Participants: Deyvy Rodriguez & Jon Paulien
Series Code: JBOTB
Program Code: JBOTB00021A
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00:21 Hello friends, and welcome back
00:22 to this program "Books of the Book." 00:24 My name is Deyvy Rodriguez and I am so happy again 00:27 that you can be with us in this Bible study. 00:30 And we are in the Gospel of John 00:33 and today we are on Chapter 16. 00:36 So, if you have a Bible somewhere, 00:38 I invite you to open it to this chapter. 00:41 And with us is a brilliant scholar 00:43 and I say brilliant because just the Bible applications 00:46 that he brings from the Gospel of John 00:50 as he calls it the-- it's a spiritual Gospel 00:53 and I've mentioned to him, I understand why. 00:56 And he comes all the way from Loma Linda, California. 00:59 He is the Dean of Religion in Loma Linda University. 01:03 So, Dr. Jon Paulien, welcome back. 01:06 Thank you. Thank you. 01:07 You know we are almost finished with the Gospel of John. 01:10 That's right. 01:11 You said earlier that this is your favorite gospel, 01:13 you've written three books on it. 01:16 And I should probably say that I didn't invent 01:18 the idea of spiritual gospel. 01:19 That's actually, probably the earliest 01:22 summary of the gospel. 01:24 It's very early church father like about 25-30 years 01:29 after the Gospel of John was written, 01:30 he said, you know, he just talks 01:32 about Matthew, Mark and Luke and he says, but John, 01:35 he brought a spiritual gospel. 01:37 And so already right from the beginning 01:39 they were recognizing there was something different 01:41 about this book from the other three. 01:44 Now we were talking about friendship last time. 01:47 We were. Yeah. 01:48 And I have to tell you that you and I become friends 01:51 just in producing these programs. 01:53 We didn't know each other before we started. 01:56 And I am getting to like this a whole lot. 01:59 Well, thank you. 02:00 I appreciate and I am getting to like you. Yeah. 02:03 That just you know, we are having more and fun as we-- 02:05 Not that I hated you or didn't like you before, 02:07 I am just saying that you know, 02:08 It's just very interesting knowing you more and more. 02:10 Now we can just draw the curtain on that, okay. 02:14 So today, we are on Chapter 16, 02:17 I see a lot of red ink on my Chapter 14, 15 02:22 and now 16, even 17 02:24 and so we all know that those are the words of Jesus. 02:29 Apparently He is giving this long discourse. 02:32 So where are we now? 02:33 Well, one of the interesting things about it is 02:35 He repeats Himself a lot 02:37 in these chapters over and over again. 02:39 And I would remind our viewers 02:41 that we are in skipping the references 02:45 to the Holy Spirit in 14, 15 and 16 02:47 because we are going to have a whole program 02:50 on the Holy Spirit and that should be the next one. 02:53 But we are looking at each of these chapters 02:55 and Jesus constantly repeating Himself 02:57 because the disciples just don't get it. 03:00 They are truly clueless in this gospel 03:04 and that's serving John's purpose. 03:07 In that he wants us to understand, 03:09 having the physical presence of Jesus is no guarantee 03:12 that you are going to understand Him. 03:14 In fact the very humanist of Jesus 03:16 may be a barrier to receiving Him as God, 03:19 where as through the words of the disciples 03:23 and through the influence of the Holy Spirit, 03:26 people then can have a deep 03:29 and meaningful relationship with the Jesus 03:31 even though they cannot see, hear or touch Him. 03:34 Okay. And where are we picking up today then? 03:37 We will go to Chapter 16 03:40 and here He is continuing on from Chapter 15. 03:45 there were no interruptions from the disciples in Chapter 15 03:48 but when you get to 16, they start interrupting again 03:53 and their interruptions rarely glorify them. 03:57 They tend to be a little bit clueless. 04:00 But Jesus in Chapter 16 repeats a lot of the themes 04:05 that He has covered in 14 and 15. 04:07 There's the theme of the world's hatred 04:09 which we closed with in Chapter 15. 04:12 There's the theme of going away. 04:14 I am going to be going away, that happened at the beginning. 04:17 Now He comes back to it in 16. 04:20 The Holy Spirit of course is repeated all through 04:22 and we will cover that in the next program. 04:25 And He returns to the themes of prayer and love, 04:29 which were particularly strong in Chapter 14. 04:32 So 16 kind of pulls together all of the themes 04:36 that He was talking about in 14 and 15. Okay. 04:41 So why don't we get started and we can go to verse 2. 04:46 "They will put you out of the synagogues. 04:49 Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you 04:52 will think that he offers God service. 04:55 And these things they will do to you 04:57 because they have not known the Father nor Me." 05:01 All right, so here it talks about service to God 05:04 that they will kill you 05:06 thinking they are offering service to God. 05:08 The interesting piece of that 05:10 is that the Greek word is not the normal word for service. 05:14 It's the word latria 05:15 which actually means sacrificial service. 05:18 It's the kind of service you did in the temple, 05:21 doing the sacrifices. 05:23 In other words, they think that they are portraying God 05:28 the way He should be portrayed. 05:30 People who kill in the name of God 05:33 are people who think of God as blood thirsty, 05:37 think of God as one who delights in death 05:40 but this is not the kind of God that Jesus has brought. 05:45 We become like the God we worship. 05:49 And if we worship a God 05:51 that is fearsome and threatening and so on, 05:54 we will tend to behave that way toward others. 05:58 Interestingly enough there's a faculty member on my staff 06:03 at Loma Linda University 06:05 who has been doing brain research 06:08 where they use brain scans 06:10 to actually look inside your head 06:12 and see the brain and they've come to realize 06:14 the brain is very malleable, it's kind of like Jell-O, 06:19 it's the consistency of it. 06:20 That's why it's important to wear helmet 06:22 when you are on a motorcycle, things like that 06:24 because you know, you bounce your head off the concrete 06:27 and all that stuff is sloshing around, 06:29 that's not good, you see. 06:31 So they can look inside the brain 06:33 and they've discovered that the brain take shape, 06:36 changes shape based on your thoughts and feelings 06:41 that we can actually, even older people 06:44 can change the way they think 06:46 and change the way their brain functions. 06:49 And what he has discovered in his research 06:52 that people whose view of God 06:54 is judgmental and cruel and so on, 06:57 such a view of God actually stuns the brain 07:02 and makes it more rigid and less able to function 07:06 where as person whose view of God 07:08 is kind and loving and friendly 07:11 like the God that Jesus is portraying here, 07:14 that view of God actually makes the brain healthier. 07:18 Now that's not final word all of itself, 07:21 it's a scientific word but it's very, very interesting 07:24 that the view of God portrayed in the Gospel of John 07:27 is actually healthy for us. 07:30 And here he shows that people have the capacity 07:34 to kill in the name of God. 07:36 They think they are doing God service. 07:39 They will do such things 07:41 because they have not known the Father, interesting. 07:46 They are serving God but they have not known Him. 07:51 If you serve God in cruel ways, 07:54 if you serve God in vicious judgmental ways, 07:58 you don't know God. 08:00 And God Himself comes in a different way. 08:05 It's interesting, the cruelest people of the ancient world 08:09 were probably the Assyrians and they had the cruelest gods. 08:13 Many of the gods of the ancient people 08:16 were very arbitrary, severe, cruel, judgmental 08:21 and these people behaved like the gods they worshipped. 08:26 So it's very, very important as we come to know Jesus, 08:29 He transforms our brains and even our lives 08:33 so that we become more like Him. 08:36 And the interesting thing is you would think 08:39 that someone who loves everybody like Jesus did, 08:43 someone who is gracious and kind would be very popular. 08:47 You think that, right? Not true. 08:51 The one thing most people will not tolerate 08:56 is if someone loves their enemy. 08:59 If I love your enemy 09:01 that will be very challenging for our friendship 09:04 because you want your friends 09:06 to be enemies of your enemies, you see. 09:09 And that's the way human beings are. 09:11 So a person who truly loves everybody, 09:14 having received the Spirit of God 09:16 and that attitude of God, 09:18 such a person actually is very irritating and infuriating. 09:23 And people will reconcile, enemies will reconcile 09:27 to kill somebody who loves everyone. 09:29 And that's what happened to Jesus. 09:31 Herod, Pilate and Caiaphas were enemies of each other 09:35 and yet they all came together to destroy Jesus 09:38 because they saw in His gracious loving spirit, 09:41 a threat to everything that they believed in. 09:45 Well, as the Bible says, 09:46 "You worship me with your lips 09:48 but your hearts are far from Me." 09:50 Well put, well put. 09:52 That certainly fits in there very, very beautifully. 09:56 Let's go on to verse 7. 10:00 "Nevertheless I tell you the truth. 10:02 It is to your advantage that I go away 10:05 for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you 10:09 but if I depart, I will send Him to you." 10:13 He says, "It's to your advantage that I go away." 10:18 It's better for you if I go away 10:20 and here disciples are all depressed 10:23 that Jesus is going away and He says, 10:27 "Its better for you if I go away." 10:29 I remember when I was back in college, 10:31 I had a girlfriend and she lived down in South America, 10:35 that's where her family came from 10:37 but they were now living there by the college 10:39 and we spent you know a year, year and half together 10:44 and really precious person 10:47 and I really think we wanted to make it work. 10:50 But just somehow no matter what we did it didn't work 10:54 and finally we came to the summer and we said, 10:56 "Okay, we are both going to be up here for the summer 10:58 but let's not have any relationship with each other. 11:00 We just go separate ways and see how that goes." 11:04 And as the summer went on we discovered 11:06 we couldn't stand to be apart 11:08 and we couldn't stand to be together. 11:11 It was a strange kind of experience, you know. 11:14 When we were together we were miserable 11:15 and now we are apart we are miserable. 11:17 So at the end of the summer she announces to me, 11:20 I am going back home, I am going back to my home country. 11:24 I think that's the best for us. 11:27 It will be better for you if I go away. 11:32 I thought that was crazy. 11:34 I didn't buy that for one minute. 11:36 That was the-- that was the worst line 11:38 I'd ever heard for breaking up. 11:41 Sounds like a good one though. 11:43 No word for her. 11:44 But you know the interesting thing about it is 11:47 less than a year later I met the woman 11:50 who would become my wife 11:52 and as I look back on it now from 40 years later, it's true. 11:57 It was better for both of us. 11:59 She has done very well where she is. 12:01 She is an author and a teacher 12:03 and very beloved by her people. 12:05 And similar things have happened for me. 12:09 So Jesus is looking into the future 12:12 and recognizing that yes, its painful now 12:16 but it's better for you if I go away 12:19 because if I go away the Holy Spirit can come 12:22 and the Holy Spirit will do things for you 12:24 that wouldn't happen if I was still here. 12:27 We will get into that in the next program 12:29 but just a little foretaste that Jesus recognizes 12:35 that His going away is painful as it is for them 12:38 will be a positive as well. Okay. 12:41 So well, then how do the disciples take this 12:44 because it doesn't sound very encouraging as you said? 12:48 Not at the time, not at the time. Yeah. 12:51 So then shall we keep reading here? 12:53 I would say let's go on to verse 16-19 12:55 because the verses 7-15 are about the Holy Spirit 12:59 and we will cover that next time but verses 16-19, 13:04 Jesus throws a riddle at the disciples. 13:07 Let's see if we can figure it out. 13:09 "A little while, and you will not see Me 13:12 and again a little while, and you will see Me, 13:15 because I go to the Father. 13:16 Then some of His disciples said among themselves, 13:19 What is this that He says to us, 13:21 'A little while, and you will not see Me, 13:23 and again a little while, and you will not see Me.' 13:25 And, 'because I go to the Father' 13:27 They said therefore, 13:28 "What is this that He says, 'A little while'? 13:31 We do not know what He is saying." 13:33 Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, 13:37 and He said to them, 13:38 "Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said, 13:41 'A little while, and you will not see Me 13:43 and again a little while, and you will see Me'?" 13:47 Wow, that sounds very-- even hard to read there. 13:50 Yeah, yeah. It's a riddle, you see. 13:53 And there's four pieces to this. 13:55 First of all they will see Him no more, 13:58 second, they will see Him, 14:01 third, He is going to the father 14:04 and fourth, it's going to be a little while. 14:07 And what is this little while? 14:09 So there, a little while we will see Him 14:12 and little while we won't see Him 14:13 and a little while he will go to the father. 14:16 And so the riddle is all there. 14:18 And like many things in the Gospel of John 14:20 there's a double meaning here 14:23 because on the one hand in the immediate future 14:27 Jesus is going away. Where is He going? 14:30 He is going to the cross, He is going to death 14:33 and they can't follow Him there. 14:36 But while He is going away and they won't see Him, 14:40 shortly after they will see Him. 14:43 He will be raised from the dead. 14:45 But then He is going away again, 14:49 He is ascending back to heaven. 14:51 And when He ascends to heaven, 14:53 they won't see Him. 14:55 He will go to the Father 14:56 but then eventually at the return of Jesus 14:59 they will see Him again. 15:01 So Jesus is introducing major themes, 15:04 death in resurrection, second coming, 15:07 all of that is packed in to these simple words 15:11 but unless you know that larger picture 15:13 the riddle is unsolvable. 15:15 The disciples are just spinning their wheels 15:17 trying to figure out what Jesus was saying. 15:19 Well, friends, we are going to continue 15:21 on this Gospel of John. 15:23 So stay with us after this break. |
Revised 2014-12-17