Written by Aaron D. Messner |
Saturday, August 13, 2022
He comes in judgment against His enemies, none can withstand Him. He swoops in against His prey, swift, fierce, and strong, and none can deliver. When He secures an eternal home for His people and covers them with His protection, we are safe indeed. None can harm us there. When He elevates and upholds our spirit in times of trial, none can drag us down. And when He saves, He does so to the uttermost with absolute and unfettered victory. 

The eagle in flight is a picture of serene beauty and majestic strength. It is not without reason that nations and empires, both ancient and modern, have embraced the eagle as their symbol, and one who is acquainted with the Scriptures will certainly call to mind God’s bearing His people “on eagles’ wings” (Ex. 19:4) and causing them to “mount up with wings like eagles” (Isa. 40:31). Such words stir the heart and inspire the poetic imagination, but what exactly do they mean? What is the actual theological reality behind the literary metaphor in Scripture? To understand this more fully, it is helpful to take in a fuller range of references to eagles and eagles’ wings in Scripture.

For starters, the eagle is portrayed as a bird of prey (Job 39:27–30), and in keeping with this idea, the most common way that eagles are referenced in Scripture is as images of devastating, swift, and unstoppable judgment. Judgment (generally in the form of an invading nation) comes “swooping down like the eagle” (Deut. 28:49) or “swiftly like an eagle” (Jer. 49:22) or “like an eagle swift to devour” (Hab. 1:8). Mighty foreign nations in the Bible (such as Babylon and Egypt) are often portrayed as an eagle (Ezek. 17:3, 7; Dan. 7:4). So in the Scriptures, “the eagle’s wing” often brings swift and unstoppable destruction and death.

Yet at the same time, the eagle is also portrayed as a nurturer and protector of her own chicks. Job 39:27–30 speaks of the eagle as a bird of prey, but it also highlights that the eagle seeks its prey to feed its young, who dwell secure in the “nest on high . . . the rocky crag and stronghold.” The eagle is thus used in Scripture as a metaphor for God’s tender care and sure protection of His people.

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Jesus is God and Savior. Jesus can claim that the disciple who comes to/believes in Him will no longer “go hungry” or “be thirsty”, for they have fully embraced Christ as the source and sustenance of life.2 Jesus further elaborates the exclusivity of those that will be satisfied by the bread of life in John 6:46-47, “ No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only He has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.” The Father draws people who will be satisfied by the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is a brilliant teacher. He takes everyday objects and makes poignant and profound claims that get to the heart of the issue. This is the case when Jesus says that He is the bread of life. What does Jesus mean when He says that He is the bread of life? Jesus cannot mean that He is an actual bread because He has never been described in this manner in the entire Bible. Jesus has been described as both God (Jn. 1:1-5) and man (Phil. 2:6-11). Therefore, Jesus is obviously using a metaphor to describe a particular characteristic about Himself that can be derived from similarities drawn from bread.
John 20:31 states the purpose of John writing his book. He says, “30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” The purpose of John provides some insight into Jesus’ meaning in John 6:35. John has accomplished this purpose by clearly articulating how Jesus’ miracles and actions clearly point to Him as the Lord and the promised Messiah. In John 6:1-15 Jesus feeds the 5000 and in John 6:16-24 Jesus walks on water. The common denominator in both incidents is that Jesus is a miracle worker and therefore His claims of being the Messiah are true. These miracles were clearly signs pointing to Jesus as the Messiah.
The teachings of Jesus in John 6:25-59 are so difficult to swallow, that several people who enjoyed the physical bread provided by Jesus could not digest His life-giving words. Therefore, John 6:60-71 records many so-called disciples or followers of Jesus who abandon Jesus because they did not like what Jesus said. The only people who remained after Jesus’ hard teaching were the twelve disciples. What is it that Jesus said that caused this kind of consternation?
Five observations can be made about this statement in John 6:35.
1. Jesus is indeed the Son of God.The words “I am” are a translation of one Greek word. Typically, these words don’t have any significance beyond pointing to a subject. However, if these words are understood considering the entire corpus of John, these words significantly point out a particular quality about Jesus.
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It is the hope you have in the Lord Jesus that enables you to persevere, to endure to the end. Knowing the glory that he has stored up for us, the home he has prepared for us, the welcome that is waiting for us from the Lord Christ himself. Knowing that all who are joined to the Son have that promise of joy in our Father’s presence, of eternal pleasures with him. This is what can keep us going, enduring, in serving the Lord and serving others.

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3:
We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers.
We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

There can be a view of the apostle Paul that he is this huge head full of theological concepts like predestination and election, mortification and sanctification, and a heart that is two sizes too small. That he cares about lofty ideas, but not really about people.
It’s certainly true that in the Lord’s unique gifting of Paul, as well as his providence in the training the apostle had even before he came to Christ, Paul does have this immense God-given wisdom, so that his Spirit-inspired letters have been a guide to God’s people for close to two thousand years.  His God-breathed writings have been used by the Lord to keep Christ’s church on the rails for two millennia.
But the idea that Paul didn’t care about people is just blown away, all the way through his letters and the book of Acts. I love it in Acts 20 when Paul is saying goodbye to the Ephesian elders, and we’re told ‘They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again.’
This isn’t how you respond to a man who doesn’t care about people. This is how you respond to someone who loves people so much that he is delighted to share not only his words, but his whole life with them – in order that they might see the truth and the goodness and the beauty of his Saviour. This weeping on the beach is how you respond to someone who is able to say, in all seriousness, ‘we ALWAYS thank God for ALL of you, mentioning you in our prayers’.
This is a man who cares about people, knowing that in God’s glorious and glorifying plan of salvation, it is PEOPLE that Christ came to rescue. And in these verses, we see a man who cares for and gives thanks for specific people. A people he cares for deeply. There’s three specific things he gives thanks for in the Thessalonian believers. And you’ll see that they relate to that trio of Christian virtues that are in First Corinthians 13, and come up many times in Paul’s writings – faith, hope, and love.
Let’s look briefly at each one – and may they fuel our prayers.
Work Produced by Faith
Paul and his companions were continually remembering before God how the Thessalonians worked, and that these good works they did were produced by their faith in Christ. Coming from a Catholic upbringing, where I genuinely thought I needed to work really hard in order to be in with a shot of God’s favour and mercy and grace, it was so precious to me when I realised the truth of the gospel. When I realised that we are made right with God by faith, apart from works. It took away so much uncertainty and anxiety, about whether I’d been good enough. Whether I’d done enough. Perhaps I felt a little something of what the Reformer Martin Luther felt when he discovered the gospel of grace, and said: “I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”
But of course, because we’re saved by faith apart from works, that doesn’t mean there’s no place for works.
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