Participants: Deyvy Rodriguez & Jon Paulien
Series Code: JBOTB
Program Code: JBOTB00024B
|
00:01 And welcome back, we are in Chapter 18
00:03 of the Gospel of John and we are with Dr. Jon Paulien. 00:08 Dr. Paulien, you know as we were reading here in verse 5 00:11 it says that or verse 6 it says 00:13 that Jesus said, "I am He." 00:15 You know, Jesus of Nazareth and everybody draws back 00:18 and falls to the ground so it seems that just by His word, 00:22 Jesus has the power to release Himself and His disciples 00:26 and here is Peter whom you were talking about 00:28 trying to make things right here as he know, 00:31 he takes out his sword and did he just overlook 00:35 that even the words of Jesus could change everything around 00:39 and here he is with his little, you know, 00:40 sword or pocket knife and try to make the difference here. 00:45 And you were saying, you know, 00:46 how sometimes we often won't don't allow God 00:51 to take charge and we here we are you know 00:54 thinking that we will make things better but we don't. 00:57 Look at all the way through history, 00:59 how people have tried to fix God's problems, 01:02 you know, the inquisition. 01:04 Well, you know God can't handle all these heretics, 01:07 so we've got to do something about, the crusades. 01:09 You know, God couldn't possibly allow the Muslims 01:12 to have Jerusalem, so we got to do something about it. 01:15 The suicide bombers today somehow God 01:18 has become small you see, 01:21 he is not really in control anymore. 01:23 So we've got to do something 01:24 really dramatic to save his skin. 01:28 And John would just look at all of this 01:30 and shake his head and say, you know how silly? 01:35 Why does Peter see Jesus' divinity flashes here? 01:38 We see the Father, you know, 01:40 and God in every full sense of the term. 01:42 They fall back when Jesus says, I am once again. 01:46 Why does Peter still whip his sword out? 01:50 Evidently Jesus has made clear, 01:52 let these guys go. 01:54 Let my disciples go but you can have me. 01:57 And Peter, I think felt little ashamed by that. 02:01 And he said I'm not going to let Jesus be taken, 02:05 I'm going to step in. 02:06 Fortunately later on that virtually 02:09 undermine Jesus' defense before Pilate. 02:12 Because his whole point was that my servants 02:15 won't fight to protect me because 02:16 I'm not a political king. 02:18 Peter acted the political role and whenever politics 02:21 and religion get together, 02:23 bad things happen, and that's what was 02:26 happening here. Right. 02:28 So let's move on and we can go to verses 12-27 02:33 and we see the trial before Annas and also Peter 02:38 in the courtyard going on here. 02:41 We talked already about the fact that Annas is running 02:45 this trial as the high priest of choice. 02:49 Notice, he is the one that the Jews really felt 02:51 was the high priest because he was still alive 02:54 having been high priest but he is sort of getting their heads 03:00 together saying how shall we go about presenting this to Pilate. 03:04 So Annas is still respected perhaps as a smart one 03:09 who can really put it all together 03:10 and then they send it to Caiaphas 03:13 who is bit more of the hard headed one 03:15 and then it goes on to Pilate. 03:20 So anyway interesting piece of this, 03:23 let's read verses 20 to 23, I think it is. 03:27 Let me have a look here. 03:28 Yes. Some very interesting. 03:33 Go back to 19 to 23. 03:36 "The high priest then asked Jesus 03:37 about his disciples and of his doctrine. 03:40 Jesus answered him, I spoke openly to the world 03:43 I have always taught in the synagogues, 03:46 and in the temple, where the Jews always meet 03:48 and in secret I have said nothing. 03:51 Why do you ask me? 03:52 Ask those who have heard me, 03:54 what I said to them indeed they know what I said. 03:57 And when he had said these things, 03:59 one of the officers who stood by struck Jesus 04:02 with the palm of his hand, saying, 04:04 Do you answer the high priest like that? 04:06 Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, 04:10 bear witness of the evil but if well, 04:13 why do you strike me?" 04:17 Anything strange there that you didn't expect? 04:21 Well, the high priest, here is a religious leader 04:26 using violence to hit an innocent man, 04:29 which is uncommon, it's like going to church 04:32 and here is the passive, you know, why did you do that? 04:35 And how does Jesus respond? 04:38 You, know what's my wrong here? 04:40 He protests. Yeah. Yeah. 04:42 What would you think, Jesus should have done? 04:45 What does He say in the sermon on the Mount. 04:48 If somebody strikes you on the cheek, what do you do? 04:51 Let him-- give him the other cheek. 04:54 To give the other cheek, yeah, 04:55 Jesus doesn't do that here, does He? 04:57 Right. Now in the Gospel of John, 05:00 Jesus is much more assertive. 05:03 In the synoptics Mathew, Mark and Luke, 05:06 He is the lonely Jesus, meek and mild. 05:08 You know that we often think of. 05:10 John has this masculine Jesus 05:13 who doesn't put up with nonsense. 05:16 High priest asked Him a dumb question, 05:17 He says wait a minute, 05:19 He says why do you even need to ask. 05:20 All kinds of people heard me. 05:22 I haven't been teaching in secret. 05:24 What I'm teaching is public knowledge. 05:26 You don't need to even ask me this. 05:28 That's a pretty assertive answer. 05:29 And that's why He gets slapped on the face 05:31 and then He says, who gave you the right to hit me. 05:36 Sometimes I think we tend to take one piece of a Bible 05:41 and we run with it to an extreme. 05:43 We can say, okay, you always turn the other cheek. 05:46 You never defend yourself and so someone 05:49 might let someone come into their house 05:51 and violate the family and things like that. 05:55 No, Christians are not be a doormat 05:59 that people just walk over. 06:01 If there is a balance between on the one hand 06:04 in many circumstances, it might be a powerful witness 06:07 to turn the other cheek. 06:09 But in other circumstances, it's a powerful witness 06:11 to speak up for yourself and to defend the helpless 06:15 and to defend the oppressed. 06:17 So Jesus shows us that this idea of a simple rule 06:21 for all situations is probably not the most healthier 06:26 or the most mature approach to His teachings, 06:29 but Jesus himself in different circumstances 06:32 could act a little bit differently. 06:35 The other side of this I like is as people 06:39 look at me they probably don't see too meek and mild, 06:44 I'm a fairly big guy, I have got a big voice, 06:47 I don't mind saying what I think, 06:49 you know things like that. 06:51 And I remember much of my life, 06:53 I kind of felt guilty about that, 06:55 and thought that I should be more like Jesus 06:59 and then I discovered John's Jesus, 07:01 and I said all right, you see. 07:04 Jesus is big enough for all of our personalities. 07:06 John's Jesus is my Jesus that was your thought. 07:08 We shouldn't try to mold everybody into one mold. 07:14 Unity, the unity that Jesus prayed for is not a unity 07:17 where everybody thinks alike, everybody acts alike, 07:20 everyone is a same personality. 07:22 But it is unity in a blend of different personalities, 07:27 unity in a blend of different ways of thinking, 07:31 that is what makes the unity so striking in the world. 07:36 When a couple gets together and gets married, 07:39 there is a unity there but they are not going to think alike, 07:42 they are not going to have the same personalities. 07:44 In fact people tend to marry their opposite 07:46 because they want to balance themselves out. 07:49 And then after you get married you look at your opposite 07:51 and say why did I do this to me? 07:53 Why did I do it to myself? 07:55 And so learning to deal with differences, 07:59 learning to forgive, learning to get along with people 08:03 who think differently is the essence of the unity 08:06 that Jesus was praying for and we see here in the story 08:11 Jesus was not a cookie cutter Christian so to speak. 08:14 Jesus could sometimes He would be silent 08:18 in some parts of this trials He was silent. 08:20 Before Annas here, He is very assertive. 08:23 So you want to get both pictures of Jesus. 08:26 Don't just make a judgment from one piece of the Bible. 08:29 So often we argue over things where both of them are right. 08:33 They are both seeing something in scripture 08:35 that's worth remembering and so finding that for me, 08:39 it is the whole Bible that is the authority. 08:43 Not the Bible that this person might prefer. 08:45 Thomas Jefferson just cut out little sayings of Jesus, 08:48 that's my Bible, the Thomas Jefferson's Bible. 08:51 And it was a good Bible because it's the sayings of Jesus 08:54 but it isn't the whole picture. 08:56 And when people take one part of the Bible 08:58 and ignore the rest, they quickly go to extremes. 09:03 Now we see here that Annas could not answer 09:05 that question why do you strike me so, 09:07 it's verse 24 says that "Annas sent him 09:10 and he sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest". 09:16 Right. Now, Caiaphas has that case to him. 09:20 But, we have nothing in the Gospel of John 09:21 to tell us what happened there. 09:23 What does happen here in a double stage 09:25 is that you have Peter and the beloved disciple out 09:29 in the courtyard and this is the only gospel 09:32 where somebody is with Peter and so the role of John 09:37 is portrayed because he was actually there. 09:40 What's unique here is it tells us that the maid 09:45 who identifies Peter was also the door keeper 09:48 and she knew John, so that's couple of details 09:52 we didn't know from the others, 09:54 tells us the weather was cold in March in Jerusalem 09:58 it can be quite pleasant or it can be quite cold, 10:00 that kind of goes back and forth. 10:02 So tells us the reason there was a fire 10:04 there was that it was cold and people 10:06 were trying to stay warm. 10:09 And it also tells us that he was recognized 10:12 by a relative of Malchus. 10:16 Malchus was the fellow whose ear he cut off 10:19 and it's a relative of Malchus that recognizes Peter. 10:22 Oh, you are the one. 10:23 So Peter's boldness gets him into trouble. 10:26 He is too bold in the garden. 10:29 He is too timid when he gets into the courtyard. 10:34 There he is not confessing Jesus 10:37 so he is on the wrong side both ways. 10:40 Peter's someone who is out of balance. 10:43 So this brings us into the trial before Pilate. 10:46 And as I mentioned earlier, 10:47 Pilate really is like a secondary star 10:51 of this one here because he is much more involved 10:55 then he was in Mathew, Mark and Luke. 10:57 And here we see Pilate acting the role of a judge 11:02 and he is actually doing it pretty properly. 11:04 He is asking the right questions. 11:07 I mean if you and I were faced with that situation, 11:09 we might ask some strange question. 11:12 But Pilate, you see, he's doing what a judge is supposed to do. 11:15 And seeing how Pilate relates to Jesus is a very important 11:20 piece of the puzzle but we will continue 11:22 with that in the next program. 11:24 Well, Dr. Paulien, I look forward 11:25 to that next Bible study and you know one of the lessons 11:28 that I have learned is that now that I think about it sometimes 11:31 in the midst of my problems and hardships I do, 11:34 I do not consult God and I don't make it a habit 11:37 to pray about my problems and allow God to take charge. 11:41 And friends, I invite you to place God first in your lives, 11:45 that way things can go better. God bless. |
Revised 2014-12-17