by Beth Moore
Beloved, do we still see men as trees, walking? Do we see them as distortions of who they really are? Would we be willing to allow God to change our minds and adjust our sight? We're only half healed until then.
Chapter 17
DEVASTATION
He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. (Acts 12:2)
I had no idea when I began this Bible study how profoundly different the scenes would look when viewed through the eyes of John. The series I wrote prior to our present journey was Jesus the One and Only. I have researched some of the same scenes, but the perspective has changed dramatically as I've attempted to look over John's shoulder rather than Jesus'. Had God not appointed us to walk specifically "beside" John, I would never have viewed the next dramatic scriptural account from his point of view. May the Holy Spirit help us grasp the significance of these events in his regard.
Acts 12 tells us that Herod began to persecute the church because such actions bought him favor with the Jewish leaders. His action undoubtedly impacted John more than the other believers because Herod had James "put to death with the sword" (v. 2).
We may have to untangle a maze of Jameses and Johns in the chapter. Herod killed our John's brother James. Then he arrested Peter. An angel delivered Peter from prison, so Peter proceeded to the home of Mary, the mother of John. This was John Mark, the cousin of Barnabas and the writer of the Second Gospel.
We have no way of knowing for certain whether or not John the apostle was among those gathered and praying at Mary's house. He may have been among those referenced in Acts 12:17 whom Peter told to "tell James and the brothers" about his deliverance from prison. The "James" referenced in this passage is the younger sibling of Jesus, and the "brothers" in this passage may have been Christ's other biological half-brothers. They became believers after the resurrection and were active participants in the prayer meetings recorded in Acts 1:14. Keep in mind, John may have been with the group at John Mark's, but another possibility exists. From the cross Jesus said, "Here is your mother." And "from that time on, this disciple took her into his home" (John 19:27).
Now that we have untangled the Jameses and Johns, let's return to the presenting issue. Herod had John's brother killed. Let the weight of it fall on you. "James, the brother of John." Inseparable as boys. John, the younger, always tagging along. His entire early identity was wrapped up in his brother's: James son of Zebedee and his brother John.
The other day I sat on an airplane next to a mom with two little boys. The older couldn't have been more than three and the younger about eighteen months. As a mother, I knew how hard keeping a hat or cap on a toddler can be, yet the little guy kept a baseball cap firmly on his head the entire flight. Would you like to know why? Because big brother wore a baseball cap just like it. Don't you know James and John were the same way? Almost every little brother wants to be just like the big one.
My daughters love each other dearly, but they were raised differently than my older sister and I. Amanda and Melissa had their own rooms and could use the word mine and mean it. Raised on a shoestring, from our early adolescence my sister Gay and I shared the same small room and the same double bed. Beyond our underwear, I am hard-pressed to think of a single thing either of us could have called "mine." We whispered late into the night and would laugh until the bed frame shook. We'd hear Major Dad stomping down the hall to warn us, and we'd immediately fake a dual snore ... which brought on uncontrollable laughter and a good (but useless) scolding. We were inseparable.
I remember the call that came to our home informing us that Gay had flipped our old Volkswagen bus on the highway pulling out of a local burger joint. She was practically unscathed, but I remember having one of my first realizations that we were indeed two separate people and that one of us could live and the other die. I wept almost as if it had happened.
I have studied and even taught Acts 12 many times. I love the story of Peter's deliverance from prison, but until today I have never regarded the events from John's point of view. How devastated he must have been! By this time in the Book of Acts, the disciples all knew the Jews could make good on their threats. They had crucified Christ and stoned Stephen. They told Peter and John to stop speaking in the name of Jesus or else. They chose "or else."
Acts 8:1 tells us that earlier a persecution had scattered the believers, but the apostles remained in Jerusalem. Yes, John and Peter trekked to Samaria, but the ministries of the apostles remained intact in Jerusalem for this period of time. I assume that they simply did not yet feel released by the Holy Spirit to center their ministries elsewhere.
Now in a terrible wave of persecution, James was arrested. I wonder if John saw them seize his brother. If not, who broke the news to him? Can you imagine the sear of terror that tore through his heart? Remember, John was the apostle who'd had connections when Jesus was arrested and was able to get into the priest's courtyard. Don't you know he tried to pull every favor and call on every connection he had?
He probably couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat. He no doubt fell facedown on the floor and begged God to spare his brother's life. Beloved, don't hurry past this scene. James was John's flesh and blood. All the disciples were terrified, but none of them could relate to John's horror. Surely prayer meetings took place. Don't forget, these were men with the power and authority of the Holy Spirit to heal diseases and cast out demons. No doubt they named and claimed James's release and demanded his life in prayer. For all we know, James claimed his own life before his jailers and forbade them to harm one of Jesus' elect. After all, the disciples were promised power and were told they would be Christ's witnesses all over Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. His ministry had just begun! No, this couldn't be the end. He would surely be delivered!
Then they killed him. I pity the person who came to John with the news. In 2 Samuel 1, David was so horrified by the report of Saul and Jonathan's deaths that he had the bearer of bad news slain. Although John had no such authority or desire, don't you imagine he wanted to shake the bad news out of the bearer's mouth and demand a different ending? Don't you also imagine that he tried his hardest to shake the reality out of his own head? James was the first of the disciples martyred. Reality must have hit like an unsuspected tidal wave, crashing on the shores of servant lives.
More than any of the other ten, John must have replayed the events a thousand times in his mind, wondering if his big brother had been terrified or calm. Did he think of their parents? Hadn't Zebedee been through enough? How was he going to tell his mother? Had James felt any pain? Was it quick? Was he next? Then before he had time to steady from reeling, he learned he was not next. Peter was. Have you ever felt like a percussionist slammed king-size cymbals on both sides of your head? Not Peter! This was too much! Not James and Peter! Not both of them, Lord! Please, please, no, Lord!
When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John, and James. (Luke 8:51)
About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. (Luke 9:28)
Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover." (Luke 22:8)
He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. (Matt. 26:37)
So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" (John 20:2)
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them.... When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?" (John 21:20-21)
"Yeah, Lord! What about me? How will I go on with all of this without James and Peter? What are You doing? What aren't You doing? Will You let them kill all of us?" John had good reason to believe Peter might never make it out of that prison. But then he did. God granted him a miracle ...
scarcely
before they had mopped the blood of John's big brother off the floor. Can you imagine the mix of emotions John must have felt if he was anything like the rest of us?
I believe something huge happened for John in this traumatic turn of events. I think the young apostle came to the startling reality that when all comes down, we are each on our own before God. Every life is separate and distinct. We may think we have partnerships in life or in ministry that we cannot exist or operate without. We may think that everything in the Christian experience is about "body life," but it's not. Yes, we're all parts of the body of Christ, and we function in each generation as parts of a whole, but until we each stand before our God with a shocking awareness of our solitary standing, I'm not sure we have a clue about our "part."
I don't believe any one of us who is serious about God will forego this test. And this test is no thirty-minute quiz. It's a lifelong essay test written on the tablets of our hearts. Will we loose our hold on anything and anyone else as prerequisites of our followship and follow Him in the intensity of aloneness? If you can answer quickly, I'm not sure you grasp the seriousness of the issue. Even the question makes me feel insecure. Would we be willing to live ... and die ... alone with Christ?
I have a wonderful staff of coworkers at Living Proof Ministries. I would not trade them for anything! I'm crazy about my husband and get a bigger kick out of my two young adult daughters than anyone in the world. I am very involved in my church. I am often surrounded by scores of people. Yet moments come unexpectedly when the awareness of my solitary estate before God so radically overwhelms me that I fall to my knees and weep. Bitterly. Frighteningly. The feeling is so intense at times I can hardly bear it. I heard an internationally known speaker say something the other day that I, in my much smaller world of ministry, could totally understand. She said, "I'm so far out on a limb with God now, if I even think of walking by sight instead of faith, I'm dead." Amen.
That goes for all who have truly chosen to follow Jesus Christ. Size of ministry makes no difference whatsoever. How much of your life you've banked on Jesus is the issue. Have we held some back for ourselves ... just in case? Just in case He's not as real, as powerful, as active as we thought? Just in case He doesn't come through? Just in case He really can't be taken at His Word? Or have we bet the farm? Meaning everything we have and everything we are is banked on the reality of Jesus Christ as Lord of all the earth. We will never fulfill our destinies until our hope is built on nothing less. How about you? Do you have a "just in case" contingency plan, or are you totally out on a limb with God?
We can lock arms with fellow servants just like the disciples did, and we will experience a measure of God's anointing and perform some significant works. For the parts of the whole to work as God intended them, however, each part is tested and tried as its own whole before a highly personal God. If we insist on a sandbox full of company, we'll miss the waves of the ocean where man can only walk one at a time. When a wave of loneliness suddenly erupts, ride the thing. Let your stomach rise and fall with fear and peculiar excitement. Don't fight the feeling. Don't just busy yourself. Ride the wave straight into the presence of God and experience the strange adventure of feeling you're the only one there.
The intensity of your solitary estate is often most obvious when you fight to reconcile the facts of life with the words of faith. When you grapple with questions like, "Why did God let the blood of my brother spill but performed a miracle for my best friend?" And the explanations of others only frustrate you more. In fact, often we only bother asking so we can release a little anger in the demand of a better answer. Rarely will it come. I'm not sure John ever figured this one out. Goodness knows he was thankful his friend's life was spared, but why was James's life seemingly less significant? Why was he the first to go? Why, Lord? And what about me?
Solitude is not so much the place we find answers. It's the place we find our own square foot of earth from which to grapple with heaven and decide if we're going on ... possibly alone ... without our answers. And many of us will. Why? Because the privilege of wrestling with such a holy and mysterious God still beats the numbness-the pitiful mediocrity-of an otherwise life. Sometimes we don't realize how real He is until we've experienced the awesomeness of His answerless Presence. He knows that what we crave far more than explanations is the unshakable conviction that He is utterly, supremely God.
Chapter 18
THE RIGHT HAND OF
FELLOWSHIP
James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. (Galatians 2:9)
If you read the background Scriptures, you noticed a new character in Acts 12:25. You may wonder what the persecutor-turned-preacher named Saul had to do with our protagonist. Actually, Paul's testimony will offer us several important insights into the apostle John and also will supply us with a very valuable time line.
In Galatians Paul tells that after his conversion he went to Arabia and then returned to Damascus. Only after three years did he travel to Jerusalem. The three years encompassed his original stay in Damascus, his flight to the desert, his return to Damascus, and his travel time to Jerusalem.
Acts 9:26 tells us that when Paul came to Jerusalem, "he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple." Position John among the disciples in Jerusalem at this time.
Don't miss the words in Acts 9:1: "Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples." Peter, John, and the others had plenty of reasons to take Saul's actions personally. Furthermore, they hadn't received the same vision God had given to Ananias in Damascus concerning the validity of Saul's conversion. Saul could have faked his conversion as a means of getting close to them and exposing their unrelenting evangelism after the warning to cease.
Acts 9 and Galatians 1 may seem to contradict each other in reference to Paul's time with the apostles. Galatians 1:19 tells us he saw only Peter, but I believe the intent of the reference is the time he spent getting acquainted. The rest of the apostles may have heard Barnabas's apologetic for Paul, but the only one who really got to know the new convert was Peter. John did not get to know Paul at this time and may have even purposely remained somewhat distant from him.
Fast-forward your thoughts on the time line now to the events we studied in the previous chapter: the death of James, John's beloved brother. We have no reason to believe much time passed between Paul's conversion and the martyrdom of James. We know that Stephen was martyred before Paul's conversion and that Paul in fact gave approval to his death. James was martyred after Paul's conversion. Even though several years had passed according to the time line in Galatians 1 and 2, don't you imagine that if John were anything like most of us, he had some pretty strong feelings about Paul? His threats against the lives of the disciples prior to his encounter with Christ were described as murderous. Paul was among the most radical activists that existed among the haters of "the Way."
Even though Paul dramatically gave his life to Christ before James was seized and killed, had I been John, I would have had a fairly difficult time embracing him. I'm afraid I might have had thoughts like, "If not for people exactly like you, my brother might still be alive." Maybe John felt none of what I'm describing, but I believe Christ's first ragtag band of followers were like us. Yes, the Holy Spirit had come to them and, yes, they had matured somewhat, but grief and loss don't always perpetuate extremely rational feelings. None of the rest of the apostles had lost a blood brother at this point. I just have to wonder how John felt about Paul those first several years.
Now let's pick up with the time line in Galatians 2 where the apostle John appears. Paul says that fourteen years later he went up again to Jerusalem. Acts 15 describes this trip in greater detail. The meetings are often called the "Jerusalem conference" or "council." When it comes to
John, we know nothing of the years falling between the l
ast mention in Acts and the events described in Galatians 2. For now all we know is that he continued to serve faithfully and obviously retained Jerusalem as home base, just as Peter did. We do know from Paul's testimony that John held a primary role in the Christian church in Jerusalem because Paul listed him as a "pillar" of the church (Gal. 2:9).
The James to which Galatians 2:9 refers is Christ's younger half-brother who became part of the backbone of the infant church after the resurrection. He was also the one who wrote the New Testament book that bears his name. James the brother of John had been slain about a decade earlier. A different James now joined with Peter and John to form what Paul called pillars of the church. According to Galatians 2:2, Paul approached the leaders privately for fear that they would reject the Gentile Christians. He was not unsure of the revelation God had given him, but he did not know whether they would accept it.
Acts 15:6.-19 describes the outcome of the meeting. Peter appealed to the leaders not to put a yoke on the necks of the Gentiles that they had not been able to bear. Then James delivered the verdict: "We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God" (v. 19).