WE LIVE IN DAYS WHEN THE DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST is under assault. Along with the major cults, we have a surge in denials of his true nature and victory by TV preachers and even some mainline denominations. It was into just such an atmosphere that John wrote his Gospel, his parting gift to the Body of Christ.
John did not repeat the biographies already in circulation. He compiled a very different document, carefully selecting the words, actions and claims of Jesus, to prove once and for all time that ‘Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.’ (John 20:31)
In this brief, readable volume, Ray Barnett peels back the layers to show us how John’s knowledge of the Old Testament and his love for Christ combine to create a portrait like no other.
Whether a young believer, a study leader or Bible teacher, this guide to the public ministry of Jesus in John’s Gospel will enrich your understanding and warm your heart. Avoiding unnecessary technicalities, it opens a window into Jesus as John knew him.
ISBN: 979-8800383751
INTRODUCTION
An evening with John
If you could spend an evening in your own home with the apostle John, what would you ask him? What would you want him to talk about?
That would have been the situation for the Christians in Ephesus.[1] In those late first-century years, most meetings of believers would have been in homes. They would have met around the meal table, talking and listening. Imagine having John at a fellowship dinner in your own home!
What would John have talked about? He gives us a pretty strong clue in his first letter:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it… We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard… (1 John 1:1-3)
READ MOREOf all the people in the church, almost certainly John was the only one who had walked and talked with Jesus for those three eventful years. He ‘seen, heard and touched’ the Saviour. He had eaten the bread when the 5,000 were fed. He had been with Jesus on the mountain and seen him transfigured before his very eyes. He had been in the boat on that incredible night when Jesus had spoken the storm into silence. He was one of the only two people on earth to whom Jesus spoke from the cross.
Now probably eighty or ninety years old, he was still their first-hand connection to the truths that most believers only ever heard passed down second and third hand. What an amazing gift he must have been to the local believers. How they must have loved hearing him tell the stories. Adding real life, ‘I-was-there’ colour to the things they had heard.
Perhaps it was the people of his church who urged him to write. ‘John, before you go, write it down. Give us something to help us remember…’ But more likely, his driving motivation would have been the heresies spreading like cancer among the churches. Where the Gospel had spread, error was spreading and some of the heresies were gaining traction.
How could he sit by and allow know-it-all heretics who didn’t walk, talk and eat with Jesus, to peddle theories that bore no relationship to the reality of Christ as John knew him? Each of the other disciples had gone. If there were to be any final legacy from one of the twelve, it would need to be from him.
What he wrote was a document of such grandeur, such brilliance, that only someone who had walked and talked with Jesus and who was possessed by the Spirit of God could write.
I hope you learn to love it as I do. But even more so, to love Jesus as John did. The real Jesus. The one, ‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ (Colossians 2:3)
So, let’s begin…
[1] Legend suggests, with some reliability, that John lived in Ephesus in his old age. If that is not a correct record of history, wherever he lived the same situation would have occurred. People would have known him, sat with him and listened to him.
COLLAPSE
