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            The chapter continues by the Gentiles wishing to see Jesus and asking Philip if they could see Him. Jesus said that the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified and exalted. Jesus spoke prophetically and called things forth even though it may not have made sense to the disciples. Often time when we hear prophetic words they won’t make sense with what is going on in the natural, but that’s the whole point. The prophetic is the word from God that calls forth His will into action. God tells His prophets His plans, and then the prophets will share with the body on God’s perfect timing. Jesus then prophesied His fleshly death which confused the people. They didn’t understand how He was eternal yet about to be lifted up.

            We often times miss the message in prophetic words because we interpret wrong, we tend to interpret things off the current knowledge and wisdom we have which might not be enough to correctly interpret the word given in that moment. Thankfully we have the Holy Spirit to guide us and help us to understand interpretations of prophetic words.

            Jesus is the light in the darkness and those who follow Him will stay in His light and glory. To follow Him we have to beleive and trust in Him, we need to stay out of doubt. After all the miracles He performed some still doubted and had disbelief. Even though the light was right in front of them, some couldn’t see it. We have to be open to receive Jesus and we have to surrender fully to Him. We have to choose Him above all else to be in His light and stay in His light. The moment we lose focus of Him and intimacy with Him, our light dims and it slowly begins to get dark. The dark wants to devour those who beleive. The enemy wants to pull believers into distractions and being busy in hopes to dim His light in them. God will never force us to stay in communion with Him, we have to choose to fight to stay in His light. We do this by spending time with Him, reading His word, worshiping Him and continuously surrending to Jesus in all things with every knew opportunity that arises to surrender.

            Verse 42 says that there were pharisees who believed Jesus was the Song of God yet they wouldn’t confess it out of fear that they would be rejected and kicked out of the synagogue.  They feared losing their approval and stature that the synagogue provided them, they weren’t willing to surrender. We need to do more than believe, we need to surrender. Anyone who believes and trusts in Jesus will no longer live in darkness, they will live in light. When we trust in Jesus our actions will show it, we will show a life that is surrendered; we have to choose.

            Even Jesus had a choice, HE states that the words He spoke were not on His own initiative or authority but the Father Himself who sent Jesus. He had to choose to say what the Father said and not say anything else. He had to choose to execute the will of God, He wasn’t forced to do it. God never forces anything to do anything, everyone always has free choice.

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            It was six days before Passover and Jesus was back in Bethany with Lazarus (whom He hadrose from the dead) and his family for supper. The picture that is painted here is incredible to ponder. Lazarus, who was dead but Jesus rose to life is reclined at the table next to Jesus who is sitting back and enjoying the company. Martha was there serving and Mary came up to Jesus with a pound of perfume and began to anoint His feet with the perfume, wiping it with her hair. This perfume was expensive, some theologians beleive that to buy this expensive perfume Mary had to have spent her life savings on it. She gave all that she had to get this perfume to anoint Jesus with because she loved Jesus so much and wanted to bless Him and shower Him with her love. Her heart was postured on Jesus and nothing else mattered, especially finances. This is how we should be, we should have our hearts postured on wanting to worship and love Jesus regardless of the cost.

            Judas didn’t like this at all, he saw the expensive perfume being poured on Jesus’ feet and instead of seeing the beauty in how much Mary loved Jesus, Judas saw wasted money. Judas didn’t se this is an act of love and worship rather a waste of money, yet he tried to make it sound like his motives were good. Rather than being honest he lied and said that the money would have better served the poor rather than expensive perfume to dump on Jesus’ feet.  When the enemy tries to put a nasty thought in your head he will try to make it seem good by manipulating and twisting the motives. The truth was, Judas didn’t care about the poor, he was in charge of the money and had been steeling from it and he wanted the perfume to be sold so that the money could go to them and he would be able to steel from it. He wanted to benefit from it, he didn’t care about the poor and he didn’t care to see Jesus being adored by Mary, he was completely filled with greed.

            Jesus told Judas to leave her alone so that she may keep the rest of the oil for the day of His burial. He said that they will always have the poor but He will not be there forever. Jesus could read Judas’ mind and knew his motives yet didn’t call him out on it, instead He prophesied what was to come and none of them seemed to understand that at that moment.

            A large group of Jews had heard that Jesus was there and that He had rose Lazarus from the dead so they came to see for themselves. The chief priests knew this and plotted to kill Lazarus as well, because as long as Lazarus was alive he was leading people to Jesus and more and more Jews were walking away from the traditions and teaching of the Jewish leaders. The chief priests wanted the Jews to forget about the miracle so they’d keep following the Jewish leaders but as long as Lazarus was there it was a constant reminder of what Jesus had done.

            The next day, when the large crowd who had come to the Passover feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took branches of palm trees in homage to Him as King and went out to meet Him. They began shouting praises to Him; Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it to fulfill prophecy. The disciples were unsure why He sat on the donkey but once they saw Him on a donkey and people praising Him with the palms they remembered the scripture. The people who were with Jesus when He raised Lazarus’ from the tomb went and told everyone the testimony and it caused more and more people to come see Jesus. This only angered the Pharisees even more. The Pharisees were so terrified of losing their following and their power.  There could have been some whose hearts were in the right places, unfortunately they were overshadowed by the ones who were seeking to kill and murder to “protect” their religion.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This is an incredible day to give extra thanks and praise to God and all that He has done for you. Begin reminding yourself all that God has done in your life, meditate on His goodness and bring that heart posture to this Thanksgiving day to give thanks to Him and to share your testimony with others so they too can see how great our God is.

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            By the time Jesus arrived Lazarus had been in the tomb for 4 days. Many of the Jews were there to comfort Martha and Mary; as soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming she went to meet Him while Mary stayed in the house. Martha told Jesus that had He been there He could have saved Lazarus but even though he is here later, she knows that whatever Jesus will ask God, He will give Him. Jesus looked to Martha and told her that Lazarus will rise again.

            First lets look at the faith Martha had, even though her brother was dead she knew that whatever Jesus asked God, it would be given. She knew that somehow someway Jesus could still perform a miracle, why else would she say that? Had she been without hope she surely wouldn’t have said that, deep down she had faith that He could do something. I don’t think she was aware of exactly what that something would be, especially because next Jesus told her that Lazarus will rise again and she thought Jesus was referring to the carrying away of the church at the end of age. Despite not knowing what Jesus meant she had faith that Jesus could do something to fix the situation and bring good of it. We need to always keep our faith alive and strong, we don’t need to always understand the way or the outcome but simply having faith that God will provide and has a plan is what we need to focus on. Its a reminder to keep your eyes on Jesus, not the storm around us.

            Jesus said that He is the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in Him, though they were dead, shall live. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and we get born again, we will live with Him eternally and shall never die. When we see that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and we make Him our life, we will live in Him eternally.

            Martha went and got Mary to come see Jesus, when Mary saw Jesus she fell to His feet, wept and said that had He been here Lazarus wouldn’t have died. Jesus groaned when He heard what Mary felt and when He saw her and the Jews that followed her all weeping. Groan in greek means to show discomfort, to sigh, to express grief or frustration. A few verses later it says that Jesus wept. I beleive it was hard for Him to see how sad all these people were, and also how they had given up and accepted that Lazarus was gone purely because they didn’t know any different. This isn’t how it was meant to be and was another confirmation that things had to change. Jesus was going to change the world in more ways than they knew, in more ways than raising Lazarus from the tomb.

            Jesus told them to move the stone blocking the tomb to which they argued, they said that surely he would stink by now because its been four days. Jesus said, ‘Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?’ We have to beleive, we have to have our faith strong in the Lord, we can’t afford to entertain doubt, no matter how impossible or odd it may seem. They rolled the stone away and Jesus went into the tomb, He lifted up Lazarus’ eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank thee that thou has heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.’ As Jesus said this, Lazarus began to cry out and he came forth. He had been wrapped and Jesus told them to loose him and let him go. Lazarus who was dead for four days was now fully alive.

            After this miracle some saw and believed yet some still doubted. Not only did some doubt but they went to the Pharisees to tell them about what had happened. The Pharisees then gathered and held a meeting to figure out what to do, they feared that if they did nothing everyone would follow Jesus because of the miracles He did (light is contagious). They feared that if everyone followed Jesus it would upset Rome and Rome would wipe out religion altogether. Its sad how much fear gripped their hearts, fear of their traditions going away; so much fear that they would rather deny the Son of God than loose their traditions. Caiaphas, the high priest, then decided that they would sacrifice Him in order to keep their traditions and peace with Rome. So Jesus went to the wilderness after this and didn’t walk openly amongst the Jews anymore because He knew what Caiaphas was plotting and He was waiting for His time.

            Fear of change can create awful mindsets. Its important to never operate out of fear, and to be open to change. Be open to being uncomfortable, in fact embrace it. We never want to get so stuck in our ways like the Pharisees did that we miss a move of God. The Pharisees had God in a box and didn’t even realize it, we need to learn from their mistakes. We should seek relationship with Jesus, not religion.

1 Corinthians 13

            This chapter has repeatedly shown up this week and I feel its something we need to dive into which is why I’m adding it to this weeks bible study, as an extra.. This whole chapter is about love, how we should be doing things in love. With love we can have hope and faith, but faith and hope will not exist without love. Love conquers all. Why? Because God is love, and in God everything is possible.

            This chapter gives us illustration to help us understand what is being done in love verses what is being done not in love. Love is: patient, kind, nice, it rejoices in truth, it protects, trusts, hopes and preserves. Love is not: rude, proud, self-seeking, easily angered, boastful, it doesn’t keep records of wrongs, it doesn’t delight in evil and love never fails.

            If you are doing something in love it will not fail.

            We as the church should be praying for the world, for our country, for our cities, for our families, for our friends etc. However, its good to put ourselves in check sometimes with our prayers. Our prayers always need to come from a place of love, that’s when they carry real authority in Jesus. However, if we are praying it isn’t done in love, its maybe self-centered or a reaction to anger; well that’s not going to carry much authority with it. We need to always make sure we are coming from a place of love. Love never fails and love endures all. Jesus never fails and He endures all.