Wednesday Bible Study: The walk of John part 1

 

I have been told a million times: the best book in the Bible to start a new believer out on is the Gospel of John.  I've never quite got on with that, preferring the timeline approach with Genesis.  And I have wondered how you teach or learn the esoteric stuff that John starts out with right from the start, so I have decided to give this Gospel a go here.  And believe it or not, my first learning moment came here:

Joh 1:40  One of the two who heard John and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
Joh 1:41  He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah (which is, being translated, the Christ).
Joh 1:42  And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus saw him, He said, You are Simon the son of Jonah; you shall be called Cephas (which translated is, A stone). 

Now, the synoptic Gospels ( the other three, who do a 'synopsis' in chronological order) have the re-naming of Peter (the Latin of the Greek Cephus) far later in His ministry.  And that would bother me, had we not just studied Ephesians earlier and learn that God sees 'now' as insignificant compared to past and future. It is this passage that makes me realize that John isn't interested in the timeline as much as he is the IMPORTANCE of each thing he touches on.  Which means if I am to learn this book, I have to see the importance of each event.  The Catholic church is going to struggle with what I see here, because they base the rule of the Pope (with a blind eye to both the New Testament and history) on this renaming of Peter as the other Gospels tell it:

Mat 16:13  Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
Mat 16:14  And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
Mat 16:15  He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Mat 16:16  Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Mat 16:17  And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
Mat 16:18  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Matthew and Mark tell this different because the first Gospel- Mark- was told to Mark by Peter (we believe), and Matthew cribbed off it.  For Peter, this was a very important moment personally. But for John, both Peter's confession and his leadership of the Apostles was a given.  John saw the Apostles being gathered important, and he spends much of the first couple chapters hitting it. And Jesus's divinity, as we will see, he hits from the other end.  But Peter's name change and human leadership of the band, he leaves off on because it is Christ's leadership that is the main thing to Him.

John starts out just the way Genesis does: "In the Beginning"...

Joh 1:1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2  He was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

The most important thing to John was the identity of Christ.  He establishes two legs of the Trinity.  Jesus was but WITH God and WAS God. His next big point was the combining of Man and God in Jesus:

Joh 1:14  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

But he interweaves the story of John the Baptist into the narrative as well.  This is very much like how Mark incorporated the Peter story; John had been a disciple of the Baptist before going with Jesus, hence its importance to him.  Here, John finds the next point that really struck me:

Joh 1:19  And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?"
Joh 1:20  He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, "I am not the Christ."
Joh 1:21  And they asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" And he answered, "No."
Joh 1:22  So they said to him, "Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?"
Joh 1:23  He said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said." 

These are the same answers that the Apostles give much later- in the very Peter story John leaves out. So these answers are important, and this is why.  Jesus came into his ministry healing and doing miracles- and the religious leaders would NOT believe.  Because, as Jesus would tell them later, they were children of their father, the Devil.  The Devil didn't want them to believe in Jesus as Messiah; but John the Baptist? That was a different story- they would have accepted had John claimed to be the Messiah, and Satan would have been content with a false Messiah.  And all John did was baptize.  And by quoting Isaiah, the Baptist gave them the complete explanation of who HE was.  If they could have accepted John as Messiah, they SHOULD have been able to accept him POINTING OUT the real Messiah...

Joh 1:29  The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Joh 1:30  This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.'
Joh 1:31  I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel."
Joh 1:32  And John bore witness: "I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.
Joh 1:33  I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.'
Joh 1:34  And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God."

Two things to draw from this.  First, this connects in the third leg of the Trinity- the Holy Spirit.  But also, it leaves out Jesus's own baptism.  And Jesus himself explains why this is...

Mat 3:13  Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him.
Mat 3:14  John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"
Mat 3:15  But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented.

The important thing was to link Jesus with the Spirit, and this he did, both by the Spirit's descending and his confession of Christ as Son of God.  On that subject of importance, do you note that John says not one thing about the Christmas story?  Again, not important as a story, but only in that God took on flesh.  You may hear Christians ask, then why don't we celebrate Resurrection Sunday (Easter) more than Christmas? Satan want's it that way.  You can celebrate Jesus that way without ever celebrating the WHY of His coming in flesh.

Wow, we have hit on a lot of rich stuff without even getting through chapter one!