Latest / Red Couch Theology / Does Jesus Contradict Himself in the Gospels?

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Does Jesus Contradict Himself in the Gospels? · Red Couch Theology

0:14
Welcome to Right Catch the LG Podcast.
0:15
We're preparing for the podcast. Just hold tight for one second.
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That might be our worst opening yet, and we I keep I keep trying
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to. I keep trying to one up the
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vadnais of our podcast. So what are we talking about
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today, Alex? I think.
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It's just gonna be you and me with a Diet Coke staring at the
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screen. Yeah.
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Just like. Dead eyed like.
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Yeah. So, yeah.
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So in keeping with my new pattern of trying to tell people
0:48
sort of what the topic will be right up top, what are we
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talking about? We have several questions.
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We have several questions that came in, some about John, but
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then our. Favorite question was the one
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where people said thank you guys.
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You guys are amazing for doing this.
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Yeah, that's our favorite question we've ever received.
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It wasn't even posed as a question.
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It was a little bit more like a comment.
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Which they? Said this is not a question.
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This is a comment, thank you so much.
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Yes, it was very encouraging. Thank you so much.
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And then the other component of it would be I mentioned that
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this text has a ton of Bible nerd stuff and theology nerd
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stuff, none of which I talked about, so we could go there too.
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Yeah, yeah. And so.
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You're the host though. Plenty of time as well.
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What was that all about? What?
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Do you mean I had plenty of? Time.
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You had loads of sermon time, right?
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No, that's the other experiment we ran on Sunday.
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We, we, we ran an experiment. Can Aaron preach less than 40
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minutes? And the answer is no.
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He cannot. I love the fact that before you
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said I want to leave plenty of time for the song at the end and
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then left zero time for the song at the end.
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I was like, this guy is a preacher.
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So sad. So we, we do need to cover a lot
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of theology stuff, some Bible nerd stuff.
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I, I think maybe first just a little, little idea for me is
2:24
because you know, some of the things we've talked about here
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are like challenges around prepping A sermon and stuff.
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And you are super busy right now is an interesting part of your
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life, right? So what was this week like for
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you? This week was like, I didn't
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prepare a sermon and then I preached A sermon anyway and God
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did something and then I was like, what in the world just
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happened? And I remember, I, I remember
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praying the day after or something Monday or Tuesday
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morning and I was like Lord, because I was getting like such
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a, a strangely high like we I get, you know, encouraging words
3:04
occasionally and it's not that weird.
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It's actually pretty common for me to think I did worse than
3:09
other people think they did. But this week was a little
3:13
uncanny, like a shocking number of people reaching out like, Oh
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my goodness, this is what I need to hear.
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Oh my goodness. It's just like out of the
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woodwork. And I was like, all right, Lord.
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So the the lesson I'm hearing from you is don't prepare.
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Except I had the same thing the week before, and that was the
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week I prepared the most. Yeah.
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So that just means that we don't know.
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Yeah, exactly. So anyway, so how how was it?
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It was actually like extra difficult to prepare just one.
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I didn't have that as much time as I have had in the past and I
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was just procrastinating so hard in the time that I did.
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It's almost like part of how I'm wired is I'm such a momentum
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worker that like if I don't have three hours, I don't do
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anything. So if I only have an hour, I
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just sit there and think about how I should probably start the
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project. But if I have 3 hours, I do the
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project. But this week I only had like an
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hour here, an hour here, an hour here, an hour here, an hour
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here. So I just, I mean, I'm
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ruminating the whole time and 90% of the prep this time.
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Like, I was pretty clear on what the bottom line of the message
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was going to be on Tuesday last week.
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The rest of my time was getting up the courage to not say a
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bunch of stuff because this passage is so iconic in a number
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of ways which we could talk about that.
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I was like, have I been faithful to the text?
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If I don't say this and this and this and this and this?
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So how do I emotionally, psychologically let go?
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None of that has anything to do with the Congress because they
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don't care whether I say the thing or not.
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But it was for me. I was like, am I being faithful
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to this passage? Have I taught this text if I
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don't cover these topics? And we've talked about the fact
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that you do love to cut. Like we've I've said to the
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preachers in this series, pick a section.
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Don't feel like you have to do that.
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You really did the whole thing. Yeah, and I think part of it is
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I am wired to be more meta narrative preaching.
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I love the the the 30,000 foot idea on a text.
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And so if you give me more verses, I will just use them as
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the context for the big idea. Like I just honing in on a
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verse, which you could do absolutely.
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I don't know. I, I just thought there was data
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that I could reference to prove my big idea in the entire text.
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In fact, I went into some of Alex's text from last week to
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pull some data from it because it's just like the the whole
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book of John. Like a couple weeks ago when
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Kevin Butcher preached where like he preached the entire book
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of John, because John is so hyper focused on the person of
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Jesus and that Jesus is God and that he is the one that he just
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rinses and repeats it so many times.
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You could just pull from anywhere and get to that bottom
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line. So I was like, well, he gave me
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this chunk of texture. I I will find little Nuggets in
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all of it. And, and we've gone over this
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plenty of times. John is harder than it seems
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like it should be to preach. Yeah, it's the, you know,
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there's not a lot of to do's in John, maybe a bit more in this
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passage than some of the others. Yeah, some warnings, at least in
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this passage. But quite often John is doing
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the same thing over and over again.
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He's giving you reasons to believe that Jesus is who he
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said he is. That's his big goal, like, and
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it's so So the bottom line every week is believe in Jesus.
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If you listen to at least John, John's conclusion of his own
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work. Yep.
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So it, and the other thing that's unique about John, and
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not unique, but John's extra good at is he's kind of
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brilliant at leaving Nuggets while he's achieving that
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agenda, depositing this little tiny nuanced Hebrew nugget that
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pulls upon like a whole Hebrew narrative from the Old Testament
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that is a treasure trove. And so like the the cool thing
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about John is you could, you could go through it the first
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time and get his like primary meeting.
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You could go through it a second time and find all these cool
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little Nuggets 1/3 time, 1/4 time and a fourth fifth time.
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And it's like you could preach the book 50 times and still be
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finding net new big ideas that he's just like woven into the
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like the periphery of the big idea.
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So fun stuff. Yeah, it really is.
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So can you give us a summary? Yeah.
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So this passage, like, like we just said, the summary is
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believe in Jesus. Like you have this encounter
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that you preached about where Jesus heals someone on the
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Sabbath, which is a huge deal. And so I felt like just for some
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folks, they needed to be reminded and taught why Sabbath
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was a big deal. So you'd, you'd covered a little
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bit of that in the previous week.
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So I just, I added one layer to what you covered.
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You covered the law that the man had broken to carry his mat.
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So I added the law that Jesus had broken.
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Which I thought about covering and then decided I didn't have
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room for the week before. Yeah.
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And so I did both. We're actually just catching up,
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people. 'S and thus I went 40 minutes
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and you did not because I just said Alex already taught you
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this, I'm going to teach you again.
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So then he goes in and he has this really formal sort of
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response to the religious leaders of like why he's doing
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all the things he's doing. And he goes into this really
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formal speech, which I think the lead story of is the the main,
9:15
the main ideas in it is I am one with the father.
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I'm like the same as God, which he he proves in a dozen
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different ways. And then what that means is I
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will bring life to what I want to bring life to when I want to
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bring life to it. And God's allowed to do that.
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Therefore I'm allowed to do that.
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That's the first section. And then the second section, he
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said, if that's not sufficient for me to tell you that, let me
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bring witnesses. So he goes courtroom.
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So he goes courtroom and he brings multiple witnesses and
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then he says, well, you won't believe this anyway, 'cause some
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of my witnesses are the scriptures which you love and
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you don't pay attention to. End of story, mic drop.
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So there's the, there's the. See, I can do this in less than
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40 minutes. Yeah.
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So it's. Yeah, you just do it.
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Yeah, yeah. So so there's John, there's the
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works that Jesus have done, has done, and then there's the
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Father who sent and has testified concerning me.
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Then there's the Scriptures as multiple witnesses.
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Yeah. The one that you focused on
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primarily was the tension between the one witness that
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they should value more than others or at least have
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certainty around more than others is the Scriptures.
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Yeah, like, and actually, I mean, I, I, the two I
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highlighted 2/1 was the Father's testimony and then the scripture
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testimony, which you can actually say he subdivides into
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two parts. There's the scriptures and then
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Moses. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Which are to us is just scriptures.
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But in their mind it was like the law, the prophets and the
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the rest of the scriptures. And then Moses is the Torah, the
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first five books, which is sort of the bedrock for them, which?
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Is an interesting switch around from John chapter 2, where to a
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Samaritan woman who only read the Torah, he only focuses on
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the Torah. Yes.
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And to these guys that love all of it, he focuses on all of it.
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Yeah. So.
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So what I mean by the Scriptures being the one that they should
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have the most, they were the like the black and white in
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front of them. Like when he says the father's
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testifying about me, they may well say, well, we don't agree
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with that. What?
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What do you mean? But when it gets to the
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Scriptures, this is their territory.
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They know these back to front. They've memorized them.
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They've been studying them for decades.
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They are fully they are people of this book or these books.
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And that, that, that to me was fascinating that there's these
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people that you know. Yeah.
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And so like that I mentioned this in the message.
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The irony of preaching a scripture text that talks about
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how the scriptures are sometimes insufficient to communicate.
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Yeah, yeah. Very ironic, right?
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And you're just like, so like literally everything a sermon is
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if people don't hear the spirit spoken infused voice of God, the
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scriptures are inadequate as a means of communicating the heart
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of God, which may sound kind of shocking.
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Like just read your Bible and pray and you're good to go.
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Incorrect because out of all people I don't know, I know
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almost no one. There's one guy that I've met
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that might have studied the scriptures similarly to these
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religious leaders. He was, he just finished
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memorizing the entire book of Psalms and was starting on the
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Torah, memorizing this, the Torah.
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So like, but that's all these guys, all of these guys had had
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at least the Torah memorized. I don't know anyone else that
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I've ever humanly met who knows the Scriptures better than these
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guys are. And Jesus is like, yeah, it's
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all about me and you missed me anyway.
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Because we've got so much other stuff to memorize.
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My dad always used to say to me, Why is it that you can memorize
13:12
every Simpsons episode from 1989 to 1999, but you can't remember
13:17
important stuff? So I mean, I guess we've got our
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challenges too. Yeah, But yes, these guys are
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experts in that they they know it back to front.
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Yep. And yeah, it's it's not enough.
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It when I was listening to that, I just been re reading.
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Have you read The Glory of Preaching?
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Yes, I started. I didn't finish it.
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So he's actually begins with this really beautiful like
13:44
capturing of Ezekiel 37, which is when Ezekiel stands in a
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valley and the dry bones in the valley.
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And as he and God says to Ezekiel, can these dry bones,
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these dead people, can they live?
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And Ezekiel just fascinatingly replies to him.
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Well, you Lord, you know, and, and then Ezekiel says to him,
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and then God says to Ezekiel, well, we'll speak to the bones
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like prophecy to them, tell them to come alive.
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And so Ezekiel does it. But the challenge of it is, is
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that this is what Daryl Johnson talks about.
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But it's not Ezekiel's words that brings them back to life.
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It's God that brings them back to life.
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So he's kind of pushing you towards this gap between what
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you say as a preacher and what God needs to do in people.
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To your point, that isn't dependent on whether you have a
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lot of time to prep. That isn't dependent on whether
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you'd look at it and analyze it as the best message you ever
14:49
preach. It's something about the work
14:50
that God does in. Yeah, and I, that's true for
14:53
every sermon. And I think the reason I went in
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to this Sunday more disoriented than average is this text is so
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explicit about that issue that only the voice of Jesus has is
15:07
the generator of life and transformation and stuff.
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So it was just so palpable in my mind that literally I'm actually
15:15
inconsequential to the variables at play on a Sunday morning.
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Like I prepped, I prayed, I asked him to do the voice thing,
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I asked him to speak. And then I'm like more clearly
15:27
confident than most Sundays, which intellectually I know he's
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the only one that does the speaking.
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But this week I was like, if you don't talk, then this is going
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to be ridiculously useless. And so please show up.
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And that was just more on the forefront of my mind this week
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than ever. And then I feel like he did for
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some folks. And that was beautiful.
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And then when they say, oh, man, that was great.
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I was like, yeah, you have no idea.
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You're complimenting the incorrect person.
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Because my prep time, my awareness of what he was
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actually gonna say to you, I didn't have any of these things
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in place. And so thank you.
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I appreciate the encouragement, but let's be honest, the only
16:15
goodness was the voice of Jesus. If there was goodness.
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And that's true every, every single Sunday.
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Yeah, Yeah, I think it. If you want transformation, only
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God can do the transforming. Peace.
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Yeah. Now we know because there's
16:30
popular speakers that aren't followers of Jesus that gather a
16:34
lot of followers. If you want to gather a lot of
16:37
followers then there might have to be some, like some skill in
16:44
the speaking part. But if you want transformation,
16:48
then only God can do the. Transformation.
16:50
Yeah. And then, like in God's divine
16:52
humor, he decides to use humans to accomplish certain things.
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And so, yeah, it's it's I'm grateful he does that.
17:00
But let's be honest, he's doing all the heavy lifting.
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Well, we got we got some questions to get through.
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Yeah, and I don't. Know now is the challenge.
17:08
You master the questions and you usually find them and ask them.
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So I'm going to have to navigate your system.
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Yeah, so you can click on these and then.
17:25
So one of the questions is actually about this passage in
17:27
general. Yeah.
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Like and the person who asked, it felt like they don't hear a
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lot of sermons on this passage. Another one they highlighted was
17:37
John 17 passages that are about like unity, passages that are
17:42
about transformation, those kind of things and actually passages
17:46
that are actually Jesus words like this is actually Jesus
17:52
speaking to us. Now there's all sorts of
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questions in John like famously, if you have a Bible 10 years
17:58
older then John 316 and onwards is is probably words in red.
18:04
If your Bible does that, it's usually assigned as words of
18:08
Jesus. Now over the last 10 years, it's
18:10
usually been assigned as commentary from John because it
18:13
reads more like the prologue does and things like that.
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So there's some questions there, but no one's really questioning
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who's speaking here. Yep.
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Why don't you think we hear more sermons about that?
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So honestly, because I think those sermons were preached and
18:30
kind of locked in as theologically at around the time
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of the creeds. Yeah.
18:37
Yeah. So like, interestingly.
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So I said something on Sunday that this is probably one of the
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most theologically important New Testament texts.
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Interesting. It's a bold claim.
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It is, and here's why 'cause Jesus teaches explicit theology
18:53
in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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But not very controversial theology if you're an
18:57
evangelical or even if you, if you're a Christian at all.
19:02
If you're a Christian, one of the main things he teaches is
19:05
that Jesus is God. And if you're a Christian, Yep,
19:11
that's what I signed up for. Not very controversial.
19:15
Another thing he teaches here is that Jesus is the key to
19:18
salvation. If you're a Christian, not super
19:22
controversial. He does nudge on some stuff that
19:25
would be more controversial maybe, right.
19:27
I mean, if you take his idea that the scriptures by
19:32
themselves need to be interpreted properly, that could
19:37
be quite controversial. Yes, but I'm saying I'm talking
19:40
about like the bulk of his of the text at the very end.
19:44
He does say something about some things about the scriptures that
19:47
feel more controversial. But like the bulk of his
19:49
teaching, actually, I think his big idea has less to do with, I
19:53
think it's tangential or it's a secondary issue that he's
19:57
addressing with the scripture thing.
19:58
But his main point is I'm God. And if you're already a
20:02
Christian, that's not like, oh, a guy is claiming to be God.
20:08
Like that's actually something that you had to reconcile almost
20:11
before entering the faith. So I think it's not as exciting
20:14
to preach to a group of Christians that Jesus is God now
20:20
to. To like if you were talking to a
20:23
Muslim or to someone outside the faith who's like, yeah, I think
20:27
Jesus is like a really good teacher and a good guy.
20:29
This is one of the first texts that a an apologist will turn to
20:33
because it's the most, one of the most explicit articulations
20:39
that Jesus offers humanity, that he's like, not even Jesus
20:43
thought that about himself. He was pretty confident that he
20:46
was God equal with the Father. So it's theologic.
20:50
That's why I meant it's like so theologically important because
20:54
it's one of the texts that anchored in, in church history,
20:59
the deity of Christ, super important to Christians and kind
21:05
of dealt with way long ago. Some of it's also like, do you
21:09
feel some of the challenges? I mean, I'm just going to push
21:13
back on that idea a little bit. So, so I would agree with all
21:15
that, the creed, everything, but some of the challenge here is he
21:19
says something and then at least on the surface appears to step
21:22
back from it a little. What do I mean in John chapter,
21:25
I think is it verse 24, he says, you know something about you
21:31
know that or they say he was making himself equal with God.
21:35
And then he kind of says the Son can do nothing by himself.
21:39
You know, only, only he only does what he sees the Father
21:42
doing. So I think some people might
21:45
avoid it because that requires some navigating.
21:48
Yes, like for us control people in power, they're, they're the
21:55
top of the, the pyramid and anyone who submits to them,
21:58
well, they're second in the pyramid.
22:00
And so we have a very clear hierarchy idea.
22:04
I think this this scripture is hard for preachers today because
22:08
they can't understand how the Son could submit to the Father.
22:13
In the same text the Father submits to the Son.
22:17
In some sense, he relinquishes judgment.
22:19
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:20
So like, yeah, there's a but. Again he well, he gives it.
22:24
He gives it. So it's, they fully understand
22:26
that a, a person in authority can give what they want.
22:29
Yeah, but but so I, I just think it's interesting it, it pushes
22:33
us at times into some questions around how does all this work?
22:37
And we, and we actually today, I think struggle with questions
22:39
like that. Yeah, I think, I think so, but
22:43
the the party line is actually pretty quick to regurgitate if
22:47
you're a mainstream Christian. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:49
Is Jesus God, Yeah. How does that work?
22:51
I don't know. Is yeah, those sorts of things.
22:56
So it's also less exciting to preach 'cause it feels like,
22:59
especially in a crowd, when you're preaching to a group of
23:02
people who are, most of them are already believers, it kind of
23:11
feels like preaching to the choir.
23:12
It really does this text because the the topics that Jesus covers
23:16
here are this is an iconic text for Christology.
23:20
Who is Jesus? The, the, the hypostatic union,
23:25
which is like his, he is fully divine, fully man.
23:29
These are texts that the early church bled over and wrestled
23:34
over to anchor the idea that Jesus is fully God, fully man
23:38
100%. God, so I think this.
23:40
And then another one is salvation.
23:42
Who? How does salvation?
23:43
So soteriology is that topic. This text addresses pretty
23:47
heavily how soteriology, some of the elements of how soteriology
23:51
functions. This text addresses eschatology,
23:55
'cause he says I'm gonna speak life into dead things and their
23:59
resurrection's gonna come. And so it covers a lot of the
24:02
big ologies, but most of them were settled way, way, way, way,
24:08
way, way long ago. And then we've been sort of
24:10
toting the party line. And so preachers get here and
24:12
it's less maybe exciting, like theologically to talk.
24:17
Well, I I think this is, and this is where I kind of as I
24:20
thought about this question. So I grew up in a church that
24:24
preached the two passages mentioned all the time.
24:27
Yeah, I probably heard more about John 5 and John 17 than
24:31
98% of passages in the Scriptures.
24:35
Interesting. Because we were a praying
24:36
church, A healing church, yeah. Or church that saw those things.
24:40
And maybe a little bit more evangelistic.
24:42
Certainly that, and so we heard all the time, do what the
24:45
father's doing. What is the father doing like
24:48
you that that listening question like we heard that constantly
24:52
and then John 17 unity Jesus actually praying like I the
24:56
number of times I heard like this is Jesus praying for you
25:00
right now in John 17 like it to me.
25:02
So I feel like my culture was like can we hear less about John
25:07
5 and John 17 and more about other passages.
25:10
Now, I do think the pastor I grew up with, again, amazing
25:14
guy. He, I think he had this very
25:18
real sense of, I don't believe most of the people in the church
25:24
could tell me anything about the creeds and anything about
25:28
beliefs forged over thousands of years.
25:32
So I, so I think the challenge for some preachers is they look
25:35
at something and they're like, oh, this is boring.
25:36
Everyone knows this. And then you got a whole bunch
25:39
of people in the Church of Light.
25:40
I don't know what you're talking about.
25:41
Yeah. And I think that maybe that's
25:42
part of what this text resonates so much.
25:44
It was just it was good to hear some of the foundation of.
25:46
Things. At the heart, and which is what
25:51
I ended up sort of landing on, like only the voice of Jesus
25:57
speaks life. It's the only voice that
25:59
actually has the power to generate life.
26:03
So I think that the more church the audience is, the less you
26:07
hear from these texts for some of those reasons.
26:09
And then the more evangelistic a church is, you'll hear more
26:13
because that's sort of its function.
26:16
It's it, it theologically kind of lives more in that earlier
26:19
phase of things. So there's one of the questions.
26:21
Oh, by the way, we do also need to wrap up a little earlier than
26:24
normal 'cause I got to go pick up my daughter for a doctor's
26:28
appointment. We're moving now.
26:31
How do I go back on this so we. Just take this one off, OK?
26:35
I love it. We already did the thank you
26:40
one. Well, that one's just a reminder
26:44
for that. OK, I will help you look at.
26:46
That you should just do this. You know, and this should be all
26:50
right, Christian. 50 years ago I read Mark and then John.
26:54
Over the years, I became familiar with the stories in
26:56
John, but the not the depth of meaning.
26:59
This has been an A transformative study.
27:02
Thank you. Well, we appreciate it.
27:03
Thank you. But as we've just said, you can
27:06
only really thank God for that because it was nothing to do
27:08
with us. Yeah.
27:11
So, OK, another question. I loved how Aaron broke down
27:15
this passage. I know I have heard it before,
27:17
but it was different and fresh to hear the context of what the
27:19
Jewish leaders would have understood and believed about
27:22
God working on the Sabbath. I also love Jesus.
27:26
Aaron. Yeah, Jesus is trial alike
27:29
defense giving John the Baptist his own miracles, God's
27:32
testament scripture and Moses as testament.
27:37
Aaron mentioned Jesus teaches in parables.
27:40
I'm curious why when Jesus speaks directly about who he is
27:43
and what salvation is, those texts seem to be less taught or
27:47
known than parables and beatitudes.
27:51
Why aren't John 5617, etcetera more valued?
27:56
Interesting. Very similar to what we just
27:58
talked about I So here's my theory about why Jesus is less
28:02
explicit, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too.
28:06
Why Jesus is less explicit? When in most of the time,
28:12
because I think Jesus is more interested in transforming the
28:17
heart than the intellect and he's more patient than we are in
28:23
the Western world. Like we want to just give me the
28:26
bottom line, give me the facts, Jack kind of like this is our
28:29
wiring. And so but Jesus is like with
28:32
parables, he can sort of tell a story that's like a time bomb.
28:37
It like deposits in your brain and you ruminate on it and it's
28:40
just like, it's maybe more like one of those like fireworks that
28:44
has multiple explosions. This is what a parable is.
28:47
It's like it goes off and you're like, oh, that's cool.
28:50
And then it goes off again. And this is what a parable does.
28:53
And that's like Jesus's preferred method of teaching
28:56
because getting humans to make intellectual ascents isn't the
29:02
win in Jesus minds. Getting the hearts of humans to
29:07
to encounter him is the win and he feels like story is is more
29:13
effective at that most of the time.
29:14
So I, I, I would say my answer is primarily, I don't think.
29:21
And I, I'm going to say this not knowing if it's true.
29:25
I don't think Jesus ever teaches the crowds in John.
29:33
OK. I don't think there's a single
29:34
passage that I can think of right now where he's teaching
29:38
the everyday crowds of people. It mentions that he does it, but
29:41
I don't think there's. John 6 and 767.
29:44
All right. Well, were the people that have
29:46
already chosen to follow him OK, you know.
29:48
OK, the general SO. Seems like somewhere there's
29:51
like a push back on like, yeah, these are people that have
29:53
actually come across. So it doesn't seem like it's the
29:56
20 odd thousand. Yeah.
29:58
And the feeding of the 5000. Yep.
30:01
Now, now we know he did teach them because the other gospels,
30:04
Matthew, Mark and Luke talk about that.
30:06
Yeah. But I think most of the teaching
30:08
in John is primarily directed at his disciples and the Pharisees.
30:13
Yep. And so, you know, again, there's
30:15
different levels of disciples, it seems with Jesus, there's the
30:18
12 and then there's others. And you could even argue in in
30:21
amongst the 12, there's the five and then there's the three and
30:24
then, you know, there could even be a one.
30:26
But I think most of it is is designed a lot of it's
30:30
Pharisees. A ton of it.
30:33
So it's pushing back on people that know.
30:36
Or should know better? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:39
When you're in Matthew, Mark and Luke, there's so much more of it
30:43
that is designed is, is, is to everyday people.
30:47
Yeah. Who are like they're the,
30:49
they're, they're the maybe a decision point.
30:51
They're an interest. Some of them have come because
30:53
they've been fed all those different things.
30:54
And that happens in John too. But he actually says, like I use
30:58
power balls. Actually the, the, the
31:02
challenging language is the Isaiah language where it says,
31:05
you know, I use parable so they can hear without understanding.
31:10
Now, some people read that as they're not meant to understand.
31:14
It's like a, almost like a selection or a, you know, a
31:18
Calvinistic stance. Others read it as, no, it
31:22
actually holds your arm's length.
31:25
So a parable requires you to do the work.
31:29
It's not instant knowledge, it's.
31:32
A time bomb. Yeah.
31:33
And then you get this sense of like, yeah, I wonder if that's
31:38
that. I wonder if like.
31:40
It's an interesting pedagogy, right?
31:42
It's like it's a teaching method that like that it these stories
31:47
wiggle their way into your soul. Yeah, that's exactly what they
31:51
do. Rather than like, I get it, I
31:53
get it, I get it, I will never think about it again.
31:56
If you have to wrestle, yeah, it actually has the ability to
31:59
transform. So some, some sometimes you see
32:01
this in books and films today like so I I actually have this
32:05
memory of did you ever watch Cloverfield?
32:07
No. So it's this fairly terrible
32:11
movie, I would say made like 2008 maybe.
32:14
And it's basically a monster movie where it's all done on
32:18
video camera, like hang camera before iPhones were really doing
32:21
that kind of thing. It must have been a bit earlier
32:22
than that. And, and I went to watch this
32:26
movie. It made me sick, like seasick
32:28
almost, because the camera movement's so shaky.
32:30
It's all over the place. You barely get a glimpse of the
32:33
monster. There's all these undefined
32:35
relationships because it just happens.
32:36
Like, you know, if someone were to film mine and Laura's life
32:39
now, they're not. We're not defining stories.
32:42
We're in the midst of a relationship.
32:44
And I went away saying, what was that about?
32:47
I have no clue. The next day, I couldn't stop
32:51
thinking about it. Yeah, couldn't stop thinking
32:54
about. And then later they released a
32:56
movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and you're like, oh, wait, this is
33:00
the same story, just from a different perspective.
33:04
Like, it just, like, had a way of getting inside of you and
33:08
making you ask all these questions.
33:10
That's what good stories actually do.
33:12
Yeah. They're open to interpretation.
33:15
You have to wrestle with them to get something from and for A
33:19
and. For a God who is really, really
33:21
wise, really, really patient and he he doesn't and not interested
33:29
in Western obsession with marketing and efficiency and all
33:33
these sorts of things. He's he's more interested in the
33:36
relationship and the dialogue and the unfolding of a human
33:40
story than in like getting the biggest possible crowd humanly
33:44
possible and then articulating explicitly, hey, by the way, so
33:48
I'm God, the way you get saved is by praying this prayer.
33:50
And it's just, it's just not his preferred method.
33:54
And the reason he does it here, and he does it more explicitly
34:00
in the book of John than any of the other accounts, partially
34:04
'cause that's John's agenda is like this the latest gospel, if
34:10
there's rumors floating around that maybe Jesus wasn't God and
34:15
all this stuff. And so John's like, I will
34:17
settle this once and for all. Let me pull out this story that
34:20
the other gospel writers didn't share where Jesus was like
34:25
really explicit that I am God. And then we'll settle it once
34:30
and for all. And this is part of the big
34:32
agenda of of John, the author is to bring the more explicit
34:37
articulation of the deity of Christ forward and so.
34:41
So one more thing on parables that I think is really just real
34:44
brief thing that and really interesting is that we do have
34:48
one example of a parable where it's taught and then Jesus
34:51
actually goes away with his disciples and actually explains
34:55
how it's working. With an explanation that's not
34:58
super helpful. No, I mean, I sort of yeah, I, I
35:02
think it's, I think it's helpful.
35:03
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I think the scriptures
35:07
are helpful, you know, even. If you know, some scholars say
35:11
yeah. But, but, but the first one, the
35:14
story is a farmer goes out to Seoul and as he's throwing seed,
35:19
some of it goes on to the hard rocks and, you know, gets eaten
35:23
up. Some of it goes here, some of it
35:24
goes there. So the bizarre point is that the
35:27
people go away with these seeds that have been thrown to them
35:31
and find out whether they are the hard rocks or something else
35:36
by their willingness to wrestle with the story.
35:39
Yeah. You know, so it's, it's very
35:41
like, it's fascinating the way that they work.
35:45
They're actually finding out as they go.
35:46
If they're not interested in the story, where you find out
35:49
exactly what kind of soil they are.
35:52
Yeah. If they get too busy and leave
35:54
it to one side, will you find out exactly what kind of soil
35:58
that they are? Like, there's all these little
36:00
different things that kind of like demonstrate how the process
36:04
of parables work in a parable, which is.
36:07
Brilliant. Yeah.
36:08
And so interestingly, this question is partially answered
36:13
by Jesus in the text. So when he talks about if
36:19
someone came in their own name, you would buy it.
36:25
But if they come basically not pursuing their own glory, you
36:31
can just click out of the side. Yeah.
36:32
And then go to Slack for the rest of the questions.
36:36
So he explains under podcast. Here we go.
36:45
There's the last two. So he he actually says this
36:48
here. Let me try and find it here.
36:52
Remember on Sunday, one of the things I mentioned is the reason
36:55
that the one of the reasons why the religious leaders missed
36:58
Jesus is they don't understand Kingdom frameworks of how to
37:04
validate things. They're operating from a broken
37:08
mindset that like things that are valid, pursue glory, things
37:12
that are valid require self effort, things that are valid
37:16
like we and we all do this like things that make sense.
37:21
There's marketing to us and clear explicit communication and
37:27
trying harder gets better results.
37:30
And the Kingdom is so backwards that we we're not even wired to
37:36
receive the voice of God because it's so counterintuitive to the
37:40
broken nature of humanity. And so one of the reasons why
37:44
Jesus doesn't do a lot of explicit teaching is because
37:49
that's a little bit more the way the world communicates.
37:53
And the counterintuitive of the Kingdom is that he's almost anti
37:56
marketing in the book of John, like in the next few chapters,
38:00
spoiler alert, he he has a group of people who follow him and
38:04
they're excited about him. And then?
38:06
He starts teaching wacky. Those are my passages.
38:10
He starts teaching wacky stuff and he scares him away and then
38:13
and then he like almost double S down and scares even more of
38:17
them away. Sure, yeah.
38:21
The the book of John is how to not do marketing with Jesus.
38:27
But he says why he does it in this text.
38:31
He says he does it because how Can you believe since you accept
38:36
glory from one another, but you do not seek the glory that comes
38:39
from only God. In other words, if this is
38:41
successful, if this whole marketing campaign of Jesus,
38:45
it's not going to be because I'm super witty.
38:47
It's not going to be because I'm super explicit and articulate.
38:50
It's not going to be because I'm fancier than the next guy.
38:53
It's going to because the power of God and the voice of God is
38:56
upon me. Despite the fact that Jesus is
38:58
also super witty and he's. Totally, totally.
39:02
But you kind of get what I'm saying.
39:04
It's yeah, he's humble. He's all.
39:06
OK, We got a couple of questions.
39:07
And then you gotta go, you gotta go catch a plane or something
39:10
like that. It's like full celebrity, Yeah.
39:13
My limo's going to show up in a minute.
39:14
Yeah, this question has to do with the definition of good in
39:19
John 524 through 47 in light of Jesus definition of good, those
39:24
who believe. So this question points out that
39:26
there's a definition. That I gave as.
39:29
Believing, you know, how does the parable of the sheep?
39:33
So another parable question. How do the the parable of the
39:36
sheep and the goats in Matthew 2531 to 46 fit into this?
39:43
It seems like the sheep are good and do good things and the goats
39:48
are bad and ignore people's needs.
39:51
How can we know if we are sheep or goats and it is based on good
39:56
as in works or good as in believing in Jesus?
40:01
That's a great question. It is a great question and.
40:04
Actually, interestingly, I would also throw in at the start of
40:06
this passage, he says. And I will raise to eternal life
40:11
whoever I want, those who have done good things to eternal life
40:16
to life, and those who have done bad things to death.
40:20
Yes. And then that's where in the
40:23
message I defined what he meant. Very passing.
40:28
I said it very, very fleetingly. I don't remember that, so maybe
40:31
you should say it. Again, So I think that's why
40:32
this question was was posed. I made I made the statement that
40:37
the good works in John is believing in Jesus.
40:40
That is good. Works, but again, what about
40:42
Matthew then? I think it's the same.
40:45
But but he says, like, you know, I gave you gave a cup of water
40:49
to someone who needed it. Whatever you do for the least of
40:52
these, you did for me. Yeah.
40:53
And whatever you didn't do, you didn't do.
40:56
So it seems like Matthew's more interested in how you live out
41:01
your life. Yeah.
41:03
And I think. Not just who you believe in.
41:06
Yes, but it's it's so for for John, he when he defines the
41:13
good works that is like which we've he's established in John
41:17
three that good works is believing in him.
41:20
He's he's re kind of rinsed and repeated this idea and in in the
41:24
next several book, the chapters, he's going to define it even
41:29
further new that essentially the the maximum good work you can do
41:33
is believe that I'm the one now by inference.
41:37
If you believe that Jesus's voice is the voice of God, then
41:43
the things he recommends you, how you live are thrown in.
41:48
So does that mean we identify who's in by the works they do?
41:53
The works that they do are evidence of their belief.
41:57
So. So should we go like through the
42:00
church membership and like assign who's doing good things
42:04
and who's not? Should we go through the giving
42:08
like tithing roles and be like bad bad bad bad bad?
42:11
No, because I think you can do good works for the glory of and
42:16
the praise of men like, oh, he's supposed there's this.
42:20
Exactly. Question is like.
42:21
How do you know? So the, the way the so the way
42:26
I, I mean, I don't think from the outside looking in you can
42:28
fully know, OK, but like in John's.
42:31
But I think This is why John is so hyper focused on defining
42:35
what he means by good, which you may not think of it the first
42:39
glance when you're reading like you read in this passage the my
42:43
impulse when I first read this, if you do good work good, you're
42:47
gonna go to the good place. And if you do bad, you're gonna
42:50
go to the bad place. Yeah.
42:52
But then if you look at how John defines it, even in its
42:55
immediate context, and then back in John 3 and then later on in
43:00
John six and seven and so forth, you start to say, oh, he's kind
43:06
of saying that believing me is the is the good work.
43:10
And then you have to go back to this passage and say, oh, that's
43:12
what he also means here. And so the worst thing you could
43:16
do, the worst crime you could commit, according to the book of
43:21
John, is not believing in Jesus. And so this is where like for,
43:25
for those that like to go deep and nerd out a little, Yeah, the
43:29
challenge that we face at times is like, so it's, it's perfectly
43:34
OK to believe that John heard Jesus say these things directly
43:39
and just wrote them down, like in the chosen Matthews there
43:42
with his like little book. And then Matthew and John are
43:45
bantering back and forth about whose is going to be real and
43:48
whose isn't and all those things.
43:50
But probably, almost certainly Jesus didn't speak in Greek.
43:55
So there's some chant translation choices in play as
43:58
well. And John also has his audience
44:00
in mind. He wants to share things that
44:02
will help them. You know, even says that I could
44:04
have shared so much more, could have filled the world with
44:07
books. But I selected some stories that
44:10
will help you believe in Jesus. But believe would have meant one
44:15
thing to his first hearers and one thing to his later heroes,
44:20
right? Like to his first heroes,
44:22
believing essentially meant something like follow me, get
44:26
involved in what I'm doing, like journey with me, where I'm
44:30
going. Yeah, like if you believe I'm
44:31
God and that everything I say is absolutely the best thing ever,
44:35
then you'll also do the things I say get thrown in.
44:38
Like good works and believing in Jesus are almost synonymous in
44:42
the book of John. And actually I think the
44:45
majority of the rest of the New Testament, which is why you can
44:47
reconcile the book of James with with.
44:50
Romans. Bromans is they're kind of
44:54
saying the same thing, but they're emphasizing 1 facet a
44:58
little bit differently. Yeah, and.
45:00
And and then for He's here as later John's first readers, well
45:05
that actually starts to take on more of the shape of believe in
45:08
his death and resurrection, his gift of life for us and those
45:12
kind of things. There's a little bit of a
45:13
translation going on for John as he as he moves from Aramaic to
45:18
Greek and as he, you know. Yep.
45:20
And John, I mean, this is John for you, right?
45:23
John is a super abstract thinker, which I love 'cause I
45:25
think this way in a lot of ways too, but it means that you have
45:29
to read between the lines to understand what he's doing,
45:31
'cause he's very abstract. Yeah, very meta.
45:34
John is super meta. Yep, Meta.
45:36
I love it. Last question before the limo
45:39
gets here. If we're supposed to listen for
45:43
the voice of God the Holy Spirit, how do we tell if we the
45:49
voice we are hearing is actually from God or what we're hearing
45:54
is actually from God? Great question.
45:56
It is a great question and I can only answer it for well, I don't
46:03
think I have time to answer it 'cause I really, really have to
46:05
go. How about that's for an answer.
46:08
I I'll answer it for me in a couple different ways.
46:11
I actually taught a a seminar on this a while back and I wish I
46:14
had some of my notes from it to be a little bit more clear with
46:18
some other references, but I think a few filters you can run
46:24
it through is scripture. Does the voice contradict
46:33
anything that I see in Scripture?
46:35
Like if you hear a voice that says murder someone?
46:40
Probably not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
46:41
From God. But that's not gonna, most
46:43
people are gonna land there like coming up close anyway, right?
46:47
So there's one you might say, if you hear the voice of God
46:49
saying, oh, you're supposed to be with this person, not the
46:52
person you married, you should go off and like you.
46:54
Know. Yeah.
46:55
And so then if you read, read the scriptures, you can start to
46:58
understand that like that the scriptures uphold marriage above
47:03
this. All right, so that's like the
47:06
low hanging fruit, like filter it through the lens of
47:08
Scripture. All right, I think maybe a
47:12
harder, more nuanced answer is to filter it through the
47:16
greatest commandment. Does the voice I hear help me
47:21
love God or love my neighbor? And or maybe another way of
47:28
asking it is does this in any way harm my relationship with
47:34
God or harm my neighbor? So one example from my life is I
47:39
remember I was praying and I was asking the Lord, like, is there
47:42
anything you want me to do to be a better husband and father and
47:47
a pastor? And I went on a silent retreat.
47:50
Now, this is what I was praying and I was just sort of listening
47:54
and I kept thinking I was hearing paint the house.
47:58
And I was like, it's like really?
48:02
No, that's not the question I asked.
48:06
And I was there for three days and every time I went to pray,
48:11
the phrase paint my house just obsessively came.
48:14
So finally day three, I was like, I finally said, is that
48:18
you? Or am I just like losing my mind
48:21
'cause I asked this question, I think I'm getting this.
48:24
And so I filtered it through this, the law of love, and I
48:27
said, all right, is this something that would harm my
48:31
relationship with God? No, probably inconsequential
48:33
there, at least at the time I felt like that.
48:36
Is this a way of being loving towards my neighbor?
48:39
My wife's been asking me to paint the house for four years.
48:44
And so then I was like, I don't know if this is you, but it
48:47
can't hurt. In fact, I'd be kind of like you
48:52
to speak to me this way. So I went ahead and painted the
48:55
house. Little did I know the the next
48:58
time I went to listening pray it said sell the house and it was
49:03
the worst seller's market and on and on and on and on.
49:05
And we ended up in the house that were here and from some
49:08
strangely supernatural voices from God where it felt like
49:13
weird that I was hearing this. And part of it was me following
49:17
the law of love as a filter. Some other things that have
49:20
helped been helpful to me is I said one of them on Sunday.
49:23
The God's voice seems to be persistent.
49:26
It lingered. I actually had a a friend at
49:28
South that gave me a great little analogy for that.
49:31
Yeah. Where he talked about like, if I
49:34
hear something, I'll put it on a shelf.
49:36
Yep. So it's actually like a physical
49:37
movement. And he's like, OK, like you get
49:39
that? And he just put it.
49:41
He'll be like, I can put it there.
49:43
And then he said it always comes back every time.
49:45
It's God. It never disappears, it comes
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back. He's persistent.
49:49
He's he's patient, but he's persistent, at least in my
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experience of his voice. So I I've.
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Had a little one. Every time I really hear the
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voice of God and I'm in that place, I go away feeling
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distinctly loved and cared for. Yeah, it's not a harsh voice.
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It's not an unkind voice. And sometimes it.
50:08
Can tell you hard things, yes, But yes, totally.
50:11
But it's always a beautiful voice to hear, yeah.
50:17
And I like I hinted at this on Sunday, a lot of the times the
50:22
voice of God isn't a voice, It's an image for me.
50:25
It's a picture of him smiling at me kind of going, you already
50:28
know, like, let's be honest. And that's a picture, not a like
50:31
he doesn't say you already know to me.
50:33
He kind of just grins at me. So when I was first a follower
50:35
of Jesus and we can finish on this, I felt like God was always
50:40
asking me to do things. So I'd be at work, I'd see
50:44
later. I was like pick up that pick up
50:46
and and I just it felt like I was always having to do
50:50
something. And if you have have a voice of
50:53
God that you think is this God and all it ever asks you to do
50:57
things and it doesn't remind you of things like you're loved,
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you're valuable, you're wanted. If that voice only is
51:06
instructive, my nudge on that is it's probably not the voice of
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God, because the voice of God does tell you to do things.
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But it certainly doesn't only tell you to do things.
51:18
It wants you to know things about Him and about you.
51:22
Yeah, and the other, the other one would be just the person of
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Jesus, which I hinted at when I said like, get to know his gait.
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Like if you read the Gospels enough, you can kind of start to
51:35
sense the tone of voice of Jesus.
51:38
And when I hear something in my prayer time that kind of has the
51:42
Jesus vibe, it feels like I can sense his gate.
51:47
And then that's a a good a good way to filter it too.
51:50
Just like I know Jesus Gate, Aaron's about to walk out the
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door, and I know his gate as well.
51:55
Yeah, thank you all for tuning in.
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We'll catch y'all later. Bye.