Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hi, I'm Josh.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: And I'm Gabriel.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: And today on reading the Gospel, we are studying the event, John's Ex. Epilogue. We're going to be reading from John, chapter 20, verse 30 and 31, and also John, chapter 21, verse 24 and 25. Follow along with us.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book.
But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
And by believing, you may have life in his name.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has written these things. And we know that his testimony is true.
Now, there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
A professor once made a statement where he said, the Bible is not a history book.
You know, while it does give history, that is not the purpose of the Bible. The Bible reveals how God works and how God works to save humanity through flawed humanity.
And I get this in these two, in these two sections that we read that this is not a life work of Jesus Christ. This is what God is giving us to know how to be saved. You know, it's not everything Jesus ever did, but it is what we need to know Jesus Christ and to know what he did for us.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: It's not a complete biography.
Even if there is a lot about the life of Jesus Christ, it is a revelation from God showing us who Jesus Christ was.
And I like the conclusion, the summary of the whole book, that Jesus is the Christ, the Promised One, the Messiah that everyone was waiting for, starting with Eve and Adam.
And it was prophesied by major prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, and he is the Son of God.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: And this is what's unique about Christianity versus other religions in the world.
A lot of other religions in the world have a creation story. They have a flood story. They have good and bad. They have, you know, commandments of some sort. They have all these things. But in most of those other religions, you obtain eternal life by your good works.
However, with Jesus Christ, he came and died for us. And we attain eternal life not based on our own merits, not based on how good we are or what we do, based solely on that gift that he gave.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: It's the focus away from a checklist to a relationship.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: And so as we move away from that checklist and come to accept that gift, it should give us the assurance of salvation, right?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: And by believing, you may have life in his name.
It is as simple as that.
If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, he is the Promised one from the Old Testament.
And if you believe that he came to die for you or instead of you, you will have life in his name.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: So, Paul in First Corinthians 3:1:2.
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit, but as people who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.
Indeed, you are still not ready.
Early on, I used to think that the milk was John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son and that the, the meat of the Gospel was work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. And you know those verses on we need to submit ourselves to God.
But the more and more I become a Christian, the more and more I see that flipping around that the, the milk is the checklist, that when we come to God, we want this checklist. We want to know, what do I need to do? But as we grow closer to God, as we find more about him, gets more basic to the John 3:16, that, that we're saved by this gift and that life is something God is working within us. He's changing who we are. He's making us a new creation each and every day. And it's his work. And so it moves us away from that perfection checklist and moves us to a relationship, relationship focused journey with Christ.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: And this is the essence of Christianity.
It is centered about Jesus Christ.
And this is why we're called Christians after His name, Jesus Christ.
And the essence of many non Christian religions is what I can do.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Focus is, is on me.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And so John here has wrapped, is wrapping this up. He's given us the information about Jesus and it should be enough.
And I think this is a point we need to touch on.
I would like more detail.
I would have loved it if the apostles had written more, you know, written 100 times as much as they did. Told us what Jesus did as a child, you know, did he, did he whittle. He grew up with a father who was a carpenter. You know, as he's going around with the disciples, did he pick up sticks and pull out his pocket knife and carve just twiddling around, tell me about his food. What did he eat? What did he do? We don't have this.
And we need to be satisfied with the information we have.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: I really appreciate what you're saying that some people are focusing on the details so much, and they even believe that, you know, the devil is in the details.
But this passage says that Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples.
What we have in the Gospel of John and all the Gospels, we have the essentials necessary to understand who Jesus Christ was, that he was the Christ, the Son of God, and we have all the evidence, the minimum evidence necessary to believe in his name and have eternal life.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: And so this is why we encourage you, the listener, to read the Bible on a daily basis to find Jesus not just in the Gospel, as we talked about early on in this, this project, this reading the Gospel. We didn't start right in the Gospels. We went to see Jesus in different places in the Bible that we can find God and his workings throughout.
And so broaden your horizons, but spend time each day just getting to know him more. And as we get to know him more, we end up loving him more and desiring to be like him. And God does this work in us.
Philippians says, he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Knowing him more is not about knowing more details about him.
It is knowing him personally, experiencing him in different situations of life, being able to relate to him from different perspectives, and also being able to understand him in, in, in many situations of life.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, we know how friendship works on a human to human basis. So first of all, you have acquaintances, and an acquaintance might be, you know, someone at the grocery store who checks out your food all the time, you see them constantly, so you know they exist, but you don't know much about them.
And to move from an acquaintance to a friend, you share stories.
And so if you go to that person, you start sharing stories, who you are, who they are, find out more about them, they start becoming a friend.
To move from a friend to a close relationship, a bonded relationship, we could say that happens by sharing experiences.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Share your heart.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: And as we have experiences, we become bonded with that person. You and I, we, we hiked Long's Peak. You know, that was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. And, and it brought us closer together.
We rode around Lake Michigan.
We were, some of us were on motorcycles and you were coming along and supporting us in the car. And those are things that bond us together.
And the same thing's true with Jesus.
You know, we can hear about him or see churches around and he might be an acquaintance, but to, to get to know him or to become friends with him, we share stories. And so we can read these Stories, the, The Gospel of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and the rest of the Bible.
But we want that bonded relationship. And to get that bonded relationship, we need to experience life together.
And you can do that by spiritual vacations, you know, going places.
Israel's the one that jumps to the top of the list. Or Rome to see the coliseums and everything over there, or Turkey, the seven churches.
When you have experiences like that, it brings the Bible to life.
Going down to see the ark encounter in Kentucky and walk through that big ark, there's lots of things that we.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Can do, and we may have some small experiences. When you ask the Lord in the morning, I want to help someone today. Show me, open the door and help me to identify that opportunity. And that person might be your neighbor who's going through a rough patch of life or just came back from the hospital and needs someone to fix a dinner or to wash dishes or, you know, to clean the.
Cut the grass or so.
And you do that together with the Lord. And you experience the Lord in a very practical ways. The Lord that values your neighbor as much as yourself, the Lord who guides you in the direction of service, because Jesus Christ did that. And he invites us to serve with him together, as the Bible says, yoked to him so we can do it together.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: And I call that divine appointments. You know, pray in the morning, God give me a divine appointment. And at the end of the day, when we see that God put us in the right place at the right time to serve someone, those are the things that makes Jesus real to us.
It's not as much reading the Bible, it's seeing Jesus in our lives, experiencing him active and working within us. The Bible definitely points, and it's vital, vital part in this process.
But we need a living relationship. We need a personal connection with Jesus.
And so we invite the listener to, to get out there and to pray these prayers, to spend time with him each day, but to look for ways where you can experience life together with God.
Let's pray.
Father. God, we are so thankful that we have the gospels that we have of the Bible, because this gives us a picture of you.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Without this, we would all be running around on our own designs and, and thoughts about who you are.
And Father, honestly, it's easy as a Christian to get complacent and not come back and say, well, I learned about God when I was a child, but I pray that we will always come back to your word, that we will make it a part of our day.
But more than that, we will experience you within our lives that our eyes will be open to see your blessings and that you will be able to use us each and every day to help others.
So please come dwell in our lives in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Sa.
