Face to Face

The Lovely Joanne and I talk by phone during her business trips, as a way to stay connected.  What's better is when she can call me on her computer and we can see each others' faces.  We can read the emotions in the facial expressions, not just hear the words, and that's a far greater connection. 

Wouldn't it be nice to have a direct, face-to-face connection with God?  Adam and Eve got to talk with God in the garden of Eden.  Abraham spoke with God in person (Gen. 18) but that seems to have been a rare thing even for Abraham.  Moses was said to talk face to face with God in Ex. 33:7-11, but ancient Israel as a whole never saw God's face or heard his voice.  Who said that?  Jesus himself, in John 5:37:  "And the Father who sent me has testified about me himself. You have never heard his voice or seen him face to face."  


Let's look at those words in context, in John 5.  Jesus heals a lame man at the pool of Bethesda, where people who were "blind, lame and paralyzed" waited for an occasional miraculous healing.  The Pharisees, keepers of all things righteous, objected to Jesus 'breaking' the Sabbath day.  Jesus begins to explain how they don't see what is right in front of them -- explaining that he is the Son of God, so clearly that they are ready to kill him (verses 16-18).  He says that he does only what he "sees his Father doing" and his Father "love the Son and shows him everything he is doing" (19-20).  Jesus says that "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" (24). 


Again, he talks about his relationship with the Father, and the authority he carries, in 36-38:  "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 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."  To cap that off, he tells them that they are refusing to see what the Father has been showing them in the scriptures: "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" (39-40).  


Jesus met people who were blind, lame and paralyzed at the pool.  For some reason, we only read about one whom he healed, although there could have been others, because John has a specific reason for bringing this story to us.  What is it?  That these Pharisees were spiritually blind, lame and paralyzed by their refusal to believe.  (Watch the number of times Jesus refers to seeing and hearing in this passage.)  Most of all, he points to himself as the one true Messenger from the Father.  Jesus came to show us the Father (John 14:9) so that we would no longer be blind, lame or paralyzed spiritually; and so we would see the Father through him, face to face.  


Want to see God face to face, to know him intimately?  Look at Jesus.  More on that next time.