Week 9 - John 4:46-54 - Healing from a Distance

Normally, two witnesses are required to be legitimate (Deuteronomy 17:6; 19:15)  While Jesus had the forerunner of John the Baptist, both are actually individual testimonies.  

Jesus acknowledges the issue and the Pharisees attack him for it, but Jesus points to the confirming works and therefore to God, the Father as the second witness.  

John 5:30-36

 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.

The statement “greater than John” means he is not relying simply on the prophetic testimony.  Rather it is the Father whose testimony is confirming.

John 8:13-18

So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.”

John the Evangelist, in fact organizes this Gospel around seven confirming signs.  The second of which is in our passage (John 4:46-54) and confirms His omnipotence by healing a person from a distance.

Week 8 - John 4:1-42 - The Samaritan Woman

Unlike today, when all we need to do is open a tap, all the water that this woman used for daily life had to be carried from its source to her home.

Jacob’s Well was different than the nearby springs (ten-minute walk).  Jacob had purchased the plot of land (Genesis 33:18-19) near Shechem, but that would not have included one of those precious springs.  

The well was hand dug to be independent of those surface level springs and the people that used them to water their animals.  Because it was hand dug and deep, it was special.  It was very good water very suitable for drinking, but every bucket meant hauling it up 100-150ft.

The idea of having such water welling up (v. 14) more than caught her attention!

As a youth we hiked the 100-mile trail between Mt. Katahdin and the little town of Monson in Maine.  Along that trail, we reached the Potaywadjo spring in full flood.  Water gushed from the spring, and we filled every container we had with its delicious water.  It was large enough for two of us to relax in its waters after a hot day of hiking, and from it ran what would be called a river.

Our Lord Jesus Christ offered this woman (and us) such a spring welling up inside us.

John 4:13-14

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

When  the town received the testimony of the woman and confirmed it themselves revival broke out (John 4:39-42).

Week 7 - John 3:22-36 - On Baptism

Jewish immersion was rooted in the cleansings found in the Law (Leviticus 6,11,13-17) and the Pool of Siloam (John 9) and Pool of Bethesda (John 5:2-9) near the Temple Mount were used for this purpose.  These were self-administered.

The baptisms of John and of Jesus were however not for purification but rather repentance (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3; Matthew 3:11; Acts 13:24; Acts 19:4) and were not self-administered.  

A legal discussion (zētēsis) with an individual and John's disciples arose over the difference.  During this debate the baptisms that the disciples of Jesus were performing surfaced.  Jesus was one or two days away from Jerusalem and John the Baptist was 6 or 7 days away.  They were not on the way to the Temple, but rather pulled people away from the temple.  

Mark 1:4-5

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

No other itinerant preacher of the time, nor any other prophet of the Old Testament performed such baptisms.  While Judaism later adopted baptism as an initiatory rite for proselytes, there is no pre-70 AD evidence of its use. 

It is also not part of the Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:1–21) to which Jesus was not submitting when He was baptized, for Jesus drank wine (Matthew 11:18–19), touched the dead (Mark 5:41), and He cut His hair (no account of him not doing so).  This assertion unfortunately is frequently heard.

So, these baptisms were innovative.  All Old Testament washings needed to be repeated.  The baptisms of John and Jesus were one time.  

Acts 19:1-7

And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John's baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. There were about twelve men in all.

Note please the phrases “Into John’s Baptism” and “baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus”.  

Baptism is a transition from a before state to an after state.  The individual ever after becomes identified by that name.

John 3:31-33

He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.

In taking their baptism, the individual declared the testimonies of John the Baptist or Jesus Christ were true.  

But more than that, in taking their baptism they are saying that God’s testimony heard by John and by Jesus is true.

1 John 5:9-12

If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

So, what statement did they hear God make?

Matthew 3:17

. . . and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Matthew 17:5

He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

God is true.

  

Week 6 - John 3:1-21 - Phone a Friend

Desperate to talk with Jesus, Nicodemus asked a friend to arrange a meeting with Jesus at night.  There were no street lamps.  Night meant that he would not be recognized for he was not on official business.  Unlike when multiple representatives investigated the ministry of John the Baptist (John 1:19), he came on his own, but not alone.

That friend was unnamed, but present throughout the entire conversation that evening and recorded it for us (See Ellicott' Commentary)!  Note the use of "we":

John 3:2b
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

This is a second time when John the Apostle and author leaves his own name out of the narrative.  John, though not a member of the Sanhedrin, was close to the High Priest's family.  He, for example, was how Peter was admitted to the courtyard that awful night when Jesus was arrested (John 18:15–16).  

The conversation that took place was deliberately confused.  Jesus used a Greek word that had a double meaning (anōthen).  The ESV translates it "born again" but adds the second meaning in the margin "born from above".  Repeatedly Nicodemus heard "born again" when Jesus meant "born from above".  The translation is not wrong, the duality is deliberate.  To clarify Jesus says definitively:

John 3:5-6

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Then again, and very deliberately Jesus uses the word pneuma, which also has a double meaning of either spirit or wind.   Jesus masterfully describes God's sovereign choice in election using this duality:

John 3:8

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Election, though invisible, is observable.   It is God's choice.

Lastly, Jesus explains to the searching Nicodemus the way of salvation and what is to take place.  From the Old Testament He explained that no one, on their own, ascended to Heaven.  Salvation is from God.

John 3:13-15

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

What comes next is the most often memorized verse in the Bible, whose King James-era use of "so" clouds the meaning.  Today, we use "so" to amplify, as in "He was so tired".  The Greek word  houtō(s), however,  means instead “in this way” (See for examples John 3:8,14).

Like Moses and the bronze serpent, God would love the world by raising up His only begotten Son as free gift of salvation:

John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John gave Nicodemus front-row seats to hear for the first time that salvation would be by Christ alone, by grace alone, and by faith alone.