Henry: Welcome To Immerse: The Daily Bible Reading Experience.
Day 67.
it was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went
to Jerusalem in the temple area.
He saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices.
He also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money.
Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the temple.
He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers, coins over
the floor, and turned over their tables.
Then going over to the people who sold doves.
He told them, get these things out of here.
Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.
Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the scriptures.
Passion for God's house will consume me, but the Jewish leaders
demanded, what are you doing?
If God gave you authority to do this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.
All right.
Jesus replied, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
What they exclaimed.
It has taken 46 years to build this temple and you can rebuild it in three days.
But when Jesus said this temple, he meant his own body.
After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said
this, and they believed both the scriptures and what Jesus had said.
Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover
celebration, many began to trust in him, but Jesus didn't trust them
because he knew all about people.
No one needed to tell him about human nature for he knew what
was in each person's heart.
There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee.
After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus Rabbi.
He said, we all know that God has sent you to teach us.
Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.
Jesus replied, I tell you the truth, unless you are born again,
you cannot see the kingdom of God.
What do you mean exclaimed, Nicodemus?
How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again?
Jesus replied, I assure you.
No one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born
of water and the spirit.
Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit
gives birth to spiritual life.
So don't be surprised when I say you must be born again.
The wind blows wherever it wants, just as you can hear the wind, but can't tell
where it comes from or where it is going.
So you can't explain how people are born of the spirit.
How are these things possible?
Nicodemus asked.
Jesus replied, you are a respected Jewish teacher and yet you
don't understand these things.
I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet
you won't believe our testimony.
But if you don't believe me when I tell you about earthly things,
how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
No one has ever gone to heaven and returned, but the son of man has come
down from heaven and as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the
wilderness, so the son of man must be lifted up so that everyone who
believes in him will have eternal life for this is how God loved the world.
He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will
not perish, but have eternal life.
God sent his son into the world not to judge the world, but
to save the world through him.
There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him, but anyone who does not
believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God's one and only son.
And the judgment is based on this fact.
God's light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than
the light for their actions were evil.
All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear.
Their sins will be exposed, but those who do what is right, come
to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.
Then Jesus and his disciples left Jerusalem and went
into the Judean countryside.
Jesus spent some time with them there baptizing people.
At this time, John the Baptist was baptizing at Enon near Salem because
there was plenty of water there, and people kept coming to him for baptism.
This was before John was thrown into prison.
A debate broke out between John's disciples and a certain
Jew over ceremonial cleansing.
So John's disciples came to him and said, rabbi, the man you met on the
other side of the Jordan River, the one you identified as the Messiah, is
also baptizing people and everybody is going to him instead of coming to us.
John replied, no one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven.
You yourselves know how plainly I told you, I am not the Messiah.
I am only here to prepare the way for him.
It is the bridegroom who marries the bride, and the bridegroom's
friend is simply glad to stand with him and hear his vows.
Therefore, I am filled with joy at his success.
He must become greater and greater.
And I must become less and less.
He has come from above and is greater than anyone else.
We are of the earth and we speak of earthly things, but he has come from
heaven and is greater than anyone else.
He testifies about what he has seen and heard, but how few
believe what he tells them.
Anyone who accepts his testimony can affirm that God
is true, for he is sent by God.
He speaks God's words for God, gives him the spirit without limit.
The Father loves his son and has put everything into his hands, and anyone who
believes in God's son has eternal life.
Anyone who doesn't obey the son will never experience eternal life, but
remains under God's angry judgment.
Jesus knew the Pharisees had heard that he was baptizing and
making more disciples than John.
Though Jesus himself didn't baptize them, his disciples did.
So he left Judea and returned to Galilee.
He had to go through Samaria on the way.
Eventually he came to the Samaritan Village of Sychar near the field
that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph.
Jacob's well was there, and Jesus tired from the long walk, sat weary
beside the well about noontime.
Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus said to
her, please give me a drink.
He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into
the village to buy some food.
The woman was surprised for Jews refused to have anything to do with Samaritans.
She said to Jesus.
You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.
Why are you asking me for a drink?
Jesus replied, if you only knew the gift God has for you and who you
are speaking to, you would ask me and I would give you living water.
But sir, you don't have a rope or a bucket, she said,
and this well is very deep.
Where would you get this living water?
And besides, do you think you're greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this?
Well, how can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?
Jesus replied, anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again.
But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again.
It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.
Please, sir.
The woman said, give me this water then I'll never be thirsty again and I
won't have to come here to get water.
Go and get your husband.
Jesus told her, I don't have a husband.
The woman replied, Jesus said, you're right.
You don't have a husband for, you have had five husbands and you aren't even
married to the man you're living with now.
You certainly spoke the truth.
Sir, the woman said, you must be a prophet.
So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only
place of worship while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Garrison
where our ancestors worshiped?
Jesus replied, believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no
longer matter whether you worship the father on this mountain or in Jerusalem.
You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship.
While we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews, but
the time is coming indeed, it's here now.
When true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, the
Father is looking for those who will worship him That way, for God is Spirit.
So those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
The woman said, I know the Messiah is coming.
The one who is called Christ.
When he comes, he will explain everything to us.
Then Jesus told her, I am the Messiah.
Just then his disciples came back.
They were shocked to find him talking to a woman, but none of them had the
nerve to ask, what do you want with her?
Or Why are you talking to her?
The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village
telling everyone, come and see a man who told me everything I ever did.
Could he possibly be the Messiah?
So the people came streaming from the village to see him.
Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus, rabbi, eat something.
But Jesus replied, I have a kind of food, you know nothing about.
Did someone bring him food while we were gone?
The disciples asked each other.
Then Jesus explained My nourishment comes from doing the will of God who
sent me and from finishing his work.
You know the saying, four months between planting and harvest, but
I say, wake up and look around.
The fields are already ripe for harvest.
The harvesters are paid good wages and the fruit they harvest is
people brought to eternal life.
What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike, you
know the saying one plants and another harvests, and it's true.
I sent you to harvest where you didn't plant others had already
done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest.
Many Samaritans from the village believed in Jesus because the woman had
said, he told me everything I ever did.
When they came out to see him, they begged him to stay in their village.
So he stayed for two days long enough for many more to hear his message and believe.
Then they said to the woman, now we believe not just because of what you
told us, but because we have heard him ourselves, now we know that he
is indeed the savior of the world.
At the end of the two days, Jesus went on to Galilee.
He himself had said that a prophet is not honored in his own hometown.
Yet the Galileans welcomed him for, they had been in Jerusalem
at the Passover celebration and had seen everything he did there.
As he traveled through Galilee, he came to Cana where he had
turned the water into wine.
There was a government official in nearby Capernaum whose son was
very sick when he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee.
He went and begged Jesus to come to Capernaum to heal his
son, who was about to die.
Jesus asked, will you never believe in me unless you see miraculous signs and
wonders, the official pleaded, Lord, please come now before my little boy dies.
Then Jesus told him, go back home.
Your son will live.
And the man believed what Jesus said and started home while the man was on his way.
Some of his servants met him with the news that his son was alive and well.
He asked them when the boy had begun to get better, and they replied
yesterday afternoon at one o'clock, his fever suddenly disappeared.
Then the father realized that that was the very time Jesus had told him,
your son will live, and he and his entire household believed in Jesus.
This was the second miraculous sign Jesus did in Galilee after coming from Judea.
Afterward.
Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days inside the city.
Near the sheep gate was the pool of Bethesda with five covered porches,
crowds of sick people, blind, lame, or paralyzed, lay on the porches.
One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years.
When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked
him, would you like to get well?
I can't, sir.
The sick man said for, I have no one to put me into the pool.
When the water bubbles up, someone else always gets there ahead of me.
Jesus told him, stand up.
Pick up your mat and walk.
Instantly, the man was healed.
He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking.
But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected.
They said to the man who was cured.
You can't work on the Sabbath.
The law doesn't allow you to carry that sleeping mat, but he
replied, the man who healed me told me, pick up your mat and walk.
Who said such a thing as that?
They demanded, the man didn't know for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.
But afterward Jesus found him in the temple and told him, now you are well.
So stop sinning or something, even worse, may happen to you.
Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it
was Jesus who had healed him.
So the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules.
But Jesus replied, my father is always working and so am I.
So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him.
For, he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his father, thereby
making himself equal with God.
So Jesus explained, I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself.
He does only what he sees the Father doing.
Whatever the Father does, the son also does for the Father, loves the son
and shows him everything he is doing.
In fact, the father will show him how to do even greater
works than healing this man.
Then he will truly be astonished for just as the father gives life
to those he raises from the dead.
So the son gives life to anyone he wants.
In addition, the father judges no one.
Instead, he has given the son absolute authority to judge so
that everyone will honor the son just as they honor the father.
Anyone who does not honor the son is certainly not honoring
the father who sent him.
I tell you the truth.
Those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life.
They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed
from death into life, and I assure you that the time is coming indeed.
It's here now when the dead will hear my voice, the voice of the Son of God.
And those who listen will live.
The father has life in himself and he has granted that same life-giving
power to his son, and he has given him authority to judge everyone
because he is the son of man.
Don't be so surprised indeed the time is coming when all the dead in
their graves will hear the voice of God's son and they will rise again.
Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life, and
those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgment.
I can do nothing on my own.
I judge as God tells me.
Therefore, my judgment is just because I carry out the will of the
one who sent me not my own will.
If I were to testify on my own behalf, my testimony would not be valid.
But someone else is also testifying about me, and I assure you that
everything he says about me is true.
In fact, you sent investigators to listen to John the Baptist, and
his testimony about me was true.
Of course, I have no need of human witnesses, but I say these
things so you might be saved.
John was like a burning and shining lamp, and you were excited
for a while about his message.
But I have a greater witness than John.
My teachings and my miracles.
The father gave me these works to accomplish and they prove that he
sent me, and the father who sent me has testified about me, him himself.
You have never heard his voice or seen him face to face, and you do not have
his message in your hearts because you do not believe me, the one he sent to you.
You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the
scriptures point to me, yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.
Your approval means nothing to me because I know you don't
have God's love within you.
For I have come to you in my father's name and you have rejected me.
Yet, if others come in their own name, you gladly welcome them.
No wonder you can't believe for you gladly honor each other, but
you don't care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God.
Yet it isn't I who will accuse you before the Father Moses will accuse you.
Yes, Moses in whom you put your hopes.
If you really believed Moses, you would believe me because he wrote about me.
But since you don't believe what he wrote, How will you believe what I say?
This concludes today's Immer reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.