Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 4 Study # 5
December 18, 2022
Broadlands, Louisiana
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Thesis: Part II of Author-John's record of Witness-John's "witness" starts with its "setting": "Who are you?" needs to be understood in light of "Why do you care?"
Introduction: In our study last week, there was a serious omission regarding Author-John's second conclusion to Witness-John's first statement of "witness". That omission had to do with why Author-John declared that the "Only Begotten God" is in "the bosom of The Father". The word translated "bosom" is used in the New Testament to refer to the chest of a man in respect to the fact that that is where the heart is beating. I conclude that this signals the metaphorical issue of the "heart": that place in man where his values are kept and guarded. Thus, the statement by Author-John is this: because no man has ever seen God, the only one who truly knows His heart is the one who resides "in His bosom". This reveals that one of the crucial issues of Witness-John's declaration of Jesus as "The Infinite God" is that His values are ordered with "Grace and Truth" being in a much higher place than "Law and Justice". Moses was the instrument of the revelation of "Law and Justice", but that revelation created, in the dulled minds of fallen men, a false picture of a God Whose major focus is upon Justice and its corollary of "Judgment". Law and Justice was actually intended by God to be a high pressure method of pushing men in the direction of "Grace and Truth". This makes "John's" message that "Yahweh is gracious" even more crucial since that characterization is the "Truth" of Jesus Christ, and that "Truth" is more important than "God is a Just Judge". He is, and make no mistake about it, "a Just Judge", but He is more interested in the exercise of "Grace" than He is of exercising "Justice". Why else do you think He is tolerating the extreme rise of wickedness in our generation?
This morning, we are going to move further into Author-John's record of Witness-John's "witness".
- I. Author-John's "Setting" For This Second Part Of Witness-John's "Witness".
- A. Recall to mind what Author-John said of Witness-John in 1:6-7.
- 1. He said that Witness-John is the agent of the faith that leads a person into the identity of "a child of God".
- 2. Jesus, on one occasion (Matthew 7:13-14), said that the way that leads to destruction is broad and the gate at the entrance of that way is very wide (with the consequence that far more people go through the wide gate than go through the "hard-to-discover narrow gate").
- 3. This means that Author-John is telling us that the "witness" of Witness-John is that "hard-to-discover narrow gate": it has to be if Witness-John is the agent of the faith that brings a person to Life.
- B. With the witness of Witness-John as the "gate", clearly Author-John is deliberately "squeezing" the "way of Life" down to the "narrow" boundaries of Witness-John's witness.
- 1. This makes the particulars of Witness-John's witness extremely crucial, so that the first fact (that The Word, by Witness-John's witness, is the Infinite God) means that no one comes to the faith that leads to the identity of "a child of God" who does not subscribe to Jesus as the Eternal Word of the Infinite God.
- 2. But this also raises the particulars of Witness-John's second set of facts to an extremely high level of importance.
- 3. And that raises Author-John's "stage-setting" words to a high level of importance.
- C. So, what does the fact that the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to quiz John about his identity tell us that is so important?
- 1. Their question was: Who are you?
- 2. My question is: Why do they care who he is?
- a. Who are they?
- b. What does their identity tell us about why they care?
- 3. My conclusion is that the only reason they care is that Witness-John's "witness" is gaining an enormous amount of "traction" in the minds of the people of the nation.
- a. This means that we have to ponder why the "traction" of Witness-John's witness is attracting their attention.
- b. There are really only two possibilities.
- 1) It is, at least superficially, "possible" that the reason is a healthy concern by the shepherds of the sheep as to what impact Witness-John's witness is having upon the relational life of the sheep.
- 2) But, the real concern, given the attitude these so-called shepherds of the sheep took once they heard Witness-John's answers, was not at all the health and lives of the sheep; but, rather, whether the sheep were going to be drifting away from the flock of "their" shepherding work.
- a) As Author-John develops his message, we will find that he casts the Jews in an extremely distasteful light as "fleecers of the sheep" instead of "shepherds".
- b) This means that these "Jews" did not care at all for the lives of the sheep; they cared only for the profit they would gain from the fleeces of those sheep.
- 4. Thus I am led to the conclusion that "Who are you?" means "How can we discredit you in the eyes of the sheep by which we make ourselves important and wealthy?"
- D. Witness John's identity as the "squeeze point", thus means that we can begin to understand his "witness" by understanding why it caused the "Jews" to send representatives to ask "Who are you?"
- 1. Because our own journeys into the faith of the children of God depend upon "getting through the narrow gate", we need to understand how that gate exists as the squeeze point it is.
- 2. What is it that Witness John says in his "witness" that we need to hear?
