Proof

John 5:31-47

Bill Wagner

In this reading, Jesus is attempting to convince his audience that He has been sent by God and is to deliver the message of salvation from God. For the Jewish community, a single witness was not sufficient in any legal matter; there had to be two witnesses. So Jesus refers to John the Baptist as confirmation of His true self. If one goes back to Deuteronomy 18:17-18, Moses states: “And the Lord said to me ……I will raise up a prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth”. It was unfortunate that many in the Jewish population, especially their leaders, did not see Jesus as fulfilling this prophecy, did not believe His message and would not accept Him as the Messiah.

How much proof do we need? Why do people struggle to believe that God and Jesus are real and that having faith in His grace and mercy can lead us to the fulfillment and contentment that we all are seeking? As a trained scientist, I look for proof of certain facts that can lead to confirming a possible hypothesis and eventually a solution. In this case, the proof was there in the scriptures that had predicted this prophet was going to appear and should have been apparent to anyone who was open to what was taking place. However, we also have to have faith, an allegiance to God. Faith is believing in something even when we do not have any proof of what we believe in.

PRAYER: Gracious God, help us to see your presence in our lives and recognize that Jesus was sent to us as our Savior. We thank you for your many blessings and ask that you continue to strengthen our faith and help us to live our lives as Jesus demonstrated in his life. Amen.