Dear Explorer,
Read John 1:10
The word “recognize” or “know” has 2 different meanings in common usage today. What do you think the word means in this verse?
When we recognize or know someone, we note their identity from their outer features. We've seen them before and therefore we recognize them or know them the next time we meet. The Jews had never seen Jesus, so I don't think it's this meaning.
The second meaning is to acknowledge or recognize a legitimate claim for some accomplishment or title. Jesus was their Creator. He was God. They should have known or recognized His legitimate claim – but they didn't.
Read John 1:11
Jesus came to the Jews first. Why?
Because God had carefully prepared the Jewish people for His coming.
Almost 2000 years before Jesus came to earth, God had chosen a man named Abraham to begin preparation for Jesus to arrive. Abraham's grandson was named Jacob or Israel. We've already talked about his 12 sons becoming the nation of Israel (the Jews). God had selected them to be a cocoon in which to birth Jesus. He sent them prophets and leaders to guide them and provided them with all the necessary information so that they could recognize Jesus when He arrived. There are over 300 prophecies concerning Jesus recorded in their Scriptures (the Old Testament). God's intention was to use the Jews to bless all the nations of the world with this knowledge of the Messiah. God called them “His chosen people” because He had such a special job for them to do. Jesus was born into the earthly Jewish tribe of Judah. So, the Jews were “His own people”.
Read John 1:12-13
What did those who believed and received Jesus get?
Now this was confusing to the Jews because they already considered themselves to be God's chosen people. They believed that just being born into a Jewish family made them sons and daughters of God. In one sense, that is true. Everyone who is born physically is in some ways a child of God because God is God, and everything belongs to Him. But here, John states that you can't be born into God's family with just a physical birth, you must have a spiritual birth, too. We'll talk more about this as we continue our study.
Read John 1:14
The best way I know to describe this verse is through a story I heard a long time ago. I don't usually quote other authors – but I think this is such a perfect description of this verse. You can actually hear this story read by Paul Harvey on the internet. Or you can just read it here.
The Man and the Birds
by Paul Harvey
The man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.
“I'm truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so, he stayed and they went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound…Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud…At first, he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them…He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms…Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.
And then, he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.
“If only I could be a bird,” he thought to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm…to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand.”
At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells – Adeste Fidelis – listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.
And he sank to his knees in the snow.
In His service, dale
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