WWUTT 776 Introduction to the Gospel of John?

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In the three years that this broadcast has been on the air, we've been through several books in the

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New Testament, some in the Old Testament. We've not yet gone through a gospel. Well, I'm going to change that starting today, when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text, as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. If you are able, please open with me to the

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Gospel of John, chapter 1, and I'll be reading verses 1 through 18.

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

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Word was 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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In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

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There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him.

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He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

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He was in the world, and the world was made through Him. Yet the world did not know

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Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive

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Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only

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Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and cried out,

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This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because He was before me.

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For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.

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For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

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No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side,

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He has made Him known. So, as you can tell, our next book study is going to be in the

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Gospel of John. And what rich text we have just read. I don't even know at this point how long it's going to take us to get through these first 18 verses.

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Because this is theologically deep and rich and beautiful to have just read it to you.

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Let alone that we're going to be studying it over the next at least couple of weeks here. So, let's talk about this

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Gospel first of all. Before we get to the specifics of this very first sentence.

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One of the most well known passages in the Bible, certainly in the New Testament. In the beginning was the

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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Who is writing here?

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Well, this is John, the son of Zebedee. The one who is also referred to as the beloved disciple.

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We have a few occasions in this particular Gospel where he is referred to that way. When we get to the upper room in John 13.

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Which, by the way, is the most detailed description of the upper room encounter between Jesus and His disciples.

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We have it in the Gospel of John, more so than the other three Gospels. So, in chapter 13, it says in verse 23.

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One of His disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus' side.

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A few chapters later, when Jesus is dying on the cross. He looks at the disciple whom

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He loved and told him to take care of His mother. And then when you get to chapter 21.

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This is right after Jesus was talking with Peter. It says in verse 20, Peter turned and saw the disciple whom

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Jesus loved following them. The one who also had leaned back against Him during the supper and had said,

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Lord, who is it that is going to betray you? When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man?

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And Jesus said to him, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

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You follow me. So, the saying spread abroad among the brothers that the disciple was not to die.

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Yet, Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die. But, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

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And then here's what we have in verse 24. So, this is John 21 -24. This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things.

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And who has written these things. And we know that his testimony is true.

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That's John identifying himself in this gospel. He is the son of Zebedee, who is also the brother of James.

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And we know that not just from the gospel of John, but also from the other gospels. Matthew 4 -21, for example.

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Going on from there, he saw two other brothers. James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother. So, that is the apostle whom we are talking about that wrote this particular gospel.

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Here in chapter 1, in verse 14, we read, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.

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Glory as of the only Son, from the Father, full of grace and truth. So, we know this was from an apostle who was an eyewitness of these events that are being written about.

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It's very similar to the introduction to 1 John. When did we go through 1 John? Was that last year?

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1 John 1, verse 1. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.

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John's apostleship he is appealing to there as an eyewitness to these things that he is writing about.

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And that is also what we have in the gospel of John. Now, John is unlike the other gospels in a lot of ways.

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And you probably know this about John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic gospels.

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Synoptic meaning the same. There are many similarities between those three books. You can even go and find studies that will show you

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Matthew is umpteen percent like Luke or a percentage like Mark.

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I think Matthew and Mark have like an 85 percent identity or similarity ratio or something like that.

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So they're very similar. They follow the same kind of pattern. They often tell the same stories.

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They often word things in exactly the same way. And this was the gospel the way it was primarily shared among the apostles, what you have written in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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Matthew, of course, is writing from himself. This is Matthew's account of the gospel.

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In Mark, what you're essentially reading is Peter's account of the gospel. The way

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Peter preached the gospel is what you read in Mark. And then Luke is the way that the apostle

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Paul preached the gospel. And you can see the similarities in this gospel message that was proclaimed by the apostles when you look at those similarities among those three books.

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There are different audiences in those three gospels as well. Matthew is written primarily to a

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Jewish audience. Mark is written primarily to a Gentile audience. And Luke is written to Theophilus because that's who's being addressed at the start of the gospel of Luke.

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But you're probably talking about Gentiles in a Greco -Roman culture. That's more the intended audience of the book of Luke.

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When you get to John, there is no specific audience. Of course, we should consider

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Christians in the first century. I don't think we should go outside that realm because that helps us to understand what it is that John is writing.

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And we even get a little bit of that from the very beginning of the book. In the beginning was the

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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John is very clearly confronting a popular philosophical belief that was beginning to spread among the

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Greco -Roman world, both in Stoicism and also in the beginnings of Gnosticism.

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Gnosticism had not yet taken hold at the time that the book of John was written, but you could certainly see hints in the beginnings of it.

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And so John is directly confronting those thoughts. Stoicism had this idea of this divine impersonal reason that was the cause of everything, not just coming into existence, but also its perpetuation.

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Events as they would unfold have all been derived from this impersonal cosmic reason.

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But John shows that the Creator of all things is personal, and indeed

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He has dwelt among us. In verse 14, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

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So in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

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The Word is taking that Greek word for logos, which was used by the

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Stoics in a very impersonal way, and showing, no, this is not an impersonal God. This is a

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God whose image we were created in, and He even stepped into our world to redeem us from our sin against Him.

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So it's very deliberate, the way that John opens this, confronting a popular secular thought at that particular time.

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But his audience is not exclusively Gentiles, even though it certainly begins that way, confronting

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Gentile philosophy. There is a lot of knowledge concerning Jewish locations and customs that come about in the book of John as well.

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So this was very much the gospel for Jews or Gentiles. The dividing wall of hostility that has been broken down in Christ, as Paul wrote about in Ephesians 2.

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So therefore, there is no division here as John is sharing his gospel.

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He means for this to be heard and received by Jews and Gentiles alike.

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And this is really the only one of the four gospels that has that intention in its writing.

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That doesn't mean that Matthew, Mark, and Luke cannot be received by both Jews and Gentiles.

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But we understand those books a certain way, knowing the audience that the writers had in mind when they wrote it.

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Matthew is very much trying to show the Jews that Jesus is indeed the promised

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Messiah. And that's why he begins with the genealogy at the start of the book of Matthew. Mark is appealing more to Gentiles, so he does not go back into Jewish record as much as Matthew does.

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And then Luke has kind of a balance of both, because when Paul went out preaching the gospel, he would go first into the synagogues in whatever city that he went into.

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And then when they wouldn't receive his message, then he would go to the Gentiles. So Luke addressing

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Theophilus, who would have been a Gentile and somebody of noble standing. Therefore, the gospel of Luke is more in a language that would be appealing to a

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Gentile audience, more so than a Jewish audience. But John really has more in mind an entire world of men who need to hear the gospel of Christ, whether you are

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Jew or Gentile. John is also writing in a different environment than Matthew, Mark, and Luke were writing in.

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke were writing in a time that preceded the destruction of the temple.

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John was writing at a time after the destruction of the temple. And I really am a proponent for a later dating of the gospel of John.

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I do not believe he wrote this before 70 AD. And there are three reasons that I have to give, which are internal reasons.

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They are not external. What do I mean by that? Meaning that I can make a defense for a later date of the writing of the gospel of John from the evidence that we have in the book of John and not according to church tradition.

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If we go by church tradition, well, it's almost unanimously agreed upon that John was written after the destruction of the temple of 70

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AD. Nonetheless, you've got several different camps that want to argue that John's gospel was written prior to 70

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AD, especially among the preterists who believe that the events that we read about in the book of Revelation were fulfilled with the destruction of the temple.

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That's what it was John was writing about. He was foretelling about all of those events that were going to happen in AD 70.

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And so most of the book of Revelation has already been fulfilled and really isn't relevant to us.

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So a preterist will argue that John first, second, third, John and Revelation were written prior to 70

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AD. And that is a perspective that I simply don't share. There's also kind of a hyper view of cessationism that believes that the

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Holy Spirit and the miraculous manifestation of the sign gifts only happened between 30 and 70

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AD. And so there was not any continued spiritual revelation that was going on after 70

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AD. Therefore, John could not have written his material in that span of life between 70 and 95, because most of church tradition or church history holds that John died in the year 95 in what is today modern day

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Turkey. He spent a lot of the of the end of his life in Ephesus, and it was likely where he also died.

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So anyway, this hyper cessationist view that the Holy Spirit was only manifesting the miraculous sign gifts between 30 and 70.

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Therefore, since there would be no new revelation after the destruction of the temple,

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John could not have possibly written the book of Revelation after that date. But there's not a reason to hold that view unless you're a preterist and you want to argue that John was foretelling the things that were leading up to the destruction of the temple.

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The end of the apostolic era was not with the destruction of the temple. It was with the death of John in the year 95.

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And so the Holy Spirit was, of course, still working through John in the spread of the gospel to the world, even in the era following the end of the temple.

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So here's three arguments, three internal arguments for the later date of the book of John. Number one,

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John makes a reference to the Sea of Tiberias rather than the Sea of Galilee. And the Sea of Galilee was not known as the

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Sea of Tiberias until the later part of the first century. Number two, John makes a reference to Peter's martyrdom, which would have happened probably about 66

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A .D. It's in John chapter 21 when Jesus and Peter were talking after breakfast.

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And he said in verse 18, Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted.

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But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.

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And then verse 19, This he said to show by what kind of death

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Peter was to glorify God. And after saying this, Jesus said to him,

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Follow me. So John makes a reference to Peter's martyrdom in this particular book.

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Therefore, it had to have been written after 66. Now, that's not necessarily an argument for a writing of the

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Gospel of John after 70. But I see that as being more likely than John having written the

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Gospel between 66 and 70. News about Peter's death would have spread far and wide, and it now would have been tradition in the church, knowing that Peter was crucified just as Jesus was, but he had been crucified upside down.

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So John doesn't spell out the details exactly regarding how Peter died, because that would have been known by the church.

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But he does make a reference to his martyrdom. So I think that's an argument for a later dating of the writing of the

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Gospel of John. And here is the third argument. The Sadducees are never mentioned in John.

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Why would that be relevant? Because the Sadducees, as a governing law body in Jewish communities and in the

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Sanhedrin, ceased to exist after the destruction of the temple. So John only refers to the

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Sanhedrin according to the Pharisees, which were still the existing political body, rather than the

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Sadducees. Since the Sadducees were no longer around, the Sanhedrin only would have been known by the

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Pharisees at that particular time. I think that's a pretty strong argument. Now, there's also an argument that John never mentions the destruction of the temple.

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That's kind of an argument from silence. I don't hold that as one of the stronger arguments, but you could certainly make it.

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke all talk about when the temple is going to be destroyed. John doesn't mention it, because the temple's already been destroyed.

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So he doesn't talk about like the Olivet Discourse. We don't have that in the Book of John. But what you do have are miracles that will be mentioned, and John singles out seven miracles in particular.

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It's actually the fewest number of miracles in any of the Gospels, but there are very specific reasons why he chose those miracles.

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And then he also shows what they symbolize. And it's usually like a miracle will happen, and then

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Jesus gives like a full discourse explaining the meaning of the miracle. For example, he feeds 5 ,000 in chapter 6, which is followed a few verses later by Jesus talking about being the bread of life in verses 25 through 40.

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So the story of him feeding 5 ,000 is only 13 verses long, and then him talking about being the bread of life is like another 15 verses long.

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So he'll give an extended explanation of what this is supposed to indicate and how this points to who he is, who

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Jesus is. The main theme of the Gospel of John is the Gospel.

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And Jesus clearly separates people out into two groups in this Gospel. You're either a believer or you're an unbeliever.

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And so John has written this Gospel so that people would hear it and know that Jesus Christ is the

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Son of God who was sent in the flesh to die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the grave so that all who believe in him will be forgiven their sins, will not perish, and will have eternal life.

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I can't think of a better way to close than with John 3 .16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

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Son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

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We're going to come back to John 1 .1 again tomorrow, and I hope you will come back and join me.

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Let's pray. Our wonderful God, we thank you for your Gospel, for it is by the proclamation of this

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Gospel that we have come to an awareness of our sin and our need for a Savior. And by your work of the

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Holy Spirit in our hearts, we have repented from sin. We have clung to this Gospel. We have believed and so have been saved, not by a will of the flesh, but by the will of God.

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And so God, by your will, may you continue to show us who you are in light of the

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Gospel, in light of what we're reading here in the Gospel of John, embarking upon this particular study.

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And I pray that it would be edifying for us, it would encourage our spirits, it would lift up our hearts, and raise our gaze toward heaven, looking toward Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith.

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And we ask this in his name, amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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Text. Pastor Gabe is the author of the book, 40 of the Most Popular Bible Verses and What They Really Mean.

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Available in paperback or for your Kindle, found at our website at www .utt .com.