1. Intro to John
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Jeremy: [00:00:00] Welcome to week one of rebuilding faith. This is a message from the Bible in 10 minutes or less each and every week. It's designed for those of you who have doubts and you have questions and you want to work through them. As you study the Bible with the goal of having a Jesus looking God, being the focal point. And I believe that's what all the Bible is intended to point us to, and that's how we should read it.
And that's how we're going to study it together. Now, this is designed for you to use by yourself, free to use with your family, with a life group. Uh, you can use it in addition to the church community that you're a part of, or maybe you're on a journey. Maybe you would consider yourself deconstructing and you are not able to experience church right now for a variety of reasons.
And maybe this is the thing that can keep you connected as you process through the different things that you're going through. I'm so excited to have you be [00:01:00] a part of this with me. The last series that I was in when I was a lead pastor was a series going through the gospel of John.
Now I loved this series and I was excited to get in to the nitty-gritty to just go slowly, take my time, work my way through this book. And I think I only made it to like chapter six. And now I get the chance to revisit it.
We're going to go through the gospel of John together just bit by bit, one passage at a time. And I have no idea how long this will go. Each week, I'm going to invite you to use your own Bible and read it for yourself.
And I believe that's a huge part of owning your own. Faith is not just hearing someone else talk about it, but reading the words for yourself and making sense of it. And so if you've got your Bible today, I want you to go to John chapter 20. Now, if you don't have a Bible, just hit pause right now, go get one.
. The [00:02:00] motivation for John to write his gospel is kind of an interesting story. At that point in the origin of the church. There was all sorts of views about Jesus emerging. And some of the views were what we would consider false views.
There was one person in particular that was saying a lot of these kinds of things. His name was Cerinthus. And Cerinthus was going around saying different things like, God did not make the physical world. And he would kind of create this separation.
He thought that Jesus only had the spirit descended upon him when he was baptized. And then the spirit was with him during his ministry while he did his miracles, but then the spirit left him at the crucifixion. And so basically Jesus started and ended just as a human. In fact, he maintained that Jesus was not born of a Virgin, but just a mere man, the biological son of Mary. And Joseph. Now as you might imagine these views [00:03:00] from Cerinthus and other people like him ticked off the other people who had seen Jesus, the Christians who had been with Jesus.
And who had a very different view of who Jesus was like the apostle John who writes this book. John actually ran into Cerinthus and it's kind of like that awkward meetup of that person. You've been avoiding. You make eye contact, you see him at the store and then it's like, what do you do?
What do you say? Well, John has one of those moments, and this is recorded by Irenaeus. One of the early church fathers. He says this. There are also those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus and perceiving Cerinthus within rushed out of the bath house without bathing. Exclaiming, let us fly less even the bath house fall down because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth is [00:04:00] within. But I love the drama of that. I can't even bathe here because this whole building is going to come crashing down because of that guy, that guy is the issue. And there's even a picture that we have from the early church of this scene depicted of John running out of the bath house because Cerinthus was there and he could not be in the same building with him.
Well, the reason we're going to go to John 20 today, rather than John chapter one, as you might be expecting in an intro to the book of John it's because John lays out the reasons he wrote the book all the way in chapter 20. So we're going to look at these two verses and this is what's going to help us understand the reason why the gospel of John exists in John chapter 20 verses 30 and 31. John writes this. Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not [00:05:00] recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God.
And that by believing you may have life in his name. This is the thesis statement behind the gospel of John. This is what we're going to go back to as we look at each of these different chapters, cause this is John explaining why he's writing it. Most people today believe that the author is the disciple john. And if that's true, he was one of the inner three disciples of Jesus, Peter, James, and John.
This was like the trio that was always with Jesus in the inner circle. Can you imagine having that level of access? Not just one of the 12 disciples, but you're one of the three elite disciples. If you will, but here's, what's crazy. John never mentions that in the book. In fact, he doesn't even mention himself by name. In this entire book. John doesn't want himself [00:06:00] to get in the way he doesn't want to take anything away from pointing people to Jesus, that they would see that Jesus is the culmination of all they've been looking for.
These are just a few of the things that we're going to explore in John, just a few of the things that Jesus actually did. In fact, if you add up the miracles and all four of the gospels, Matthew mark, Luke, and John, you get about 35 different miracles. John's only going to pick seven. Seven of them. To focus on now it's interesting if you've read the other gospels, Matthew, mark, and Luke. They're called the synoptic gospels, and they're very different than John.
They're very similar to each other, but then there's John, that kind of stands alone. In fact, one new Testament scholar, Marianne Meye Thompson says it like this. In the end. The degree of overlap between the gospel of John and the other new Testament, gospels is less than 10. Percent. Which means John is a unique book that when you study it, you're going to read things [00:07:00] and see things that are not in the other gospels.
John's going to pick seven signs that reveal who Jesus is. Now sometimes you and I, we get confused by a sign, right? I was in Israel one time and I saw this sign that talked about, there's you know, holy water, and this is water of life.
But then right next to it, no, it's not this water. Like don't drink this water, which means someone had to get that confused and think, oh, this must be the water that Jesus was talking about. But other signs. Are very clear, like this one. No matter how you turn the sign, it points the same way each and every time. It's like the Zoolander of arrows that can't turn left.
Just goes to that one way. And I love this image as a way to understand the gospel of John. The John is constantly focusing us right back on Jesus, right back on Jesus. And that's what we're going to see time and time again. And so the point of the book. Is twofold. Number one. [00:08:00] To see Jesus as he really is, which to John is the Messiah.
This is God in flesh. And two, to find our life in the person of Jesus. And I hope that this study is going to have the same effect on us today that it had on John's original audience, that we would see Jesus more clearly. And we would learn to find our life. In him. Brian Zahnd says it like this. God is like, Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We haven't always known this, but now. We do. I think we are all looking for a sign. Is Jesus.
Really? God. Can we really find life in him today? And if you make it a little bit more personal, can Jesus meet you in the pain of your life? Can Jesus meets you in the [00:09:00] disappointments of your life. Can Jesus meet you? In the hopes that you have for your life. Can you see Jesus in new ways? And can you find life? In him.
What if there was a constant sign for you? A constant way to be redirected, no matter what you're going through, no matter what you're dealing with, no matter what's in front of you at the moment, is there a way to keep seeing Jesus in the midst of it and find life in the process? I'll close with something that Greg Boyd says.
He says, God is infinitely more beautiful than you could ever conceive. But spend a lot of your energy trying. I love that contrast. God is far more beautiful. Jesus is so amazing. We could never wrap our minds around him. But we're going to spend a lot of time. Trying. We'll see you next week on rebuilding faith.
