Participants: Deyvy Rodriguez & Jon Paulien
Series Code: JBOTB
Program Code: JBOTB00026A
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00:20 Hello, friends, and welcome back
00:21 to this program "Books of the Book." 00:23 My name is Deyvy Rodriguez and we are so happy 00:26 that you are taking this time to join us in this Bible study. 00:29 And we have been studying the Gospel of John 00:32 and today we are picking up on Chapter 20. 00:35 So, if you have a Bible near you somewhere, 00:37 I invite you to grab it and open it again 00:40 to Chapter 20 of the Gospel of John. 00:42 And with us is Dr. Jon Paulien, he is a Bible scholar. 00:45 He comes from Loma Linda University. 00:49 Dr. Jon Paulien, you know, 00:51 we have been studying the Gospel of John. 00:53 Now we are on Chapter 20 and definitely 00:56 it has been a lot of material to cover. 00:58 In fact we have not been able to read a verse by verse 01:02 and no commentary on that. 01:05 But if someone is very interested 01:08 in the Gospel of John. 01:09 Someone is watching really wants to know more about the material 01:14 that we've been covering or some of the material 01:16 that we've skipped because of time, 01:18 how can they attain that material? 01:21 Well, the good news is that because 01:24 we've not been able to cover 01:26 every details of the Gospel of John. 01:29 We are planning to put the script on my website 01:32 and people can access it there 01:35 and there will be lots of Bible texts 01:37 and lots of features that we haven't covered here. 01:40 And that particular 01:41 website is www.thebattleofarmageddon.com. 01:49 So we hope that people will take advantage of that. 01:51 And there will be no charge or anything like that. 01:53 No. It's just downloadable. 01:55 No download fees. 01:56 Okay so now we are in Chapter 20 of the Gospel of John. 02:00 The last program we talked about the crucifixion, 02:04 the trial of Jesus before Pilate. 02:07 Give us a little bit of review on the previous chapter, 02:10 so that we can now having to in context Chapter 20. 02:14 Well, why don't I take this opportunity 02:16 maybe to quickly summarize the whole book. 02:20 First of all there are 12 chapters. 02:22 The first 12 chapters are Jesus' public ministry 02:26 where He is out ministering to people in Jerusalem 02:29 and in surroundings around Jerusalem, 02:31 in Galilee and He goes back and forth between those two. 02:36 Then in Chapter 13, Jesus moves to a private ministry, 02:39 just between Him and His disciples. 02:41 So from Chapters 13 through 17 you have this private ministry 02:46 where He is preparing the disciples 02:48 for what life would be like after Jesus leaves. 02:52 Then in Chapters 18 and 19 you have the crucifixion, 02:58 the trial, the crucifixion, the burial and so on. 03:01 And that sets the stage for where we are now. 03:04 In Chapter 20, we have moved to the resurrection of Jesus. 03:10 And it's really an important turning point in the story 03:13 because without the resurrection, 03:16 there would be no Christian church. 03:18 The cross by itself would simply be a grave 03:23 and the end of the story but because 03:26 of the resurrection of Jesus, 03:27 it changes everything with regard to who Jesus is, 03:31 with regard to how God looks at Him. 03:34 It is the heavenly court over turning, 03:36 Pilate's court and the religious leader's court 03:40 and we begin to see that Jesus is much, much more. 03:44 If Jesus is raised from the dead then we too 03:48 can one day be raised from the dead. 03:50 If the resurrection of Jesus happens, 03:52 then no miracle is impossible 03:54 and that's an amazing kind of miracle. 03:57 So that sets the tone for what's happening in Chapter 20 04:01 and there's four parts in Chapter 20. 04:04 First of all you have the story of some woman 04:07 who go to the tomb and they find it empty 04:10 and so they rush back to the disciples to say, 04:13 "Guess what, the tomb is empty." 04:15 Peter and John go into a foot race 04:17 and it's one of the two or three foot races in the Bible 04:20 and Peter cheats, he gets a head start but John 04:25 is the steady one and he picks up 04:27 and passes Peter and he gets there first. 04:30 And John takes a look inside the door of the tomb, 04:36 doesn't see any thing. 04:37 Peter rushes up, he goes right in. 04:39 you know, he's more impetuous of the two. 04:41 And then the second incident is Mary evidently followed them. 04:46 I don't know if she was running too 04:48 but she gets there eventually. 04:50 As they leave, she stays alone at the garden 04:54 there where Jesus is buried and then she runs into, 04:57 she thinks the gardener who probably moved Jesus' body 05:01 somewhere else and finds out it is Jesus Himself. 05:05 Then the third story is back in the upper room, 05:08 Jesus and the disciples meet together 05:11 there and He ministers to them but Thomas isn't there. 05:17 And so the fourth scene is His appearance 05:20 to disciples and Thomas. 05:24 So there's a series of incidence here, 05:28 three of which Jesus actually appears 05:30 and the first one only the empty tomb appears. 05:35 So there are three appearances in the Gospel of John. 05:38 How many total appearances are in the Bible? 05:41 Well, actually there's a fourth one in Chapter 21. 05:43 Okay. So there would be four post-resurrection 05:47 appearances of Jesus there but the total actually is 11. 05:52 When you go to the entire New Testament 05:54 and I thought it would be good to share here 05:55 so I wrote it down, make sure it would be accurate. 05:59 And what I have here is that Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene. 06:04 We saw that in the middle of Chapter 20. 06:07 He appears to Mary and some other women in Matthew 28. 06:12 He appears to Peter by Himself. 06:15 Now we don't have an account 06:16 of that but it's mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 06:21 and it's also mentioned in Luke 24 that Peter has seen Him, 06:25 you know, one on one. 06:26 So that we know that, that occurred 06:28 but it's only referred to. 06:30 Then you have the road to Emmaus 06:32 where there's two disciples walking along the road 06:35 and Jesus joins them, that's in Luke 24. 06:39 And then here in John, Jesus meets with 10 disciples 06:43 and Thomas is missing and then He meets again 06:47 with the ten plus Thomas a week later. 06:51 In Chapter 21, Jesus meets 06:53 with seven fishing disciples up in Galilee. 06:57 Then according to Matthew 28, 06:59 He met with the 11 on a mountain and gave the great commission, 07:04 so that's one I think everybody knows. 07:06 In the Book of Acts there's the ascension appearance 07:10 where Jesus goes up to heaven and according to Paul 07:14 at one point Jesus met with 500 people 07:17 at one time on a hillside in Galilee. 07:20 That's the biggest crowd and then He meets with James 07:25 who was the half brother of Jesus. 07:28 So that's 11 total and you wonder 07:33 why are all of these mentioned. 07:36 Why so many people. 07:37 I suppose you could ask why so few but the beauty 07:41 of it is the resurrection of Jesus is supported 07:44 by many, many witnesses. 07:47 If anybody chose to doubt the resurrection of Jesus, 07:50 there were so many people who could say 07:52 that they had seen Him that it became 07:55 very, very difficult to do. 07:57 If only two or three or five people had seen Jesus 08:00 after the crucifixion, it would be easy to say, 08:02 well, you know, maybe they had hallucinations but 500? 08:06 I mean how many people can share a hallucination? 08:10 I've been with people who are hallucinating 08:13 and they are the only ones that can see 08:14 what they are seeing and hear what they are hearing, you know. 08:17 So to say that 500 people were all hallucinating 08:21 at the same time, I think that would be pretty unique. 08:23 And 500 peoples alive, if you think about it, 08:25 they would have a similar testimony 08:27 of the resurrection of Jesus. 08:30 And even if their testimonies aren't identical, 08:33 I mean that's normal. 08:34 You get a group of people, they are not going to tell 08:36 the story exactly the same way but the reality 08:39 is they are not all going to be hallucinating at once. 08:42 Right. You know, 08:43 that the simple weight of that 500 to 600 people 08:47 saw Jesus after His crucifixion. 08:49 It tells you it's not a made up story. 08:51 Right. I think that's the part 08:52 that comes through clearly here. 08:54 But you know what? 08:56 Even those witnesses are maybe not the greatest 08:59 evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. 09:03 Historically the greatest evidence 09:05 may well be the empty tomb 09:08 because when you stop and think 09:09 about it that is pretty hard to explain. 09:13 Why is Jesus' tomb empty? 09:15 Everybody seems to agree on that. 09:17 The tomb was empty so what are the possibilities? 09:20 Well, one possibility is maybe the Romans or the Jews 09:24 came and stole away His body, okay. 09:28 But what motive they have to do that? 09:31 How would stealing the body of Jesus 09:34 help them in their case? 09:35 Right. The reality is if they had 09:38 done that, all they had to do to refute 09:42 the story is produce the body of Jesus. 09:45 They never do. 09:46 So they didn't have the body. 09:48 The other option is maybe the disciples 09:51 stole the body of Jesus and in stealing the body of Jesus 09:55 then they made it appear that He have been resurrected, right. 09:58 So that's the most plausible explanation here 10:02 but is that really likely. 10:06 I mean the disciples before the cross were a mess. 10:10 You know, they were all over the map, 10:12 they didn't really understand, they didn't really believed, 10:15 they couldn't believe He was going to the cross. 10:17 I mean, Peter pulls the sword out, 10:19 can't let this happen, no way, you know. 10:23 They didn't buy the idea that Jesus 10:25 was going to be crucified. 10:26 So the whole thing was devastating to them. 10:29 Everything seemed lost and gone. 10:33 Even after He returns, they are slow to believe. 10:38 You know, look at Thomas but he is not the only one, 10:40 all of the disciples are slow to believe. 10:42 The women come back and they say, 10:45 "You know, Jesus has appeared..." 10:47 I don't know about that. 10:49 Peter and John come back, "Well the tomb is empty." 10:51 I don't know. 10:52 It's only when they see Jesus, 10:54 when they touch Him, 10:56 when they get that full five sense, 10:58 sense of it then they say, 11:00 "Wow, He must have been raised from the dead afterward." 11:04 And by the way, while John 11:08 doesn't mention it for the disciples 11:11 to steal the body means to get passed 11:13 the detachment of Roman solders. 11:16 And no matter how brave Peter might be, 11:19 he is not a trained solder and these guys 11:22 were the Navy Seals of their day. 11:25 I seriously don't think that the disciples 11:27 had any shot of getting the body 11:29 even if they had wanted to. 11:31 Would they want to bad enough 11:32 to fight their way through you know, 11:35 a whole squad of Roman solders, probably not. 11:39 So, then comes the final question. 11:45 Maybe the disciples made it all up. 11:48 You know, the tomb is empty and so they create this story 11:51 that Jesus was raised from dead. 11:53 They know that he wasn't but they create the story 11:56 to keep the myth alive. 11:58 Is that really likely? 12:00 I don't think so because who would hang on to a hoax 12:07 all the way through their lives, 12:09 go through all kinds of torment and suffering, 12:11 go to martyrdom and death for something 12:14 that they knew was a lie? 12:17 That just doesn't make any sense historically. 12:19 So I think we can reasonably assume that the body of Jesus 12:25 was in fact raised from the dead 12:27 and that's the only historical explanation 12:30 that make sense of all the details that we have. 12:32 And not only one disciple to hold on to hoax like that 12:35 but as we were saying at least 12:37 just a little bit more than 500 people. 12:40 Yeah. And we were also talking about 12:42 the resurrection of Lazarus and how they wanted to-- 12:46 the Jews wanted to kill. 12:49 They were looking for an opportunity to kill Lazarus 12:51 because it was also convincing of the power of God. 12:57 And so I would suppose 12:58 they would have to do a lot of planning, 13:02 you know, for those 500 witnesses 13:04 as well and that is very impossible. 13:07 And you know unless one has the assumption 13:11 that a resurrection is impossible 13:12 in the very face of it that God doesn't exist and so on. 13:16 Then one would have to come up with some idea 13:18 of how this story occurred without a real resurrection. 13:23 But if you believe in God and believe in the possibility, 13:26 the resurrection of Jesus 13:28 is a solid historically evidence wise as anything else we know. 13:33 Why don't we get into the story? Sure. 13:35 Take Chapter 20 and read verses 1-9 13:39 and when you're done with that reading, 13:40 we should probably go to a break. 13:41 Yes. "Now on the first day of the week 13:44 Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, 13:47 while it was still dark, and saw that the stone 13:50 had been taken away from the tomb. 13:53 Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, 13:55 and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, 13:58 and said to them, 'They have taken away 14:00 the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know 14:03 where they have laid Him.' 14:04 Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, 14:07 and were going to the tomb. 14:09 So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran 14:13 Peter and came to the tomb first. 14:16 And he, stooping down and looking in, 14:19 saw the linen cloths lying there yet he did not go in. 14:25 Then Simon Peter came, following him, 14:27 and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths 14:30 lying there, and the handkerchief 14:34 that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, 14:37 but folded together in a place by itself. 14:42 Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, 14:46 went in also and he saw and believed. 14:49 For as yet they did not know the Scripture, 14:51 that He must rise again from the dead." 14:55 Okay. Why don't we take that moment here 14:59 and move toward a break. |
Revised 2014-12-17