Jesus

We have heard someone tell us good new of joy and peace. We have come to know Jesus the Shepherd King. We tell others what we have seen and heard and know. We join with angels and all the redeemed in singing Glory to God.

Whether our darkness comes from relational breakdown, grief, loneliness, health challenges, the guilt of sins committed, the shame of sins experienced, global trends or deep personal struggle, we must know that our God is a God of hope.

Christ is a husband like no other—the husband all others point to. There is no length he is unwilling to go to care and provide for her. Christ spends himself on her. He sweats for her. He bleeds for her. He dies for her. He gives himself up for her. For he loves her.

Dear friends, if you’re struggling and suffering this morning, if you feel you’re running out of options, there is somewhere left to turn. There is a hiding place and a safe refuge with Jesus as He gathers around him all of us who are in need. We’re not meant to be the assembly of the shiny, the sorted and the successful. And we’re not impressing God with our brilliance and our strength. No we are together. The bruised reeds, the smothering wicks huddled together around our King Jesus.

If the Old Testament were teaching a way of salvation based on our own merit, would it be useful reading when I want to grow in Christ—the one whose yoke is easy? If the God I meet in the Old Testament were a different God from the one whom I meet in Christ, could I build others up in Christ by reading the two Testaments together? If the God who saves me through the work of Jesus now “saved” quite differently back then, could I delight in the God I meet in the pages of the Old Covenant?

Friends, it’s not incidental to God that he is a kind and loving Father. That’s not a role he’s stepped into or an act that he tries to pull off while inwardly just being transcendent and disinterested in you.When you pray the Lord’s Prayer and call him “Our Father” or “Abba, Father,” you’re not asking him to pretend for a moment he’s less like God and more like Jesus than he actually is. You’re putting your finger on the very essence of God.

To “abide,” then, is not some special spiritual technique, but instead the posture of trust in Jesus, resting in his love (15:9), lived out in glad obedience to him (15:10). It’s joy-full (15:11). And every branch united to him in two-way friendship is guaranteed fruit that will stand the test of time.

Know that in that day, when Christ takes us to himself fully and finally, one moment in heaven will be worth a thousand lifetimes of trial. All of our regrets, failures, worries, will be assigned to oblivion when we enter into the joyful presence of our supremely kind Saviour and Friend, our Lord and Brother, our King and our God.

Jesus goes out of his way to meet this woman. But why? Perhaps it was not because she was righteous or that she was worthy, but simply that she was: thirsty. Thirsty for more than what she could haul home with her own feeble hands. A thirst that was deeper than Jacob’s well could ever go, deep down in the parched places of her heart.

Daniel Hames introduces the early Church Father, Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril’s legacy endures as one of the most influential figures in the development of the doctrine of Christ, shaping the theological landscape of Christianity for centuries to come.