Introduction to John

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Please take out your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of John and find your place at chapter 1 and verse 1.
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Those of you who are members and long -time participants here at Sovereign Grace know that it is our practice on a normal basis to preach through books of the
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Bible. And ordinarily, when I finish a book, like last week we finished the book of 2
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Corinthians, ordinarily we would have a little interim break to just sort of give us a chance to have a moment before we launch back into a long series.
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But because of where we have fallen and 2 Corinthians took me a little longer than I thought it would to finish,
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I don't want to wait. I don't want to do anything in between. But I do have to say that as the elders and I were having a meeting this past week, it was brought up, well how long do you think this series will last?
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2 Corinthians took us a year. Prior to that we did Colossians. It took us almost a year.
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So I'm thinking we'll be here until Jesus comes. Because I don't have any idea how long it's going to take us to get through the
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Gospel of John, but it's not going to be short, if I could just say that.
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But I am thankful. Like I said, I didn't do the interim, I usually do something topical in between books just to kind of give our brains a rest and give me a rest as well.
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But I didn't do that this time because of where we are falling for the season. I felt like it would be appropriate to launch right into John's Gospel because John's Gospel gives us that tremendous opening statement about the divinity of Christ.
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And so this morning we're going to have an introduction to the Gospel of John. And then next
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Sunday, which is technically Christmas Sunday, the Sunday before Christmas, I'll actually preach more, dig more deeply into verses 1 through 3.
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We're going to look at them today, but only in a cursory review. Next week we will dig into the language and see what we learn.
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Today is more about the book as a whole and why it is unique among not only the
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Gospels, but it is unique among all of the books of the Bible.
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If you take your Bible, we know that it divides into two parts. It divides in the
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Old Testament, which is everything that happened before Christ came, and then the New Testament, which was written after Christ had come.
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And so the great subdivision of our Bible is Old Testament and New Testament. But then when we begin to look at the
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Bible, we see that we can subdivide it further. In the Old Testament we have the law, the
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Torah, the first five books of Moses, followed by the history books, followed by the wisdom books, followed by the prophetic books.
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That's the way our Bible is outlined. It puts them categorically, not chronologically. Well, the
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New Testament has a similar breakdown. When we look at the New Testament, the first four books, much like the first five books of the
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Old Testament are the law of Moses, the first four books of the New Testament are the gospel of Jesus.
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And then we have the history book, which is Acts. And then we have the epistolary literature, which is the
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Pauline epistles and the general epistles. And then, of course, the apocalyptic literature, which is the prophetic word about what is to come.
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And so the structure of the New Testament lays out with the focus beginning on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
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The life and ministry of Jesus Christ split the history of man into two parts.
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All of history is broken down into what happened before Jesus and what happened since.
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We used to identify that as B .C. and A .D. B .C.
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was before Christ. A .D., Latin, Anno Domini, in the year of our
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Lord. Very recently, in college textbooks, you'll notice that the change that has come now is
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B .C .E. and C .E., which means before the common era and the common era.
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So you don't see B .C. and A .D. anymore. You see B .C .E. and C .E.
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And I always like to simply raise my hand when I'm in any of those opportunities where people are using that language.
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I say, excuse me, what makes it the common era? What makes it, what separated it?
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Was it a special event? Could you tell us what the event was? Could you tell us what made this
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C .E. and that B .C .E.? See, even when we try to obscure the language, we can't depart the truth.
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That a very important, in fact, the most important event of all of human history happened 2 ,000 years ago.
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The event that split time in half, subdivided all of human history, and gave us a reference point for what we call the fullness of time, happened 2 ,000 years ago.
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And God, who says in his own word that all things which are testified must be testified on the basis of two or three witnesses, has gone above and beyond his own standard by providing us four witnesses.
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He provides us four gospels. Each one a biography, but not just a biography, a theological treatise on the life of Jesus Christ.
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That's what each of the gospels is. And just how we can subdivide our Bibles down, and just how we can subdivide our
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Testaments down, we can also subdivide our gospels. Our gospels are divided into two parts.
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Not evenly, but specifically unevenly. The gospels are divided by what are called the synoptic gospels, and the synoptic gospels are
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Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all look at the life of Jesus through a similar perspective, and thus the term synoptic means to be viewed together.
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So the synoptic gospels look at the life of Jesus Christ in a very similar way.
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In fact, they are so similar that some scholars believe that they actually relied upon one another, drew from one another, and some believe they drew from an external source, that there was another written document.
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Some call that document Q, and they say they were all drawing from this Q document, and some believe they were drawing from oral tradition.
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Well, I've taught on this in the academy, and I don't want to spend all of our time on it today, but I don't believe in Q.
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I don't believe there's any extra document, but there certainly is obviously a point of synthesis in the three.
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They certainly all are coming together, and in many places writing the very same thing. And you say, well, how did that happen?
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Well, the simple answer is God the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author, and he chose in those moments to give us a testimony of Christ which was uniquely similar.
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And so when we look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we find stories. Some of them tell the story the exact same way with the exact same words, and we call them the synoptic gospels.
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But then we come to the fourth gospel, which is called the autoptic gospel, which simply means to be viewed alone, where the synoptic gospels mean to be viewed together.
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The autoptic gospel, the gospel of John, means it is viewed from a single perspective.
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And if you've never read the four gospels in a row, if you've never looked at them, John is way different.
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John's structure is way different. The way he tells the stories is way different, not to the point that there is contradiction, but certainly there is theological purpose in what
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John is writing. He's not overly concerned with chronology. He's more concerned with theology.
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He's not overly concerned with giving us every story Jesus ever did or ever told. In fact, he tells us in his book if everything
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Jesus ever did was written down, all the books of the world wouldn't contain it anyway. So he tells us in his book, he is writing this in a way that is different than the others, less of a biography and more of a theological treatise.
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Who is this man, Jesus Christ? What is this man,
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Jesus Christ? And so as we begin today, we're going to simply read his first three verses and then we are going to walk through the authorship, the purpose, the structure, and the theological insights which we can expect to learn from this important book.
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So let's stand together. Some of the most sublime words in all of the scriptures begin in John 1, 1.
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In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was
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God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
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Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, as we come to you this morning,
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I want to pray first and foremost as I do every time I preach, and I don't know how many times
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I've said these words, but Lord, keep me from error. Open up my heart to what you have for your people and open up their heart to hear it.
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And Lord, by your spirit, take your word and apply it into the hearts of your people, not just into their ear or into their mind to satisfy their intellect, but Lord, into the heart to satisfy the need for the soul to be instructed from the word of God.
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May you be with us now as we study this word. May you be with us now, and Lord, help us to truly have anticipation for this study, to want to hear what your word says.
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Moreover, Lord, I pray that if there are those here today who have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, or perhaps there are those here today whose faith is in a false
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Christ, I pray, Lord, that today would be the day of salvation, that we would throw off the shackles of error and falsehood, and that we would submit unto the word of God and its truth.
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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Anytime we start a study of a new book, there are some areas of importance that it would behoove us to focus our attention on.
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And I want to sort of just give a disclaimer. A sermon like this may seem very academic.
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And as you know, those of you who have been here for any length of time, the sermons vary depending on what we're preaching.
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And it's going to depend on what we're preaching that will determine the style. Some of our messages are more evangelistic.
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Some of them are more focused on sanctification. And some are more focused on the edification of our minds, understanding and learning.
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And anytime we come to a new book, there are some questions that we should ask ourselves about that book before we begin to study it.
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Because these questions answer, or these questions open us up to the answers of the issue of context, the issue of purpose, the issue of meaning.
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Sometimes it's good to step back before we read something and have an idea of what it is we're going to read.
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And so today we're going to be focusing on four areas of this book as we begin our study into the
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Gospel of John. Like I said, who knows how long. So we're taking one
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Sunday today to look at the authorship of this book, to look at the purpose of this book, to look at the structure of this book, and then to, as we have time today, examine some of the theology that we should expect to learn in this book.
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This is the best way I know how to begin a study of a book.
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In fact, if you have a study Bible, some of you, many of you probably have two or three study Bibles, you'll notice before you get to each of the books of your
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Bible, it'll be about the similar structure in the introduction. Even the Bible that you have, if you're looking at the
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Pew Bible that we have, it has an introduction to the book. So as to not walk in with no understanding of what it is you are reading.
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So we're going to begin by looking at the authorship of the book. And tradition tells us the authorship, and I like,
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I was reading A .W. Pink this week, and if you're unfamiliar with A .W. Pink, he's a tremendous writer, but he wrote an entire commentary on the
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Gospel of John, so I got a copy of it as I'm going to be reading it throughout my study of this book and teaching.
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And the very first thing is, he said in his commentary, John wrote it, we don't really have to concern ourselves with that, let's move on.
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So if I were A .W. Pink, that would be my sermon at this point, but I'm not.
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I also am reading Jim Boyce's commentary. This is James Montgomery Boyce, not James Pettigrew Boyce, but James Montgomery Boyce does focus a little bit on the authorship here, and I think it's important, and here's why.
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And this may be why Pink didn't. Because Pink lived quite a bit of time before Boyce did.
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And in the lifetime of Pink, there was not such an onslaught of argumentation against the authorship of John.
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But there is, especially in the last part of the last century, a lot of scholars who have come out against what we call
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Johannine authorship, or John being the author. And what's interesting about that is so much of what they claimed was based on bad information.
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Those who were claiming that John didn't write this, many of them said, this book was not written in the first century.
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This book was written late in the second century. How do we know that? Look at the high
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Christology in this book. Look how much emphasis is placed on the divinity of Christ.
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Look how much is given to us about who Jesus is. Those weren't ideas that were alive and well in the first century.
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Those were second century inventions. And that was the argument.
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John couldn't have been written in the first century. It had to be written late in the second century because of all it says about the deity of Christ, it's too high of a view of Jesus.
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In fact, the same argument was made for Colossians because Colossians clearly tells us that Jesus Christ is the creator of all things.
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All things are created through him. And many scholars say, oh, it couldn't have been written by Paul. That's too high of a
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Christology for Paul. It had to have come later. Do you see the assumption in the minds of the ones who would come to that conclusion?
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Do you see how they're coming to that conclusion? They have an automatic assumption that if you have a high
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Christology, you have a wrong Christology because if you have a high
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Christology, that wasn't invented until the second century, the third century, or some even push it out to the fourth century with the council of Nicaea.
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But can I stress something to you this morning? A high Christology, meaning a high view of Jesus Christ, was alive and well in the lifetime of Christ.
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It is the very heart and soul of the gospels themselves. It is the very heart and soul of the writings of Paul and the other epistles.
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A high Christology is that upon which the Bible is based. And to argue that a high
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Christology did not come until the second or third century is a falsehood. But I will add another thought.
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Archaeology is the Christian's friend. Don't ever be afraid of the truth.
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Don't ever be afraid that one day some archaeologist is going to stick his spade in the ground and unearth some writing or some book or some scroll that's going to unroll the
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Christian faith. It's not. When the archaeologists stick their spades in the ground, you know what they often unearth?
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Proofs of our faith. Not the opposite. Not opposed to our faith.
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They unearth things that are true about our faith. In fact, there was years ago where people said
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Luke was a bad historian because he mentioned cities that didn't exist.
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Until one day an archaeologist opened up and it was literally like a sign.
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You're now entering this city. Like when you go to Callahan. You're entering Callahan.
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It was like you're entering this city. And they were like, hey look, it did exist. And you know what all the
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Christians said? We know! Because Luke told us it existed. We didn't need that.
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We're glad for it. We're happy about it. But the Bible said it. We believe it. It's fine.
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We didn't wonder. But you see, that's the argument is, well, we need some kind of external evidence to prove the
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Bible's true. Well, all the external evidence does prove the Bible's true because the Bible is true. When you believe the
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Bible's true, you trust the Bible, then you don't have to worry about them picking anything up out of the sand that's going to cause us any problems.
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In fact, what often happens is it helps us. And that's exactly what happened with the Gospel of John.
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You see, archaeologists in the last 200 years have done some amazing things in the area of discovering manuscripts of the
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Bible. And some of these manuscripts go all the way back to the early part of the second century.
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Now, they're not full manuscripts. They're not finding books like this in the ground.
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Oh, look, it's not quite like that. These were manuscripts that were written on something called papyri.
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Papyri was a type of paper that was created when they would take the papyrus plant and they would lay one piece this way and one piece this way and they would flatten it out and it would create a smooth side on one side and a rough side on the other.
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And it made a type of paper that was used for writing. And that's how most of our books in the early part of the transmission of the
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Bible were written on this papyri. Well, they have discovered papyri manuscripts buried in the sand, buried in caves, found in scrolls, these urns looking things where they have these scrolls in them.
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And one of the manuscripts that was found, a portion of it, a small portion, was from the
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Gospel of John. And when they began to date that manuscript, that portion, it's called
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P52. P stands for papyrus, so it's papyrus fragment 52. When that piece of papyrus was dated, looking at the way it was written, the type of material that was used, where it was found, they're able to date it to the early 2nd century.
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Here's what's amazing. It was in a discarded piece of material, which means that the book that it was based on, the
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Gospel of John, had already been written, copied, disseminated, and discarded by the early 2nd century.
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Which means what? It had to have been written in the 1st century.
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Now, I don't have my whiteboard up here, and I sometimes do miss it, because on days like this
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I like to have it. But if you can't remember when we talk about 1st century, 2nd century, 3rd century, things like that, always remember that it's one less than the number.
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So the 1st century is 0 to 99. The 2nd century is 100 to 199.
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So when we talk about the early 2nd century, the dating of that papyrus is right around 110 to 120.
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I don't want to ask a quiz question. I almost said, raise your hand if you know. We're in church. Remember, we're not in class. When did
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John live? During the lifetime of Christ, and he lived throughout.
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He was the oldest apostle. He lived to the latter part of the 1st century, into the 80s, possibly into the 90s.
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Right? So John lives in that time period of when the book would have been written.
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So when someone says John could not have written it, because it was written outside of his time period, that is simply not true.
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It was written during the lifetime of John. Now we're going to step back and we'll say, well, when during the lifetime of John?
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That answer I can't give you. I hold a particular view that all of the
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New Testament writings were written before the fall of Jerusalem, which means I believe that John's gospel was written before the fall of Jerusalem.
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When did the fall of Jerusalem happen? A .D. 70, which means I believe Revelation was written before 70.
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I believe John was written before 70. I believe even 1st, 2nd, 3rd John was written before 70. I will say
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I could be wrong about that. I have reasons for holding that particular view. One of the reasons is none of the gospel writers mention the fall of Jerusalem, none of the epistle writers mention the fall of Jerusalem, and even the book of Revelation doesn't mention the fall of Jerusalem, except in predicting it, because that's what we believe it's about.
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This is the most important event outside of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus in the 1st century, and none of them wrote about it, except in prophecy.
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Jesus said, look at this temple, not one stone will be left upon another, and this generation will not pass away until that takes place.
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Right? He predicted it would happen, and it happened. And so, in my estimation, my question is, why, if Jesus predicted it and it happened, did nobody write about it?
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And that leads me to the conclusion, because they all wrote before it happened. They all wrote before it happened.
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Again, that's one argument. There are others. Ken Gentry makes a good argument for an early dating of Revelation, if you want to look at his book.
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But again, when John wrote his gospel is not as important as that he wrote it.
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This comes to us from the pen of the man who identifies himself as the one whom
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Jesus loved. In fact, since you, I'm sure, have your Bible still out, very quickly turn to John 21.
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In John 21, go to verse 24. Speaking of the one whom
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Jesus loved, it says in verse 24, This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
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He's speaking of himself in the third person. He says, This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things.
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So he identifies himself as the one who wrote it. The beloved disciple is the one who wrote these things.
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And not only do we have the testimony in the book itself, we also have historical testimony to the writing.
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When we look at the early church fathers, the patristics, and we read what they wrote about the
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Bible, we find that many of them identified John as the author.
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Most notably was Irenaeus, who was the disciple of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of John.
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So John discipled Polycarp, Polycarp disciples Irenaeus, and Irenaeus says
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John wrote that gospel. I mean, is that enough?
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I mean, we have it in his timeline. We have him identifying himself in the book.
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We have extra biblical writers saying he's the one who wrote it. Maybe I should have just taken
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Pink's approach and just said, Go with the tradition, the tradition's right. Because the tradition says
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John wrote this gospel. And we have every reason to believe
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John wrote the gospel. In fact, there's no real reason to doubt that John wrote this gospel.
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But why did he write it? That takes us to the question of purpose. John wrote this gospel, as we noted already, much differently than the other gospel writers wrote theirs.
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So much of what is contained in John is not in the others. You don't read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about Jesus turning water into wine.
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You don't read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about Jesus talking to the woman at the well.
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You don't read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about Jesus's extended upper room discourse where he explains the work of the
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Holy Spirit and the ministry that's going to come after he goes away and the paraclete comes.
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John's gospel is unique. And while debates rage about who wrote the book, while debates rage about when it was written, where it was written, there's one thing that we don't debate.
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We don't debate why it was written. If you've still got your Bible turned to, you're in 21, turn back to 20.
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Go back to chapter 20, verse 30. It tells us why it was written.
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It says in verse 30 of chapter 20, it says, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
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What's the book about? It's a gospel tract. The gospel of John is written with a purpose and he tells us what the purpose is so we don't have to wonder.
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The purpose of the gospel of John is that you would believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that by believing in his name you can have life.
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Beloved, I'm excited for however long this is going to take. Because I've been reading through as I've been preparing for my lessons.
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I've been reading it with the family as part of our Advent devotion at home. And as we're reading through, first of all
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I said, Wow, this is going to take forever. It's so much. But at the same time I've been saying, Almost every page is a call to faith in Jesus.
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Almost everything in here ends with some kind of a, And this is why you should believe.
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And this is why you should trust. This is who he is. This is what he did.
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This is why. This is one of the reasons many churches, including our own, have at times purchased just the gospel of John and given it out as a gospel tract.
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Because the gospel of John, as I said, stands unique among the gospels. It also stands unique among the other 66 books of the
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Bible because it provides for us a Holy Spirit inspired call to faith.
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A Holy Spirit inspired reason to believe. In fact,
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I would say this to all of you. Christmas is only a few days away.
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I don't know what you do as far as family gifts and if you even exchange gifts. But one of the things we have tried to do in our family over the years is with our extended family, many of whom don't trust
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Christ for whatever reason, is we've tried to point them to Christ with the things that we give them.
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And a copy of the gospel of John is a tremendous gift. Just a thought. Because again, it's written with the purpose that you would believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God. Notice again just that phrasing. These things are written so that you may believe
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Jesus is the Christ. Meaning he is the Messiah.
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Christos, the Greek for the Hebrew, Mashiach, the Messiah, that he is the prophet, priest, and king sent by God.
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That you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. And that by believing you may have life in his name.
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Do you have life in his name this morning? Have you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you believed that he is the
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Christ, the Son of the living God? Have you believed that? If you have not, you do not have life in you.
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And my prayer is that you would believe. And that's the purpose that John wrote this letter, wrote this book.
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And so we know the author and we know why he wrote. Let's take a moment to look how he wrote.
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John's gospel can be essentially broken down into two parts.
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From chapters 1 to chapter 11, you have Jesus' public ministry, which is noted by seven specific miracles that John points out to us as we go through the book.
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We call this the public ministry of Christ. And some scholars, when they break down the gospel of John, they call this the book of signs.
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They say there's two books. In John's gospel, there's the book of signs and the book of glory. This is how this is outlined here.
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The first 12 chapters, the book of signs. The last portion is the book of glory. I would further break it down than that because I'm a subdivider, subdivider.
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But if you just wanted two parts, that's the two parts. The first 12 chapters are going to deal with Jesus' public ministry, culminating with the triumphal entry, which comes in chapter 12.
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And then in chapter 13, we go right into Jesus washing the apostles' feet in the last supper.
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So chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 is one night.
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It's just a long discourse of Jesus preparing his disciples for his departure.
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Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, you believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you.
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I'm going to prepare a place for you. He's preparing them for the next day. Chapter 17, he gives this tremendous prayer, which we call the high priestly prayer of Christ.
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And then, of course, it moves us right into the death, burial, and resurrection.
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And then John's gospel, if you wanted to further subdivide it, is bookended with a prologue at the beginning and an epilogue at the end.
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Two sections that sort of bring the book together as a whole. So again, that's the structure.
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As I said, the first 12 chapters really center around seven miracles. Turning water into wine, healing the nobleman's son, healing the cripple at the pool of Bethesda, feeding 5 ,000, walking on the water, healing a man blind from birth, and raising
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Lazarus from the dead. And that, of course, is seen as the greatest miracle because, again, man's four days dead.
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Remember what it was? By now he stinketh. And that leads into chapter 12 where people wanted to kill
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Jesus and kill Lazarus for what had happened. So John structures his gospel, again, quite differently than the other gospel writers, focusing, as it were, so much of his attention on the last 24 hours of Jesus' life.
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Whole chapters dedicated to that final time with his apostles.
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Something we wouldn't have those discourses if we didn't have John's gospel. We wouldn't have those portions if it weren't for John's gospel.
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We would have snippets and sections, but not as a whole. John there with Jesus, leaning his head on his breast.
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He's there hearing it, taking it in, and now providing it to us so that we can know those things that Jesus gave so intimately to his apostles.
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So that's the structure of the book. And finally, the theology of John.
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The theology of John centers around a simple but yet profound idea that this one who we are dealing with is the
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God -man. Now, I am convinced if all we had was
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Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we would still conclude that Jesus is the God -man.
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Because if all we had was Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we would still see things about Jesus that are uniquely
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God -like. Particularly his willingness and ability to forgive sins.
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Think of the three synoptic gospels. How many times the Pharisees are angry. Why are they angry?
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Because you're forgiving sins. Only God can do that. And Jesus is like, yep, you're not wrong.
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And I love it when people say, well, Jesus never said, I am God. Let me say this about that.
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Not only are there so many identification markers for the person of Jesus being divine, and not only are there specific passages which call him divine,
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Colossians says, in him is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And not only do we have
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John's gospel that says, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God, he was
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God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Not only do we have all these passages, but we also have in the gospel of John, statement after statement after statement after statement where Jesus identifies himself with God.
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He uses the phrase, I am, over and over and over.
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And if you're not familiar with why that is so theologically important, remember that when
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Moses asked Yahweh, who should I tell has sent me?
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God said, tell them, I am. Now, why does
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God use that present tense of the verbal form to be? That's the verbal be or being is used in the present,
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I am. Not the past I was or the future I will be, but in the present,
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I am. Why is that phrase so important? Because God is identifying himself as the one who exists, not only outside of our world, but he exists outside of time and space.
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He himself exists in a independent way where he is not dependent upon us.
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He is not dependent upon environment. He is not dependent upon sustenance. He is not dependent upon anything to bring him joy or happiness.
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He is not dependent upon anything else for all being is wrapped up in him.
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So he says, I am. You can't say that. You say, well,
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I am too. Old Benny Hinn said that. God says,
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I am. I say, I am too. And I say, yeah, and that's blasphemy because you ain't.
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Say, I am. No, you ain't. Because when
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God says, I am, it's different than us. Because if I say to you, do you exist?
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You say, yeah, but I say, why? You exist because you have the right environment. You exist at the right amount of pressure.
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You go too high, the pressures, I don't know if it increases or decreases. Tell me. Does it go, huh?
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Decreases, thank you. Again, I'm dumb when it comes to, I know this, I don't know anything else. I forget.
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You go up higher, the pressure decreases. You go too low, it increases. You know, you go down in the submarine, it goes too far, what happens?
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Crushes it like a can of soda. We live at the perfect environment.
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We have a world that produces food for us. If it didn't, we wouldn't survive. It produces air for us.
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If it didn't, we wouldn't survive. People always say, I'm independent. You're not independent. You're dependent on everything.
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I'm dependent on my wife. I couldn't get by without her. Everything. People say,
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I'm so dependent on so many things. So when I say I am, I say I am because I got the right amount of food. I am because I got the right amount of water.
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I am because I got the right shelter. I am because I got the right environment, the right amount of pressure, the right amount of air, the right amount of all those things.
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God simply says, I am. I have no need. I have no lack.
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I have no dependency. I simply am. Jesus comes along and he identifies himself with the
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I am. He does so in many different ways. One thing he does is he says,
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I am all of these things to you. Seven specific I am statements in John. He says,
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I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life.
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I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the vine. You are the branches. Jesus says, I am, I am,
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I am. But in one particular instance, when the Jews are coming against him, who do you think you are?
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You're not even 50 years old. And you say
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Abraham looked forward to seeing you. And Jesus said, before Abraham was,
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I am. Now, linguistically, he should have said, yeah, before Abraham was,
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I was. Or before Abraham was, I is. But he didn't. He said, before Abraham was, I am.
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Identifying himself with Yahweh. Identifying himself as the
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God man. The theology of John centers on what later church fathers would call the doctrine of the hypostatic union.
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What the Latin writers would call vera homa, vera deus. Truly God.
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Truly man. For Jesus is not only God, but he is also man.
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And those two natures are united in him. Not mixed or confused, but united in his one person.
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So that he can, as God, represent God to man. And as man, represent man to God.
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And be the perfect prophet, priest, and king. And this is what we mean when we say, do you believe
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Jesus is the Christ? Because when we say he is the Christ, we are saying he is prophet, priest.
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And king. Beloved, this is what Christmas is all about.
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This is why we celebrate. And we can enjoy the trappings of the season.
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But never may we or never should we allow the trappings of the season to overshadow the real purpose for our celebration.
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The purpose for our celebration is written on these two banners. The prophet Isaiah 700 years before Jesus was born, he says, unto us a son is given.
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Unto us a son is born. As man, he is born. But as God, he is given.
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Through the virgin's womb comes the man, Christ Jesus. But the word of God preexisted
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Bethlehem. Preexisted the world. And has existed for all time.
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He who was eternal took on flesh to dwell among us.
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And all of the gospel writers do their best to capture this. Matthew captures this in the story of Joseph and his dream and being visited by the angel and fearing that he would have to divorce
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Mary. And then the story of the wise men who come and they speak to Herod and they go and they see
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Jesus. And there's the running to Egypt because Herod is now going to destroy the birth, those who are born two years and younger.
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That whole story is found in Matthew's gospel. Matthew focusing on Jesus as the son of David, the son of Abraham.
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If you look at his genealogy going back to Abraham. Mark's gospel mentions not the birth at all.
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But runs right into the ministry of Christ. Calls him the son of God.
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And says that his first words when he came preaching was repent. For the kingdom is at hand.
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And then we get to Luke's gospel. Luke's gospel provides for us
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Mary's story. It begins with Elizabeth and Zachariah.
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And the birth of John the Baptist. And then Mary's annunciation where the angel comes and shares with her that you're going to have this child.
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And she now with Joseph go to Bethlehem.
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And we're told what? They had to be born in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.
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But then we come to John's gospel. We've got two stories of the nativity from two perspectives.
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We've got one gospel that shoots right into Jesus' public ministry. But we have one gospel that says wait a minute.
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Let's go back to before. Let's go back to before Jesus walked the earth.
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And let's show you that in the beginning the word already was.
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And that's what John provides to us in his gospel. A reminder that we are dealing with the
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God man. So beloved this morning I ask you. Is your trust in the
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Christ of scripture? Are you trusting in the one who is the son of God and is himself
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God in the flesh? Perhaps you came here today and you've never heard this. Perhaps you came here today and you've never trusted in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Let me remind you what the Bible says. The Bible says all of our sin deserves
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God's punishment. Because when we sin and because we have sinned we make ourselves his enemy.
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And all of our sin deserves God's punishment. And we're all sinners. We can walk through the law. We can see that we've lied.
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We've stolen. We have hated people which Jesus says is tantamount to murder. We've lusted which
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Jesus says is tantamount to adultery. We look at the law and we see in ourselves guilt.
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But the Bible says in the fullness of time God sent forth his son. Born of a woman.
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Born under the law. To redeem those who were under the law.
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And give us the adoption as sons. Have you received that adoption?
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Have you turned from your unbelief and trusted in the
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Lord Jesus Christ? The only one who can save. If you haven't in a moment
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I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray specifically for you. And if you have in just a moment we're going to share the table.
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As a reminder of what Christ did to save us. So let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the opportunity to talk about your word.
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And to overview this very important letter. This gospel.
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And I pray, Lord, that in the weeks and months to come, Lord, that you would bless us in our study of it. But now,
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O God, as we have come to the end of this message. I pray for anyone here who does not trust that Jesus is the
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Christ. The son of the living God. I pray that they would turn from their sin of unbelief. I pray that they would turn to Jesus Christ.
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That they would trust in him and be saved. And, Lord, that they would not only do that in their heart.
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But that they would tell someone. Come and talk to one of our elders. One of our deacons. Talk to someone, Lord, so that they can be encouraged in their new faith.
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And I pray, Lord, for those who are of the faith. That today as we participate in the
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Lord's Supper. That we be reminded yet again of the great blessing of he who came into the world.
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And knew no sin. But became sin for us. That we could become the righteousness of God in him.