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Jesus the Exegete
Topics: Church Article
Anonymous user Tue Aug 28, 2007 17:11:33 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments Location: 26180 Plateau Way, Tehachapi, CA 93561

     To be communicative is a wonderful quality, depending on what is being communicated.  One person has said, “The mouths of many people seem to have the habit of going on active duty while their brains are on furlough.”  It’s easy to have our lips and brain out of sink so that we’re not thinking before we talk.

     During my childhood, I quite frequently put my foot in my mouth.  To rectify the problem, my dad often pointed his long index finger at me and said, “Jeffrey, think before you talk!”  I wish I could say that I have completely conquered that vice.  But I would be disingenuous if I made such a claim.

     God never had a problem regretting something that He said.  What He said and continues to say is always right and appropriate and without remorse.  Perhaps you’re wondering, “How communicative could God be?  After all, God told Moses, ‘You cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live!’” (Exodus 33:20).  Even in John 1:18, John reinforced this idea when he wrote:  “No one has seen God at any time.”  While it is true that no one has seen God at any time, and while it’s true that no one has seen God’s essence, God has been seen when He takes on the form of a person or a theophany. 

     That’s why we must not overlook the rest of John 1:18 which reads, “…the only begotten God (i.e., Jesus) who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him.”  John tells us in verse 18 that Jesus “has explained him,” i.e., God.  The Greek term for “explained” is exa-gay’-sato.  We get the word, exegesis, from it.  Exegesis means, “To extract or lead out meaning.  To interpret.”  Jesus is the supreme exegete, the absolute interpreter of God.  Christ did more than announce God.  He expounded upon who God is.  God the Son gave a full account of God the Father.  Jesus Christ made known on earth what He observed and heard from the Father (John 6:46; 8:26,38,40; 12:50).

     So the invisible God is displayed by the words and works of Jesus.  All that our feeble minds are capable of knowing about the Father is revealed to us through Christ.  Jesus told Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).  In 1879, the first bishop of Liverpool, J. C. Ryle wrote:  “(God’s) perfect wisdom, His almighty power, His unspeakable love to sinners, His incomparable holiness, His hatred of sin could never be represented to our eyes more clearly than we see them in Christ’s life and death.”

     Through Jesus Christ, the distant, invisible, unknowable, unreachable God has come to us, and God will never be a stranger to us again.  Can we ever think too highly of Jesus?  Is it possible to honor Him too much?  No.  If anything, we need to learn how to exalt Him more with our hearts and rest the whole weight of our souls in His nail-scarred hands. 

     I challenge you to get alone with God sometime today, and ask Him to enlarge your heart with greater love for Jesus.  Ask God to give you the most exalted view of Christ that is possible.

     Jeff Kaplan is the senior pastor of Bear Valley Church in Tehachapi.  To find out more about Bear Valley Church, please visit their website at www.bearvalleychurch.org or call the church at 661-821-0183.                     

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