Participants: Deyvy Rodriguez & Jon Paulien
Series Code: JBOTB
Program Code: JBOTB00004A
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00:19 Hello, friends, and welcome to this program,
00:21 "Books of the Book." 00:22 My name is Deyvy Rodriguez, and I'm so pleased 00:24 that you are able to join us in this Bible study. 00:28 We're studying the Gospel of John 00:31 and with us is Dr. Jon Paulien. 00:34 Dr. Paulien, welcome again. 00:36 And I have to tell you, I didn't write this book. Okay. 00:39 You looked like, you're a little uncertain there for me. 00:41 What do you gonna say? 00:43 By the way, your name spelled differently. 00:45 That's right. 00:46 J-O-N. It's J-O-N. 00:48 There is no H in there. What's up with that? 00:50 That's what my mother called me. Okay. 00:52 Actually, it goes back to Jonathan. 00:56 I think the whole thing of, 00:58 you know, David and Jonathan in the Bible intrigued them 01:01 and the name means, "Gift of God." 01:04 But as I became an adult and author I thought, 01:07 you know, I'm gonna have to sign my name 01:08 100,000 times in my life. 01:09 I'd like it to be a little shorter. 01:11 So oddly enough my wife and my daughter 01:15 they both insist on the long version of their names, 01:18 even though everyone calls them the short ones. 01:19 So we're all being difficult and-- 01:21 So you've save time even while signing your name? 01:24 Absolutely. 01:26 You know, make it nice and simple, J-O-N. 01:27 2.5 seconds, okay. 01:29 And it catches peoples' attention, too. 01:30 Yeah, that's good. You're unique. 01:34 We all are, you know. 01:36 Did you know that no two snowflakes are alike? 01:39 Sounds interesting. 01:40 If that's true and sciences have are telling us, 01:43 that's why I believe them. 01:45 If that's true then 01:46 no two human beings are exactly are alike. 01:49 And that means you have a unique mission 01:52 and something unique to do for God. 01:54 Amen. That sounds very encouraging. 01:57 I've never seen another person 01:58 that looks like me in this world. 02:00 That is true. 02:01 And then sometimes we say, it's a good thing, 02:03 but in your case, it will be all right to have a twin. 02:05 I don't know about that. 02:08 So today we're continuing now talking on the Gospel of John 1. 02:11 Where are we picking up today? 02:13 Okay, well at the first three programs 02:15 we were looking at the Gospel of John 02:16 as a whole and noticing a lot of its uniqueness, 02:20 but now we're coming into the first chapter 02:24 and that's what called a prologue here. 02:27 The first 18 verses of the Gospel of John 02:31 standout separately. 02:33 They're unique from the rest of the gospel. 02:35 And you might say, "Well, how come verse 19 02:37 isn't chapter 2?" 02:40 Well, it's because the chapters were not decided by John, 02:43 nor by us. 02:45 They kind of happened in the middle ages 02:47 and they were put in there just for convenience. 02:50 But the reality is the first 18 verses 02:53 really are set apart as something separate there. 02:57 And so we're gonna take this program 03:00 to have a look at that. Okay. 03:02 So, where are we picking up then? 03:03 Well, I want to talk about the prologue 03:06 as a whole for a minute. 03:08 Those three things about it that scholars have discovered 03:11 that are really interesting. Okay. 03:13 Why don't you start with the first five verses 03:16 and just read them for us? 03:17 "In the beginning was the Word, 03:19 and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 03:23 He was in the beginning with God. 03:25 All things were made through him, 03:27 and without him nothing was made that was made, 03:31 in him was life, and the life was the light of men. 03:35 And the light shines in the darkness, 03:38 and the darkness did not comprehend it." 03:41 Is that a little bit different than normal writing? It does. 03:45 It sounds like, it repeats itself. Yeah. 03:47 Yeah, there's a lot of repetition here. 03:49 You know, in the English language, 03:52 poetry is usually through rhyme. 03:56 You know, the last word kind of sounds the same. 04:00 But in Hebrew poetry, 04:02 it was rhythm and repetition that made it. 04:06 And scholars have noticed this looks like poetry here. 04:11 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 04:14 and the Word was God. 04:16 He was with God in the beginning." 04:19 This repletion and even in the English translation 04:23 you can feel like, you're getting a cadence going. 04:26 And then something else happens in verses 4 and 5. 04:30 You notice it says, "In it was life, 04:33 and the life was the light of men. 04:36 And the light shone in the darkness, 04:38 and the darkness didn't comprehend." 04:42 I called that "Stair-step parallelism." 04:45 It's like, you know, you have this double mention 04:48 here in verse 4 of life 04:51 and then there's a double mention of light 04:53 and then the double mention of darkness, 04:55 but the life is the light 04:56 and the light shines in the darkness, 04:58 they're linked together like a staircase, climbing up. 05:02 So you have two different forms of poetry here. 05:07 And what do you think is happening here? 05:10 You got a gospel in early book, 05:13 why would there be poetry in here all of a sudden? 05:15 Any idea? 05:16 I don't know, but it sounds also like a song 05:19 you could probably make a song out of this. Okay. 05:21 Yeah, songs-- songs usually start with poetry. 05:25 Where would the early church have songs? 05:27 Well, we know that they sing songs, 05:29 so possibly from the Book of Psalms or no songs. 05:34 Yeah, the Psalms in the Hebrew Bible 05:38 would probably been sung in the synagogues. 05:40 And we know from Paul that early churches 05:43 in their worship would sing songs. 05:46 So that was part of the thing. 05:48 So John seems to have taken an early Christian hymn 05:53 and built it into the prologue of the gospel. 05:57 So something that they were singing 06:00 and there's language in here 06:01 that seems earlier than the time when-- 06:03 of the actual writing of the New Testament. 06:05 There's actually four or five hymns in the New Testament. 06:10 Most famous one is Philippians 2:6-11, 06:14 where you know, Jesus is with God in heaven 06:17 and He comes down and humbles Himself 06:20 and then gets exalted again. 06:22 That has all the sound of poetry again to it. 06:26 And all the hymns are similar in the themes. 06:29 You know, about God coming down and going back, 06:32 that's the theme of all the hymns. 06:34 So John takes an early Christian hymn. 06:36 He is connecting with church people 06:39 who would read this gospel. 06:41 He is connecting with them, right at the start. 06:43 So that's the neat part when you see that. 06:47 There's another aspect here it's a chiasm, 06:50 and that may not mean anything to you, 06:53 but it comes from the Greek letter "X." 06:56 You know the idea of like, a pyramid type of thing. 07:00 Notice right at the beginning, it says, 07:02 "In the beginning was the Word, 07:05 and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 07:09 In verse 1 and then if you hold your finger 07:11 then go to verse 18, 07:14 it says, "No one has ever seen God, 07:17 but God the One and Only 07:18 who was at the Father's side, has made him known." 07:22 So it's about the relationship 07:25 between God and the Word in verse 1 07:28 and then again in verse 18. 07:31 But then when you get to verse 3 it says, 07:33 "Through him all things were made." 07:36 And there's a special word about 'made' 07:39 and you go to verse 17, 07:41 "For the law was given through Moses, 07:44 but grace and truths came through Jesus Christ." 07:47 Now that translation misses it completely. 07:50 But what is your say from verse 17. 07:52 Actually, it says the same thing, 07:53 "For the law was given through Moses, 07:55 but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." 07:58 This Greek words for "came" and Greek words for "is," 08:02 this isn't that. It's the word 'becoming.' 08:06 And in Genesis 1, 08:10 it uses the word 'becoming' for creation. 08:13 It came to be, you see. 08:15 So in verse 3, everything came to be through the word. 08:20 In verse 17, the grace 08:24 and truth came to be in Jesus Christ. 08:28 So unfortunately, there is one of those times 08:29 where English translation lets us down 08:31 and we miss the parallels. 08:34 Verse 1 and verse 18 are parallel. 08:36 Verse 3 and 17 are parallel. 08:39 Verse 6 and 15, John the Baptist is mentioned twice 08:43 and those are parallel. 08:44 So it's like a big pyramid. 08:47 The beginning and the end is together 08:49 and then like a stair-step and that points to the middle. 08:54 Now, why is this, 08:55 why even bother telling you this? 08:58 It's because in the Hebrew mind, 09:00 they had a different kind of logic than we have. 09:04 In our Western logic, A+B equals what? 09:09 C. C. 09:10 You see, so there is a linear kind of a thing. 09:13 And it's going somewhere. 09:16 So where is the climax? 09:17 At the end. A+B, there is the climax. 09:21 In Hebrew logic, it's different. A+B equals A enhanced. 09:28 In other words, you go from A to B 09:30 and then you come back to A, but the A is bigger now. 09:35 Like a musical scale. 09:38 You have the A key and when you go through, 09:40 you come back to A, 09:42 but know there's more vibrations. 09:43 You see, that's kind of like that. 09:45 And in the Hebrew logic, the emphasis is not on the end, 09:50 but in the middle. 09:52 In the Book of Revelation I have come to feel 09:55 that the Book of Revelation is a giant pyramid like this. 09:59 And if that's true, 10:00 then the key to Book of Revelation 10:02 is in the middle chapters 12, 13, and 14. 10:06 And that's where the crucial things are happening. 10:09 So when you understand the Hebrew mindset 10:12 then you know where to look. 10:13 And what's in the middle of the prologue? 10:15 It's verses 12 and 13. 10:18 "But as many as received Him, 10:20 to them He gave the right to become children of God, 10:23 to those who believe in His name, 10:26 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 10:30 nor of the will of man, but of God." 10:34 So it's telling this grand story about how God came down 10:39 and became one of us and then went back to, 10:44 you know, and send it back to heaven. 10:46 And what's the point of telling that story? 10:49 We find that in the middle here. 10:51 The point is so that people can come to God. 10:54 They can become children of God 10:56 and then becoming children of God, 10:59 they are transformed become new people. 11:02 So what God did in Jesus 11:05 as here seen in the Gospel of John for our sakes? 11:08 That we could understand God as He really was 11:12 that we could appreciate 11:13 something different about His character. 11:16 If you ask the average person, 11:18 what God is like? What would they say? 11:22 I don't know. 11:23 The most people think of God as kind of out there, 11:28 scary, maybe judgmental, 11:34 maybe even arbitrary. 11:36 You know, you have all these views of God 11:39 that people who don't know Him, have it, 11:41 and sometimes even Christian people 11:43 think of God in that way. 11:45 How is God gonna disabuse us of all of those views? 11:50 By revealing Himself in a human being. 11:53 And that's what the Gospel of John is all about, 11:55 is this revelation of what God is really like. 11:59 What is Jesus like? What is Jesus mean to you? 12:03 Well, Jesus to me, is a close personal friend, 12:07 He is my-- Not scary? 12:09 No. Okay. 12:11 I don't have any scary friends. 12:13 You know, if somebody scary, 12:15 you don't want to miss the friend. 12:16 Right. It's a logic there. 12:18 What is that say about a relationship to God? 12:21 Right. 12:22 If we have a scary God, 12:24 we're not gonna wanna be close to Him. Right. 12:25 Yeah. Right. 12:27 And that's how I view God that He is a close friend. 12:32 When I pray I open my heart to God as to a friend. 12:36 And I hope that even those who are viewing 12:40 perhaps do not have that view of God. 12:45 That the God is someone up there 12:47 and just pointing fingers at our sins 12:50 and that He's far distant from us, 12:54 but He is not, He is close to us, 12:58 and He wants to draw closer to us more. 13:03 This is good. 13:04 And that's what the Gospel John is all about. 13:07 That view of God is possible for us 13:10 because of the God we saw in Jesus. 13:13 And that's the key to this book. 13:16 Everybody else is experiencing Jesus is a human being. 13:19 It's only the reader through the Holy Spirit 13:22 that sees this deeper dimension who Jesus really is. 13:25 And Jesus came to reveal God's character. 13:28 Is that right? That's right. 13:31 It says a very explicitly 13:32 in this gospel over and over again. 13:34 So in this chiasm then, 13:38 He is connecting with Hebrew minded people, 13:40 Jewish people who may have had a view of God 13:44 as somewhat distance 13:45 and sometimes terrifying like, Mount Sinai. 13:48 And He wants now for them to see 13:50 that God doesn't want them to be slaves, 13:54 He wants them to be friends. 13:56 And you know that's the move 13:58 that happens in the Gospel of John. 14:01 It was good to have you with us again 14:03 and this time we'll take a quick break 14:05 and then we'll come back to the prologue, 14:07 you may want to read it during the break. |
Revised 2014-12-17