but far more acute, that this man
speaks out for Jesus in an official meeting of these same rulers.
Timidly? have you thought, cautiously? Yet he spoke out when no one else
did, though others there believed in Jesus. A really rare courage it was
that told of a growing faith.[66] And the personal devotion side of his
faith, evidence again of the real thing, stands out to our eyes as we
see him bring the unusual gift of very costly ointments for the
precious body of his personal friend.[67] It's a winsome story, this of
Nicodemus. May there be many a modern duplicate of it.
In utter social contrast stands the next bit of this sort following so
hard that the contrast strikes you at once. It's a half-breed Samaritan
this time, and a woman, and an openly bad life. The Samaritans were
hated by Jew and Gentile alike as belonging to neither, ground between
the two opposing social national millstones. Womanhood was debased and
held down in the way all too familiar always and everywhere. And a moral
outcast ranks lowest in influence.
But true love discerns the possible lily in the black slime bulb at the
pond's bottom and woos it into blossoming flower, till its purity and
beauty greet our delighted eyes. Under the simple tact of love's true
touch, out of such surroundings grows a faith, through the successive
stages of gossipy curiosity, cynical remark, interest, eagerness, guilty
self-consciousness that would avoid any such personal conversation, out
and out comes a faith that means a changed life, and then earnest
bringing of others till the whole village acclaims Jesus a Saviour,
_the_ Saviour.
And the very title they apply to Jesus reveals as by a flash-light the
chief personal meaning the interview had for this outcast woman. In one
way her faith meant more than Nicodemus', for it meant a radical change
of outer life with her. And many a one stops short of that, though the
real thing never does, and can't.[68]
Then the circle widens yet more, geographically. Jew, Samaritan, it is a
_Roman_ this time, one of the conquering nation under whose iron heel
the nation writhes restlessly. He is of gentle birth and high official
position. It is his sense of acute personal need that draws him to
Jesus. The child of his love is slipping from his clinging but helpless
grasp.
There's the loose sort of hearsay groping faith that turns to Jesus in
desperation. Things can't be worse, and possibly there might be help.
There's the very different faith that looks Jesus in the face and hears
the simple word of assurance so quietly spoken. He actually heard the
word spoken about _his_ dying darling, "_thy son liveth_."
Then there is that wondrous new sort of faith whose sharper hooks of
steel enter and take hold of your very being as you actually
_experience_ the power of Jesus in a way wholly new to you. As it came
to his keenly awakened mind that the favourable turn had come at the
very moment Jesus uttered those quiet words, and then as he looked into
the changed face of his recovering child, he became a changed man. The
faith in Jesus was a part of his being. The two could never be put
asunder. So the Roman world brought its grateful tribute of acceptance
to this great wooing brooding Lover. The wooing had won again.
And now there's another extreme social turnabout in the circle that
feels the power of Jesus' wooing. We turned from Jerusalem aristocrat to
Samaritan outcast; now it's from gentle Roman official to a beggaring
pauper. It is at the Tabernacles' visit. Jesus, quietly masterfully
passing out from the thick of the crowd that would stone Him, noticed a
blind ragged beggar by the roadway. One of those speculative questions
that are always pushing in, and that never help any one is asked: "Who's
to blame here?"
With His characteristic intense practicality Jesus quietly pushes the
speculative question aside with a broken sentence, a sentence broken by
His action as He begins helping the man. In effect He says, "Neither
this man nor his parents are immediately to blame; the thing goes
farther back. But"--and He reaches down and begins to make the soft clay
with His spittle--"_the_ thing is to see the power of God at work to
help." And the touch is given and the testing command to wash, and then
eyes that see for the first time.
But the one thing that concerns us now in this great ninth chapter is
the faith that was so warmly wooed up out of nothing to a thing of
courageous action and personal devotion to Jesus. It is fairly
fascinating to watch the man move from birth-blind hopelessness through
clay-anointed surprise and wonder and Siloam-walking expectancy on to
water-washing eyesight.
It is yet more fascinating to see his spirit move up in the language he
uses, from "the _man_ called Jesus," and the cautious but blunt "I don't
know about His being a sinner, but I know I can _see_," on to the
bolder "clearly not a sinner but a man in reverent touch with God
Himself."
Then the yet bolder, "a man _from God_," brings the break with the
dreaded authorities which branded him before all as an outcast and as a
damned soul. And then the earnest reverent cry "Who is He, Lord, that I
may believe?" reveals the yearning purpose of his own heart. And then
the great climax comes in the heart cry, "Lord, I believe, I believe
Thee to be the very Son of God."
And the outcast of the rulers casts in his lot with Jesus and begins at
once living the eternal quality of life which goes on endlessly. What a
day for him from hopeless blindness of body and heart to eyesight that
can see Jesus' face and know Him as his Saviour and Lord! Growth of
faith clearly is not limited to the counting of hours. It waits only on
one's walking out fully into all the light that comes, no matter where
it may lead your steps.
The Bethany Height of Faith.
The Bethany story is one of the tenderest of all. It touches the
heights. It's a hilltop story, both in its setting amidst the Bethany
blue hills where it grew up, and in the height of faith it records. It
has personal friendship and love of Jesus and implicit trust in Him as
its starting point. And from this it reaches up to levels unknown
before. Faith touches high water here. It rises to flood, a flood that
sweeps mightily through the valleys of doubt and questionings all around
about.
At the beginning there is faith in Jesus of the tender, personal sort.
At the close there's faith that He will actually meet the need of your
life and circumstance _without limit_. The highest faith is this:
connecting Jesus' power and love with the actual need of your life.
Abraham believed God with full sincerity that covenant-making night
under the dark sky. But he didn't connect his faith in God with his need
and danger among the Philistines.[69] Peter believed in Jesus fully but
his faith and his action failed to connect when the sore test came that
Gethsemane night.
The Bethany pitch of faith makes connections. It ties our God and our
need and our action into one knot. This is the pith of this whole story.
Jesus' one effort in His tactful patient wooing is to get Martha up to
the point of ordering that stone aside. He got her faith into touch with
the gravestone of her sore need. Her faith and her action connected.
That told her expectancy. Creeds are best understood when they're acted.
Moving the stone was her confession of faith. _Not_ that Jesus was the
Son of God. That was settled long before.
No: it meant this--that the Son of God was now actually going to _act as
Son of God_ to meet her need. Under His touch her dead brother was going
to live. The deadness that broke her heart would give way under Jesus'
touch. The Bethany faith doesn't believe that God _can_ do what you
need, merely. It believes that He _will_ do it And so the stone's taken
away that He _may_ do it. God has our active consent. Are we up on the
Bethany level? Has God our active consent to do all He would? Is our
faith being lived, acted out?
And the feast of grateful tribute that followed has an exquisite added
touch. The faith that lets God into one's life to meet its needs gets
clearer eyesight. Acted faith affects the spirit vision. There is a
spirit sensitiveness that recognizes God and discerns how things will
turn out.
Notice Jesus' words about Mary's act of anointing. There is a singularly
significant phrase in it. "Let her _keep it_ against (or in view of) the
day of My burying." "Keep it" is the striking phrase. What does that
mean? We speak of _keeping_ a day, as Christmas, meaning to hallow the
memories for which it stands. "Keep it" here seems to mean that. Let her
keep a memorial. Yet it would be a memorial _in advance_ of the event
remembered and hallowed.
It seems to suggest that Mary thus discerned the outcome for Jesus of
the coming crisis, and more, its great significance. The disciples
expected Jesus' power to overcome all opposition. She alone sensed what
was coming, His death and its tremendous spirit-meaning. And it is
possible that the raising of her brother helped her to sense ahead
another raising. For there is no mention of her at the tomb, as would
otherwise have been most natural.
Her simple love-lit faith could _see_, and could see _beyond_ to the
final outcome. This is the story of the Bethany faith, faith at flood.
This highest simplest truest faith, that had come in answer to Jesus'
patient persistent wooing for it, opens the way for the greatest use of
His power on record.
There's one story more in this true-blue faith list. It is the story of
the Greeks. At first it seems not to belong in here. There is no mention
made of the faith of these men nor of their acceptance of Jesus. But the
more you think into it the more it seems that here is its true place,
and that this is why John brings it in, not simply to show how the
outside world was reaching for Jesus, but to show the inner spirit of
these men towards Jesus.
Whether the term _Greeks_ is used in the looser sense for the
Greek-speaking Jews,[70] or for non-Jewish foreigners, or, as I think
most likely, in the meaning of men of Grecian blood, residents of
Greece, the significance is practically the same, it was the outer world
coming to Jesus. These had come a long journey to do homage to the true
God at Jerusalem. Their presence reveals their spirit.
They were eye and ear-witnesses of the stirring events of those last
days in Jerusalem. The stupendous story of the raising of the man out in
the Bethany suburb was the talk of the city. And then there was that
intense scene of the kingly entry into the city amid the acclaiming
multitudes. They knew of the official opposition, and the public
proclamation against Jesus. They breathed the Jerusalem air. That put
them in touch with the whole situation.
Now notice keenly they seek a personal interview with Jesus. This is the
practical outcome of the situation _to them_. It reminds one of that
other man, under similar conditions though less intense, at an earlier
stage, cautiously seeking a night interview. Their desire tells not
curiosity but earnestness, and the very earnestness reveals both purpose
and attitude towards Jesus.
And this is made the plainer by the very words they use as they seek out
the likeliest man of the Master's inner circle to secure the coveted
interview. They say, "Sir, _we would see Jesus_." The whole story of
conviction, of earnestness, of decision, is in that tremendous little
word "would." It was their will, their deliberate choice, to come into
personal relations with this Man of whom they were hearing so much.
And it seems like a direct allusion to that tremendous word, and an
answer to it, when Jesus, in effect, in meaning, says, "if any man
_would_ follow Me." Both the coming under such circumstances, and the
form of the request, seem to tell the attitude of these men towards
Jesus and their personal purpose regarding Him. It would be altogether
likely that they accompany Philip as he seeks out Andrew. It would be
the natural thing. And so they are with Philip and Andrew as they come
to tell Jesus.