And welcome back,
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we are studying
the Gospel of John
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and we are with Dr. Jon Paulien.
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Dr. Jon Paulien, we are--
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we were talking about the unique
features of the Gospel of John.
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Tell us more about those? Yeah.
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Yeah, Gospel of
John does a lot of things
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that none of the
other gospels do.
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For example, in
the Gospel of John
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Jesus is much more assertive.
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He really gets
on people sometimes.
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He could even be combative
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kind of sarcastic at times
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which is not what you
would expect from Jesus
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in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
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So the Jesus portrayed in John
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is quite a bit different in
personality from the others.
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You might say, well, you
know why is that the case?
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Well, if Jesus is
representing God to us,
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He might just be
little bit bigger
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than any of our
own personalities.
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But for example, in chapter 844
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he calls people
"Sons of the devil."
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If I would have say that
to you and really mean it,
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you know, wow,
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you son of a devil,
you, you know, it's kind of--
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you would hope I
was joking, you see.
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So Jesus is very
serious when He says that.
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And another one, I
remember in Chapter 10.
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They're mad at Jesus and
they are picking up stones
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to throw at Him and
he says, "Time out."
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He says, "You're
about to stone Me,
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but I've a question.
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For which of My good
works are you stoning me?"
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You see, now that's funny.
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You know, you'd
stop and think about it.
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So Jesus is very assertive.
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I mean, He
instead of disappearing
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like He would
in Luke, He starts,
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you know,
challenging His stoners.
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What they are doing here.
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You've got
narratives in the Gospel of John
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that are
nowhere else, Nicodemus,
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the Samaritan woman for example,
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the Lazarus story,
these are not found,
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you know, the tomb of Lazarus,
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and so these are not
found in any other gospel.
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Often in Matthew, Mark and Luke
there are three party dialogues,
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where you have Jesus
talking with two other people
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or two groups or something
and it's going back and forth.
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In the Gospel of John
it's always one on one.
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And He will speak to one person
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and then He
will speak to another
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and so on, so
that's a difference.
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I mentioned in
an earlier program
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that John doesn't have parables.
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You know, like
sower goes out to sow
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and he puts out the grain
and some other grain does well
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and some gets choked
out and, you know, so on.
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Doesn't do parables,
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the closest thing to a parable
would be divine and the branches
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or maybe the good shepherd,
but those are analogies,
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they are not really parables.
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So in John the stories
themselves become parables
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and we'll see how that
works in future programs.
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In the Gospel of John,
Jesus is not a teacher.
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He doesn't talk
for chapters long.
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He simply acts and His sayings
are short and clipped and so on.
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And one more thing He
said, in the Gospel of John
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Jesus repeatedly
visits Jerusalem,
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where as in
Matthew, Mark and Luke,
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His main visit to Jerusalem
is really the only one.
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In Luke, He visits as a child,
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but in His ministry-- He
does His ministry in Galilee
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and then comes to Jerusalem.
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So John is sharing a bunch
of earlier visits to Jerusalem
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that aren't
mentioned in the others.
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So when we look at John uniquely
there's a whole lot here
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that we want to
pay attention to.
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And one of the most exciting
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features of the
gospel is the narrator.
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You know, you noticed
that sometimes in stories
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there's a narrator
who breaks in and he says,
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"This is what was
going on," you know.
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Morally he was dead or whatever.
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And so there's a
narrator in the Gospel of John.
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Let's get
acquainted with it. Sure.
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It's in Chapter 1
and you'll find him
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all the way through the
gospel, but Chapter 1 verse 38.
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John 1:38, why
don't you read that?
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"Then Jesus turned
and seeing them following,
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He said to them,
"What do you seek?"
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They said to Him, "Rabbi"
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which is to say
when translated Teacher,
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"where are You staying?" Okay.
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Where's the
narrator there? When--
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He's interpreting
Rabbi, see, right in it.
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Here, Rabbi,
where are you staying?
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He interrupts that.
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So obviously
Jesus did not say that.
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Jesus didn't say.
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You know, Rabbi, which is
interpreted being teacher.
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Where are you staying?
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No, the people didn't say that.
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That's the
narrator inserting, why?
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Because the reader may
not understand that term.
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So the narrator steps in
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and he tells the information
that they didn't know.
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Look at verse 39.
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"He said to
them, "Come, and see."
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They came and saw
where he was staying,
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and remained with him that day.
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It was about the
tenth hour. Okay.
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You know my
Bible has parenthesis.
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For the tenth hour there?
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That one and
also the previous one,
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which is to say when
translated teacher. Yeah.
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You see, so the
translator there is recognizing
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that there is
something else going on here.
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It's not part of the dialogue.
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Yeah, it's not part
of the dialogue, exactly.
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So Gospel of
John has this feature
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constantly jumping in there.
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You know, well, it
was about the tenth hour.
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Explaining stuff that
the reader needs to know
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to fully understand
what is happening here.
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Go to verse 41.
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"And he brought him to Jesus.
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Now when Jesus looked at him,
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he said, you are
Simon the son of Jonah
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and shall be called Cephas,
which is translated, a stone."
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Which again we see the
parenthesis in my version.
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That's right. That's right.
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So he's interpreting
what that means, okay.
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So there you
see how the narrator
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kind of inserts himself.
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And it's
interesting about this narrator.
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First of all he
knows everything.
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The narrator knows
what characters thought,
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what they felt,
what they intended to do.
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You know, he knows what Judas
is thinking at the supper table.
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He knows what the disciples
are thinking about Judas
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and all this,
narrator keeps plugging it in.
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He can be everywhere.
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He's there with Jesus
and the Samaritan woman.
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But then the disciples show up
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and the Samaritan
woman goes to town.
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Narrator follows her to town
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and at the same time he knows
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what Jesus and the disciples are
talking about with each other.
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So the narrator can
know, knows everything.
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And the narrator can go anywhere
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and he also knows
what's in the future.
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There are several times
in the gospel where it says,
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you know, they did
this and so and he says,
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but they didn't really
understand at this time,
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because the Holy
Spirit hadn't come yet.
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So the narrator
jumps in and he says,
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these guys are
kind of dumb right now,
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but they're gonna
get smart later on.
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So he knows the future of
what's going on in the story.
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So lot of people--
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So he's kind of
helping the reader understand.
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You know, you probably
don't know what I mean by this,
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but this is
what it really means.
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And so that's,
that's helpful. Yeah.
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And since you watch for
the narrator as you go through
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and the narrator gives you
the information that you need.
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And one thing you'll notice
is the narrator is always right.
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Because-- And
you know he's right
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because what he is saying
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connects with everything else
you know about the situation.
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Through the
narrator you know stuff
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that the people in
the story don't know.
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So it's like inside information.
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And he knows it
because he was there. Yeah.
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He saw it. Yeah.
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So in one sense, I would say
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the narrator sounds to
me like the Holy Spirit,
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providing he is--
John is illustrating
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how through the Holy
Spirit that extra information
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comes where
everything make sense.
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You know, about Christian faith.
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It makes perfect sense to
those who walk with Jesus.
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To somebody who
doesn't have that relationship,
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it may make no sense at all.
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And here you see why,
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that when people are
lacking in certain information,
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they can't make the
decision that they need to make.
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And so the Holy
Sprit is constantly trying
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to bring us the
information we need.
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In the Gospel of
John people are constantly
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misunderstanding Jesus.
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You know, that brings us back
to that second generation thing.
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We would like to think
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that if we were
there with Jesus personally
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that, you know,
we would follow Him.
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Man, we'd be better off.
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In the Gospel of
John the people with Jesus
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never seemed to get
it, they don't understand.
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Take a look at Chapter 14.
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John Chapter 14
and verses 7 to 9.
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"If you had known me,
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you would have
known my Father also.
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And from now on you
know him and have seen him.
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Philip said to him,
"Lord, show us the Father,
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and it is sufficient for us.
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Jesus said to him, I
have been with you so long,
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and yet you have
not known me, Philip?
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He who has seen Me
has seen the Father,
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so how can you say,
'Show us the Father?'"
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You see there's a
misunderstanding going on here.
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Jesus makes a statement.
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The disciples take
Him literally, you know.
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Jesus says, "I've
shown you the Father."
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Philip says, "No, You haven't."
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And Jesus says, "Yes I have."
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If you've seen Me,
you've seen the Father.
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So in this misunderstanding
that's going on,
00:10:03.29\00:10:07.24
it highlights the fact
00:10:07.27\00:10:09.48
that the Gospel of
John wants you to go deeper.
00:10:09.51\00:10:12.13
If you take the
stories only on the surface
00:10:12.16\00:10:15.68
you will misunderstand.
00:10:15.71\00:10:17.93
And if you think that
being with the physical Jesus
00:10:17.96\00:10:21.61
makes all the difference,
00:10:21.64\00:10:23.16
just take a look at
those who are with him.
00:10:23.19\00:10:25.17
They never did get it.
00:10:25.20\00:10:26.61
Over and over in
this gospel you have this,
00:10:26.64\00:10:30.11
you know, Jesus
makes a statement,
00:10:30.14\00:10:31.65
they respond taking it literally
00:10:31.68\00:10:34.58
and then Jesus or the
narrator responds once more.
00:10:34.61\00:10:39.01
For example in
Chapter 8 you have the story
00:10:39.04\00:10:41.96
that before Abraham was, I am.
00:10:41.99\00:10:47.99
Well, you know,
they were saying,
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you are how old and you
say you've seen Abraham?
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You know, well, they did get it.
00:10:53.76\00:10:55.15
In what sense is
Jesus seeing Abraham?
00:10:55.18\00:10:57.43
He's saying well,
I was with Abraham
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on the mountain there
when he sacrificed Isaac.
00:11:00.39\00:11:03.44
I was there with him, you see.
00:11:03.47\00:11:06.36
But that doesn't make sense,
00:11:06.39\00:11:07.76
but that would make
sense to the reader, why?
00:11:07.79\00:11:11.30
Why do you think it
would make sense to the reader?
00:11:11.33\00:11:13.42
It would just somehow
provide some kind of assistance.
00:11:13.45\00:11:20.98
Because the first chapter
of the book is the prologue
00:11:21.01\00:11:24.29
and it tells us who Jesus is.
00:11:24.32\00:11:26.71
He was the Logos.
He was with the Father.
00:11:26.74\00:11:31.12
He was equal with the Father
00:11:31.15\00:11:32.76
and he came down
and was made flesh.
00:11:32.79\00:11:35.48
See the reader knows all that.
00:11:35.51\00:11:38.00
So in all of these stories
00:11:38.03\00:11:39.99
the reader knows
the moment Jesus speaks.
00:11:40.02\00:11:43.54
The reader knows what He means,
00:11:43.57\00:11:45.97
but the disciples don't get it,
00:11:46.00\00:11:47.66
the Pharisees don't get it,
00:11:47.69\00:11:49.49
the Samaritan
woman doesn't get it.
00:11:49.52\00:11:51.12
So what took the
disciples several years
00:11:51.15\00:11:54.08
to understand what Jesus said,
00:11:54.11\00:11:55.95
immediately the reader
will understand as he reads it.
00:11:55.98\00:12:00.53
So you and I can read it.
Okay, that's what it meant.
00:12:00.56\00:12:02.55
It doesn't-- we
don't have to spend,
00:12:02.58\00:12:03.95
you know, several years to know
what Jesus was talking about.
00:12:03.98\00:12:07.56
And in a sense
these misunderstandings
00:12:07.59\00:12:09.81
are teaching us how to
understand this gospel.
00:12:09.84\00:12:14.15
Don't take the surface
level, you will misunderstand.
00:12:14.18\00:12:18.23
When you go beneath the surface,
00:12:18.26\00:12:19.63
like divine and the branches
the surface level is good.
00:12:19.66\00:12:23.21
You get the story of Jesus,
there's a lot to learn there,
00:12:23.24\00:12:25.67
but when you go a
little bit deeper,
00:12:25.70\00:12:27.81
it opens fresh windows,
00:12:27.84\00:12:29.68
exciting
pathways into the gospel.
00:12:29.71\00:12:32.40
Well, Dr. Paulien, this
is exciting to know more.
00:12:32.43\00:12:35.00
And I wish that
as I read the Bible
00:12:35.03\00:12:37.70
that I allow the Holy Sprit
00:12:37.73\00:12:39.61
to help me to
understand more. Me too.
00:12:39.64\00:12:41.85
And friends, I hope that
you too as you read God's word,
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you can
understand by God's spirit.
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