What it Says... What you See?

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
(John 6:37 ESV)

What do you hear when you read this statement from Jesus?

The vast majority of Christians today... read the statement of Jesus this way: 'All who come to me the Father will give me.'

In other words... we come... we decide.

'Then the Father recognizes our decision and makes us gifts to his Son.' But that is not the way Jesus taught it. Jesus said, 'The ones whom the Father has given to Me will come to Me -- every one of them."

Sometimes the teachings of Jesus are difficult. Will you listen to them, re-interpret them, or just plain ignore them?

(I preached on this passage of scripture this past Sunday. More than one person walked away questioning... but what I loved was that they weren't questioning me... as far as I could tell... they were questioning Jesus. In a good way!)

Preaching from the Gospels

The challenge of preaching from the Gospels is, in part the challenge of preaching from narrative.  The best of Western seminaries and theological colleges reinforce the cultural bent toward the abstract, and fill students' heads with the importance of grammatical, lexicographical exegesis. Such exegesis is, of course, of enormous importance. But in students who do not have a feel for literature, it can have the unwitting effect of so focusing on the tree, indeed on the third knot of the fourth branch from the bottom of the sixth tree from the left, that the entire forest remains unseen, except perhaps as a vague and ominous challenge.

I am so glad that I have been reading this commentary by Carson.  I absolutely know that I could easily miss the forest for the trees, so to speak. My tendency is to drill deep on each verse and attempt to figure out what that verse is about.  I love the wealth of information that can be found in each individual sentence.  I don't want to miss any small bit of divine inspiration, and I don't want anyone else to miss it either.  But I think that he makes a very good point in his recommendation for John.

I want the people at Edgewood to see the forest.  I know that they might miss a tree or two along the way, but if they would but see the big picture.  Carson adds to this by saying,

Rightly done, preaching from the Gospels enables a congregation to put its Bible together, and then to find the Bible's deepest and most transforming application emerging from this vision.  To put the matter another way, John's stated purpose in composing the Fourth Gospel is not that his readers might believe, but that his readers might believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus, and that in believing they might have life in his name.

Adding more to his advice on preaching through John, he adds this final bit of opinion, that I am seriously taking to heart:

...those who set out to expound John's Gospel, as opposed to one of the Synoptics, often find themselves enmeshed in 'vain repetition'. John's vision is more narrowly focused than that of the Synoptists. For all the wealth of his presentation of Jesus, his own application, made again and again with driving force, is that his readers should believe. Many a preacher has begun a series on this book only to find that his application is becoming boring even to his own ears, and abandoned the series at ch. 7 or ch. 9 or the like.

He goes on to say that the series should go on to " ... focus on Jesus himself, on the fathomless Christological wealth bound up  in this Gospel."

I would be the preacher enmeshed in vain repetition.  I know I would. I hope to avoid that by heeding this godly advice and focusing on the forest even though my brain loves gazing at the trees.


The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary)

windows into the reality of God

Yesterday I read through the entire Gospel According to John.  I did this, and will hopefully do this several more times, as preparation for our upcoming study on this Gospel.  I also started blogging my way, verse by verse, through this book.  I am up to John 1:12 as of this morning.  To cap it off, I started reading some commentaries on John, to get a better feel for the book.  It has been very interesting and enlightening, after only a few days, but it has also had a negative effect on me: I am starting to feel overwhelmed by this task. I am starting to realize that this Gospel account, even though the simplest of people can read it and find encouragement and insight, it is also very, very deep.

It's uniqueness was my first clue.  Now, I have known for quite a long time that John was different than the other three gospel accounts, but I didn't realize how unique it actually was.

It omits so many things that [the other gospel accounts] include.  The Fourth Gospel has no account of the Birth of Jesus, of His Baptism, of His Temptations; it tells us nothing of the Last Supper, nothing of Gethsemane, and nothing of the Ascension.  It has no word of the healing of any people possessed by devils and evil spirits. And, perhaps most surprising of all, it has no parables...
William Barclay, The Daily Bible Study Series, The Gospel of John (Volume I)

Some of those differences I was aware of, but more than one of them was a surprise to me.

These unique aspects, along with many other tidbits that John includes, that the other Three Gospels do not, are not meant to be interesting points of trivia, so you can win that next game of Bible Trivial Pursuit.  No, this is important to the whole understanding of this book.  Why did John not include these other items, what was his goal, what was he trying to get across.  Why was John so selective in the stories that he did include?

William Barclay, learning from Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 230), shares what he believes is the key insight into understanding this Scripture.

The feeding of the five thousand is followed by the long discourse on the Bread of Life (chapter 6); the healing of the blind man springs from the saying that Jesus in the Light of the World (chapter 9); the raising of Lazarus leads up to the saying that Jesus is the resurrection and the life (chapter 11).  To John the miracles were not simply single events in time; they were illustrations, examples, insights into that which God is always doing and what Jesus always is; they are windows into the reality of God. ...

He goes on to say,

John did not see the events of Jesus' life simply as events in time; he saw them as windows looking into eternity, and he pressed towards the spiritual meaning of the events and the words of Jesus' life in a way that the other three gospels did not attempt.
William Barclay

I am seeing these glimpses through the windows already in my own reading of John, and it is making my head spin.  I wish I had more time to study this book before I start preaching it, but I believe that God is leading me to this Gospel account for just these reasons.  With several new people at our church, I believe that what they need to see and learn most of all is who this Jesus actually is.  I suppose I will just have to use the extra time that God has given me.

If you are the praying sort, I would appreciate your prayers, that I might speak boldly the mystery of the gospel. (Ephesians 6:19-20)