FROM THE TREE TO THE CROSS

I. The Light in Galilee
The duel with the devil in the wilderness having ended, the Victor descends from the mountain.
When Jesus heard that John the baptizer had been captured he left the wilderness of Judea and came into the small city of Capernaum, which is by the sea of Galilee and began to preach to the people
“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Observe the geography of grace! He does not go to Jerusalem or the temple to find his disciples. He goes to the region of the shadow of death (Isaiah 9:2). He goes where men live in the shadow of mount hermon, where its waters pool to form the sea of Galilee, he goes straight to where the darkness is the deepest, for it is there that the Lamp will shine the brightest.
As He walks by the Sea of Galilee, He does not seek students from the schools of Hillel or Shammai where young men have been preparing all their lives to become priests or scribes; He is looking for men who know all to well the struggle that is life, and hunger and thirst for the truth that he came to reveal.
He finds Simon and Andrew, casting a net into the sea.

“Now when Jesus looked at him, He said, “You are Simon the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas” (which is translated, A Stone).”

“Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” They immediately left their nets and followed Him.”

[TYPE: THE STONES OF JOSHUA]
The very first thing Joshua did when he crossed the Jordan River was to command one man from each of the twelve tribes to reach down into the dry river bed and pull up Twelve Stones. He carried those stones to the shore and set them up as a permanent memorial and witness of a new nation in the promised land.
The very first thing Jesus (whose Hebrew name is literally Yeshua/Joshua) does when He comes out of the water and passes the wilderness test? He goes to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the very same water that feeds the Jordan river and instead of pulling up stones to serve as a witness to this historic event, he begins reaching into the water of the Sea of Galilee to pull up Twelve Men!
Joshua gathered 12 stones to be a witness of the miracles of God, Jesus gathered the Twelve Disciples to be the living witness stones, and foundation of his Church!

[TYPE: THE CHANGING OF THE NAME]
For Jesus to rename Simon to Cephas was more than just an honor or title.
To be renamed by the Creator is to fundamentally alter the person’s destiny and identity, bringing them into a new covenant and setting them on a path toward God’s glory instead of their own.

Abram was changed to Abraham when he had faith in God’s promise to make him the father of a nation.
He entered into a covenant with his creator that forever changed his path and destiny.
God added the letter H to his and Sarah’s name which stands for (breath/spirit).
He literally placed his spirit in the middle of his name signifying that God and his spirit would now be at the center of his new life and identity.

Jacob was renamed to Israel when he stopped being “the deceiver” and trickster.
He stopped using his wits to manipulate the outcome in his favor and relied instead on the God of Abraham and Isaac to save him from the wrath of his brother Esau.
Forever changing his path and destiny and entering into a covenant of faith where even his name is surrounded by the name of his maker.
His Hebrew name is Yisrael
Y. Yahweh, the covenant name         I. Isaac, the father of Jacob            S. Sarah, the mother of Isaac        R. Rebekah, Jacob’s mother
A. Abraham, the father of Isaac    EL. the Hebrew word for God

His new name begins and ends with God and his covenant name and includes the people who put their faith and trust in him.
Jacob was renamed Yisrael because he was the new covenant promise that had begun with Abram and Isaac and included the mothers Sarah and Rebekah while God surrounds and protects them all from both sides.

Simon was renamed Cephas (Peter) which means a stone, because he was one of the first chosen men that represented the twelve stones of Joshua. He left his old life and profession to follow the man he believed was the Son of God.
Jesus renaming him a stone would forever change his identity and destiny and mark his faith as the beginning of a new covenant between God and man that would save the entire world from their sin.

III. The Wine of the Third Day
It is the Third Day (John 2:1) that magnificent number that rings the resurrection bell every time it is struck and repeated throughout the Scriptures!
There is a marriage in Cana of Galilee.
The mother of Jesus is there, and the disciples are invited.
It is a scene of joy, a symbolic glimpse of the wedding of Christ and his bride (the church), yet a shadow falls, a problem arises.
“They have no wine,” Mary whispers.
“My hour has not yet come.”
Why should I intervene He asks her, My wedding feast has not yet arrived.
she doesn’t even answer him, her faith alone declares the answer.
“Whatever He says to you, do it.”
Jesus points to the six water pots of stone.
Observe them!
Six. the number of Man, created on the sixth day.
Stone. the material of the Law, cold and hard. They are empty, or filled only with the water of external purification—washing the hands but leaving the heart and soul still stained.
“Fill them with water,”
Fill them with Me the Master and source of living water commands.
They fill them to the brim.
And then—the miracle of the New Creation!
He does not touch them.
He simply wills it.
The water, acknowledging its Creator, blushes into wine!

The stone pots containing the law of man are destined to become cold and empty.
It is only the creator, the seventh vessel, and the living water that is Jesus that can overcome the law and death to renew life and he will do it with ease and in abundance for all those who have faith in his sacrifice and promise.

[TYPE: THE BLOOD OF THE GRAPE]
Here is the antithesis of Moses! In Egypt, the first plague turned the water into blood—a sign of judgment and death. But here, the first miracle turns the water into wine—the blood of the grape, a sign of joy and life! The Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ.
The Old Covenant was water—essential, cleansing, but tasteless.
The New Covenant is Wine— full of flavor and life made for the spirit of joy and celebration.
The master of the feast tastes it and marvels. “You have kept the good wine until now!”
The world gives its best first—the pleasures of sin for a season—and the bitter result last. But God gives the cross first, and the crown afterwards! He keeps the best for the end!

“​This was the beginning of signs.”

It was the first sign because it was symbolic of the last wedding when there will be only joy and celebration for those who remained faithful.

II. The man who hid in the Night to see the Light
The city buzzes with the news of Jesus.
But under the cover of darkness, a shadow creeps through the narrow streets.
It is Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, a teacher of Israel. He comes by night, for fear of being seen with the light, yet he is drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
He represents the very best of a society ruled by the law —learned, moral, respected —yet he is blinded by the law without love.
“Rabbi,” he stammers, “we know that You are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

Jesus cuts through the flattery and gets right to the point. He does not need a compliment or acknowledgement; He needs followers of faith and seekers of truth. He needs men like Nicodemus to start looking beyond this life and into the next one.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus is baffled.
“Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb?”
He can only think and relate to a world based on the reality of the flesh;
But Jesus speaks of the Spirit and the Wind.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes and from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

In this life we are born of water and dirt, but in the next stage of life we are born of spirit and light. Jesus said we must be born of both in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
We can not enter into it in our current state of development and yet we can not bypass this one either. We must mature and progress through this stage of water before we can be born into the next of Spirit.

He then uses the example of the unknowable way of the wind to relate to Nicodemus that the invisible works of God are just as real as the visible ones, but he must be willing to receive them even if he cannot understand them.

The wind blows wherever it wishes, you know it is real because you can hear it and you can feel it, yet you can’t control it and you can’t predict it. In the same way is the spirit in man, he can’t understand it because it is beyond his understanding yet he knows it is there because he can feel it, he knows it’s as real as the wind.

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, and yet you people do not accept our testimony.”

Jesus speaks to Nicodemus like a master swordsman weilding his words like a blade piercing straight to the heart of the matter, he cuts right to the point by confirming the testimony of all of the prophets of the past who were sent by God as falling on deaf ears, they risked their lives to preach the truth to the elders such as Nicodemus and yet they would not listen because they did not want to hear the truth.

Jesus responded to her question of where the proper place was to worship God by saying the place is irrelevant compared to the heart and intentions of the worshiper, because God is a Spirit not a place or a tradition, to worship him is not to go to a specific place or do a specific thing but to seek and uphold truth, if your spirit is not seeking the truth and light that is the Father and the Son, then it matters not if you are in the temple at Jerusalem or the temple in Samaria.

“If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

Oh if only Nicodemus had been ready to hear and accept the truth when he secretly visited Jesus on this night.
This page would have been filled with Jesus telling Nicodemus about heaven instead of earth, but he does not leave him empty handed, he rewards him with a revelation:

“No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man, who is in heaven”

To Nicodemus this would have been even more confusing then being born again.
Both Enoch and Elijah had been taken up into heaven
Genesis 5:24
2 Kings 2:11
But Jesus is not speaking of the heaven that they were taken to but rather the highest heaven where the very presence of God dwells.
The word Heaven is used to describe the realm above but there are many layers to it just as Paul spoke of in
2 Corinthians 12:2-4 when he described a third heaven.
“I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.”
Even Genesis 1:1 describes it
“In the beginning God created the heavens”

Jesus was using heaven to proclaim his own divinity.
Nicodemus would have understood that man was not capable of being in the presence of God or looking upon him without being destroyed because of the impurity in man from being corrupted by his sin.

Exodus 33:20
“You cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live.”

1 Timothy 6:16
“He alone is immortal and dwells in unapproachable light. No one has ever seen Him, nor can anyone see Him.”

It is because of this unapproachable perfection that God had always communicated to man through his angels or by voice from a medium such as fire and a burning bush
Deuteronomy 4:12
Exodus 3:2-6

But Jesus is declaring to Nicodemus that he is not a man like other men because he has been in the very presence of God, and only he has ascended and descended from the highest heaven where he dwells because he is the Son of Man spoken of by the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel.
But here it is, the declaration of his divinity when he says the “the Son of Man, who is in heaven”

How can these things be Nicodemus would have asked again if he had the courage to speak after this declaration.
How can Jesus be the Son of Man who has been in the very presence of God himself and be the Son of Man who is in heaven if he himself was not as pure as God and able to be in two places at the same time as only God can do.

This of course is not the only time Jesus would declare his divinity

John 10:30
“I and the Father are one.”

John 8:58-59
Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”

Then they took up stones to throw at Him;

John 5:18
Because of this, the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him. Not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

This is a difficult concept for many people to understand but it will be discussed further as this narrative progresses.
This was simply the earliest declaration by Jesus of his divinity and the very beginning of his revelation of the Trinity to man, but it was not a new concept, it had been prophesied of many times before in the books of the prophets, even if it was not fully understood.

Proverbs 30:4
Who has ascended up into heaven, or descended? –
What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, If you know?

Isaiah 9:6
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

How can a born child be called Mighty God, teachers like Nicodemus did not know and yet Jesus is standing in front of him declaring, I AM Him,
I am the one Isaiah and Daniel spoke of.

And then, the Master takes the teacher back to the wilderness, back to the book of Numbers.
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”

​[TYPE: THE BRONZE SERPENT]
In Numbers 21 there is a mystery of the bronze serpent.
the people were bitten by fiery serpents because of their sin. They were dying!
When they finally begged for mercy, God did not remove the snakes; He provided a cure. He commanded Moses to make a serpent of bronze and lift it up and set it on a pole. Everyone who looked at the bronze serpent lived.
Why a serpent?
The serpent was the beginning of sin in the garden, he was the source of the fall of man. By looking at the bronze serpent they were forced to acknowledge and confess their own sins as a willful continuation of that same fall.
Why bronze?
Because bronze was the metal that covered the wood of the altar that was used for sacrifices!
Exodus 38:2
The fiery bronze serpent that represents sin and sacrifice was lifted up and set on a wooden pole that represents the cross because It was nothing less than the prophecy of the son who would be lifted up and set on his cross as a sacrifice for our sins.

Christ was made sin for us!
he took our sins upon himself at the bronze and wood altar of his sacrifice —and was lifted up on the pole of his Cross for us to look upon and confess our sin.
We are healed from the poisonous sin of the serpent, not by doing, but by seeing, and believing in the one who died for our sins! “

“ that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

The omniscient father knew that the world would kill his son, yet he sent him anyway, not as a trick or trap to cause the destruction of the world but because it was the only way to save those who would believe in the redemption that the love and sacrifice of his son would bring.

“And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”

But there is still a judgment that is coming because those who hated the light that is Jesus, hated him only because he exposed the true nature of their thoughts and hearts as being evil, they condemned themselves by proving that their hate of the light and their love of evil deeds and maintaining control of their sinful lives was more important than the love and sinless, selfless, sacrifice of his Son.

III. The Woman  the Well and the Water.

The Wind and Spirit blows where it wishes, and it blows the Savior north, through the forbidden territory of Samaria.         Typically a Jewish man like Jesus would have gone out of their way to avoid Samaria because this was the land of the Jewish imposters, the cultural counterfeits who claimed to be a mixed race of Jews and Assyrians.    They represented a gentile nation who had conquered them and taken their land and for it the Jews resented and despised the Samaritans.

It is high noon. The sun beats down on the dusty road.  Jesus, weary from His journey, sits by a well.  This is Jacob’s Well, dug by the Patriarch many centuries ago. It is deep, ancient, and filled with standing water.   A woman approaches. She comes at the sixth hour—the hour of man—because she is ashamed to come in the cool of the morning with the other women. She carries a water pot, the perpetual burden of her daily thirst. She has had five husbands—five broken covenants—and the man she now has is not her husband. She is the picture of the human soul: thirsty, broken and ashamed.

“Give Me a drink,” the Stranger asks her.

“You are a Jew,” said the woman. “How can You ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”

She is shocked. A Jew speaking to a Samaritan? A Rabbi speaking to a sinner?

But Jesus ignores the walls of territorial prejudice to reach the heart of the outcast. He uses the water in the well as an opportunity to offer her the Water of Life.

“Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

If you had known that God would send the gift that is his son to provide life where there once was only death, you would have asked him for living water.

“Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again,”But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

This is yet another picture of Christ and his bride (the church). It recalls the events of Genesis chapter 24 when Abraham sent his servant to find a bride for his son, he was instructed to not take his son with him but to go by himself to the land of his kin to find her so that his Son would not take a wife from among the canaanite cults that infested the land.

Genesis Chapter 24:6-20. “Abraham said to him, “Beware that you do not take my son back there. 7. The Lord God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my family, and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land,’ He will send His angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. 

When he arrived in the city of Nahor. 

11. he made his camels kneel down outside the city by a well of water at evening time, the time when women go out to draw water.  12. Then he said, “O Lord God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day, and show kindness to my master Abraham.  13. Behold, here I stand by the well of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.  14. Now let it be that the young woman to whom I say, ‘Please let down your pitcher that I may drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I will also give your camels a drink’—let her be the one You have appointed for Your servant Isaac. And by this I will know that You have shown kindness to my master.”  15. And it happened, before he had finished speaking, that behold, Rebekah,who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, came out with her pitcher on her shoulder.  16. Now the young woman was very beautiful to behold, a virgin; no man had known her. And she went down to the well, filled her pitcher, and came up. 17. And the servant ran to meet her and said, “Please let me drink a little water from your pitcher.” 18. So she said, “Drink, my lord.” Then she quickly let her pitcher down to her hand, and gave him a drink.   19. And when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.”   20. Then she quickly emptied her pitcher into the trough, ran back to the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. 

In the time of Abraham God desired for the bride whose future offspring would bring the Messiah to be of a pure lineage and not contaminated with the curse of the canaanite cults of the land.

But now that Jesus has been born, his bride is the church, and he seeks them even from among the gentiles.

In the book of Genesis the woman provided the water,  in the book of John Jesus is the water !!!.

This is what the Samaritan woman who came to Jacobs well to get water but instead found Jesus represents.

The lost people seeking God, seeking life but barely surviving off of only stagnant water.         She had been coming to the well of Jacob (God’s people) but remained thirsty because only Jesus could give her the living water that she had been looking for.

The Samaritans were a gentile race that had clung to God’s people and traditions just like Ruth clung to Naomi.

Ruth 1:15-20  Naomi said to Ruth, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.”

But Ruth replied to Naomi    

“do not ask me to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God.
Where you die, I will die,
And there I will be buried.       

when they had come to Bethlehem , ( The city of the birth of Jesus) all the city was excited because of them; and the women said, “Is this Naomi?”    But she said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.

[TYPE: THE BITTER WATER]      Look back to the days of Moses, do you see the bitter water at Marah. It is the prophetic example of the bitter water that is a life without Jesus but made sweet by putting in it his sacrifice on the cross.

Exodus 15:22-25 “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.

The water remained bitter and undrinkable until the tree that is symbolic of the cross was cast down into it, only then was it made sweet and capable of sustaining life.

[TYPE: THE SMITTEN ROCK]       Do you recall the thirsty multitude at Rephidim?              The people cried again for water.   God commanded Moses to strike the Rock. The Rock was Christ! He was smitten by the Rod of Moses—the curse of the Law, the punishment of the cross—so that the river of grace could gush forth in the desert. Jacob’s well required a bucket and hard labor; the Well of Christ is an artesian spring, giving life from within him! all it required was simply to believe.

The Samaritans clung to the Holy land and God’s people like Ruth clung to Naomi, but instead of redeeming them like Boaz redeemed Ruth, the Jews rejected them. 

Jesus came not to destroy the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill.  (Matthew 5:17)   He came not to reject but to Redeem.

“The woman said to Him,             “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

Because the Jews refused to allow the Samaritans to help in rebuilding the temple or to worship and sacrifice there, they built their own temple on Mount Gerizim which caused even further disputes of religious division of how and where God was to be properly worshiped according to the law. 

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.   You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.     But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Jesus responded to her question by saying the place is irrelevant compared to the heart and intentions of the worshiper, because God is a Spirit not a place or a tradition, to worship him is not to go to a specific place or do a specific thing, but rather to seek and uphold truth, if your spirit is not seeking the truth and light that is the Father and the Son, then it matters not if you are in the temple at Jerusalem or the temple in Samaria.

The woman said to Him,                “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her,         “I who speak to you I AM He.”

The woman abandons her water pot—her old life, her shame, her empty efforts of never ending thirst—and runs into the city.    She has found the Messiah.      She came for a bucket of stagnant water, but she found the Living Ocean of Gods Grace. The harvest of the gentile Samaritans begins, not with the religious elite or rich, those who by societal standards appear to be blessed, but with a poor thirsty woman who dared to ask the Gift of God for the water of life.