Tag: Gospel of John

John 6:16-24 Jesus Walks on Water

~ Vincent

Video Teaching
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From the Pulpit

Commentary

16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, 17 where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum. By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them. 18 A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, 

  1. “…they got into a boat and set off…”
    1. Why did Jesus send his disciples away from the crowd while he went to the mountain? Knowing that the crowd had differed from Christ’s teachings so much that he had to remove himself, it is likely he wanted his disciples exposed to the same tempting thought patterns.

    2. The crowd preferred the gift to the giver.  The disciples left their company, assuring that their thoughts would not start to drift towards their way of thinking.

  2. “A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough.”

    1. The Sea of Galilee, 600 feet below sea level and surrounded by mountains, is prone to sudden, strong winds and storms.

    2. “Darkness was increasing, discernment was diminishing, iniquity was growing. When, therefore, they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty furlongs. Meanwhile they struggled onward, kept advancing; nor did those winds and storms, and waves and darkness effect either that the ship should not make way, or that it should break in pieces and founder; but amid all these evils it went on.” -Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 25, 6.

  3. …they had rowed about three or four miles…”

    1. The disciples rowed all night (six to eight hours) in a brutal storm and only reached halfway across the sea (about three to four miles).

    2. This struggle wasn’t some sort of punishment; Jesus Himself sent them into the storm.  He has something to teach them here.

    3. Even though the disciples couldn’t see Jesus, Mark 6:48 explicitly says that Jesus was watching them straining at the oars from the top of the mountain and praying for them.  He never took his eyes off them.

they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were frightened. 20 But he said to them, “It is I; don’t be afraid.” 21 Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.

  1. “It is I; don’t be afraid.”

    1. Strangely, they are afraid of the very thing that can save them.  The glory of Christ on the water is a sight they can’t fully comprehend at this point in their lives.

    2. “[T]he interior effect was fear; and therefore the fear of the disciples, conceived from Christ’s sudden appearance, is set forth when it says: ‘and they were afraid’ — either with a good fear, because it was caused by humility; ‘Do not be haughty, but fear’ (Romans 11:20). Or with an evil fear, because, as is said in Matthew 14:26, they thought him to be a ghost. ‘They trembled with fear where there was no fear’ (Psalm 13:5 [Vulgate numbering]). For fear especially belongs to carnal people, who shrink back from spiritual things.” -Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, Ch. 6, 882.

  2. Here, Matthew’s Gospel mention’s Peter’s attempt to walk on water (Matt. 14:22-33), which is an incredible act of faith, even though he faltered.

  3. “Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.”

    1. Jesus waited until the disciples were willing to take Him into the boat. He doesn’t force His way in; He waits for an invitation.

    2. The moment Jesus entered the boat, they “immediately” reached the shore.  This is a second miracle, which shows the the power of letting Jesus take control.

22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. 23 Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.

  1. “Our Lord, though He did not actually shew Himself to the multitude walking on the sea, yet gave them the opportunity of inferring what had taken place; The day following, the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto His disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone. What was this but to suspect that He had walked across the sea, on His going away? For He could not have gone over in a ship, as there was only one there, that in which His disciples had entered; and He had not gone in with them.” -Chrysostom, Hom. xliii. 2.

Full Transcript

“Sow a financial seed on your MasterCard, Visa, or Discover and watch the heavens open up and the blessings of the Lord come down on you.”

Last week, we started talking about John chapter 6 with a conversation about what’s known as the prosperity gospel—this idea that God wants you to have everything you could possibly want. He wants you to have a million dollars; he wants you to get that raise at work; he wants you to have an attractive spouse. He wants you to have health, wealth, and prosperity—everything you could ever dream of. The problem, according to this view, is you. You don’t have enough faith. If you just had a little more, he would give you everything you wanted.

Now, that’s not true. You can tell because even the people in the biblical era didn’t have big hordes of cash. The apostles were poor. Jesus was poor. Throughout history, there have been a lot of great Christians who have not been particularly wealthy or healthy. Your faith does not directly correlate to you getting everything you’ve ever wanted.

The prosperity gospel is not true, but I do want to clarify something here. I think we can go in the opposite direction pretty easily and end up in a bad place. We can say, “Oh, God doesn’t like us talking about money. Maybe he can’t handle money. Maybe I should never pray about money or health. Maybe God’s a spiritual God and he only handles spiritual things.” We might think that when we pray to God, we should only bring the spiritual stuff, but for the real world—for this life—we shouldn’t go to God because that’s too worldly.

I think of a monk from a long, long time ago named Evagrius. Isn’t that a great name? Evagrius. He sounds like a wizard. Evagrius the monk was someone who wrote about prayer. He wrote a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff—it was kind of a toss-up. In his writing on prayer, he said that if you’re a really mature Christian, you should only have to pray one prayer: “Thy will be done.” That’s it. You don’t need to pray for anything else because you should just be able to trust God. Don’t worry about the details; just one prayer: “Thy will be done.” I can see what he was trying to get at, and I don’t want to be uncharitable—there is some wisdom to that—but I can’t help but notice that it doesn’t sound very much like what Jesus said.

In Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 through 11, Jesus said, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?” You can ask God about food and worldly things. It is interesting that Jesus gives the specific examples of bread and fish. Those are two things he brings up that someone might ask for.

Isn’t that exactly what Jesus dealt with last week? We saw that he was dealing with bread and fish in the feeding of the five thousand. Remember, there were probably more than five thousand men, and we don’t know how many women and children. “The feeding of the five thousand” sounds really cool, so we just go with that. Jesus did this miracle, and while there were certainly symbolic and spiritual elements to it, keep in mind the primary reason he did it: people were hungry. They needed something to eat.

Our God is not just the God of the spiritual realm. He’s not someone you can’t go to about your real physical needs. Jesus cares about all of it, and he’s the God over all of it. So don’t fall into that opposite trap of thinking Jesus doesn’t care about physical stuff. He does. The problem with the prosperity gospel isn’t that God can’t give us whatever we ask for—God can do whatever he wants; he’s God. The problem is that sometimes we’re more interested in the gifts than the Giver.

Sometimes we forget to seek God and trust that he knows more than we do. Sometimes the things he is trying to help us with are things we don’t even know about. We think our biggest problem might be that we don’t have a million dollars, but God can see other things. Sometimes he’s working on our character or teaching us to trust him. He is teaching us lessons that are really important in the face of eternity. If we only lived 100 years, that would definitely change our needs, but we know we’re eternal beings. There are things really important beyond this life that God might be working on in us. We need to be open to God, trust him, and let him work on what we need. We must trust that he knows what we need and not get angry and say, “Well, God hasn’t given me all the stuff I want. God, you owe me some stuff.”

This is one of those things we’re going to keep hearing about as we continue. If God has all this power, why doesn’t he give me all this stuff? Last week at the beginning of chapter six, we looked at the feeding of the five thousand. We saw how Jesus turned to Philip and said, “Hey, we need to feed all these people.” Philip said he didn’t know how they were going to do that because they didn’t have the money or the logistics. It didn’t make sense to him. Jesus was testing him, and Philip failed the test because he relied on what was in his control. He didn’t rely on Jesus or trust him; he tried to solve it by himself.

Andrew, a different disciple, introduced the young boy who gave Jesus his lunch of bread and fish. Jesus took that lunch and started handing it out. He just kept going and going. Not only was he able to feed everyone who had gathered, there were actually whole baskets of food left over. It wasn’t just enough for everyone to have their fill; it was more than enough.

Then those people got to thinking: “If Jesus can do this, what else can he give me?” They wanted to force Jesus to become their king. It didn’t matter what he wanted; they wanted him in charge so he could solve all their problems. This is something I didn’t talk about last week, but I wanted to touch on it because they say, “Surely this is the prophet who has come into the world.” From that, we learn that Jesus knew their intent was to force him to become king.

Why would they say that? It seems like an odd, random thing to say, but it’s a reference to Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 15. That is where Moses is speaking to the Israelites and says, “The Lord will raise up a prophet like me from among you.” Moses was the greatest prophet of all time. David was a great king, but Moses was the one—the Ten Commandments guy who got them out of Egypt. You can’t do better than Moses, and Moses said there would be a prophet like him. People were waiting on that guy who was going to be as incredible as Moses.

Now here comes Jesus. Moses led them into the wilderness and fed them bread from heaven to sustain them for forty years. Jesus leads them into the wilderness and doesn’t just give them enough bread to sustain them; he gives them more than enough. This guy’s not only like Moses, he’s even better. That’s where that phrase connects.

They want to make him king, but Jesus has had this offer before. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus went into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan. One of the temptations was to bow down, and everything he saw would be his. Of course, Jesus said no. Jesus does not need the approval of the world. He has authority of his own. He doesn’t need an earthly crown; he has a heavenly one. Jesus said no to Satan, and here is this crowd hoping he will seize a crown for himself. Jesus leaves and goes to a mountain by himself.

This morning, I am going to rely on a few different passages. This story of Jesus walking on the water appears in three of the gospels: Mark, Matthew, and John. The only one that does not contain it is Luke. I’m going to rely on all of them. Normally, I don’t always do this. I think there is wisdom in looking at individual passages and letting them stand on their own. But as I read the other two accounts, I couldn’t help but notice that they all add something really important. Mark tells us so many details about motivations, Matthew tells us about the reactions of the disciples, and John tells us some of the more miraculous elements.

At the end of the day, I am not just looking at this passage because I want to know the words John chose. I am learning about it because I want to know what happened that day with Jesus and the disciples. If you want to look at them in the coming week, I encourage you to—they are well worth it. The other two are Mark chapter 6, verses 45 through 52, and Matthew chapter 14, verses 22 to 33. It is really interesting to read them all next to each other and see how those elements interact.

Mark tells us a little more about the motivation of why Jesus left. John just says, “And Jesus left and went to a mountain by himself.” Mark tells us he went to the mountain to pray. Now we know what Jesus is doing: he is spending time with his Father in heaven. While Jesus is on that mountain praying, see verse 16: “When that evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum.”

Again, we can rely on Mark to tell us why. Why are these disciples getting into a boat and going across a lake when Jesus is going up the mountain? Why don’t they follow him? Mark tells us Jesus told them to do that. Before he went up the mountain, Jesus turned to them and said, “Hey, get in the boat. Go across the lake. I’ll catch up.”

Isn’t it interesting that he tells his disciples to get out of here in a way that’s difficult for people to follow? The crowd wants Jesus to become king. They are so hopeful he will solve all of their problems after seeing his divine power. Don’t you think the disciples might have been a little tempted to do the same? They already believe in Jesus and think he’s incredible. They don’t always understand him, but they know he’s an impressive guy. With all these people wanting him to be king, there would be that temptation to say, “Maybe Jesus doesn’t know what’s best. Maybe he should be king. Maybe he doesn’t believe in himself enough, and I believe in him more than he does. Jesus, yes, we’re going to make you king. The crowd is right.”

Rather than stay and allow them to be continually tempted, Jesus tells them to get out of there. That is a good reminder for all of us. How often do we put ourselves in situations where we are tempted to do something we know God wouldn’t want us to do? Rather than leave, we stay and see how long we can make it, continually fending off that temptation. Don’t do that. Get out.

Maybe you’re in a situation where you’re working with someone who’s just irritating. They’re driving you nuts, they’re getting everything wrong, and they’re saying crazy things. You’re about to give them a piece of your mind—get out of there. If you need to talk, come back later when you’ve cooled down. Don’t allow yourself to be continually tempted. Remove yourself from the situation.

Or maybe you’re with a friend and you’re enjoying your evening, but suddenly you start talking about things that aren’t very edifying. Suddenly, you start sniffing around some gossip. You might say, “Oh, we shouldn’t talk about that,” but then you come around for another pass. You just keep getting closer and closer. Don’t do that! Get out of there. Change your environment. When you see yourself being tempted in an environment where it’s continually coming at you, move. Maybe Jesus is telling you, “Get out of there! Go!” That’s what he tells the disciples.

So they get on this boat and they go. A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. There seem to be an awful lot of storms on the Sea of Galilee, don’t there? This is not the only miracle about a storm on that sea. I am sure you remember another one where the storm is raging and Jesus is sleeping. The disciples tell him, “Jesus, we need help,” and he quiets the storm.

The Sea of Galilee has a lot of storms because of a geographical feature. Galilee is a mountainous region, and the Sea of Galilee is six hundred feet below sea level. When a wind comes whipping down off those mountains, it becomes very easy for the weather to get rough. It’s just a region given to storms because of its geography. Now, these disciples knew this well; some of them were experienced fishermen.This was not their first rodeo. It wasn’t that they’d never seen a storm before, but this one was especially brutal. John tells us that they had rowed about three or four miles, which is about halfway through the Sea of Galilee. They were at the halfway point, and Mark tells us how long it took them to reach that spot: he says it was about dawn.

They left the night before, meaning they had been rowing all night and were still only halfway. That would be brutal. Just imagine being in that boat. Imagine the darkness around you and the wind howling. Imagine the thunder and lightning. Imagine sweat dripping down your brow, interspersed with seawater. You are straining at those oars, and blisters are forming on your hands because you’ve been at it for hours and hours. It’s three or four in the morning at this point, and you’re still going.

But when they had made it about three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water. Now, you have to admire where they’d been until this point. They worked hard, didn’t they? The venerable Bede, one of the most prolific commentators in the Middle Ages, wrote regarding this passage: “The ship does not carry a lazy crew.” They were all stout rowers. The Church is not lazy or fragile; we are tireless, constantly persevering in good works, eager to reach the harbor of everlasting salvation. These were men who worked hard. Jesus told them to do it, so they did it—even though he sent them right into a storm.

Some of you might be in storms right now. I know several of you have told me about the storms you’re facing. This week, more than usual, I feel like a lot of people are facing some hard stuff. If you are in a storm, just remember: that is not evidence that you are doing something wrong or something that Jesus doesn’t want you to do. There is that prosperity gospel thinking that says, “If God wants me to do it, it will be easy.” That’s really tempting. We think, “Oh man, this is getting hard; God must not want me doing this.” That is not necessarily true.

Here, Jesus sent these men into something very difficult because he was teaching them something. There was value to this. Going into something hard was not worthless; it was important. If you are in a storm, stay with it. You never know when you are right on the brink of something. You never know when Jesus is going to come walking to you over the waters.

Where was Jesus to these disciples? They didn’t know. They couldn’t see him. We know he was up on a mountain, and the book of Mark provides those little details: he was watching them and praying. He saw them straining at the oars. He knew they were having a hard time, and he was praying for them. They were never out of the sight of Jesus. They may not have been able to see him, but Jesus never took his eyes off them.

When he saw it was time, he came down off that mountain. I don’t know what that looked like. Did he just zoom down? Did he make a trek? We only know that he made his way over those stormy waters. These were not still, gentle pond waters, either. I imagine it would be harder to walk on storm waters—that’s just my hot take.

Jesus comes walking over the storm waters, and they are terrified. Verse 19 says: “When they had rowed three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water, and they were frightened. But he said to them, ‘It is I; don’t be afraid.'” Maybe that is something Jesus is saying to you. If you are in a storm, if you are having a hard time, if you are facing something that’s frustrating and just beating you down, Jesus is saying to you: “Do not be afraid.”

Matthew tells us the part where Peter gets out of the boat and tries to walk to Jesus. He makes it a couple of steps across those waters, but then he ultimately falls in because he does not have enough faith. Usually, that is a lesson about how Peter should have had more faith. But I have to give Peter a little bit of credit. Even making one step on the water is more than I’ve made. That’s impressive—to have so much faith you could even take one step on water. We should all try to have as much faith as we can.

After that incident, they were willing to take him into the boat. Now, Jesus had just walked across the water; if he wanted on that boat, there wasn’t a thing anyone could do to stop him. But Jesus doesn’t just jump onto the boat. He waits. He waits until they want him on the boat.

I’m not going to say Jesus always follows this rule, because sometimes he does things that are unexpected. For example, Paul, who wrote so many of the epistles in the New Testament, was someone who persecuted the church, and Jesus blinded him so that he would see the truth. Sometimes things happen in unexpected ways. But as much as that is true, more often than not, Jesus does not go around blinding people on a regular basis. Most of the time, he waits. He waits just outside the boat, waiting for someone to let him in. He stands at the door and knocks, waiting for someone to answer.

Is there an instance in your life where Jesus is waiting just outside of it? You haven’t let him in yet. You’re trying to do it on your own, working by your own power, and Jesus is just waiting for the invitation to come in. Look what happens when he is on the boat: it says that immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.

This passage doesn’t get enough credit. A lot of people don’t notice that this right here is a miracle. It doesn’t say, “And the storm subsided and they got there pretty quickly.” It says immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading. They were exactly where they needed to go. The minute Jesus got on the boat, they were there.

How many of you need to learn the same lesson that Philip learned: that if you are trying to make it through something on your own power, it’s going to be hard? It might not be enough. Maybe there is a storm in your life, a challenge that you are facing. You are straining at the oars and working hard, giving it all of your effort, but making little to no headway. Jesus is coming to you across the water. He is waiting. Let go of those oars, let him into the boat, and trust that he will get you where you need to go.

John 6:1-15: The Feeding of the Five Thousand

~ Vincent

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

From the Pulpit

Commentary

6 Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), 2 and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick.

 3 Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. 4 The Jewish Passover Festival was near.

  1. “a great crowd of people followed him”

    1. Notice that the crowd followed Jesus out into the wilderness without any food to begin with.  One can’t help but be impressed by their devotion.

    2. “Here we see, in the first place, how eager was the desire of the people to hear Christ, since all of them, forgetting themselves, take no concern about spending the night in a desert place. So much the less excusable is our indifference, or rather our sloth, when we are so far from preferring the heavenly doctrine to the gnawings of hunger, that the slightest interruptions immediately lead us away from meditation on the heavenly life.” -John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary on John

  2. “The Jewish Passover Festival was near.”

    1. This detail adds another interesting dimension to the miracle.  Passover commemorates the freedom of the Hebrew people from Egypt, after which people journeyed into the wilderness to reach the promised land.  In the wilderness, the people were sustained by miraculous bread from God.  At the upcoming feeding of the five thousand, here we are again, with people going into the wilderness and getting sustained by miraculous bread from God.  What God did once long ago, he does again here.

5 When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” 6 He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

  1. The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle, besides the resurrection, found in all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John).

    1. “Therefore as to this miracle, since we have heard how great it is, let us also search how profound it is; let us not only be delighted with its surface, but let us also seek to know its depth. This miracle, which we admire on the outside, has something within.” -Augustine, Tractate 24 on John, 2.

  2. The Book of Luke tells us that Jesus also taught and healed while he was in the wilderness with the crowd.

  3. “…to test him…”

    1. Notice that Scripture explicitly says that Jesus was testing Philip.  There’s intentionality behind his choice to go into the wilderness without food.  This is no accident.

    2. “Or to shew others it. He was not ignorant of His disciple’s heart Himself.” -Theophylact’s Commentary on John 

7 Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages[a] to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”

  1. Philip failed the test by relying on earthly calculations, estimating more than a year’s wages would barely suffice. He focused on his capacity instead of Jesus’s.

8 Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, 9 “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”

  1. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, isn’t mentioned in Scripture a lot, but when he is, he’s consistently bringing people to Jesus.

    1. John 1:40–42 Andrew meets Jesus and then runs to Simon to introduce him to Jesus as well.

    2. John 12:20-22 A group of Greeks are in Jerusalem for the passover and want to meet Jesus.  Philip turns to Andrew to make that introduction.

  2. “…five small barley loaves and two small fish…”

    1. Notice that the word “small” is used twice to emphasize just how insufficient this particular meal is.

    2. Barley, the cheapest grain (about a third the value of wheat), was “peasant food.” The meal was meager.  If this happened today, it may well have been five slices of Wonder Bread and a tin of tuna.

10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). 11 Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.

  1. “(about five thousand men were there)”

    1. The crowd numbered at least 5,000 men, not including women and children—possibly totaling 7,000 to 15,000.

  2. Notice the three steps that Jesus takes:

      1. Took: Jesus took the loaves and fish, signaling that God’s work often involves offering what we have to him. God desires human participation in his work.

      2. Gave Thanks: Jesus gives thanks for the tiny insufficient meal.  In his hands, it is more than enough.  Sometimes, we may feel insufficient, but the way God sees us is different.  In his hands, we are more than enough.

      3. Distributed: He distributed the food, and everyone ate “as much as they wanted.”  In God, there isn’t just enough.  There’s MORE than enough.

12 When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” 13 So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

  1. “…twelve baskets…”

    1. The miracle of Jesus doesn’t just give people enough; it gives them more than enough.

    2. “[W]hy did He give the fragments to His disciples to carry away, and not to the multitude? Because the disciples were to be the teachers of the world, and therefore it was most important that the truth should be impressed upon them.” – Chrysostom, Hom. xlii. 3

14 After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.”

 15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

  1. “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.”

    1. “He was the Lord of the prophets, the fulfiller of the prophets, the sanctifier of the prophets, but yet a prophet also: for it was said to Moses, I will raise up for them a prophet like you. Like, according to the flesh, but not according to the majesty…. And the Lord says of Himself, A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country. (Jn 4:44)” -Augustine, Tractate 24 on John, 7.

  2. “…they intended to come and make him king by force…”

    1. They wanted to make Jesus an earthly king by force, likely expecting him to overthrow Romans and fix their economy.  They saw Jesus as a tool to achieve their goals.

    2. There are also many people today who want to harness God for their own personal gain.  Preachers of the “prosperity gospel” make all kinds of claims about how God will give people exactly what they want if they only respond in the way that the preacher is insisting they should.

    3. Rather than trying to make God follow our agenda, we need to serve His.

    4. Be hungry for the bread of life, not just a life of bread.
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Full Transcript

If God has infinite power, why doesn’t he use it to solve my problems? If God has infinite power, why don’t I have a new car? Why don’t I have a million dollars? He has miracles, right? Why doesn’t he whip up a miracle and give me a million bucks? That would be a good miracle in my book. Why doesn’t he give me health and wealth? Why doesn’t God do that? Some people will tell you that he does.

Some people will say that’s exactly how God works. God wants to give you a million dollars; God has that new car waiting for you. The problem is you just don’t believe enough. If you have enough faith, he’s going to give you all that and more. We call those people prosperity gospel preachers. The prosperity gospel is the belief that God will solve all of your problems exactly the way you want them solved if you do something. Maybe you need to have more faith, or maybe you need to give him money. Maybe something needs to be done, and then you will get everything you’ve ever dreamed of. You’ll get the money, the car, the health, and the wealth. You’ll get all of it. This is surprisingly popular.

It is wildly popular. The last time I went to Barnes & Noble, the majority of books prominently featured in the Christian section were by prosperity gospel writers. I’m sure anyone who’s ever seen a preacher on TV knows that televangelists are famously associated with the prosperity gospel. That doesn’t mean all authors and all TV preachers are like that, but a lot of them are. It’s a popular thing because it’s attractive. Who doesn’t want a silver bullet out there that’s going to solve all their problems? That would be great! Now I don’t have to worry about it; I just need that “thing.”

The problem, of course, is that it’s not true. That should be pretty obvious, at least because if you think about the Bible, you have to ask: was Jesus rich? This is not a theoretical question; this is for you. Was Jesus rich? Jesus was not rich. Was Peter rich? Was John rich? Was Andrew rich? None of them were rich. This is a faith about a crucified God. The apostles mostly were martyrs, with the sole exception of John, who died in exile. None of them got rich quick. The fact that people somehow hijack Christianity to claim that you can get rich quick today just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t fit, but that has not stopped people from making the claim anyway.

This past week, I looked through some prosperity gospel preachers just to see the kind of things they say. Here were some of my favorite quotes: “Don’t wait for the pie in the sky by and by when you die. Get yours now with ice cream and a cherry on top.” “Sow a seed on your Mastercard, your Visa, or your American Express, and when you do, expect God to open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing.” “You must believe and then you’ll receive.”

My personal favorite apparently made headlines. There was one televangelist who explained to everyone that he had heard from God, and God told him that he was going to “call him home” unless his congregation could fundraise eight million dollars in three months. It’s just shameless. A lot of stuff like this is out there, and it’s just shameless. God doesn’t work like that.

The core idea here—that God wants to solve all of your problems on your terms—is half true. God wants to solve our problems. The biggest thing that gets in the way is that we don’t even know what our biggest problems are. We think we know. We think if God would just give us a million dollars, that would solve the problem. But God says, “That’s not your biggest problem. There’s some other stuff that’s way bigger in your life, and I’m working on that.”

Let’s dive into chapter six. Sometime after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. As you can probably surmise from the theme of this chapter, the crowd is going to get a lot of stuff wrong in the coming verses. But I like how we start. We start in a good place. These people are excited to know Jesus. Jesus is going to the other side of a sea, and their response is to go to the other side of the sea, too. They didn’t even have anything to eat. Thousands of people went to the other side of a sea just for the opportunity to spend more time with Jesus. That is a level of enthusiasm that is admirable regardless of what follows.

Are you that excited this morning? I hope you are. I hope you have that level of excitement in you because you should be excited. I think it’s easy for some folks to get ho-hum about church because we can’t see the spiritual reality of it; we only see the physical reality. We see the same walls and the same people. But we are in the house of God and Jesus is with us, and we get the chance to know him better. You should be excited. If you’re not excited, get excited.

Here are some people who are excited. They know how great Jesus is, and they want the chance to know him better. Verse three says: “Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover festival was near.” Why are they telling us that detail? On one hand, they are telling us this because it helps you locate it in the time of the year.

I think another reason they’re invoking Passover here is that Passover is about remembering the plagues. That’s the final plague that came on Egypt. The angel of death came to Egypt because they would not free the Hebrew slaves and killed the firstborn of all the Egyptians. After that day, Pharaoh said to let the Israelites go free. That is really what we’re celebrating here: the freedom and what happened right after they were free. They went into the wilderness for a long time and were sustained by bread from heaven. Isn’t it interesting? Here are some people going into the wilderness to be sustained by some miraculous bread. God does something once, and then he does it again later. It’s almost like echoes of something that already happened—in this case, an even bigger instance of something from the past.

Verse five says when Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming towards him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” By the way, this particular miracle is the only miracle in the entire four gospels that appears in each one of them, barring the resurrection. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there are a lot of stories that make it to two or three gospels, but this is a miraculous story that appears in all of them. This is really helpful because it tells us some of the details if you read across the breadth of scripture.

People are just coming up to Jesus, and he says, “We have to get food ready.” What are they doing out there? Are they just going to get a meal? Luckily, Luke fills in some of the details. It tells us that Jesus, during their time out here, also taught them and healed them. That is just a little that can be filled in by looking at the other scriptures.

Picking up again, when Jesus saw a great crowd coming towards him, he turned to Philip and asked, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. It’s important that it tells us he was testing him. Can you imagine if that little detail wasn’t there? It would change the feel of the whole thing. Jesus turns to Philip and asks if they have any way to feed these people, Philip says they don’t because it’s too expensive, and then Jesus says he guesses he has to pull a miracle out. It would make the whole thing feel unintentional, like an accident where Jesus doesn’t understand money and has to do something to make up for it. It changes the whole vibe if you don’t know it’s a test.

God knows everything. He already knows what’s going to happen. He gives people the opportunity to do what’s right and show that they get it, or he gives people the opportunity to show that they need a little more time being educated. That’s what’s happening to Philip here. It’s important to note that because it happens throughout the Bible. Sometimes God asks someone a question when he already knows the answer. Sometimes God says one thing and then later does it a little differently because someone has spoken with him. It seems almost like he’s changed his mind, but God didn’t change his mind; he gave someone the opportunity to speak truth in a way that was good.

God tests people, and it’s true with us, too. Sometimes we go through some stuff and it’s not what we expect. God tests us. He gives us the opportunity to do what’s right or to show we need some more education. Philip, unfortunately, fails this particular test. He responds by saying it would take more than a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite. Faced with this crazy task, Philip immediately relies on himself. He’s from the area and knows things pretty well. He seems to be able to look at the crowd and think about where he could get food. He probably at some point has spoken with Judas, the treasurer of the group.

How crazy is that to think about, by the way? Jesus chose Judas to be the treasurer. Thank goodness we have Charity and Todd; I’d hate to have a Judas in that position. So, Philip knows about how much money they have. He knows the tools he has and what he brings to the table, and he knows this is not possible. He relies on his skills rather than on Jesus. He needs a little more education.

Then Andrew comes up in verse eight. Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up: “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” Every time you see Andrew, he is introducing someone to Jesus. We saw him earlier in the book of John, and Andrew was introducing other people who would become disciples. Here, he’s introducing a young boy with loaves and fishes, and later on, he’s going to be introducing Gentiles to Jesus. Andrew is always introducing people to Jesus; it’s just one of those things he’s good at.

He introduces this boy who has five small barley loaves and two small fish. Notice that “small” is used twice here. This is not a big meal; it’s a boy’s meal. Some translations even say it’s a young boy’s meal. You have to imagine it’s not particularly big. Sometimes when you see Christian art, the boy comes forward with five nice, thick Italian loaves or big baguettes. Sometimes he’s got King’s Hawaiian—which, why wouldn’t you? It’s one of the best bread choices you can make. Those are all visually appealing, and there is nothing wrong with that, but in scripture, it’s not anything big. It’s five small barley loaves.

Barley loaves are not nice. Barley would have been the cheapest grain you could get; you can read about it in Ezekiel and Revelation. Barley comes up in both of those books as something that is not particularly valuable. If you give your kingdom away for a few handfuls of barley, you’ve given it away for nothing. Barley is worth about a third of what wheat is worth, so barley loaves are peasant food—commoner food. They’re not nice, and no one is necessarily excited to get them. It will fill your stomach, but it’s not particularly fancy.

A modern equivalent might be to imagine one of the kids that came up for the children’s moment. Imagine there was a church meal afterward and nothing had been prepared. One of those kids comes forward and they’ve got five slices of Wonder Bread and a tin of tuna. That’s what we’re looking at. This is not grand. People were probably thinking this wasn’t going to work. Even Andrew says as much: he notes the boy has some stuff to offer, but doesn’t know how far it’s going to get them.

But Jesus says, “Have the people sit down.” There is plenty of grass, so they sat down—about five thousand men were there. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He begins by taking it. Obviously, the kid offered it; Jesus isn’t stealing the loaves, but he is taking them. The kid can’t hold on to the meal and still see this miracle happen. Jesus takes it so the miracle can follow, and that’s important to remember.

Whenever we see a miracle—like when Jesus turned water into wine—notice that he asked them to gather water. Here, we see him feeding five thousand people, but he asks this boy for a meal. Whenever Jesus does great things, he wants humans to participate. He wants us to do something. He’s not just a genie who poofs things out of nowhere. He could if he wanted to, but he wants us to participate in what he’s doing. He wants us to do something so he can magnify it and make it even greater. It’s really humbling the way he allows us to participate in the greatness of what he does. He takes the loaves, and more will come of them because of that. You have to imagine that even for the kid, this is a good deal: he gives up one lunch and he gets as much as he wants down the road.

Everyone benefits because this kid was willing to hand over his meal. After Jesus takes the loaves, he gives thanks. There’s a great quote I came across from Charles Spurgeon referencing Augustine. You’ve got the “Prince of Preachers” invoking the “Father of Orthodoxy.” He says, “For five little cates and two sprats, God gave thanks to the Father. Apparently a meager cause for praise. But Jesus knew what he could make of them, and therefore gave thanks for what they would presently accomplish. God loves us,” says Augustine, “for what we are becoming. Christ gave thanks for these trifles because he saw whereunto they would grow.”

Jesus gave thanks for these breads and fishes knowing that, in their current form, they weren’t enough to feed five thousand people. But in the hands of Jesus, they could. That’s good news for us because, in our current form, we can’t do a whole lot. We are limited and we make mistakes. We are certainly not capable of a lot of things, but in the hands of God, we are capable of incredible things. We’re capable of miracles, just like those loaves and fishes.

Then he hands out as much as people want. It says there were five thousand men, a number that does not necessarily involve the women or the children. So how big was the crowd when all was said and done? Was it seven thousand? Ten thousand? Fifteen thousand? It’s a massive crowd. Of those seven thousand people, how many might not have had many resources? How many might have been hungry or didn’t know where their next meal was coming from? Food insecurity is real today, but it was infinitely more so in this era.

Some of these people may never have had the opportunity to genuinely eat as much as they wanted with no concern about how it would impact them tomorrow. But Jesus does that. He makes this feast where people can eat as much as they want. This was something they likely had never seen; they didn’t have all-you-can-eat buffets. This was not necessarily fancy eating—it was still barley loaves and small fish—but they got enough. That’s the thing about the Christian life: sometimes we may not always get the fanciest stuff, but God will provide. He will give us what we need.

When they had all had enough to eat, Jesus said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over. Jesus doesn’t just provide enough; he provides more than enough.

After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the prophet who came into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

The crowd gets to thinking: “Man, that guy can make loaves and fishes out of nothing. I bet he can use those powers to solve a lot of our other problems. The Romans are in charge and they’re pretty brutal. We’ve got economic problems; we’ve got tons of problems in Israel. Let’s get this guy to solve them all. Let’s make him our king.” Notice it doesn’t say they asked him if he wanted to be king; it says they wanted to make him king by force. They want to take God and get him to serve them. They don’t want to serve God.

They have just seen a man they are convinced is, at minimum, a prophet. They saw him multiply bread and fish with their own eyes. Instead of saying, “You must know something—how can I serve you and be a part of what you’re doing?” they say, “I’ve got some jobs for you.”

Jesus knows they do not get it, so he leaves. We will see more of this because that mentality doesn’t depart from them easily—the idea that God wants to give me “stuff,” that God can solve all my problems, and that he’s going to be the best employee I’ve ever seen by giving me money, a new house, and the perfect life. But Jesus is looking for people who want to look on a grander scale. He wants people who are hungry for the bread of life, not people who are just hungry for a life of bread.

We’ll see more of that next week as we see Jesus walk across the water. Amen.

John 5:15-47: The Authority of the Son

~ Vincent

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

From the Pulpit

Commentary

16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 

  1. Historic Context of Sabbath Observance
    1. The Jewish leaders are acting the way they are because of the history of the Jewish people. The Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, and the Old Testament penalty for breaking it was death (Exo. 31:14-15 and 35:2)
    2. Israel’s failure to keep the Sabbath contributed to their 70 years in exile (2 Chron. 36:20-21, Lev. 26:33-35, Jer. 25:11-12)
    3. The exile ended about 500  years before the time of Christ, but it was a massive event in Israelite history.  A significant part of their communal self-understanding was wrapped up in that period of exile.
    4. This led to taking the law so seriously that they created a series of laws concerning what activities were allowable and which ones weren’t that were so complex that they even dictated what could and couldn’t carry on the Sabbath.
      1. In the Babylonian Talmud (b. Shabbat 94b), there is a series of laws concerning Muktzeh (laws concerning whether items should be handled at all) and Hotza’ah (laws concerning the carrying of items) on the Sabbath. Some items, like a hoe, are Muktzeh (translated: set aside) because they are tools of labor and have no Sabbath-appropriate purpose. Other items, like a sleeping mat, are permitted for use but are subject to Hotza’ah laws, which prevent you from moving the items from a private dwelling into a public area. The mat had a Sabbath-appropriate purpose (sitting or lying down), but the man was carrying it in the streets, so it was a violation of law.

17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

  1. “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”
    1. Jesus equates himself to God with this statement, which the leaders recognize and are infuriated by.
  2. …not only was he breaking the Sabbath,
    1. Jesus consistently taught the Sabbath’s purpose was misunderstood. 
      1. His disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:3-8).
      2. Teaching that one would rescue a child or a donkey from a well on the Sabbath (Luke 14:5).
      3. Jesus teaches, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” and that He is the “Lord of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)
    2. The Sabbath is a means to draw closer to God, not an end. It was established at creation to teach humans to rest in God.
  3. Christian Sabbath (Sunday)
    1. The Christian Sabbath moved from Saturday to Sunday, as seen in Acts 20:7.
    2. The logic: the old Sabbath represented rest in the old creation, while Sunday—the day of Jesus’s resurrection—signifies the start of the new creation.
    3. Modern Christians are more at risk of neglecting the Sabbath than of taking it too seriously.  Many have redefined Sabbath away from a particular day or to include any sort of rest, rather than rest specifically intended to grow closer to God.
    4. There’s an opportunity to value the Sabbath not just as a brief moment of rest in a busy day or a random vacation, but as a day that God intended for us as a tool and means for our benefit—a day of worshipful rest in God.

19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.

  1. After the Sabbath conflict, Jesus explains His relationship with God the Father.
    1. This section uses a large amount of classic Trinitarian language, affirming that Jesus and the Father are distinct persons yet one being—both are God.  To honor one is to honor both.
    2. “To believe and love the Trinity is to possess the key of theology.” -Charles Spurgeon, “Bread Enough and to Spare,” July 16, 1871.

24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. 25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.

  1. And he has given him authority…
    1. Jesus asserts His authority in response to earthly authorities challenging Him. He speaks with perfect judgment and discernment as God.
    2. When we encounter teachings or actions of Jesus we don’t understand or prefer, we must remember His divine authority. Our disagreement is our problem, not His.

28 “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. 30 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

31 “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.

33 “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. 34 Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. 35 John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

36 “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38 nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39 You study[c] the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

  1. “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true…”
    1. Jesus admits that His own testimony would not be sufficient to prove anything, so he points to external witnesses.
      1. Deut. 19:15 and Num. 35:30 require two or three witnesses to establish any charge or execute judgment. 
  2. “I have testimony weightier than that of John…”
    1. John the Baptist testified to the truth, which was helpful, but Jesus relies on a weightier testimony: God Himself.  God’s testimony is expressed in two ways:
      1. Miracles: Jesus’s works, given by the Father, testify that the Father sent Him.
      2. Scripture: The Old Testament points to Jesus constantly.
  3. Jesus tells scripture experts that they study diligently thinking they have eternal life, but miss the point.
  4. “These are the very scriptures that testify about me…”
    1. “Again, we are taught by this passage, that if we wish to obtain the knowledge of Christ, we must seek it from the Scriptures; for they who imagine whatever they choose concerning Christ will ultimately have nothing instead of him but a shadowy phantom.” -John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary on John  
    2. Scripture is a means to an end (knowing God), not an end in itself. The words matter, like in a love letter, but their value lies in pointing to the author, God.
  5. There are many people that claim to know a lot about Scripture, but they haven’t found God in spite of all of their so-called knowledge.
    1. Bart Ehrman is a famous professor and atheist that uses his knowledge of early Christian documents to try to debunk Christianity.
    2. Amy Jill-Levine is a professor of the New Testament that is Jewish and does not believe in Jesus.  In spite of that, she produces resources about Jesus to be used in churches.
    3. People inside the church today can also miss the point by treating scripture reading as a checklist item.
    4. When opening scripture, expect to encounter God, regardless of feelings. The goal is to seek God through it.

41 “I do not accept glory from human beings, 42 but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God[d]?

45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

  1. God is the intended endpoint of everything we see.
    1. “I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts…”
      1. Everything in our lives is intended to point us to God, whether it be prayer, a walk in the park, or time with a friend.  God is the ultimate end of everything that’s created.  It’s should draw our attention to Him.
    2. “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”
      1. We are called to be means through which others see God’s goodness.  Just as everything should draw our attention to God, we should draw other people’s attention to God, not to ourselves.
      2. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you” -Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Bk. 1.
  2. “…for he wrote about me.”
    1. “Indeed had they attended to His words, they ought and would have tried to learn from Him, what the things were which Moses had written of Him. But they are silent. For it is the nature of wickedness to defy persuasion. Do what you will, it retains its venom to the last.” -John Chrysostom, Hom. xli. 2.

Full Transcript

It is critically important to recognize the difference between ends in and of themselves and means to ends. An end is something that is good on its own terms; it doesn’t lead to anything else. It is the baseline of what you are seeking—a good thing that you can rest in. On the other hand, a means to an end is something that gets you closer to the end that you’re looking for. That’s a bit of an abstract definition, so it’s much easier to speak using examples.

My favorite example is a love letter. A love letter is a means to an end, and I don’t mean that in a sinister way. If you think about it, when someone receives a love letter—and people have since the beginning of time—they treasure it. They read it again and again, soaking in every word and every letter. Why do they do that? It’s not because they’re really big fans of the genre of love letters. They love the letter not for its own sake, but because of the person who wrote it. It’s just a means to an end, which is a relationship between two people. When they look at the letter, they remember the person that loves them, how good they are, how gracious they are, and how beautiful they are. That’s the point of a love letter.

Can you imagine if someone read a love letter and thought of it as an end in and of itself? How absurd and weird it would be. Imagine seeing one of your friends reading a handwritten love letter and you say, “Ooh, looks like someone’s got something special going on.” They respond, “What? Oh, no, I found this in the Walmart parking lot blowing around. I have no idea who wrote it, but man, it’s beautiful! I’ve read it every day for the past two weeks.” Yikes! That’s not a good thing. You would probably think your friend needs to get out more because they seem lonely. That’s the thing: when we treat means to an end as ends in and of themselves, it makes us weird. Our affections are disordered.

That’s what Jesus is going to talk about today. He’s going to talk about how we humans have this habit of looking at these means to seek a greater thing and turning them into ends in and of themselves.

We begin in verse fifteen, which is a bit of a bridge verse. It takes us from where we were last week to where we are this week. You’ll remember last week Jesus healed someone who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years. The man was paralyzed, Jesus healed him, and then he got up and started walking around. The authorities saw him and they were upset: “What are you doing moving around on the Sabbath like that? You shouldn’t pick up your mat and walk. You should stop that. And who healed you, by the way? That’s not okay.” The man said, “I don’t know, I have no idea what the guy’s name was.” Later on, he runs into Jesus and learns His name. Then, in verse fifteen, the man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Why did he do this? We could speculate endlessly. Maybe he was afraid of them, or maybe he wasn’t too bright and didn’t really think it through. Who knows what his logic was? But I think it’s just a good reminder that sometimes even when you do a good thing, you don’t get anything out of it; it might even actively cause you trouble. You don’t do a good thing because you expect to be rewarded or because you think someone will help you out in return. You do a good thing because it’s the right thing to do. That’s what Jesus does. He helps this man, and this man turns around and makes life difficult for Him. That’s just how it is, and if it was that way for Jesus, sometimes it’s going to be like that for us. We can’t expect people to turn around and do us favors when things get difficult. Good things must be done because they are good in and of themselves.

Verse sixteen: “So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense, Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’ For this reason, they tried all the more to kill him, not only because he was breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” We could look at some of this Trinitarian language—we haven’t seen that in a hot minute, though there was a lot of that in John 1. We’ll come back around to that in a second.

I want us to think about the logic of the Sabbath here because that’s what they’re angry about. They’re angry that Jesus healed on a Sabbath. It would be reasonable to assume some of them are insincere and just see Jesus as a troublemaker, but it would be crazy to assume they are all insincere. Some of them genuinely believe this and are upset. The Sabbath was serious. It wasn’t a recommendation from God; it’s one of the Ten Commandments. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” If you look throughout the Old Testament, the recommended penalty for someone who did not keep the Sabbath was death. It was carried out in certain instances where people were going about business as usual on a Saturday trying to get ahead.

Especially during the time of the two kingdoms, as you see the Israelite kings rising and falling, you can see the consistent fall away of the Israelites from God’s ways. You start with King David, who was a great king, then King Solomon, who was pretty good, and then you just got a bunch of stinkers. Over time, they broke God’s law more and more. One of the listed things they were doing wrong was not keeping the Sabbath. This is one of the reasons God got angry and they were sent into exile. Their land was taken from them and they were sent across the continent because they broke God’s law and refused His ways. It was only about five hundred years before this that they were allowed to come back to their lands. Part of their history is that they fell away from God’s law so severely that they lost their home. You can imagine why they might take the law pretty seriously—so seriously that they’re making up “bonus” laws. There is nothing actually in the rules about the Sabbath that says miracles cannot happen on Saturdays, or that homeless people can’t pick up mats. They just added that stuff because they thought bonus laws were better than not enough laws.

Jesus has a different perspective. In Matthew 12, His disciples pluck grain from a field because they’re hungry. The authorities get angry, and Jesus says, “That’s not the point. You are missing it.” In Luke 14, they get angry at Jesus for doing good things on a Saturday again, and Jesus says, “If you had a kid that fell into a well or a donkey that fell into a hole on a Sabbath, wouldn’t you get him out?” Probably His clearest statement of what the Sabbath is supposed to be is in Mark 2:27-28. He says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” and He says that He is the Lord of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is a means, not an end. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good or important means, but the Sabbath exists to help us grow closer to God. It doesn’t exist in and of itself for itself. All the way back to creation, God made everything in six days and rested on the seventh. He didn’t rest because He was tired; God doesn’t get “tuckered out.” He did it for us, to teach us how to exist well. On that Sabbath day, we rest in Him.

Some people get confused about why Christians have Sunday as their Sabbath instead of Saturday. You can see in Acts 20:7 that the early Christians moved their Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. The logic was that the Sabbath was the day God rested in the old creation—it was the end of the old way—but now Jesus has come and was resurrected on a Sunday. This is the beginning of something new. We don’t belong to the old world anymore; we belong to this new creation that Jesus made. We’ve been doing it that way since the beginning.

The real point here is that Jesus sees the Sabbath not as an end in and of itself. He says they’re going about it all wrong. The goal is to grow closer to God through the Sabbath. To be fair, I doubt very many Americans today are at risk of taking the Sabbath too seriously. Culturally, we’re more likely to not recognize that it has any value at all. It’s mostly the “bad” weekend day. Saturday is the good one because you have the fun stuff, and Sunday is the one where you have to go to church and have work the next day. I think we have a lot to learn about the Sabbath and a real opportunity to take it more seriously as a valuable tool intended for our benefit. I don’t say that as someone who has it all figured out; my wife and I have had conversations this past year about how we can make this a more worshipful day where we really rest in God.

We pick up now where we get into more of that Trinitarian language.

“Jesus gave them this answer: ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. He will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that they all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.'”

Massive section here. You can think about the creed we said earlier and how much of it finds its roots right here. Jesus is repeatedly saying, “Me and the Father do the same stuff.” We are in the same boat, we have the same strength. We are different persons, but we are one being on the same tier. We’re both God. But we could spend a lot of time on that. Instead, I would rather take this time to think about why He’s saying this. What’s the point? Why is He telling us that He has this authority and has been given this life unto itself? Why is He saying all of this?

He’s showing that His authority is real. When the authorities on this earth challenge Him and say, “Hey man, you are doing the Sabbath wrong,” He responds, “No, I have the authority to speak on this. I would know.” I’m not just guessing about this stuff. I have been given perfect judgment. I have been given perfect discernment. I am God. I am at one with the Father.

When we see Jesus in the scripture, I think this is a serious challenge. Sometimes we see Him do stuff that you wonder about. It’s not what you would have done, or maybe it’s not what you would have preferred Him to do. You think to yourself, “What’s He doing?” Sometimes people even theorize, “Well, here Jesus made a little bit of a mistake.” That’s not His deal. If we don’t like what He does, that’s our problem. Jesus is God. That’s the whole point when He does things or teaches us things; He acts with authority—not as someone who’s a random guesser or someone who’s got an intriguing theory for us to mull over, but as someone who has all due discernment, judgment, and authority.

He continues on looking at another “means” that people are failing to see as a means to a good end. Verse thirty-one: “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true. You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. Not that I accept human testimony, but I mention it that you may be saved. John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light. I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish, the very works I am doing testify that the Father has sent me. And the Father who has sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form.”

In other words, what He’s saying here is, “I am not the one telling you that I am great.” I could do that, but it wouldn’t be particularly legitimate. You can’t be a reference for yourself; that’s not how it works. He says John told you—taking us all the way back to chapter one—and John was right, and that was helpful for you. But I am not relying on John’s testimony because he’s just another person, and people get it wrong sometimes. I have a better witness than that: God. Check the scriptures. That’s about me. If you are curious if I am legit, look at the scriptures and look at what I am doing. I am fulfilling the scriptures. I am the answer to the scriptures. I am what you’ve been waiting for. That book is about me.

Verse thirty-eight: “Nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father’s name, but you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, since you accept glory from one another, but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

This is a whole section about scripture because He’s talking to people who are supposed to be experts on scripture. These are people who spent their whole lives studying it, and He says, “You are supposed to know Him, but you don’t know me. You are missing the point.” This is not an end in and of itself; it is a means to an end.

By no means do I suggest that the words of scripture are not important. I think that’s a way people could mishear that. But think about the love letter again. A love letter is a means, and aren’t the words in a love letter important? They make a big difference. The words are important, but you don’t read the words for their own sake; you read them because of the person who wrote them. The scriptures are not an end in and of themselves. They are something intended to bring us closer to God. That’s their whole purpose. We read the scriptures to encounter God.

Yet, you can see all kinds of instances where people know the scriptures incredibly well but don’t know God. I think especially of Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is a professor who specializes in early Christian documents, and he is an atheist. His whole deal is that he has studied all of these scriptures, and he uses what he knows to try to debunk Christianity. He has written book after book talking about why he thinks it’s illegitimate. He’s someone we’re going to talk about a little bit in the Advent study because a lot of his challenges, once you understand his methodology, are not so hard to take on. Nonetheless, he has been determined his whole life to debunk Christianity. He has studied the scriptures, but he doesn’t believe in God.

While looking him up, I ended up on his blog and saw one of his more recent Christmas posts. He was frustrated. He was frustrated at the way non-religious people act. He wrote, “Why do religious people give so much more of their possessions and of themselves than secular people? Why do religious people so much more frequently commit themselves to the good of others than secular people do? Why are so many secular people so obsessed with the fleeting pleasures of the flesh and the superficial enjoyments that the media crams down our throats? It is one of my perennial puzzles and concerns.”

How absurd! He spent his whole life convincing people not to believe in Jesus, and then he’s angry that some people don’t believe in Jesus and act like it. What did you think was going to happen, Bart? You goober. But taking him seriously, this is someone who recognizes that what he’s doing is unfulfilling. He is creating a world that he doesn’t want. Why? Because he’s an expert on the scriptures but doesn’t know God, so he’s missed the entire point.

There are other examples. I remember before I left the UMC, I saw a lot of stuff from Cokesbury. They were pushing one particular author for studies; they wanted everyone to buy her work. Her big selling point was that she’s Jewish, but an expert on the New Testament. Because she’s Jewish, she knows the cultural stuff, so you should do her studies to learn new things. You want me to learn about Jesus from someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus? You are missing the point. The point of Jesus is not that He’s this interesting cultural figure you might get some cool historical ideas about. The point is that He’s Lord. If you’ve spent your time studying the scriptures and you don’t believe, there is no reason to study them; it’s a total waste of your time.

It’s easy to see people outside the church that study the scriptures and yet have missed the point. But it happens in the church too. How often do we open the scriptures just because we’re “supposed to” that day, just checking a box? When we open the scriptures, we should expect to encounter God. That’s the point. They don’t exist as an item to check off on a checklist.

I’m not saying when we expect to encounter God, we should necessarily feel like we encountered God. Sometimes people expect a certain feeling or a level of enthusiasm to prove that God is there, but that’s wrong thinking. Feelings are fleeting. Sometimes you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. It’s not anything you did or anything wrong with the day; you’re just in a bad mood. Sometimes you feel close to God, and maybe sometimes you don’t. Feelings come and go. We should expect to encounter God regardless of what we feel. The goal of the scriptures is to seek God; it is a means to an end.

It’s true with so many things in the Christian life. Prayer is not an end in and of itself; it’s a means to an end, and that end is God. Coming to church is not an end in and of itself; it is a means to build our relationship with God. The goal of the whole Christian journey is to grow our relationship with God. When we start to see these individual things as their own ends, we get twisted up.

It’s not just the religious stuff that is intended to be a means to the end of growing our relationship with God. Think about all the other ways we could do that. Going outside and enjoying creation—creation exists to reflect the glory of God. By seeing that, we can grow closer to Him. When we spend time with a friend who is especially kind, we have the opportunity to see the kindness and mercy of God through them. We ourselves are means to the end of finding God. We are expected to behave in such a way that people see God’s goodness and mercy in us.

Really, the only true end is God. Everything is intended to draw us to Him, to help us to see Him better, to see His glory and His goodness. As we go about this holiday season, I’m sure you’re going to be stressed. You’ll be running around dealing with family and a million events. Whatever you’re wrestling with, remember to ask yourself that question: Is this an end in and of itself, or is it a means to an end? When you recognize that it is a means, ask yourself, “How can I see God in this?”

We will all constantly feel restless, frustrated, and confused until we find that one true end. We will be restless until we rest in God. Amen.

John 5:1-14: The Healing at the Pool of Bethesda

~ Vincent

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

Video Teaching

Commentary

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 

  1. Christians disagree on which unnamed festival Jesus was going to Jerusalem for in this instance.  Passover or Shavuot tend to be the ones most gravitate towards.
    1. If it was Passover (which Jesus also goes up for in John 2:13, 6:4, and 11:55) it would reasonably fit into Jesus’s 3.5 year period of public ministry.  Symbolically, healing during Passover would show that Jesus is liberating people today, just as Moses liberated in the past, painting him as the greater Moses.
    2. Passover happened at harvest, but John 4:35 says harvest was still four months away.  Shavuot was a festival that happened around that time.  It was a celebration of Moses receiving the law at Sinai.  Symbolically, healing on the Sabbath (a violation of the law, strictly interpreted) and then lecturing the Jewish leaders about the law afterwards would be fitting for a festival about God’s law.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.

  1. The pool was located in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate, a gate used primarily for moving sheep and other livestock in and out of the city.
  2. The covered colonnades were a beautiful work of Roman architecture, but here it had been essentially turned into a homelessness camp by the poor and desperate who were hoping to find healing in the waters.  This was a place of immense suffering.
  3. The pool of Bethesda was a local legend, not widely known throughout the empire. It was almost forgotten by history until archaeologists found it. Its modern remembrance is primarily because Jesus visited it.

—and they waited for the moving of the waters. 4 From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.

  1. This addition to verse three and the entirety of verse four is subject to scholarly debate.  It does not appear in some of the earliest version of the text.  It may have been a scribe’s explanatory note that was later incorporated into the text.
  2. Regardless of its scriptural authenticity, the verse is helpful because it explains that people were waiting and watching for the water to bubble, at which point there would be a “mad dash” to be the first one in.
  3. This intense focus on the pool caused the people to miss Jesus, a great healer, when He came.
  4. “Their eyes were fixed on the water, expecting it to be troubled; they were so taken up with their own chosen way that the true way was neglected.” -Charles Spurgeon, “Jesus at Bethesda; or, Waiting Changed for Believing”, April 7 1867.

 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

  1. The man Jesus approached had been an invalid for 38 years.  His whole life defined by his condition.
  2. When Jesus asks him, “Do you want to get well,” it is not a silly question.  Being healed would be hard!  It would completely change the man’s life. He would lose his means of getting charity, have to find a trade, and possibly lose the community he knew by the pool.

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

  1. The man responded with an excuse, explaining that he has no one to help him into the pool. Jesus doesn’t ask for or need an explanation or justification.
  2. Jesus commands him, “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” This healing requires the man to take initiative and trust Jesus, even though it may have seemed irrational or been physically difficult.
  3. If you want to be healed from the unhealthy things in your life,pick up your mat and walk, trusting that Jesus’s power, mercy, and grace are available if you take the initiative.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

  1. After being healed, the man is confronted by authorities who are upset that he is carrying his mat on the Sabbath. They want him to preserve the status quo and effectively “go back where he came from.”
  2. When we experience healing in Christ, some people may be frustrated and want to drag us back to our old, unhealthy ways.

14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 

  1. Healing is not a “one and done” event. One must continually choose to live as a new creation and not slip back into sin or brokenness.

Full Transcript

A buddy of mine told me about a little church that he once served. It was a tiny country church, about twenty-five people in attendance on the average Sunday, and they were older—significantly older. They recognized that if they didn’t do something to start reaching out to younger people, they didn’t have that much time left, so they decided to have a meeting to come up with ways that they could reach out to younger generations. The pastor was quite pleased with this. He himself was younger and he recognized that, truth be told, this was something they probably should have talked about well before now, but late is better than never. They all came together and had this meeting.

There wasn’t a lot of energy in the room. People didn’t really seem to know what to do. They didn’t really know any young people or what they might like, so it was awkward stumbling for that first while. The pastor spoke up and tried to give them some direction. He said, “Most of you have children, and a lot of your children live in this community. They come sometimes on Christmas. Have you ever asked them what stops them from coming more regularly? That’d be a good starting place to give us a place to start working from.”

People started to say things. One woman said, “My son doesn’t like the music.” Another person said, “My daughter says there’s too much drama, that this community has too much politics, and so she just doesn’t want to be involved.” Another person spoke up, “Well, my grandkids have ball games on Sunday, and they don’t want to miss the ball games.” Then a woman stood up and she said, “This is ridiculous. I’m tired of this. What are we doing? Why are we sitting around trying to come up with ideas on how we need to change? They’re the ones that need to change. It’s not us, it’s the young people! They need to change!”

Then the room got cooking. People loved what she said. They spent the next thirty minutes talking about what was wrong with young people today. I wonder why there weren’t any young people in their church. Go figure.

After a full thirty minutes, they were coming near the close of the meeting and realized they had not come up with any ideas about how they might reach out to young people. They decided, “Let’s just wait on that. Let’s give it some time. You never know. We’ll look again next year.”

Change is hard. Change is really, really hard. Even when we recognize that we are not healthy—that there are things actively wrong with us—it is really hard to look a problem in the face and change our behaviors. A lot of times, it’s easier to just deal with the problem, to learn to live around it, and just be content with being unhealthy rather than face the terror of a new world in which we actually address the problems in our lives. Sometimes we cloak that by saying, “Oh, we’re just going to wait. Let’s just wait a little longer. Let’s see what happens. Maybe it’ll just solve itself.”

It is easy to see that with this little dysfunctional church, but I think most of us can relate to that. Most of us have something in our lives that we know isn’t healthy—whether it be pride or negativity or lust or rage—something that we know means we’re not living our best life. Every so often we trot it out and think about it. We say, “Man, maybe we should do something.” But sometimes we decide not to because change is hard and change is scary. We tell ourselves, “It’s a really busy time of the year. The holidays are coming up. We’ll look at it again in January. Really, who knows? Maybe it’ll be gone by then. Maybe a miracle will just drop out of the sky and solve all of our problems.”

The passage we’re looking at this morning is about someone who had lived with a problem for thirty-eight years. His whole life had been defined by a problem until one day Jesus came to him and asked him, “Do you want to be healed?”

We’re at John chapter five, verse one. By the way, we are almost to the end of the five chapters of John that we set out to look at, so I’d like you all to do something. I’m giving you homework this week. I want you to go home and look back on the five chapters that we looked at and just see what you learned. Start with the pre-incarnate Word. Read through the story of John the Baptist, the story of Nicodemus, and all of these stories to see what stuck with you. What is one thing you want to remember that you think was important?

It doesn’t have to be something that I said. Maybe it’s just a certain verse that stood out to you differently because of your life circumstances this time around. Maybe there was a particular song in worship that brought out a dimension of this scripture that you hadn’t seen before. Maybe it was another pastor you were reading that struck you. I don’t care where you learned something, but I want to know what you learned. I think it is so important as we come to the end of a project to take a minute and look back, because if we don’t intentionally think about what we want to remember, there is a good chance we’re not going to remember anything. Next week, I am going to include a little slip of paper in your bulletins and ask you to write down one thing that you learned.

The week after that, I want to share what you guys learned. I think there are so many things that people learn that can build each other up just by seeing what God has taught us across a period of time. You don’t have to sign them, so you don’t have to be worried about doing “good enough” that people are impressed with you. That’s not what this is about. Just think about something that would benefit this community—something you learned in the book of John that you’d be willing to share. You’ve been warned: next week, papers.

John chapter five, verse one: “Sometime later Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.”

When we’re at a miraculous site, sometimes it can be easy to assume that this place was somehow more dignified than others, that somehow God’s grace just shone through a little clearer in this place. This is not the case with Bethesda. Bethesda was an ugly place. This was not the kind of place you would be delighted to spend a lot of time in, and you can see it in the details. First off, the pool of Bethesda is near the Sheep Gate. You can guess how the Sheep Gate got its name; it is a gate that was used predominantly for sheep. If you had sheep that you needed to get in and out of Jerusalem, that’s the gate you took them through. Occasionally some other livestock might come through, but this is primarily an area for animals.

There is a pool by the gate for animals. It would be incredibly reasonable to think that sheep might have stopped to drink from it if they were thirsty on the way in. It’s a place for animals, and yet people are here—some of the people who are most vulnerable, who are hurting, paralyzed, can’t walk, blind. All of these people are scattered around.

I think the NIV does a bit of a disservice here by saying there are “covered colonnades.” It’s a fine translation, but I don’t use that phrase in my regular speech. The King James Version perhaps does it better by just calling them “porches.” There are five porches. Another way to think about these structures might be shelter houses. These are not nice places to spend time. “Colonnade” suggests they’re somehow a beautiful ancient ruin just because the word is fancy, but these were not fancy. These are just buildings with no walls. They are makeshift structures to protect people from the sun and the rain. Essentially, what we’re coming across here is a pool surrounded by a homelessness camp. It is not beautiful. There is a lot of suffering by this pool.

The pool itself doesn’t have great storied legends. Don’t think that we remember this place because it was just so uniquely special. As a matter of fact, the Bible is pretty much the only source that references Bethesda. There was a period of time where archaeologists started to think that Bethesda didn’t exist, and maybe the person who wrote the Bible was wrong or mixing stories because they just couldn’t find a pool in the place where it was described. Sure enough, they found it given time, but that’s the thing—this place was almost forgotten about. It did not have this vast legend that people all over the empire knew about; it was a local legend.

The reason we remember this place today is because it is a place that Jesus graced with His presence. That’s what made it memorable. As ugly as it might have been, when you think about how Jesus graced it with His presence, it can be tempting to think, “Man, I wish I were there so I could see Jesus heal someone.” Heartbreaking though it may have been, I wish I could see that. But Jesus repeatedly assures us throughout the scriptures that He is with us. He says, “Where two or more are gathered, there I am.” He says, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Jesus is with us in Walnut Grove. If you want to see Jesus heal someone, go to Him.

Now we have the mystery of verse four. Depending on what translation you are using, you may or may not have verse four in the text proper. If you are using the NIV like me, you will notice it is not in the text; it is a footnote. It reads: “From time to time, an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.” It’s an explanation of how the pool worked.

Some of the older versions of John that have been found do not contain this verse. There is a debate: was this actually intended to be scripture, or did some well-meaning scribe add this note as just a little piece of commentary explaining how this particular area worked? As people copied the gospel again and again by hand, did they start to accidentally think that this piece of commentary was actually a part of the scripture itself? I read up a little bit on it and it is complicated. There are really good arguments to be made in either direction, and I cannot say that I feel comfortable weighing in definitively. Either way, whether it is a piece of commentary that has snuck in or is intended to be a part of the scripture proper, I think it’s helpful. It tells us what’s going on at this place—how it functions and what the people are doing.

All these people who have gathered there and are staying by the pool are waiting and watching for a miracle. They are waiting and watching for those bubbles to come out, and the second the water starts to bubble, there’s a mad dash because the first one in the water is healed. You can imagine that’s where all of the attention is wrapped. If you are waiting there for years, you don’t want to miss it because you weren’t paying attention for a minute. This is the focal point of these people’s lives: waiting and hoping for a miracle from this pool.

Even when Jesus comes—a great healer—no one seems to recognize Him. We see already in the book of John that Jesus has become something of a local legend. People know Him and seek His healing, and yet a whole camp of people waiting on healing don’t recognize Him. I think Charles Spurgeon put it really well. He says, “The blindness had come over the people at this pool. There they were, and there was Christ who could heal them, but not a single one of them sought Him. Their eyes were so fixed on the water, expecting it to be troubled; they were so taken up with their own chosen way, that the true way was neglected.”

All of us, to some extent, have that same potential. Instead of seeing problems and addressing them and taking them to Jesus, trusting that He can help, sometimes we wait. We just wait on it, kind of like that church. “Let’s give it another year. Let’s wait a little longer. Who knows what’ll happen? Maybe there’ll be some grand miracle and the problem will just go away.” It is easy to want to wait and not have to face the problem properly—not to take it to the infinitely better source that we know is there. We know we can take our problems to Jesus. We know He is a much better solution than waiting for a random miracle. Because, let’s be honest, what are the odds of a random miracle, right?  Occasionally you hear stories about people who have random, totally out-of-the-blue miracles that change their lives. Occasionally you’ll hear a story about someone who led a really rough life—a lot of drugs, a lot of crime. They end up in prison and, lo and behold, they have a vision from God out of nowhere. God says, “Hey, I have plans for you. Get it together.” Their life is changed, and everything is different from that moment onward.

It does happen; you can find these stories. There is a chance that a random miracle just plops out of the sky, but that doesn’t happen for most people, does it? You can see that even at this pool. There are tons of people in need waiting by the pool, and how many are healed when those bubbles come around? One.

There are a lot of people who are stuck waiting forever. Random miracles are not common. They are not a normative, expected way that we should expect our problems to go away. We need to take them to Jesus.

Continuing on, we see the story of one particular man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” That might seem like a silly question. Surely no one wants to be paralyzed; of course he wants to be healed. But imagine what it would be like to be him. Imagine if you were this guy for thirty-eight years. You’ve been living by that pool and your whole life is defined by that. You’ve learned how to get food by staying there. Your friends are all people you met while you were there. You don’t even know what’s down the street.

Can you imagine how his life would change if he were healed? It would change, and it would be terrifying. No one would give him charity anymore; no one is going to give a healthy man charity. He is going to have to find a trade. He is going to have to go into town and figure out how to live, and he has no experience with that. A lot of his friends are probably going to say, “What are you doing here, man? You can’t hang out by the pool anymore. It’s weird. Move on.” There are all kinds of reasons not to want to be healed. Being healed is infinitely harder in the short term than just sitting and languishing. So Jesus asks, because if you don’t want to be healed, it’s not going to work out.

He asked the man, “Do you want to be healed?” The man responds, “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” He gives an explanation as to why he’s there—an excuse. To be fair, I don’t think this is a bad excuse; I think it is a great excuse. He is prevented from being better. He has been stuck there for a fair reason. I am not going to fault the guy; I can’t imagine what else he would have done. But Jesus does not want an explanation. He did not ask for one, and he’s not seeking one. This man doesn’t have to justify why he is where he is to be worthy of healing. Jesus doesn’t care how we got there. Do you want to be healed now?

Yes, life is unfair. Yes, wrong things happen. There is a very good chance that you are here and you had nothing to do with it. But even if you are the cause of your own problems, Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed?” No explanation is necessary. Jesus responds to the man, “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” The way He heals in this particular situation, He gives the man His power and His grace. All of it is right there at his fingertips. If you want to change your life, take it. But you have to take it. You have to stand up. You have to take initiative.

Think about how hard that would have been for that guy to think this was rational. He has been there for thirty-eight years; he doesn’t even know who Jesus is. This stranger comes up and says, “Stand up. Pick up your mat. Go.” That would have seemed laughable. We don’t know how hard it would have been to stand, either. We don’t know the details of this particular miracle. Had his legs atrophied? Could he remember what it was like to walk? Was it easy? Was it painful? Was he afraid it would be painful? There are all kinds of reasons not to do it, just as there are all kinds of reasons not to change. There are always ways you can convince yourself not to take initiative, but Jesus’s power is there. His grace is there. His mercy is there. All the man has to do is trust Him—trust that He can heal in the way that He’s claimed.

The man does it. As the story goes on, people come around and they’re frustrated with this guy. Authorities come around and they come up with this goofy reason to be upset: “You picked up your mat on a Sabbath. Can’t do that.” This man who has been paralyzed for years can stand, and rather than celebrating that with him, they want him to go back where he came from. They want to stop this because he is upsetting the status quo. The status quo was good. They don’t care if he is healed or better; they just want to live in the status quo. They need him to put back that mat where it came from and get right back next to that pool.

It’s absurd, and it’s true in real life. When we experience the healing and health that Jesus makes available to us, sometimes there are people who are frustrated because they liked things the way they were. They want to drag us right back to where we were, to our unhealthy ways.

But what does Jesus say? Jesus sees this man in the temple and He says, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.” You are well again. Stop sinning. Don’t go back to being defined by brokenness or by hurt. Don’t go back to a bad way, even if it’s a different bad way. The man can’t literally go back to being paralyzed without a bizarre instance, but there are all kinds of ways he could slip back into a different sin, into a different way of being that was not what God created him to be. Jesus has given this man healing. He has made him closer to what he was made to be.

If we want to be changed by Jesus, it’s not a “one and done.” You have to continually make the choice to live into that healed self, to be the new creation He made us to be, rather than slipping right back down just because we solved one problem. If we want to be a new creation, we have to choose to stop living in unhealthy ways and live into the life that He’s made available to us.

I would bet a lot of us have problems or unhealthy things in our lives that we know are wrong—ways of living that are not good that we have trotted out before and said to ourselves, “This isn’t the time. Maybe later we’ll address it.” We tell ourselves this is not the time to take this to Jesus. Maybe we’re comfortable being unhealthy. Maybe that just seems like the way we are, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Or maybe we’re just hoping a random miracle plops down out of the sky and makes things easier for us.

Jesus asks us, “Do you want to be healed?” We don’t have to live that way. Do you want to be healed? If the answer is yes, pick up your mat and walk. Trust that His power, His mercy, and His grace are available. All we have to do is take initiative. He will help us every step of the way. Pick up your mat and walk. We are invited to trust that Jesus is the healer He says He is. Amen.

John 1:19-34: Jesus’s Baptism

~ Vincent ~ 3 Comments

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

Video Teaching

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

  1. The narrative shifts back chronologically from the opening eighteen verses (which served as an overview of the Book of John) to the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry.

     

  2. What is happening to John in this verse is a public interrogation, not a respectful inquiry. Their goal was to discredit John. If he denied having authority, people might stop following him. If he claimed authority, they could report him to the Romans as a troublemaker. 

21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

  1. The authoritative figures that are being addressed here are all in Scripture.  The second coming of Elijah is in Malachi 4:5, the coming of the prophet is in Deuteronomy 18:15, and prophecies about the coming messiah are found throughout the Old Testament (especially Isaiah).

22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

  1. The Pharisees’ may be villains in these passages, but they were also people with real, legitimate concerns.

     

    1. The Roman-Jewish historian Josephus recorded four individuals in the first century who claimed to be the Messiah, raised armies, and fought the Romans, all of whom understood the Messiah as a military figure.

       

    2. A later false messiah, Simon Ben Kosiba, led a rebellion in the early second century that resulted in the Romans destroying Israel, renaming it Syria Palestine, and scattering the Jewish people. Israel did not reappear on maps until after World War II.

       

    3. The Pharisees were justifiably worried that a false messiah would bring destruction, but while trying to prevent this, they tragically overlooked the true Messiah.

23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

  1. John seems surprisingly comfortable given the circumstances! He knew he wasn’t “the one.”  He was just there to point to the person who was.

     

    1. How often do we carry the burden of having to be “the one” rather than pointing to the person who genuinely is?

       

  2. He identifies himself using Isaiah’s words: “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” (Isa. 40:3)

     

    1. Untying sandals was considered such a lowly task that even rabbis were forbidden from asking their disciples to do it (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ketubot 96a)  John’s statement signifies his profound sense of unworthiness compared to the greatness of Jesus.

24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

  1. The practice of baptism existed before John, rooted in Old Testament purification rituals, such as priests washing in a basin before approaching the altar in the tabernacle and later bathing in the temple.

     

  2. John brought this practice to the people, applying the principle of purification to prepare for God’s approach in the form of Jesus.

     

  3. John’s baptism was a symbolic act. He explicitly states, “I baptize with water,” indicating it was just water and held no special divine power. It was a good thing to do, encouraging people to recognize their sinfulness and need for God’s purification.

28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 

  1. The title “Lamb of God” connects Jesus to a rich scriptural history of lambs being sacrificed so that others might live: the ram that died in Isaac’s place, the Passover lamb whose blood protected the Israelites, and the lambs sacrificed for forgiveness in the temple.

     

  2. John identifies Jesus as “the” ultimate Lamb who will provide the final sacrifice.

     

  3. The use of the singular “sin” (not “sins”) is significant. Sins are the symptoms (wrong actions), but “sin” is the underlying disease or “rot in our soul” that began with Adam and Eve. Jesus came to eliminate the root cause, not just the symptoms.

30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

  1. Why would the sinless Jesus need to be baptized? Common reasons for baptism (joining the church, receiving the Holy Spirit, washing away sin) do not apply to Him.  Surely Jesus could have revealed himself to John the Baptist in other ways.  Why was this way fitting?

     

    1. John’s baptism was purely symbolic, which means a lot of the answers (the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, joining the Body of Christ, etc.) don’t apply here.  It really is a matter of symbols: why would a sinless person symbolically ask for purification?

       

    2. The 18th-century monk Nikodemos of Athos speaks to this in his prayers: “Jesus, being God, had no need for purification, but he suffered purification for me,” (Prayers to Our Lord Jesus Christ).
    3. Jesus gained nothing from baptism; it was an act of humility. His glory is repeatedly revealed through such humble acts: the infinite God being born in a small human body, in a manger; and ultimately dying a humiliating death on a cross.

32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 

  1. What was once a purely symbolic, natural act became more than natural, now carrying the power of the Holy Spirit to bestow grace, unite a person with the body of Christ, and wash away sin.

     

  2. Note that there is no reason to expect two baptisms.  Some traditions insist that you need one “water baptism” and one “baptism of the Spirit” (generally identified by strong feelings in the believer), but Ephesians 4 is explicit that there is only one baptism. Jesus has transformed baptism, not added a second baptism.

34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.

  1. Matthew 11:11”Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

     

    1. John was the greatest of “those born of women,” or those born by purely natural means.

       

    2. Through baptism, believers are made part of the “Kingdom of Heaven” and are greater than John the Baptist

       

  2. Just as Jesus transformed water and a human body into something more than natural, He transforms believers into more than natural people by giving them the Holy Spirit.

Full Transcript

So, for those of you who thought last week was a little too abstract, good news: John gets concrete pretty quickly. Here in verse 19 onwards, we are going to see a comparison between two men, John, the Baptist and Jesus, and the different types of baptism that each of them offers : John’s baptism of repentance and Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now, often when you see comparisons between two things, one is good and one is bad. Right? There’s the good, the and the evil. The big and the small. The smart and the stupid. One is generally implied to be superior and one is implied to be inferior. This is not strictly the case, it’s a little different. Here you see something that’s good and something that’s better.  It’s got John the Baptist, the best this world has to offer, and Jesus, who is better. And, there’s a verse from Scripture that I think really helps explain the entirety of what we’re looking at today. Matthew 11:11: “Truly I tell you, Among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven. Is greater than he.” So just keep that in the back of your mind. Think on that as we move forward and let’s dig in. 

So beginning at verse 19, 

19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders   in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

Let’s just start with that. That’s a good chunk. So first off, You can see at the beginning of verse nineteen. Now this was John’s testimony when. We’re seeing that this is just a little indication that this doesn’t happen chronologically after what we had last week. Those first eighteen verses are essentially a summary of everything that happens in the book of John and a little before and a little afterwards. So we saw before Jesus was incarnate, and then we saw John the Baptist, and he was proclaiming the coming of Jesus.  And then we saw Jesus come and he was not received; he was rejected. And yet, he created a pathway to salvation. We saw all of this right there in the first eighteen verses. But now that we’re on to verse nineteen, we’re going back. We’re going back, and we’re getting a little more in detail in what was presented in the first eighteen verses as an overview. 

So, this is what happened when John, the Baptist was confronted by priests and Levites from Jerusalem, and, If you didn’t know any better, you’d think these priests thought pretty highly of him. Look at all the things they ask him : “Are you the Messiah? Are you the second coming of Elijah? Are you the prophet?” All three figures from Scripture: the Messiah since Genesis itself, this prophecy about a coming prophet from Deuteronomy, even the second coming of Elijah foretold in Malachi, all three big deals. And they’re asking John, are you this big deal? Are you that big deal? And each time, no. 

If you didn’t know any better, you might think they’re a little impressed with John. They are not. This is a public interrogation. They have cornered John the Baptist while he is doing his baptizing in front of a group of people. And what they’re trying to do is ask him if he is any of these great figures from Scripture. These would give him authority, and in their minds, this is a win-win. On one hand, he says he’s not and he has no authority. That’s great ; maybe people won’t follow him anymore and now he can’t cause any trouble. Big win! But on the other hand, maybe he says he is those figures. That’s a win too; then they can go right back. To the people in charge and the Romans, and tell them, “Hey, the guy we were wondering is he a troublemaker? Yup, troublemaker. He needs to be taken care of. ” 

I think it’s really easy to see these priests, Levites, and Pharisees as purely villainous figures. We see them harassing John the Baptist. We see them harassing Jesus. It’s easy to just say, “Uh oh.” To be fair, in this story they are villains, but I think it can be helpful to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Because they’re not one-dimensional, you know.  They had reasons for doing what they’re doing. The historian Josephus, a Roman historian specifically about Jewish people, tells us that in the first century alone, there were four different people who all claimed to be the Messiah and raised up an army in Israel and tried to fight the Romans. Four different people, all of them understood the Messiah to be a military figure—someone who would raise an army and kick out the Romans and restore Israel to its earthly glory as a phenomenal kingdom. Four times!  That’s one every twenty five years. There were a lot of people claiming to be the messiah. And Josephus only tells us that there were four who managed to put together an army to challenge the Romans. He doesn’t tell us how many people might have tried and never quite made it far enough to be historically noteworthy. 

Ultimately, it was a false messiah that would cause problems for Israel in the end. It’s a man named Simon Ben Kosiba, who was another person who claimed to be the messiah in the early second century.  And again, he put together an army and again he fought the Romans. And it didn’t, well, it went better than for a lot of others, but the Romans eventually put down this rebellion. And when they did, they were done. No more. No more of this. “How many times have we had to put down an insurrection in Israel? We’re done with it. I want that place ruined! I want it wiped off the face of the map! No more Israel. That is now Syria Palestine. No more kings of Israel. I want those people scattered to the four corners of the earth.” It was a false messiah who ultimately removed Israel from the map for over a thousand years. You don’t see Israel again on maps until after World War II, so there’s fair reason for people to be worried. They’re worried that a false messiah will cause problems, and they’re not wrong. Rather than seeing them as villainous, I guess I tend to see them as more tragic figures. All, this time trying to protect people from a false messiah, and in the end, they end up overlooking the real one in the process. But in any case, that’s why they’re doing what they’re doing. That’s why they’re interrogating John the Baptist: Is this guy going to cause trouble? Are people going to get hurt because of what he’s saying? 

You see the three different questions they asked, and John doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the questions. It says that he freely confessed that he was not the Messiah. So John’s not sweating bullets; he’s okay, he’s comfortable. Why? Because he knows he’s not the big deal that they’re worried about. He doesn’t even claim to be a big deal; he knows he’s just the guy who’s pointing people to the guy that matters, and there is a certain freedom that comes along with that. 

I wish all of us were as comfortable doing that sort of thing as John the Baptist; as free and easy pointing people to Jesus, rather than trying to point people to ourselves. That becomes very easy. All too often we try to prove to people that we are big shots, that we are the ones who can answer the questions, that we are the ones who get things done, that we are the people that they should be looking towards. When you get too used to that there’s a certain kind of anxiety that accompanies that because at the end of the day, we will never be the answer to every problem that people have. We are so limited; we just can’t do it all. Naturally, there will be anxiety.  What if they know that I am not the big deal that I claim to be? But if you point people to Jesus—if like John the Baptist, You point them to the one who is—the one who can take care of all of their problems—the anxiety is gone. You can freely confess, “I am not a big deal, but I know the one who is.” And John answers them with that exact answer in the end. They ask, “Are you this scriptural figure? Are you this scriptural figure?” He says, “I know the one that is,” he quotes from Scripture, the book of Isaiah. He says, “I am the voice calling in the wilderness: make straight the way for the Lord.” That’s the passage he chooses to identify himself. 

Now at this point, The Pharisees are annoyed. He seems to be claiming some sort of authority, and yet he will not admit it. And so they throw a curve ball at him. They say, “

“Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

“Why are you out here baptizing if you’re not a big shot?”

John the baptism did not invent baptism, by the way. Baptism had been around before John the Baptist. You’ll notice that the Bible never says, “and there was a guy named John who came up with this thing called baptism, and it was good.” Never says that. It just assumes that you probably know what baptism is. You can see the roots of baptism as early as Exodus. When the Israelites are in the tabernacle before they approach the altar, a priest is supposed to take a large basin of water and wash their hands and wash their feet to show, “I recognize that I am sinful. God, please forgive me and purify me as I approach you at your altar.”  Then when the temple is built, the practice gets a little more elaborate. The basin of water gets even bigger, and rather than just washing your hands and your feet, you bathe in the water. A priest would bathe before they approach the altar for the same reason: I know I am about to go towards God’s altar; I recognize I am sinful ; God, please purify me as I approach Your altar. What John has done is he has taken this practice of baptism, and he’s taken it to the people. Because they might not be approaching the altar, but here’s the thing: you might not be approaching God in that sense, but God is approaching us. Jesus is coming; you will want to be purified. Get baptized, repent of your sin, ask God to be made pure so when you see Him face to face, you’ll be ready. And it’s purely symbolic, right? That’s what John is doing. It’s a good thing; John is doing something that is unambiguously good.

It can’t be particularly prideful to tell people, “Hey, recognize that you are sinful and that you need to be made pure by God.” That’s it. And, yet the Pharisees are claiming that this humble practice that he is involved in is evidence of his pride. And we see that. We see that all over the world to this day. People, who are humbly trying to follow their God and others who use their humility as evidence of their pride. For example, if someone hears, “Oh yeah, I try to be in church every Sunday.” Ooh. Someone thinks they’re a pretty good person. Oh yeah, you don’t want any more drinks? Oh, you’re too good for us. Someone’s a good person. Watch out for them. Oh I can’t make it to the bachelor party this weekend. I’m not actually comfortable with the things that you guys are going to do.  Oh, okay. Okay, we got a saint over here. All too often, when people are trying to humbly do what God asked of them, others see that as evidence of pride. Totally untrue, but nonetheless a sad truth. 

How does John the Baptist handle it? He handles it by again reiterating I am not a big deal. I am not special. I just know someone who is. He responds, “I baptize with water.” Again, he’s saying, “Look, this baptism thing. I don’t have any divine special power. It’s just water on the head. That’s all I’m doing. It’s not such a big deal. I don’t claim to be special.  

But among you stands one who you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

Now, how many of you remember when George Bush was in the Middle East and got a shoe chucked at him? He was giving a speech, and someone in the crowd did not think very highly of him and so they threw a shoe at his head. It’s a chuckle-worthy YouTube clip. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth your time. But why did they do that? Because in the Middle East, that’s a sign that you don’t think too highly of someone. The foot is the grossest, dirtiest part of the body in popular imagination there, so to associate someone or something with a foot, you are saying that’s what I think of you. And here John is saying Jesus is so incredible. This guy I am preparing the way for, he’s so amazing. I am not even fit to touch the grossest, dirtiest part of his body. I can’t do the lowest of the low for him. Untying the sandal was considered so inglorious that he’s saying he’s not even worthy of that. 

When a rabbi was teaching a disciple, it was important to give them tasks so they could show that they were listening to their rabbi and that they were devout. And yet it was literally written, “But don’t have them untie your sandals. That’s too low. You can’t have them do that. Gotta let the guys have some dignity.” John is saying he is not even worthy of doing that. It’s not that he’s so great, it’s that he’s not even great enough to do that. 

So we’ve seen John the Baptist—the greatest man, according to Jesus, who ever walked this earth—the greatest man of the natural world there could possibly be. And we saw his baptism, often known as the baptism of repentance, a purely symbolic act to indicate God, “I am impure please make me pure.” Now, as we move towards this second half, we’re going to see the one who he’s being compared to. We’ve seen the best now let’s see better than the best. We’re going to look at Jesus. Verse 29: 

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” 

There’s so much in what he says right there when he sees Jesus. “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” That’s the first thing he says. And notice what he doesn’t say: “Look! A great philosopher who can teach us things about the world beyond.”  He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say, “Look, a great teacher that can teach us how to act well in the world.” He doesn’t say, “Look, a self help guru that can teach us how to be better people.” No. He says, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” 

“The Lamb of God.” What does he mean by that? Well there’s lots of lambs in Scripture. We see lambs come up time and time again. For example, as early as Genesis, we have Isaac. Abraham was told to sacrifice his son Isaac. So he takes Isaac to the altar and right before he sacrifices him, there is a lamb: a lamb that dies in Isaac’s stead. And then we have Passover.  In the book of Exodus, the angel of death comes to Egypt to kill all of the firstborn. How do the Israelites make sure that their firstborns are safe? They kill a lamb and they put the blood of the lamb on their doorways so that the angel passes over their house. And at the temple, when they have done something wrong, when they wanted to be forgiven by God, what did they do? They sacrificed a lamb. Even the book of Isaiah talks about a lamb who will be sacrificed. So much lamb imagery: lambs that die so that others might live. 

John says, not just “Here is a lamb.” He says here is the lamb. This is the ultimate lamb. This is the one who has come to finish, and he says, this lamb will take away the sin of the world. He doesn’t say sins. He uses the singular, not the plural. Often we think about sins, plural, instead of sin, and that’s fine. You know, sins are the wrong things we do. Those are not good. But at the same time, it’s kind of like a symptom. Sins are a symptom of sin. Sin in the singular is more than just the wrong things we do. It’s like a disease. It’s like a blight in our hearts. It’s like rot in our soul. That is sin. And that’s why in Genesis, when Adam and Eve commit sins, the problem is not just that they have done individual wrong things. The problem is that they have caught this disease. This rot has taken root in them! Sin is the problem—not just the individual sins they have committed, but the greater sin that is now nested within them.  Jesus has come as the Lamb to eliminate the sin, not just the sins. He’s not just going to get rid of the symptom; he’s going to get rid of the cause itself. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” 

As we get towards this last section, this answers one of the questions that I had for the longest time. I always wondered. Why did Jesus get baptized? What did he get out of it? I wondered that for years. Why would Jesus need to get baptized? It doesn’t make any sense by a lot of metrics. When we talk about baptism, we think there’s a lot of ways of explaining it and they’re all true. For example, baptism is when we individually join the church which is the body of Christ. Baptism is when the Holy Spirit is bestowed on us. Baptism is the washing away of our sins. Baptism is a promise that we make to God to stay loyal. It’s all of these, and yet do any of those make sense for Jesus? Why would Jesus need to join the body of Christ when He. Himself is Christ? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Jesus, part of the Trinity which is Father, Son and Holy Spirit always in communion with one another, need to have the Holy Spirit bestowed on him when he’s already in constant communion with it? Why would Jesus, a man that has no sin, need to be purified of sin? That doesn’t make any sense. And, why would he need to make a promise to God when he himself is God? All of the ways we describe baptism make no sense for Jesus.  So why did Jesus get baptized? 

Well, in this passage from John, first off, we see that a lot of those questions can be eliminated right off the bat because this is John’s baptism. He says it himself: it’s just symbolic. It’s just water. There is no divine power behind it. You’ve got to wait for Jesus to that to happen. So the only thing symbolically that’s happening here is Jesus is asking His Father, through baptism, to be purified of His sins. That’s a lot of our questions eliminated right off the bat, but we still have one: why would a sinless person need to ask to be purified from their sins? It doesn’t make sense. I wondered that for ages, and it wasn’t until I ran across the writings of a devotional author called Nikodemos of Athos. Nikodemos of Athos was a monk in 18th century Greece well known for his devotional writings. Among the many treasures he has left to the world, one of them is an acrostic series of prayers. It just takes you through the whole alphabet, and it’s got a different prayer for every letter of the alphabet. As you go through the alphabet, you go through the life of Christ thanking him for each and everything he did. They’re really lovely prayers. I was reading through them one day, and I got to the part about Jesus’ baptism. He had written “Jesus, being God, had no need for purification but he suffered purification for me.” I had never heard someone say that word “suffered” before, and yet it’s helped me start to make sense of it. 

What did Jesus get out of baptism? What did He stand to gain? Nothing. If anything, It’s inglorious for someone who is perfect to have to ask for purification from sins that He didn’t commit. It’s a little absurd, but He did it to be revealed to John the Baptist. He is revealed through his humility, and that’s something that happens throughout Scripture. We can jump back over to that other passage we were looking at this morning in Philippians. Philippians 2:5: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God, something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by being obedient to death, even death on a cross.” 

Jesus is repeatedly found through acts of humility. He is glorious, and he absolutely could have just descended from the sky with glorious beams shooting off of him, a giant crown and a scepter or something. And yet he did not. Repeatedly we see him reveal his glory in his humility. God, the infinite God is born into the smallness of a human body? Unthinkable! God, the infinite God is born—not just born, but born in a manger. These are circumstances, which for the average person would be incredibly undignified. And yet this is how God reveals Himself. The pure asks for purification. Why? Unthinkable, undignified, And ultimately, Jesus dies on a cross, not just a death, but the most humiliating and painful death you could think of. All of this Jesus goes through so His glory is known through his humility. Here we see Jesus reveals himself, not by trying to prove he’s some kind of big shot. A real big shot doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody. They are a big shot simply by nature of what they are. God is glorious not because he needs to impress anybody, but because he can help anybody do anything just by nature of who He is. 

We see here it says verse 30. 

30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

The greatness of God is revealed in this humble moment in which the pure asks to be purified. And we see here that the second form of baptism, baptism by the Holy Spirit, is what Jesus will offer—something different, something better than what John has offered.  What John offered was good, but Jesus offers something that is greater than good. 

Now, some people get confused here. They think there’s actually two forms of baptism. They think you need to get baptized by water, and that’s like the baptism of John the Baptist, and then there’s a second bonus baptism that comes afterwards. That’s your baptism by the Holy Spirit. That is usually indicated, in their thinking, by a fierce feeling that you’re very close to God, and when you feel that that’s your second baptism, the baptism by the Holy Spirit. This appears nowhere in Scripture. Pentecostals often make this claim, but in the early church’s writings, you can find no one who thinks that there’s a second baptism that is indicated by strong feelings. Not only that, but in Scripture it says that there aren’t two baptisms. In Ephesians 4 it says that there is not two, but one baptism. 

Jesus did not offer this baptism by the Holy Spirit by some kind of different means. He didn’t come up with this new thing that people need after their first baptism. He took baptism in the same way that John the Baptist was doing it: water on the head, something that was purely symbolic, and he gave it divine power. No longer was it just a symbolic gesture. It had the power of the Holy Spirit behind it. That’s where we start to see all of those other meanings we were talking about earlier. Now, through the waters of baptism, the Spirit can be bestowed. Now, through the waters of baptism, a person can be united with the body of Christ. Now, there is so much more dimension because with John alone, we only have the natural—the best of the natural world—a great man who does great symbolic acts only through the power of man. With Jesus we have someone who is greater than just a human. He’s better than the best the natural world can offer, and His baptism—still water on the head—now carries infinitely more power, because the divine has transformed it from something merely natural into something more than natural, something that carries the power of the divine.  

Think back to that Scripture we started with, Matthew 11:11: “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” He says, “among those born of women.”  What Jesus is saying is, among those who have purely been born by natural means there’s no one better than John the Baptist. He is the greatest the natural world alone can produce. And yet, in the kingdom of heaven, there is better.”

You were made a part of the Kingdom of Heaven through the waters of baptism. You are no longer just natural. Just as Jesus took the waters of baptism, just water, and transformed it into something greater than the natural world has.  In the same way He took a human body and made it greater than just a human body; He gave it the divine power of the Word. In that same way, Jesus took you, and now you are more than just a natural person.  You were made a part of the Kingdom of Heaven through the waters of baptism. You are no longer just natural. Just as Jesus took the waters of baptism (just water) and transformed it into something greater than the natural world has, in the same way He took a human body and made it greater than just a human body; He gave it the divine power of the Word. In that same way, Jesus took you, and you are more than just a natural person.You have the power of the Holy Spirit inside of you. You have been blessed with the power of the Holy Spirit. You, according to Scripture—the words of Jesus Himself—are greater than the greatest that the natural world has to offer.

I don’t know what you faced this week. I don’t know what you’re going to face in the coming weeks. I don’t know the challenges. I don’t know the frustrations. I don’t know the hurt. I don’t know what this world has for you. But we saw this morning John handle the incredible distress of being interrogated by some of the most powerful people in his region, and he stood up to that. If the greatest the natural world had to offer was a man so great, I wonder, what can God do through you, who is greater than him, who has the power of the Holy Spirit behind you? What will God do through you? Amen.

John 1:1-18: Prologue

~ Vincent ~ 2 Comments

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
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Overview: John 1
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Video Teaching

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

Background

  1. John is one of the four Gospels

    1. Matthew emphasizes fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies;
       
    2. Mark emphasizes Jesus as servant who suffers;

    3. Luke emphasizes Jesus’s humanity;

    4. John emphasizes Christ’s divinity

  2. John is often recommended for new Bible readers alongside Philippians, but just because it’s good for beginners doesn’t mean there’s not tremendous depth for everyone.

    1. “Consider, then, brethren, if perchance John is not one of those mountains concerning whom we sang a little while ago, I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence shall come my help. Therefore, my brethren, if you would understand, lift up your eyes to this mountain, that is, raise yourselves up to the evangelist, rise to his meaning.”  -Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on John, Tractate 1

  3. The depth of God reflected in John’s prologue helps address a common critique of Christianity: “It’s about a magical guy in the sky that grants wishes.”

  4. John’s opening, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” immediately displays the complexity and depth of the Christian understanding of God, which even language strains to fully express.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 

  1. “In the beginning…”

    1. This opening verse parallels Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning…”).  John is retelling the story of creation, but answering a question that haunted mankind from the beginning: who is “us?”

      1. Genesis 1:26: “Let us make mankind…”

      2. Many answers that people have proposed (God is talking to angels (not creators) or humanity (not existent) or the Earth (an object, not a being)) are deeply inadequate.

      3. John reveals “the Word” (Jesus pre-incarnate) as with God and as God—revealing the foundation of the Trinity.

  2. “The Word” refers to Jesus before His incarnation.

    1. “From this it is also clear that ‘the Word,’ properly speaking, is always understood as a divine person, since He is precisely what is expressed by the One who understands. Furthermore, this divine Word is the perfect likeness of Him from whom He proceeds. He is co-eternal with Him from whom He proceeds, because He was never a work-in-progress before being formed, but is always fully realized in act. He is equal to the Father, being completely perfect and expressing the Father’s entire being. Finally, He is co-essential and consubstantial with the Father, because He is of the very same divine substance.” -Aquinas, Commentary on John, Lecture 1, 27.

  3. In the original Greek that John was writing in, “The Word” is “Logos.”  That word carried important and distinct meanings for both Jewish and Greek audiences:

    1. For a Jewish reader: “Logos” meant “the word,” resonating with the Old Testament’s emphasis on the power and righteousness of God’s word.

      1.  “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” -Psalm 33:6
      2. “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” -Isa. 55:11
      3. Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path -Psalm 119:105
    2. For a Greek audience: “Logos” meant the “plan,” “blueprint,” or “wisdom” behind the universe—what philosophers sought to understand.

      1. “Right reason (orthos logos) is that which declares what is the right course.” -Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter 2 (1103b31).
      2. “[T]his Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time … though all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it.” -Heraclitus, The Fragments, DK B1
    3. By using “Logos,” John tells both groups that the thing they loved and were looking for had come to find them: Jesus.

3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 

  1. By using that term, “logos,” John affirmed that Jesus was both the creative word of God (the spoken word in Genesis) and the blueprint of creation.

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

  1. “The darkness has not overcome it” can also be translated “the darkness has not understood it.” Both are good translations.

     

  2. The world’s darkness (frustration, cruelty) persists because people haven’t understood Jesus. But that darkness can’t overcome the light and hope that is Jesus.

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

  1. The John in verse 6 is John the Baptist, not the Gospel’s author. Throughout the book of John, the author doesn’t refer to himself by name.  Instead, he calls himself, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

     

  2. John the Baptist’s role was to witness to the light (Jesus), serving as a herald announcing the King’s arrival.

     

  3. A herald prepares people to receive the king properly. The fact that Jesus’s herald was a crazy guy on society’s fringe shows how little the world understood God or was ready to receive Him.

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 

  1. Imagine a parent visiting their child, only for the child not to recognize them at all.  That’s what it was like for God coming to us.

12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

  1. Some might object that we’re all “children of God” because God made us. 
     
    1. God doesn’t just want to be our father in the smallest sense!  He wants to be our father in the fullest sense!  He wants to be the one we count on in every situation.

       

    2. A good father isn’t just the person who helps us to exist, but the one who nurtures us, protects us, and cares for us.

       

    3. God invites us to be in a personal relationship with him so we can be His child in the fullest sense.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 

  1. In Hebrew culture, older writers received greater respect.  By conceding to Jesus’s age, John the Baptist is showing that Jesus is the ultimate authority that he doesn’t can’t give any credibility to.  He already has ultimate credibility.

16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

  1. In Exodus 33:20, God says, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

     

    1. This is because He is utterly holy and beyond comprehension.  Our sinful, mortal minds couldn’t handle it.

       

    2. Even though it’s incomprehensible, God made Himself knowable by coming down to our level as Jesus to restore our broken relationship with Him.

       

  2. This prologue is highly abstract!  Not everyone is comfortable with abstract thought.
    1. If you’re not, here’s the core takeaway: seek a relationship with God.  In spite of your smallness and his vastness, he wants to know you.  Pray to him.

Full Transcript

This morning, we are embarking on a new series. We’re going to go through the book of John. And the methodology we’re going to be using: we’re just going to start at the beginning and go chapter by chapter, verse by verse for a little while. We’ll do about five chapters and see where we’re at. This is a style of preaching, by the way, that I enjoy. I think it’s helpful for us. It’s easy to jump around the Bible and miss certain parts. When we skip around, there’s a tendency to go to what’s exciting or what’s encouraging or what’s delightful. That can be good sometimes. Sometimes I preach like that. There’s nothing wrong with it. But when you go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, you end up looking at those verses that you don’t often look at otherwise. The verses that are convicting! The verses that are confusing! And that’s good! Sometimes God wants to challenge us. Sometimes he wants to convict us. When we go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, I believe we have that opportunity to see the full range of what God is saying to us in the Scriptures. 

Now before we get too far into John,here are  just a few notes. First off, the Gospel of John is indeed a Gospel. There are four Gospels in scripture: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They all tell about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, but each of those four Gospels presents things just a little bit differently. The Gospel of Matthew focuses on how Jesus was someone that fulfilled all of the prophecies in the Old Testament. The Gospel of Mark focuses on how Jesus came to serve us and suffered on our behalf.  The Gospel of Luke focuses on Jesus’s humanity, and the Gospel of John focuses on Christ’s divinity. So expect to see a lot about how Jesus was God and who exactly God is. You’ll see that in all of the Gospels to some degree, they all have a little bit of everything, but it is the most prominent theme in the Gospel of John. 

I know I mentioned a few weeks ago that John is one of the books of the Bible that I recommend for people who are just starting out reading their Bibles. The two books I usually send people to are the Epistle to the Philippians and the Gospel of John, but I don’t want you thinking that we’re starting here because we’re starting with the easiest stuff and if you’ve been reading your Bible for a million years, there’s nothing you can get out of this.  John did not write just a little primer on the basics for people who didn’t really understand that no one else could benefit from. No, to the contrary, the Gospel that John wrote has so much depth to it. It’s something that if you are coming to it for the first time, you will get something. And if you’re coming to it for the thousandth time, you will still get something. 

I couldn’t put it any better than the great Augustine of Hippo once put it. Augustine of Hippo, you’ll hear me talk about him from time to time. He is one of the greatest Christian thinkers in all of history. He was a bishop in the fourth century, and the man was… he was a poet, he was a philosopher, he was a theologian, he was a pastor… he was a genius and his influence cannot be overstated.  You hear all of those different things he did, and you might be thinking, oh man, this guy was kind of a big shot. He probably didn’t know what life was like for real everyday people. To the contrary, that’s what made him famous. Augustine of Hippo was famous because he understood people. He understood real life. He understood the struggles that we face every day, and he knew how to speak to those things in a way that anyone could benefit from.  When he preached through the Gospel of John, he started out saying that one of the psalms we sing reads, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from?” That’s Psalm 124. The apostle John may just be one of those mountains that Scripture hopes we look towards.  Here is a mountain of the faith that rose above every earthly peak. He rose above the sky. He rose above the highest stars and every choir of angels. Because unless he rose above everything that was created, he wouldn’t have arrived at the one who created everything. I could not put it any better. Here we have someone who was aware of spiritual realities. We can only hope someday to scratch the surface of there is so much here in John. 

As we get ready to look at these first few verses, I have to admit to you, I am humbled to approach verses like these. They are so beautiful and they’re not just beautiful.  They are incredibly important for people in this modern world. One of the most common objections to Christianity that I hear and see around in the world is, “Oh yeah, You guys just believe in a magical guy in the sky that grants you wishes. That’s all Christianity is. It’s just a guy in the sky that grants wishes.” Some people say that they’re making that argument specifically knowing that it’s untrue. It’s overly simplified. The argument is made out of mean-spiritedness. People are just trying to make it look silly so it’s all the easier to defeat. I don’t think that’s true. When I come across that argument, I think more often than not, it’s not born out of mean-spiritedness so much as ignorance. I think a lot of people genuinely think that the Christian vision of God is so shallow, so easy, so simplistic. That it is nothing more than a guy in the sky that grants wishes. That is objectively untrue. 

Here in the Gospel of John, you can see right from the very beginning how complex our vision of God really is:

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. ; without him, nothing was made that has been made.

We’ll go through it piece by piece, but recognize that this is not simple. To the contrary, this is incredibly complex. It’s almost as though John recognizes the limitation of language. He’s trying to describe something the likes of which language itself cannot fully describe, And so he’s getting close, and he’s doing his best to try to tie it down. This is incredibly complex, though. I wish more people knew the full depths of our vision of our God. This is not a simple God. This is a God the likes of which words cannot fully describe. 

Let’s dive in. Verse one: 

In the beginning was the Word. 

And we have to stop already. That alone has so much you could unpack with it. “In the beginning was the Word.” I hope that sounded a little familiar to you.  Familiar because it sounds a whole lot like the beginning of another book of Scripture!  Which book is that? It’s Genesis. Genesis 1 :1 ” In, the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” “In the beginning…” These two books start the exact same way, and this is not something that John was ignorant of. Any first century Jew knew the book of Genesis very well, especially the opening line. John is deliberately referencing the book of Genesis to talk about what happened there, but he’s not trying to change it. He’s not trying to fundamentally alter what’s presented in Genesis in an unfaithful way. To the contrary, He is answering one of the biggest questions that people had pondered in the book of Genesis for years. 

Look at Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” Who is “us”? Why is God speaking in plural? There were all kinds of answers that people came up with. Some said that God was using a plural because maybe he was talking to the angels. Maybe the angels were made on day one; these are, after all, beings of spiritual light. Maybe, they were made on day one and now God just wants to include them in his creative action. He’s saying it out of courtesy.  While that’s clever enough, it doesn’t fully make sense, does it? Because nowhere in Scripture does it say ever that the angels helped God make things. To the contrary, it repeatedly and consistently talks about how God is the sole creator of everything. That doesn’t make sense. 

Others thought that maybe God was speaking to humanity itself.  God gave us free will. We have the ability to make decisions that create the person that we will become. Maybe God was including us by saying, “let us make humanity.” Again, exceedingly clever, but it doesn’t really work that well because God hasn’t made humans yet. Why is he talking to someone who doesn’t exist? That’s not a very helpful practice. If you want to talk to someone, you should wait until they exist first and then have a word with them. 

Still, others believed maybe God was speaking to the earth. Genesis two talks a little about the specifics on how God made humanity, and it talks about how from the dust of the earth and God’s divine breath, humans were created. So we know earth is there. We know humans were made partially from the earth. Maybe God is speaking to the earth when he says, “Let us make humanity.” But, you know, that doesn’t work either. Think about a time when you made something. I remember a time that I made a birdhouse. I really had to struggle for this analogy because I am not good with my hands. I do not make things often. It was like eighth grade, but nonetheless, I remember it well. I made a birdhouse, and before I made that birdhouse, do you think I sat down with the wood and said, “All right, wood. Here we go. We’re going to make this birdhouse together.” No. I didn’t talk to the wood. Wood is an object. It can’t hear me. It is just wood. It’s not going to get up and help me either. “We” were not making the birdhouse; I was making it out of the wood. Trust me, I wish the wood would have helped! Maybe the birdhouse would have turned out better. It wasn’t great. But the wood didn’t do a thing during creation! It just sat there and I had to work with it. That’s the same with dirt. God would not have sat down with dirt and said, “All right, dirt, here we go. ” That doesn’t really work. It’s dirt!  It’s raw material!  It’s not part of the creative act. 

You can still hear some of these interpretations in non Christian circles today. But really, John is revealing who the “us” was. He is revealing it here in John after all these years. He says, “Here it is: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

Now who is the Word? You can answer. I know you know. It’s Jesus! You can tell that from context. We’re starting a book about the life of Jesus, and sure enough it begins with talking about this Word that existed before the world did and then enters into the world to save humanity. From context clues, it’s Jesus. We’ll talk about why John calls Jesus “the Word” here in a minute, but for now, it’s good enough just to say the Word is Jesus before he was incarnated as a person. 

So we know that Jesus is this Word. He is this thing, and this is the one who was part of the “us” in the beginning. This is the us! In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This is one of the most explicitly trinitarian verses in the entire Bible. Clearly we see thatJesus is God, and yet there is more to God than just Jesus alone. There are three persons that are all God; three that are one.

Now, the Holy Spirit is not in this particular verse. We know about his involvement from Christian doctrine and other verses, but in this particular verse it specifically talks about the second person of the Trinity, Jesus. Now, I find a lot of people think the Trinity is incredibly hard to understand. If it’s baffling to you, don’t feel too bad. We aren’t going to go into a deep dive of the Trinity today. This is just a reference that we see here but, you know, there’s not a lot of beings that we know that are three persons that are one being. That’s not a common thing. All of the beings we meet are only one person, right? The only exception to that rule is God, who is three persons that are one being. Naturally, that’s going to be confusing. We have no frame of reference for it around us. We have nothing that we can compare it to. So don’t feel too bad. That’s just part of how massive God is; how totally different from anything we can regularly see and understand. God is so different that even when language makes him explicitly apparent to us, it’s still challenging to wrap our minds around Him. 

But I promised you that we’d talk about why John used the language ” the Word.” Why did he call Jesus pre-incarnation “the Word”? And obviously, John was not writing in English. He would have written in Greek. And in Greek, the word for “word” that’s used here is logos. And logos can mean different things to different audiences. For people in the first few centuries reading the Gospel of John, if you were Jewish, it would have been immediately clear what John was talking about when he started writing about this logos. What was the logos? It was the Word!  And any Jewish person reading through their Old Testament can see how often they talk about God’s word. Love God’s word! Keep God’s word! Have God’s word in your heart! It is a constant theme. That’s the way you can have God with you and please Him is to know His word and hold it closely. So as they read about this logos, they would’ve thought, “Okay yeah I get it. God’s word is what he’s talking about”

But there was another audience that was also reading that in the first few centuries, and they were Greek. The Greeks thought about logos a little differently. Logos can also be translated into something like, and it’s hard to put into English, something like plan, blueprint, or wisdom. Something like that. Greek philosophers were always writing about the logos. They thought that if they could just understand the wisdom behind this world, the blueprint that was made to create it, the plan behind everything, if they could just pin it down, then they’d be able to really act in this world. You just had to know the logos, the blueprint, the plan. So if a Greek was reading this, that’s what would have popped into their head. They would have made a different association than the Hebrew readers, but one that was also connected with something beloved, something that some of their greatest men had spent years trying to fully understand.

John is speaking to two different groups and telling them both with just one word, that thing that you love? The thing you have written whole books about? You have been seeking it all this time, but you don’t have to seek it anymore. It came here and is seeking you. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made.” 

Hopefully you can hear the duality in how he’s speaking. It works brilliantly for the Greek readers and for the Jewish readers. “Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made.” If you’re thinking about logos as some kind of blueprint, boom! That perfectly encapsulates it! Through him all things were made! Yeah, that’s the logos alright! The same one we know about! Great, this guy knows what he’s talking about!  And if you were Jewish, “through him all things were made.” All things were made through the word? Well, that’s right! In the beginning of Genesis, how does God make things? Words. And so here, here we don’t just have a word. This is the Word! The creative Word is here. 

“In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” 

Now, I don’t know which Bible you might be looking at this morning, but there’s a popular difference in how that one word is translated. Some translations use the word “the darkness has not overcome the light.” Other translations say that “the darkness has not understood” the light. Which is a better translation? Frankly, they’re both good, and I think they both bring something different to the table. I mean, just think about it. Think about the darkness in this world. I want you to think about the things you endured this week: the frustrations, the stressors, the cruelty—the bad stuff! Think of all that darkness. Think about how much of it would not exist if people acted like Jesus. This world has not understood Jesus. If even just one percent of this world truly understood Jesus, there would not be nearly as much darkness as there is. The world has not understood Jesus, and yet think of all that darkness again: all the frustrations, all of the cruelty. And look at where you are now. Here you are in church on Sunday morning.

Why? Because you know.  You know that all of that darkness out there in the world cannot extinguish the light that is Jesus. Jesus is the hope beyond all hopes, the joy beyond all joys. All the darkness in the world cannot stand against his light. That’s what got you here this morning. You know the light that is Jesus. 

Verse six: 

There was a man sent from God whose name Was John. 

The apostle John is not talking about himself here; he’s talking about John the Baptist. When John talks about himself in the Gospel of John, he calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” We’ll talk about that later, but for now, just know this is John the Baptist. 

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. 

John the Baptist, I think, is kind of an odd figure in many of our imaginations. When we come to the Gospels, we’re not really there for John the Baptist. We’re there for Jesus. And he’s there kind of at the beginning doing his thing. What’s he doing? Why is he significant? A helpful way to think about John the Baptist is to remember that Jesus was the King, the King of all creation, and any king anywhere doesn’t just walk into a place. A king does not just wander into a random town. That’s not how it works. A king has someone who lets you know that they are coming. Why? So you can act appropriately. You don’t want to be standing around slouching with your hands in your pockets, and then the king walks in! You want to be prepared to receive the King well!

So who was the one telling everyone that the King was coming? John the Baptist. And, you’d think that a king as illustrious as Jesus himself, would have a herald that is the most earthly impressive person in the world. Someone who is well-educated, landed elite, wealthy, influential. That’s the kind of herald you’d expect and yet, The Herald of Jesus is someone on the fringe.  He’s this crazy guy who’s really out there! That is who Jesus’ herald is. Why? I think it just shows us how little the world understood God and how little they were ready to receive Him. The best herald available was someone who everyone thought was crazy! This way-out-there guy? That’s the best herald for Jesus. But in spite of someone telling everyone, “The King is coming,” nobody prepared for the King. 

Scripture continues on in that same vein:

The true light that gives light to everyone, verse nine, was coming into the world. He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not receive him, recognize him. He came to that, which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Think about that for a second. Think about the emotional impact of that. Many of you have children. Imagine going to your child’s house to visit them, and you knock on the door, and they answer it and they say, “What do you want?” And you say, “I’m here to visit you.” They say, “Who are you?” They genuinely don’t know! Nothing in their eyes recognizes you.  After all of the years that you spent raising them and loving them, they don’t even know who you are. That’s what it was like for God. God came here, he saw us, the children that he had spent time and effort and love. He came to see us and we didn’t even recognize him. 

To all who did receive him, those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.  Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, nor of a husband’s will, but born of God. 

Some of you may well be thinking, well we’re all children of God aren’t we? God made everything and everyone. So in that sense we are all God’s children. Right? That’s true. Yes in the minimal sense, we are all always children of God, but God doesn’t just want to be a father in the least sense of the word. He does not just want to be the one who is responsible for our biological existence. He wants to be a father in the greatest sense of that word! He wants to be someone who has a relationship with us, who knows us, who loves us, who supports us, who teaches us. He wants to be there cheering for us when things are good, and he wants to be there listening to us when things are bad. That’s what God wants. That’s what he meant when he said now you can really be children. Not just children in the lowest sense, but children in the perfect sense. And He will be our father in the fullest sense of the word. 

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified concerning him. He cried out saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.”

It was common that the writers and thinkers who were the oldest were treated with the most respect. That’s the social convention he’s referring to. He said, I am not even fit to give this guy credibility. He is the most credible there is. He’s the oldest there is! He was around before all of this. He should be the most revered!

Verse sixteen, 

Out of His fullness, we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father and has made him known. 

No one has ever seen God. “No one can look upon the face of God and live,” is how the book of Exodus chapter 33 verse 20 puts it because God is so holy. He’s so different, He’s so massive, He’s so totally beyond our comprehension, that to look at the face of God, you just can’t even handle it. You would just cease to exist because God is so far beyond us. And yet in spite of that, here, after all this time, we see that because God was so beyond us, He made Himself knowable to us. In all of His greatness, he came down to a place where we could engage with him to start the relationship again. 

That gets us through the first eighteen verses of the book of John. I love these verses, I really do, but I understand they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. Some of you may be out there thinking, “Okay, I don’t know. That was a little out there. It’s a little here and there. I wish we just had a nice simple parable. I like it when there are stories! Those are easy to follow. This is… I don’t know. It’s weird.” If that’s you, that’s okay. These first few verses especially require you to be a pretty abstract thinker to wrap your mind around all of them. That’s a skill that some are comfortable with and some are not. Some have a knack for it and some don’t, but it’s a skill like any other. The more you think in abstract ways the better you’ll get at it. So you will learn more as you go. But if abstract thinking isn’t your forte, these may have been challenging verses for you. If that’s the case, let’s just recap it real quick. Let’s look at the big takeaways. God, the God, that is so far beyond our understanding that we can’t even fully comprehend Him, that God loved us so much, that He came to us. He made Himself knowable to us. When we broke the relationship with that God, He sought to restore it, because a God that big wants to be in a personal relationship with us. He notices us. He cares about us. He didn’t just make us and then stop worrying about us. 

So I have to ask, how’s your relationship with God? Have you been nurturing it lately? And if you don’t have a relationship with God, there is no better time to start than today. There is no better time than now to go to God in prayer and just ask Him to begin that relationship. He would be delighted. But I’m sure many of you have had a longstanding relationship with God. How’s it going? When’s the last time you talked to God? When’s the last time you spent time with Him? That’s what God wants. A relationship isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s not something you just say, “Yep, I met him once.” That’s not good enough. No, A strong relationship requires constant effort from both parties, and God is always putting in the effort. God is always there. He always wants to be the one that we run to when things are good, when things are bad and when things are in-between. How’s your relationship with God? Spend some time on it this week because the God that is beyond human comprehension, the God that is so holy that we can’t even look on His face, has made himself knowable to us, and He is waiting to talk to you. Amen.