Latest / Bible stories / Why Is John 1 the Most Important Chapter in the Bible_

Transcript

Why Is John 1 the Most Important Chapter in the Bible_ · Bible stories

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bible Stories. You may notice there
0:03
Speaker 1: are no ads on this video because YouTube has demonetized
0:07
Speaker 1: our channel. To support us, you can scan the first
0:10
Speaker 1: QR code to join the Bible Stories podcast app, where
0:15
Speaker 1: you can listen offline and access exclusive episodes. Or, if
0:19
Speaker 1: you simply want to give, you can scan the second
0:22
Speaker 1: QR code to donate directly. Thank you for helping us
0:27
Speaker 1: keep these Bible Stories going. John 1 is the most
0:32
Speaker 1: important chapter in the Bible, and the reason is not
0:35
Speaker 1: the one most people give. Ask why, and you will
0:39
Speaker 1: usually hear the same answer. Because of the first line,
0:43
Speaker 1: in the beginning was the Word. because it says plainly
0:47
Speaker 1: that Jesus is God. That is true. It is also
0:51
Speaker 1: not the reason. The reason is that John 1 does
0:54
Speaker 1: something no other chapter in the Bible does. It begins
0:58
Speaker 1: before the world existed, before there was a sky or
1:01
Speaker 1: a sea or a single created thing, and it ends
1:05
Speaker 1: with two men sitting in a house with Jesus at
1:08
Speaker 1: four in the afternoon on an ordinary weekday. The God
1:12
Speaker 1: nobody could see and a man you could walk up
1:15
Speaker 1: to and ask a question. Most chapters give you one
1:19
Speaker 1: or the other. This chapter gives you both and it
1:22
Speaker 1: never leaves the subject to do it. The half that
1:25
Speaker 1: carries the weight is the half almost nobody teaches. John
1:29
Speaker 1: 1 has 51 verses. Most Christians have only ever heard
1:33
Speaker 1: 18 of them. and the thirty-three that get skipped are
1:37
Speaker 1: where the chapter stops making its claim and starts proving it.
1:41
Speaker 1: That is worth your time if you have ever suspected
1:45
Speaker 1: that God is real but far off, that he made
1:48
Speaker 1: everything and then stepped back, that he is available to
1:52
Speaker 1: people with cleaner records and stronger faith than yours. John
1:58
Speaker 1: 1 was written against that exact suspicion. The change happens
2:02
Speaker 1: at verse 19, and you can hear it the moment
2:05
Speaker 1: somebody reads it out loud. Up to that point, the
2:09
Speaker 1: language is the highest in the New Testament. Light and darkness, glory, grace,
2:14
Speaker 1: and truth. The Word who was there before, there was
2:17
Speaker 1: anything to be there for. Then it stops. what comes
2:22
Speaker 1: next is a plain almost boringly ordinary story about four
2:27
Speaker 1: days in a row near a river names travel small
2:31
Speaker 1: talk a change of address a time of day that
2:34
Speaker 1: drop is the whole argument anyone can write a beautiful
2:38
Speaker 1: sentence about eternity and plenty of people have What John
2:42
Speaker 1: does after verse 18 is walk you through a normal
2:46
Speaker 1: week and let you watch the sentence come true in
2:49
Speaker 1: front of ordinary men who had no idea who they
2:52
Speaker 1: were talking to. So let us take the famous part briefly,
2:56
Speaker 1: because it sets up everything, and then let us go
2:59
Speaker 1: where most teaching never goes. In the beginning was the Word,
3:04
Speaker 1: and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
3:09
Speaker 1: John chapter 1 verse 1. Whatever else you make of
3:13
Speaker 1: that sentence, notice what it refuses to do. It does
3:17
Speaker 1: not start Jesus at a birth. It does not start
3:20
Speaker 1: him at a family line or a hometown or a nation.
3:23
Speaker 1: It starts him before starting existed. And notice the name
3:28
Speaker 1: it chooses. of all the ways to introduce him the
3:31
Speaker 1: writer reaches for something that means speech not a throne
3:35
Speaker 1: not a crown not a family line going back to
3:39
Speaker 1: a king he calls him a spoken thing keep that
3:42
Speaker 1: in mind because it turns out to be a promise
3:45
Speaker 1: about the rest of the chapter Almost everything that happens
3:48
Speaker 1: in the second half of John 1 happens because somebody
3:52
Speaker 1: opens their mouth and says something out loud to somebody else. Then,
3:56
Speaker 1: a few lines down, the sentence that no other religion
4:00
Speaker 1: in the world has ever attempted. The Word became flesh
4:05
Speaker 1: and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory,
4:09
Speaker 1: the glory of the one and only Son, who came
4:12
Speaker 1: from the Father, full of grace and truth. John chapter
4:17
Speaker 1: 1 verse 14. Read that as the writer wrote it
4:21
Speaker 1: in the first person plural, we have seen, he was there,
4:25
Speaker 1: he is filing a report. And then comes verse 18,
4:30
Speaker 1: which should, by every rule of writing, end the chapter.
4:34
Speaker 1: No one has ever seen God, but the one and
4:38
Speaker 1: only Son, who is himself God, and is in closest
4:41
Speaker 1: relationship with the Father, has made him known. John chapter
4:46
Speaker 1: 1 verse 18. That is a full stop if there
4:50
Speaker 1: ever was one. No one has ever seen God. It
4:54
Speaker 1: is the final word on the oldest human complaint. Moses
4:59
Speaker 1: asked for a look at him and was permitted only
5:02
Speaker 1: a glimpse of his back. Men who did catch sight
5:06
Speaker 1: of something collapsed where they stood. Whatever else God is,
5:09
Speaker 1: he has always been out of range of the human eye.
5:13
Speaker 1: So the natural thing for the chapter to do here
5:15
Speaker 1: is stop, land the point, move to chapter 2. Instead,
5:22
Speaker 1: the chapter keeps going for another 33 verses, and the
5:26
Speaker 1: word that runs through all of them is the word see.
5:30
Speaker 1: Come and you will see. Come and see. You will
5:34
Speaker 1: see greater things than that. You will see heaven open.
5:39
Speaker 1: Four times in the back half of this chapter, somebody
5:42
Speaker 1: is invited to look at something. The chapter opens by
5:45
Speaker 1: telling you that God cannot be seen, and then spends
5:49
Speaker 1: the rest of itself pointing at a man and saying,
5:52
Speaker 1: look at him. That is the argument of John 1,
5:56
Speaker 1: not stated as a doctrine, built into the shape of
5:59
Speaker 1: the chapter day by day as it happens. Before we
6:03
Speaker 1: walk through the second half, there is something in the
6:06
Speaker 1: way it is written that is worth seeing, because it
6:09
Speaker 1: tells you what the writer was doing. Three times in
6:13
Speaker 1: the back half of this chapter, a short phrase appears,
6:17
Speaker 1: the next day. It shows up at verse 29, again
6:21
Speaker 1: at verse 35, and again at verse 43. Then, the
6:25
Speaker 1: very next line after this chapter, at the start of
6:29
Speaker 1: chapter 2, says, On the third day there was a
6:32
Speaker 1: wedding in Galilee. count what that gives you a first
6:36
Speaker 1: day of questions by the river a second day when
6:40
Speaker 1: john points at jesus a third day when two men
6:43
Speaker 1: follow him home a fourth day when philip and nathaniel
6:47
Speaker 1: are brought in and then a wedding a few days
6:51
Speaker 1: later where the first miracle happens the opening of this
6:55
Speaker 1: gospel is dated somebody sat down and laid these events
6:59
Speaker 1: out day by day in order like a man going
7:03
Speaker 1: back through a week he could still count That is
7:06
Speaker 1: a very strange thing to do after the sentences we
7:09
Speaker 1: just read. The first eighteen verses are about a word
7:13
Speaker 1: who existed before anything else existed, where time itself is
7:18
Speaker 1: not yet in the picture. And then, without any warning,
7:22
Speaker 1: the same writer starts numbering days. He is doing that
7:26
Speaker 1: on purpose. He is telling you that the one who
7:28
Speaker 1: was there before the beginning showed up inside a calendar.
7:32
Speaker 1: He had a week. He had a Monday and a Tuesday.
7:35
Speaker 1: He went somewhere, and then the next day he went
7:38
Speaker 1: somewhere else. We say that God is eternal, and we
7:42
Speaker 1: mean it as comfort, and it is a comfort, but
7:45
Speaker 1: eternity on its own can feel like distance, something so
7:50
Speaker 1: far above your Tuesday that it has no bearing on it.
7:54
Speaker 1: John 1 refuses to leave the idea up there. It
7:58
Speaker 1: brings it down into a sequence of ordinary days you
8:01
Speaker 1: could have walked through beside him, and then it starts
8:04
Speaker 1: telling you what people said. Verse 19 changes everything about
8:09
Speaker 1: the writing. Suddenly there are officials and a place name
8:13
Speaker 1: and a conversation. A delegation of priests and Levites comes
8:18
Speaker 1: down from Jerusalem to the Jordan River to interview a
8:21
Speaker 1: man who has been baptizing people in the wilderness. They
8:25
Speaker 1: want a straight answer. Who are you? Watch what he
8:29
Speaker 1: does with the three titles they hand him. Are you
8:33
Speaker 1: the Messiah? I am not the Messiah. john chapter one
8:38
Speaker 1: verse twenty are you elijah he says he is not
8:43
Speaker 1: are you the prophet he says no again those were
8:47
Speaker 1: not random guesses every one of them was a live
8:50
Speaker 1: expectation in that country malachi had promised elijah would come
8:55
Speaker 1: before the great day of the lord moses had said
8:59
Speaker 1: god would raise up a prophet like him and the
9:01
Speaker 1: messiah had been waited on for centuries the delegation offered
9:06
Speaker 1: this man the three highest positions available in jewish hope
9:10
Speaker 1: and he turned down all three' Think about what it
9:14
Speaker 1: costs a man to do that. He had crowds, he
9:17
Speaker 1: had the attention of the capital, he was standing in
9:19
Speaker 1: front of the religious establishment of his nation, and they
9:22
Speaker 1: were practically inviting him to claim something. He told them
9:26
Speaker 1: he was a voice and nothing more. He said he
9:29
Speaker 1: was the one shouting in the desert to straighten the road,
9:32
Speaker 1: because somebody more important was coming behind him.' He said
9:36
Speaker 1: he was not worthy to untie that man's sandal, which
9:40
Speaker 1: was the job of the lowest servant in a house.
9:43
Speaker 1: The line about the road was not his own. He
9:45
Speaker 1: was quoting Isaiah from a passage written to a people
9:49
Speaker 1: in exile who had begun to believe God had lost
9:52
Speaker 1: interest in them. In that passage a voice goes ahead
9:55
Speaker 1: of the Lord and tells the country to level the
9:58
Speaker 1: ground because he has come back to his people and
10:01
Speaker 1: nothing is going to be allowed to stand in the way.
10:05
Speaker 1: So the man by the river gave his own job
10:07
Speaker 1: description in a single borrowed line. He was roadwork, he
10:12
Speaker 1: was the sound of a shovel before the visit, and
10:15
Speaker 1: the delegation went home with nothing they could report, except
10:18
Speaker 1: that a man in the wilderness had turned down every
10:21
Speaker 1: honour they offered him, and told them the real one
10:24
Speaker 1: was already standing among them, and they did not know
10:27
Speaker 1: who he was. So the first human being to speak
10:31
Speaker 1: in this chapter uses his voice to say who he
10:34
Speaker 1: is not three times, and then to point somewhere else.
10:39
Speaker 1: and the chapter has not even shown us Jesus walking yet.
10:43
Speaker 1: The next day, John sees Jesus coming toward him, and
10:47
Speaker 1: he says one sentence, Look, the Lamb of God, who
10:52
Speaker 1: takes away the sin of the world. John 1.29 No
10:59
Speaker 1: one had ever called a person that. Lambs were what
11:02
Speaker 1: you brought to the temple. Lambs were what a family
11:06
Speaker 1: ate on the night God brought them out of Egypt.
11:09
Speaker 1: A lamb was the thing that died in your place
11:12
Speaker 1: while you stood there and watched, and every Israelite had
11:15
Speaker 1: seen it happen since childhood. He looks at a man
11:19
Speaker 1: walking up a riverbank and applies that word to him,
11:23
Speaker 1: and with it comes the size of the claim, not
11:26
Speaker 1: the sin of a household, not the sin of a nation,
11:29
Speaker 1: the sin of the world. To measure what that landed
11:33
Speaker 1: like on the people standing there, remember what a lamb
11:36
Speaker 1: meant to them. Every morning and every evening, in the
11:40
Speaker 1: temple in Jerusalem, a lamb was offered. Twice a day,
11:44
Speaker 1: every day, year after year, for centuries. It was the
11:49
Speaker 1: heartbeat of the nation's religious life, and the reason for
11:52
Speaker 1: it never changed. Something had to die because people had
11:56
Speaker 1: gone wrong, and the something was never the person who
12:00
Speaker 1: had gone wrong. And once a year, the whole country
12:03
Speaker 1: remembered a night in Egypt when the blood of a
12:06
Speaker 1: lamb was put on the doorframes of their houses, and
12:10
Speaker 1: death went past those doors. Families stood inside, eating in
12:14
Speaker 1: a hurry with their sandals on, alive because something else
12:19
Speaker 1: was not. That was the word John used. Every man
12:23
Speaker 1: listening to him had been watching it happen his whole
12:26
Speaker 1: life and had understood somewhere underneath that a lamb is
12:30
Speaker 1: a temporary arrangement. It works until the next morning. Then
12:34
Speaker 1: you need another one. John looks at Jesus and says,
12:39
Speaker 1: The arrangement is over. Here is the one who takes
12:42
Speaker 1: it away. Now here is the detail almost nobody notices.
12:47
Speaker 1: He says it twice. The second time is the following day,
12:51
Speaker 1: verse 36, and this time only two men hear it.
12:56
Speaker 1: There is no crowd, no delegation, no scene, just a
13:01
Speaker 1: teacher and two of his own students standing there, and
13:04
Speaker 1: he says it again. Look, the Lamb of God. The
13:09
Speaker 1: first time he said it, nothing happened. The second time,
13:13
Speaker 1: the two men left him and followed Jesus down the road.
13:17
Speaker 1: That is how faith usually comes to a person, not
13:20
Speaker 1: in the crowd, not on the big day, on the
13:23
Speaker 1: second telling, when almost nobody is around. Jesus hears them
13:28
Speaker 1: behind him, he turns around, and here are the first
13:31
Speaker 1: words out of his mouth in this entire gospel. What
13:35
Speaker 1: do you want? John 1.38 Four words, that is the
13:43
Speaker 1: opening line of the Word who made the world. He
13:46
Speaker 1: does not announce himself, he does not warn them, he
13:50
Speaker 1: asks two strangers what they are after. There is a
13:53
Speaker 1: whole theology sitting in that question, and it never gets preached.
13:58
Speaker 1: The first thing this man does is make room for
14:00
Speaker 1: what somebody else wants. He begins with a question, and
14:04
Speaker 1: he has been beginning with questions ever since. What do
14:07
Speaker 1: you want? What are you looking for? What do you
14:10
Speaker 1: actually hope for when you pray and nothing seems to answer?
14:14
Speaker 1: And their reply is almost comically ordinary. They ask him
14:19
Speaker 1: where he is staying. They have just been told he
14:21
Speaker 1: takes away the sin of the world, and what comes
14:24
Speaker 1: out of their mouths is a question about his address.
14:28
Speaker 1: They do not know what to say, so they ask
14:30
Speaker 1: the smallest, most human thing they can think of, because
14:34
Speaker 1: they want to be near him, and they do not
14:36
Speaker 1: have better words for it. He does not correct them.
14:39
Speaker 1: He says,' Come, and you will see.' And then the
14:43
Speaker 1: chapter does something no one expects. It tells you what
14:47
Speaker 1: time it was. So they went and saw where he
14:50
Speaker 1: was staying, and they spent that day with him. It
14:53
Speaker 1: was about the tenth hour. John chapter 1, verse 39.
14:59
Speaker 1: In that world, daylight hours were counted from about six
15:02
Speaker 1: in the morning. The tenth hour is around four in
15:06
Speaker 1: the afternoon. Stop and see what has just happened to
15:09
Speaker 1: this chapter. It opened before the creation of the world,
15:13
Speaker 1: in language so high that theologians have argued over single
15:17
Speaker 1: words in it for two thousand years, and now it
15:20
Speaker 1: is telling you that it was about four o'clock. Why
15:23
Speaker 1: would anyone write that down?' There is only one good reason.
15:28
Speaker 1: Somebody remembered. One of those two men never forgot what
15:32
Speaker 1: time it was on the afternoon he first sat in
15:35
Speaker 1: a room with Jesus, and decades later, when he wrote
15:38
Speaker 1: it out, the hour was still there. That is what
15:41
Speaker 1: happens to people. Ask anyone who has walked with God
15:45
Speaker 1: for a long time about the day it became real
15:48
Speaker 1: to them, and you will often get a strangely small detail.
15:52
Speaker 1: A chair. A kitchen. What the weather was doing, the
15:57
Speaker 1: mind holds on to the ordinary furniture of the moment,
16:00
Speaker 1: because the moment itself was too large to file anywhere.
16:05
Speaker 1: The chapter that begins in eternity gives you a clock.
16:09
Speaker 1: That is not decoration. That is a witness. One of
16:13
Speaker 1: those two men is named Andrew, and the very first
16:17
Speaker 1: thing Andrew does is go and find his brother. He
16:20
Speaker 1: does not go home and study. He does not wait
16:23
Speaker 1: until he can explain it properly. He finds Simon and
16:27
Speaker 1: tells him they have found the Messiah, and he brings him.
16:31
Speaker 1: Then Jesus looks at Simon and gives him a new name, Cephas,
16:36
Speaker 1: a rock. Before Simon has said a word, before he
16:40
Speaker 1: has followed or served or failed or denied him in
16:43
Speaker 1: a courtyard beside a fire or been put back together
16:46
Speaker 1: on a beat, the name arrives at the beginning and
16:50
Speaker 1: the man spends the rest of his life growing into it.
16:54
Speaker 1: If you know Peter's story, that ought to loosen something
16:57
Speaker 1: in you. The name was not a reward for how
17:00
Speaker 1: he turned out. It was given the day they met,
17:03
Speaker 1: and it held even through the worst night of his life.
17:06
Speaker 1: The next day it happens again. Jesus finds Philip. Philip
17:11
Speaker 1: finds Nathanael. And Nathanael gives us the most honest line
17:15
Speaker 1: in the chapter. Philip tells him they have found the
17:19
Speaker 1: one Moses wrote about, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph.
17:23
Speaker 1: and Nathanael says what any sensible man in that region
17:27
Speaker 1: would say. Nazareth? Can anything good come from there? John
17:33
Speaker 1: chapter 1 verse 46 Nazareth was nothing. A small village
17:38
Speaker 1: in the north, never once mentioned in the Old Testament.
17:42
Speaker 1: No reputation, no importance, no reason to look at it twice.
17:46
Speaker 1: It was the kind of place people made jokes about.
17:49
Speaker 1: And Nathaniel made one. Now, watch Philip's response, because it
17:54
Speaker 1: is the method of this whole chapter. He does not argue.
17:57
Speaker 1: He does not defend Nazareth. He does not produce a
18:00
Speaker 1: verse or win a debate. He says, Come and see.
18:05
Speaker 1: That is the second time those words appear in the chapter,
18:09
Speaker 1: and they are still the best invitation anybody has ever
18:12
Speaker 1: handed a doubter, not a lecture, a door held open.
18:16
Speaker 1: If you have ever felt useless in talking to someone
18:19
Speaker 1: about faith, because you do not have the answers and
18:22
Speaker 1: you lose every argument, look at how the first believers
18:26
Speaker 1: did it. Andrew got his brother. Philip got his friend.
18:31
Speaker 1: Neither of them explained anything. They just refused to go alone.
18:36
Speaker 1: Trace the line back through the chapter, and you can
18:39
Speaker 1: see the whole thing running on that one small motion.
18:42
Speaker 1: John the Baptist points, and two men move. One of
18:46
Speaker 1: those men goes to get his brother, the next day
18:49
Speaker 1: another man is found, and immediately goes to get someone
18:52
Speaker 1: he knows. Four days, four hand-offs, and every single one
18:56
Speaker 1: of them is a person walking a short distance to
18:59
Speaker 1: fetch somebody else. That is how the church began. Not
19:04
Speaker 1: with a strategy, with a brother, a friend, and a
19:08
Speaker 1: sentence anyone could say. Two thousand years later, it still
19:13
Speaker 1: moves the same way. Somebody put a Bible in your hands.
19:16
Speaker 1: Somebody said a word to you at the right moment.
19:19
Speaker 1: Somebody prayed for you when you did not know about it.
19:23
Speaker 1: Every believer alive is standing at the end of a
19:26
Speaker 1: chain of people who did what Andrew did, and none
19:29
Speaker 1: of them had all the answers either. Nathaniel comes, still unconvinced,
19:36
Speaker 1: and before he can open his mouth, Jesus speaks about him.
19:40
Speaker 1: He calls him an Israelite, with nothing false in him,
19:43
Speaker 1: a man with no act. Nathaniel, understandably, asks how on
19:49
Speaker 1: earth this stranger knows anything about him, and Jesus tells
19:53
Speaker 1: him that he saw him under the fig tree before
19:56
Speaker 1: Philip ever called him. We are not told what Nathaniel
19:59
Speaker 1: was doing there. The text does not say. All we
20:02
Speaker 1: know is that whatever it was, it was private, it
20:06
Speaker 1: was his, and it was already seen. That is what
20:10
Speaker 1: breaks him. Not a miracle he could watch, the discovery
20:15
Speaker 1: that he had been watched. There is a particular kind
20:18
Speaker 1: of loneliness that comes from feeling unobserved. You get older.
20:22
Speaker 1: Fewer people call. Nobody sees what your days actually contain.
20:27
Speaker 1: The effort it takes to get up. The prayers said
20:29
Speaker 1: out loud in an empty room. The small faithful things
20:33
Speaker 1: nobody will ever know about. It can feel like living
20:37
Speaker 1: behind glass. Nathaniel found out he had been under someone's
20:41
Speaker 1: eye the whole time before he knew there was anyone
20:44
Speaker 1: to know, and the one who had been looking was
20:47
Speaker 1: not looking to catch him out. He called him honest.
20:51
Speaker 1: Nathaniel's answer comes out in a rush. Rabbi, you are
20:57
Speaker 1: the Son of God, you are the King of Israel.
21:01
Speaker 1: From joke to worship in about ninety seconds. And now
21:05
Speaker 1: the chapter reaches its last line, which is the strangest
21:09
Speaker 1: sentence in it, and the one that pulls everything together.
21:13
Speaker 1: Jesus tells Nathanael that he will see far greater things
21:17
Speaker 1: than that. And then he says this, Very truly I
21:21
Speaker 1: tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels
21:24
Speaker 1: of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
21:29
Speaker 1: John 1.51 To us, that sounds like poetry. To a
21:35
Speaker 1: man raised on the Hebrew Scriptures, it was a direct
21:38
Speaker 1: quotation of a scene he had known since he was
21:41
Speaker 1: a boy. Genesis 28 Jacob is running away from his brother,
21:47
Speaker 1: who wants to kill him, and he has good reason
21:50
Speaker 1: to think God is finished with him. He is out
21:53
Speaker 1: in open country, with nowhere to sleep, so he takes
21:56
Speaker 1: a stone for a pillow and lies down in the dirt.
22:00
Speaker 1: And in the night he dreams of a stairway, standing
22:03
Speaker 1: on the earth with its top, reaching into heaven, and
22:06
Speaker 1: the angels of God are going up and coming down
22:09
Speaker 1: on it. Jacob wakes up shaking, and says the Lord
22:14
Speaker 1: was in this place, and he did not know it.
22:16
Speaker 1: It matters who that was happening to. Jacob was not
22:20
Speaker 1: a good man, having a hard week. He was a cheat.
22:23
Speaker 1: He had bought his brother's birthright off him for a
22:26
Speaker 1: bowl of stew, and then lied to his blind father
22:30
Speaker 1: to steal the blessing that went with it. He was
22:33
Speaker 1: sleeping in open country that night, because his own family
22:36
Speaker 1: had become dangerous to him, and he had run out
22:39
Speaker 1: of options. That is the man heaven opened over. God
22:44
Speaker 1: did not wait for him to make it right. The
22:48
Speaker 1: stairway came down while he was still running, in the
22:51
Speaker 1: worst stretch of his life, in a place so unimportant
22:55
Speaker 1: it did not have a name until he gave it one.
22:58
Speaker 1: Now put the two together. Jesus takes the picture of
23:02
Speaker 1: the one place where heaven and earth were connected, the
23:05
Speaker 1: traffic between the two running up and down in front
23:08
Speaker 1: of a frightened runaway, and he says that from now
23:12
Speaker 1: on the traffic runs through him. Whatever that ladder was
23:16
Speaker 1: in Jacob's dream, it now has a name and a face.
23:20
Speaker 1: And look what that does to verse 18. No one
23:21
Speaker 1: has ever seen God. The chapter opened with the door shut,
23:28
Speaker 1: and it ends with a promise that heaven will be
23:30
Speaker 1: seen standing open, with the way up and down, running
23:34
Speaker 1: through a man from Nazareth who has just told a
23:37
Speaker 1: doubter that he saw him sitting under a tree. That
23:41
Speaker 1: is the chapter. It walks you from an invisible God
23:45
Speaker 1: to an open sky in fifty-one verses, and it never
23:49
Speaker 1: once asks you to take its word for it. It
23:51
Speaker 1: just keeps saying,' Come and look.' There is one more
23:55
Speaker 1: thing worth counting before we finish, because it is another
23:59
Speaker 1: reason this chapter stands where it does. Look at how
24:02
Speaker 1: many titles for Jesus are gathered inside these fifty-one verses.
24:06
Speaker 1: He is called the Word, the Light of the World,
24:10
Speaker 1: the One and Only Son, the Lamb of God, Rabbi,
24:15
Speaker 1: which the writer stops to translate for us as Teacher,
24:19
Speaker 1: the Messiah. The one Moses wrote about, the Son of God,
24:23
Speaker 1: the King of Israel, and in the closing line, the
24:26
Speaker 1: Son of Man. You will not find that many names
24:30
Speaker 1: for him gathered in any other single chapter of the Bible.
24:34
Speaker 1: Most chapters give you one picture of Jesus. This one
24:38
Speaker 1: lays out the whole portrait, from before creation to the
24:42
Speaker 1: title he used most often for himself. And notice who
24:45
Speaker 1: says most of them. Almost none come from Jesus. John
24:50
Speaker 1: the Baptist supplies some. Andrew supplies one. Nathaniel supplies two
24:56
Speaker 1: in a single breath. jesus speaks about ninety words in
25:01
Speaker 1: the entire chapter everyone else does the talking the chapter
25:05
Speaker 1: that makes the biggest claim about him barely lets him
25:08
Speaker 1: make it himself it brings in witnesses instead one after
25:12
Speaker 1: another and lets them say what they saw And they
25:16
Speaker 1: are an unimpressive set of witnesses. A preacher living rough
25:20
Speaker 1: in the desert. A fisherman who ran to get his brother.
25:23
Speaker 1: A man who had just insulted the town Jesus grew
25:26
Speaker 1: up in. None of them held any office. None of
25:29
Speaker 1: them had been trained for this. They simply looked at
25:32
Speaker 1: him and said what they saw, and their words are
25:35
Speaker 1: still being read out loud in churches two thousand years later.
25:39
Speaker 1: That is worth holding on to if you have ever
25:42
Speaker 1: felt too small or too late or too uneducated to
25:46
Speaker 1: be of any use to God. The first people ever
25:50
Speaker 1: to say who Jesus was had no qualifications at all.
25:54
Speaker 1: They were just there, and they were honest about it.
25:57
Speaker 1: There are chapters in the Bible that will hold you
26:00
Speaker 1: up when nothing else will. Hebrews chapter 11 gives you
26:04
Speaker 1: a room full of people who trusted God without ever
26:08
Speaker 1: seeing the outcome. Romans chapter 8 gives you the promise
26:13
Speaker 1: that nothing in creation can separate you from His love.
26:18
Speaker 1: Psalm 23 has walked more people through hospital corridors than
26:23
Speaker 1: any other page ever written. So why does John 1
26:27
Speaker 1: sit above them? Because those chapters all assume something that
26:31
Speaker 1: John 1 establishes. They assume you already know who Jesus is.
26:35
Speaker 1: They assume the gap between God and a human being
26:39
Speaker 1: has already been closed, and that the closing is trustworthy.
26:43
Speaker 1: John 1 is where that closing happens on the page.
26:47
Speaker 1: Take this chapter out, and the others become beautiful, writing
26:51
Speaker 1: about a God who might still be too far away
26:54
Speaker 1: to reach. And it does the work in a way
26:57
Speaker 1: nothing else in Scripture does. It gives you the impossible
27:00
Speaker 1: height of who he is. And then, in the same chapter,
27:04
Speaker 1: without any change of subject, it gives you a riverbank,
27:07
Speaker 1: four ordinary days, a question about where he was staying,
27:11
Speaker 1: a joke about Nazareth, and a time of day. Eternity
27:16
Speaker 1: and four in the afternoon, held together in fifty-one verses.
27:21
Speaker 1: That is why. There is one more thing. Most of
27:24
Speaker 1: the great chapters of the Bible are answers. They tell
27:28
Speaker 1: you what is true and hand it to you, finished.
27:31
Speaker 1: John 1 ends with an invitation and an open sky.
27:36
Speaker 1: It leaves you standing where Nathaniel was standing, having just
27:39
Speaker 1: been told he would see greater things with the greater
27:43
Speaker 1: things still ahead of him. The chapter does not close
27:47
Speaker 1: the subject, it opens it. Everything else in that gospel,
27:51
Speaker 1: every conversation, every healing, every argument, every hour of the
27:56
Speaker 1: last week of his life, is the answer to the
27:59
Speaker 1: promise made in the last verse of chapter 1. You
28:03
Speaker 1: will see greater things than that, and the man who
28:06
Speaker 1: wrote it spent three years watching that promise come true,
28:10
Speaker 1: and then spent decades more turning it over before he
28:13
Speaker 1: ever put it on paper. When he came to write
28:16
Speaker 1: the opening, he did not begin with a birth. He
28:19
Speaker 1: began before the world, and he closed his first chapter
28:23
Speaker 1: at four in the afternoon, and he trusted you to notice.
28:26
Speaker 1: So take this chapter and put it where you actually live.
28:31
Speaker 1: Everybody who came to Jesus in this chapter came with
28:34
Speaker 1: something wrong about them. Andrew and his friend came with
28:38
Speaker 1: a clumsy question because they could not think of anything
28:41
Speaker 1: better to say. Simon came because his brother dragged him,
28:45
Speaker 1: and he had not done a single thing yet to
28:48
Speaker 1: deserve the name he was given. Nathaniel came in the
28:52
Speaker 1: middle of a bad opinion, having just said out loud
28:55
Speaker 1: that nothing good comes out of the place Jesus was from.
28:59
Speaker 1: Not one of them arrived sorted. Not one of them
29:02
Speaker 1: was told to come back when they had it together.
29:04
Speaker 1: The invitation both times was the same four words, come
29:09
Speaker 1: and see. If you have been carrying the idea that
29:12
Speaker 1: God is somewhere far off attending to more important things,
29:16
Speaker 1: this chapter was written against that idea. The distance you
29:21
Speaker 1: feel is real to you, and I am not going
29:24
Speaker 1: to talk you out of the feeling, but the chapter
29:26
Speaker 1: says the distance has already been crossed from the other side.
29:30
Speaker 1: He came down the road, he turned around, he asked
29:34
Speaker 1: what you want, and if what you carry is loneliness,
29:37
Speaker 1: the kind that has settled in as the years have
29:40
Speaker 1: gone on, and the phone rings less than it used to,
29:43
Speaker 1: notice how the greatest chapter in the Bible chooses to
29:47
Speaker 1: end its first day with him, not with a miracle.
29:51
Speaker 1: Not with a sermon, with two men in a house,
29:54
Speaker 1: staying from about four in the afternoon until it got dark.
29:57
Speaker 1: That is what he offered first. Company. Somebody remembered the
30:02
Speaker 1: hour for the rest of his life. You are not
30:05
Speaker 1: watching that from outside. The one who saw Nathaniel under
30:09
Speaker 1: the fig tree before anyone told him a thing about
30:12
Speaker 1: the man has seen every hour of your life that
30:16
Speaker 1: nobody else has been there for. The prayers in the
30:20
Speaker 1: empty room, the mornings that took more courage than anyone knows.
30:24
Speaker 1: He is not waiting for you to become impressive. He
30:27
Speaker 1: never was. The chapter opens by telling you that no
30:31
Speaker 1: one has ever seen God, and it closes by promising
30:35
Speaker 1: heaven standing open. Between those two lines is a person
30:40
Speaker 1: you can go to. That is the whole message of
30:43
Speaker 1: John 1, and it is why it is the most
30:45
Speaker 1: important chapter in the Bible. Come and see. If this
30:49
Speaker 1: video helped you grow deeper in God's Word, I want
30:52
Speaker 1: to personally invite you to be part of what we
30:55
Speaker 1: are building here. Every video on this channel takes many
30:59
Speaker 1: hours of study and careful research to make sure we
31:02
Speaker 1: bring you content that is faithful to Scripture and worthy
31:06
Speaker 1: of your time. If you would like to support this
31:09
Speaker 1: mission and help us keep making these videos, you can
31:13
Speaker 1: find a link in the description below to give a
31:16
Speaker 1: one-time gift or become a monthly supporter. Every gift, no
31:21
Speaker 1: matter the size, goes directly toward creating more content like this.
31:27
Speaker 1: And if you are not in a position to give
31:29
Speaker 1: right now, that is completely fine. The best thing you
31:34
Speaker 1: can do is subscribe, share this video with someone who
31:37
Speaker 1: needs to hear it, and keep studying God's Word with us.
31:42
Speaker 1: Thank you for being here, and may God bless you richly.