Ohio Yearly Meeting's Podcast
So, if thee is interested in learning the differences between Conservative Quakers and other Quakers, or would like to understand differences between Quakers and other Christians, thee may well be at the right place. On the other hand, the Conservative Quaker perspective is so strikingly unique in contemporary society, that it will be a balm to many seeking spiritual fulfillment. To assist these seekers is the true intent of publishing our podcast.
A good many of the podcast installments will be presented by Henry Jason. Henry is knowledgeable in the Greek of the New Testament and has a fascinating way of tying the meaning of the original words with the writings of early Friends. Listening to him provides a refreshing view of scripture and is an excellent way to learn about original Quaker theology. Henry's podcasts are usually bible classes and so they are often interspersed with discussions, questions and insightful comments by his students.
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Ohio Yearly Meeting's Podcast
Conservative Friends Bible Study of The Gospel of John #12
John 6:40 - 7:18
We explore Jesus' challenging teaching about being "the bread of life" and what it means to eat his flesh and drink his blood, examining the Quaker understanding of spiritual nourishment beyond ritual.
• Distinction between the two meanings of "Jews" in John's Gospel—either ethnic Jews or specifically those opposed to Jesus
• Jesus' shocking language about eating his flesh and drinking his blood as a spiritual metaphor
• The Quaker understanding that inward spiritual feeding matters more than outward rituals
• Difference between physical symbols and the spiritual reality they represent
• The meaning of "It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless"
• How Jesus' teaching relates to communion/eucharist practices
• The significance of Jesus' brothers not believing in him initially
• The contrast between human language and spiritual realities
• The divine drawing that brings people to spiritual understanding
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me." Revelation 3:20
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Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Dicipline.
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Advice number one Use vigilant care, dear friends, not to overlook those promptings of love and truth which you may feel in your hearts, for these are the tender leadings of the Spirit of God. Nor should any of us resist God's working within us, for it is His redemptive love which strives to show us our darkness and to lead us to true repentance and to His marvelous light. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me. Revelation, chapter 3, verse 20. From Ohio Yearly Meetings.
Speaker 2:Book of Discipline. This is the Greek Bible study. This is session number 12. We are reading the Gospel according to John, and we left off at verse 40 in chapter 6. Okay, let's continue then, starting with verse 41.
Speaker 2:Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said I am the bread that came down from heaven. They were saying is not this Jesus, the of joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered them. Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the father who sent me, and I will raise that person up on the last day. It. It is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life, he has seen the Father. One may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
Speaker 2:In verse 41, again we have this word Jews. As I've mentioned a number of times. It has two meanings. One is the ordinary ethnic meaning of the people who are called Jewish, and the other, in this gospel and elsewhere, is that word that was then used later on to refer the same word that was then referring to the Jewish leaders and their followers who are opposed to Jesus and to Christians. And I believe that's the sense we have here. That second sense in verse 41. If you recall, jesus said man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, from the mouth of God. That reference to the Old Testament and to Jesus is also, I think my understanding is Jesus referring to that eternal spirit in him.
Speaker 2:And what we have here in this paragraph are some very basic, traditional, quaker understandings that, as it says in verse 45, the quote there, and they shall all be taught by God, that it is that divine spirit within us, the anointed one Christ within, that will be our teacher, so that we do not need any other teacher, any human teacher, to teach us any way, as great as that inward teacher can teach. And then, continuing that verse, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. It is God himself who is leading us to himself and to his Son. Within us, and of course, again here in 47. As we've seen before. Very truly, I tell you Whoever believes has eternal life. Whoever has that confidence and the subsequent obedience To that confidence, to that faith, has eternal life. They enter into that kingdom of God, that divine state of God. They are in union with God, and the continuing verses say the same. Any comments, questions?
Speaker 3:Henry, yes, in verse 41, you started to talk about the Jewss as not just a generic term, but a particular group of jews. Right, and so are they the ones that oppose jesus right, explicitly, explicitly uh, that's my understanding.
Speaker 2:Uh, let me just share a screen here. This word I've shown before is the word that means Jew, someone who is ethnically a Jew, and resurrection of Jesus and became a clear movement of understanding Jesus as the Messiah, that there were those who disagreed strongly among the leaders of the Jews as well as their followers, so that you have those two senses here One is that of anyone who is Jewish and then two is the sense of anyone who is opposed to and rejected Jesus as Messiah.
Speaker 3:Are those distinctions still functional among Jews today?
Speaker 2:That's an interesting question because yesterday, in a different Zoom meeting, someone was saying that Christian Israelis have somewhat not persecuted as such, but are looked down upon by other Jews in Israel. Percentage of Jews who became followers of Jesus and those who were converted to being followers. They were the ones that were opposed by those Jewish leaders who were in strong opposition to Jesus, to the growth of Christians, but they also were called Jew, and we'll see again and again in this gospel that you need to distinguish which meaning of this word Udayos it is. Is it just someone who is ethnically Jewish or is it one of these Jews who are opposed to Christians?
Speaker 2:History of Christianity that what you have here is that in the first century, christians were persecuted, were, you know, had a tough time with their fellow Jews, and by the end of that century, by the 80s, they were no longer allowed into the ordinary Jewish synagogues. They were persecuted as such, and so there was this kind of animosity there that you had In later centuries, following centuries, you know, third, fourth century. You then had this anti-Semitic development among Christians, the long, dark night of the apostasy that Fox and other early friends talked about, where Christians were becoming something very different than what they were in the first century, as to how they even would persecute Jews. I mean the long history of anti-Semitism that you have.
Speaker 3:So but does it work both ways, then is my question. I'm not following.
Speaker 2:So, but does it work both ways? Then is my question. I'm not following.
Speaker 3:Well, today we could have. There's a strand that's anti-Semitic, anti-jewish.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:But is there a strand of Jews who are anti-Christian?
Speaker 2:Yes, does it work both ways, then Was it thee who said something yesterday about that to me?
Speaker 5:Yes, my sister is an Israeli Christian and she has been persecuted in Israel. She has become an Israeli citizen and my nieces and nephews are all Israeli and some of them are Jewish by statehood but not by practice. So when my niece came to live with me, I asked her are you Jewish because you're Israeli? Are you Jewish by practice? Because I wanted to be able to feed her properly. And she said to me and this is five, six years ago, um, I'm just Jewish like everybody in Israel, so she's not a practicing Jew, and so this is current.
Speaker 3:At, least from my own personal family experience. Now those non-practicing Jews in Israel. Are they explicitly anti-Christian?
Speaker 5:Yes, some of them.
Speaker 3:And they do persecute the Christian Israelis.
Speaker 2:Yes, I know that's partly true, for sure, because there's a series of YouTube videos that an American Jew has done in Israel, asking Israeli Jews, as well as Palestinians, various questions as to how they perceive or what they think about this and that kind of policy or whatever, and it's interesting that you do get this mixture of opinions opposing opinions that's something I've not realized before that among some Jewish groups there is an explicit anti-Christian force at work, because they always act the way I have had over the years, like they're victims, of sort of people looking down at them for being Jewish, but they also then have the same attitude towards others, that they sort of feel victimized about themselves.
Speaker 2:I never realized that David wants to say something.
Speaker 4:I do I really want to urge against what I believe is a false equivalency? What I believe is a false equivalency. If we're looking at socio-political and historical dynamics, I think there's no question that Jewish people have been oppressed, persecuted, killed, subject of pogroms from imperial Rome through medieval Christendom up into the early 20th century. I guess I feel this because my best friend. As I was growing up he had very vivid stories about his grandparents escaping pogroms. Particularly in this week, so-called Holy Week. It was a chance for the Christians to go kill the Jews. Israel may have some power, I think legally there would be religious tolerance, but how individuals relate to those who are not Jewish, except by statehood? Looking at the broad span of the last two millennia, I really want us to keep this in perspective as to who has been persecuting whom.
Speaker 2:Right, that's what I'm saying. Initially it was one way in the first century, but then, as Christians became much more powerful, it reversed itself. I mentioned yesterday actually even with regard to myself, my mother's father who died when she was a child. His name is a Polish Jewish name, abramovsky Abramov, and I've talked to a Jewish friend of mine, an old friend, and he said probably at some point there was a conversion to Christianity by one of my ancestors I have no idea who, because my grandfather died when my mother was a little child but Abram is an older form of Abraham and Abramov Abramovsky, was the Polish name. So somewhere in my family something happened there. I mean, that name still is a Jewish name. There are Jews who have that name, so one can only guess.
Speaker 6:There's also a lot of prejudice in Israel among religious Jews against secular Jews and the other way around. So it's just plain a lot of people in Israel, it seems, who are annoyed at one another and don't treat each other very nicely.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's go on.
Speaker 2:I don't want to beat this horse any further, unlike America. Okay, let's continue. The Jews this is verse 52,. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Just as the living father sent me and I live because of the father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate and they died, but the one who eats this bread will live forever. He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
Speaker 2:We've talked about inward and outward understandings quite often and again. This is one thing that you find over and over again in this gospel according to John, where people are taking Jesus literally, and of course, it's impossible to take them literally here in terms of eating his flesh and his blood, but we're talking about spiritual nourishment, spiritual nutrition, that spirit that was in Christ Jesus, that same spirit that is in us, potentially as a seed, and may only stay as a seed unless we allow it to grow. Feed it by eating this inward flesh and inward blood. There's a lot of misunderstanding, I think, blood there's a lot of misunderstanding, I think of that too, even today, in terms of how most Christian denominations look at the Lord's Supper or Communion or Eucharist or whatever term they use, that you need to have the outward, physical bread and wine, whereas what really matters is feeding on this eternal spirit, this eternal bread in wine, this blood in flesh.
Speaker 4:Yes, david, I wonder if the early generation of friends got into the disputes that large segments of Protestantism had against Catholicism on the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Speaker 2:I know that Robert Barclay talks about it and he has a very good discussion of the true food, the spiritual nutrition here that we're talking about in this paragraph.
Speaker 2:But others do, of course, as well. In so many cases, what friends are looking at is the spiritual understanding of something just like with baptism water baptism being baptized, being immersed in water. It doesn't do anything unless you have that true inward baptism, that true inward immersion into the living spirit. We can go back to the Great Commission, in chapter 28 of Matthew, where Jesus commands people to go forth and teach all peoples, make students of all peoples, baptizing, immersing them into the name, into the basic nature, the essence of God as Father, as Son and as Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:So many people take that as a command for water baptism, even if water baptism, which was practiced in early Christianity, it continued as an initiation rite that the Jews had still do. But they have lost the real need to look at it as what really matters is that true spiritual immersion. Is it all just words? Is it all just physical water? In 2 Peter it says baptism isn't really the washing away of the filth of the body, you know, the immersing you in water to wash you, clean you off physically. It's that inward baptism that really matters in terms of one's conscience before God, one's conscience and one's consciousness of God, and that's that pledge of a good conscience.
Speaker 7:So even all these millennia later, it still sounds shocking, and he says it over and over and over and over to eat my flesh and drink my blood. I can only imagine how shocking that was to the Jews. And why did he do that?
Speaker 2:Well, that's an interesting question. I'm not sure I can answer it, but well, maybe in part. If you look at the first three gospels Matthew, mark and Luke they all talk about the Last Supper, the Last that jesus and had with his apostles and other disciples, and that's where you so many talk about. The institution of the eucharist is happening there, when he talked about his words here. You know, this is my body, this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me, and then even further until I come, and that's an important addition there that until I come.
Speaker 2:Well, if you reach that final spiritual stage of having the experience of christ within you in such a full manner, then you don't need to have these outward symbols, because what happens so often with these outward signs these baptism and bread and water is that they become so much more important physically.
Speaker 2:You pay more attention to the signs where you should be focusing in on what they are only representations of. If you've lost the actual substance of what is being talked about and you start just saying we've got to have wine and bread and we have to have a water baptism, you've lost it already and I think that's what Franza understood as having happened in the long, dark night of the apostasy of Christianity. I don't know if that partially answers your question, because it would be very shocking for a Jew like Jesus to talk about this in this way. I'm sure they his apostles probably. I'm wondering how much they understood at that time, you know, but clearly it became clear to them after the resurrection. We have to use human language to talk about spiritual things, and that's just the nature of the problem. At times we're required to use human language if we want to convey something.
Speaker 8:When I read this it makes me feel quite sad, having been raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and as one reads that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his, his blood, you have no life in you, which the catholics do believe. And yet if you were to marry a divorced person or become divorced and there are other aspects too although the priest would absolve you of your sins, he would not give you the freedom to take the Eucharist, and so I would think that saying that to somebody under those circumstances doesn't seem very Christ-like to me.
Speaker 2:I've never thought so most Catholics are not aware that of the change that happened over the centuries, even with Catholic theology. I read this many years ago it was St Augustine, like in the fourth, fifth century, talked about the Eucharist as being a symbol and that would have gotten him burnt at a stake a thousand years later if he had said that. So there was a real development of theology and Catholicism as to look at transubstantiation, consubstantiation, all those various understandings that you have and all the fights you have and you know wrangling and piles of problems with other Christian denominations fighting each over as to the meaning of what's going on. Early friends and faithful traditional friends have always understood it as a true spiritual communion, a true spiritual union that we're talking about here. The symbols, the outward words here they're outward. What really matters is the inward reality is the inward reality.
Speaker 6:I think one of the reasons why he uses such shocking language is because he really has to communicate that this is something totally different from anything that people he's talking to have known, and so he uses this really impossible language to communicate something that they have no sense of the possibility of of the spirit within them being radically changed from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness. So he wants to use language that indicates that this is an inward change, that something that is in him is now going to be in them. What else could he have said that would communicate that inward change? Shocking them out of their ordinary way of thinking.
Speaker 2:In verse 56, it said those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me. They continue in my spirit. In other words, and I in them, I am in them, my spirit is in them. This is at the very basis of quaker understanding of a spiritual union with god, these kinds of in me and me in them, and I in them and I in the Father. They occur again and again in this gospel and in the three epistles.
Speaker 6:This idea of being consumed goes all the way back to the manger story. The word manger means food trough, and it's where the animals eat. So this is indicating that the animals consuming this new life will become changed.
Speaker 2:I could go into a church service and partake of bread and wine and I don't know if it would do any different, make me any different in any way. Actually, I'm just remembering something Robert Barclay does mention that he felt maybe there are times when some Christian does partake of the outward bread and wine and has that experience at that time, but that it's not necessarily connected with just having that bread and wine, so that it's not confined to a given rite or ritual. That's very important from a Quaker perspective.
Speaker 6:The point I was making was that there's a kind of symbolic use of the word manger as the place where Christ is laid. He's in the place where the food is. He's laid in the place where the food is.
Speaker 2:Okay, can we continue? All right, verse 60. When many of his disciples heard it, they said this teaching is difficult. Who can accept it? But jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them does this offend you? Then? What if you were to see the son of man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life the flesh. Flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life, but among you there are some who do not believe. But Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe and who was the one that would betray him. And he said for this reason, I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the father. In verse 63 it is the spirit that gives life. The flesh is useless.
Speaker 2:If you remember what paul says in second corinthians, 3, 6 the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life, you see something very similar here. There's a distinction made between the outward and the inward, again, the letter. There is the greek word grammar, which means a letter of the alphabet, but it means anything written, a letter of the alphabet. A letter of the alphabet is something. It means anything written, a letter of the alphabet, a letter of the alphabet is something outward, it's a physical letter. Anything written also is something physical. But what is the content within something that is written? That may or may not be so physical? The spirit can be in something outward, like something written.
Speaker 2:It's that contrast that that you find over and over again here in in john especially, the words that I have spoken to you are spirit in life. The outward words I have spoken to you are spirit and eternal life. It is a spirit that gives life. The flesh is useless, and that's the point I was trying to make with regard to bread and wine. There's nothing in bread and wine that we understand. If you believe in transubstantiationiation, you believe that those physical elements become the body and blood of jesus of christ. But our understanding is that it's the spirit there that matters, as always.
Speaker 2:Okay, and again in verse 65, no one can come to me unless it is granted by the father. I think, again, friends have always understood this is always true. Even preaching to others, it is god in them, somehow, having them see and respond to whatever spirit is being preached to them. You know that of god in me is answering, corresponding, responding to that of God in thee. That's what we're talking about here. All right, let's finish this chapter. Because of this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the 12, do you also wish to go away? Simon Peter answered him is a devil. He was speaking of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him. Any comments there?
Speaker 4:Well, I'm looking at verse 68 and the last sentence, different renditions. You have the words of eternal life. You have a message of eternal life. Looking at the Greek word oops, slipped away 68? 68, yeah, it was a word. I hadn't seen that translated word or message, but it's not logos.
Speaker 2:No, it's remeta. Okay, that's the plural form of that word. What should?
Speaker 2:we know about rhema, rhema. Well, rhema means word. Now, you know, logos, which is the word that often gets translated as word like word of God, doesn't usually mean word. This is the word that usually means word, okay, okay, and the plural is rhata T-A. And you know it's somewhat synonymous. It's in some ways a synonym of logos, but logos has this much broader sense of the whole kit and caboodle. It could be a speech that somebody gives, a sentence, a talk, a paragraph, and sometimes even the singular here will be translated as plural, because it means you know what someone had just said. We heard his logos, we heard his words, everything he said yeah, go ahead, david.
Speaker 4:Well, one of the translations I look at a-worn copy of a new testament my mom had by uh, an english scholar, weymouth and I. I sort of like how this is rendered. It says your teachings tell us of eternal life. This translator felt that it was more than just the literal words. It's the message.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to look up. It does have a few meanings. Let me just Reema. A word is saying an expression or statement of any kind. Okay, so that's kind of like what I was saying. Where it matches logos, it also means an event that can be spoken about, a thing, an object, a matter or an event. That doesn't mean that here, obviously.
Speaker 4:I guess I'm bringing this up because it takes us beyond literalism of looking at individual words, but rather the sense of a message. So if it's rendered as teachings, it would mean all that you are giving us, not words to memorize.
Speaker 2:This word, rhema, is related to an English word, rhetoric. It's someone who you know is good with words. Logos is much more common. Because of the religious connotation of the word logos, in many cases I think rhema can also mean a noun, part of speech or something. I'm not mistaken. It's not in my new testament dictionary, but I have a vague memory of that from somewhere, but I'd have to check on that. Anyway, they are partially synonymous. So all right, let's go on to chapter seven.
Speaker 2:After this, jesus went about in galilee. He did not not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him Again. Those aren't his fellow Jews, but those who were opposed to him as Messiah. Now the Jewish festival of booths was near, so his brother said to him leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works that you are doing, for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world, for not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them my time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify against it that its works are evil. Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come. After saying this, he remained in Galilee.
Speaker 4:What do we do about the brothers?
Speaker 2:What do we do about the brothers? What do we do about the brothers? After the death and resurrection of Jesus, james, the brother of the Lord, became the head of the church in Jerusalem and in the gospel according to the Hebrews, which we only have fragments left, it mentions an appearance of Jesus to his brother, james, and, if you recall, there are other instances in the New Testament where you see some of the prominence of James, the brother of Jesus. Paul himself at some point goes up and sees James. James was perhaps one of the most important Christians at that time. He was martyred too. There obviously was a change there in James before and after. I think it was in Mark. Did we read where, like his brothers and sisters, they were thinking or his family thought that he was a little crazy what he was doing? I can't recall exactly where that passage is. So there is this kind of unbelief at this point and even some sarcasm too. Go up to Jerusalem, maybe you'll get some followers there.
Speaker 2:The interesting thing here too, if you look at Matthew, mark and Luke compared to John, matthew, mark and Luke talk mostly about stuff happening in Galilee, whereas John mostly about things happening in and around Jerusalem happening in and around Jerusalem. You know we got two completely different traditions of people or persons who are the source for the writings of the three synoptic gospels and of John. John makes it clear that there was at least a three-year ministry of Jesus because he talks about these different festivals, whereas in the first three gospels, the synoptic gospels, it all seems to all happen in one year. But it's clear from John that there was at least three years of ministry of Jesus. This is just a kind of interesting point that the sources for these four gospels seem to be two main sources the sources for John and the sources for Mark and the other two gospels that built on Mark, with additional material added to what was in Mark that you find as well in Luke and Matthew.
Speaker 4:I'm curious to know whether Roman Catholic theology would insist that these were half-brothers, or if there's a Okay, yeah, that's an oh that, an oh that question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, my understanding is that the official roman catholic belief is that these were not brothers, these are cousins. Now, orthodox christians I believe perhaps all orthodox eastern orthodox christians see them as half brothers, and my understanding of most protestants they do see them as brothers. This is a kind of complex question here. One interesting fact is that at that time and I can say even today, I know Russian in Russian, the word for brother, brat, also means cousin, Мой брат, my brother. Now, if I want to be precise, I mean that means my brother or my cousin. But if I want to be specific, I would say moi dvajuradni brat, my cousin, my second-born cousin, something like that. But the word brat means both cousin and brother and in that sense the Roman Catholic Church is taking that. However, there is a Greek word for cousin as well as for brother, and the Apostle Paul uses both words brother and cousin in his epistles and when he's talking about James, he's talking about the brother of Jesus, he's not saying the cousin of Jesus.
Speaker 2:Now, there might be some argument. Well, maybe he's following the Hebrew tradition of maybe the same thing as in Russian. You know where the word can mean both cousin and brother. I hate to get involved in fights like this With Roman Catholics. You get, then, involved in terms of their understanding of the virgin birth, that Mary had only one son, and when you're talking about the brothers and sisters of Jesus, you're talking about cousins, because they have to make it clear about the virgin birth. There's a lot more you can say about this. David, you probably know a lot of it too. You can go on with these kinds of fights, but where do they leave you? Does this help your spiritual life, get you closer to God? I don't know. I don't think so. I do know there are some Catholics who do believe that Jesus' brothers were brothers, but that's not the official understanding, but that's not the official understanding.
Speaker 4:Henry, the only reason I raise that is that if we acknowledge that they are biological brothers, it reaffirms for me the full humanity of Jesus of Nazareth and it goes against the attempt look at him only heavenly yeah, david, read verse 42.
Speaker 2:They were saying is not this jesus the son of joseph, whose father and mother we know? You got a problem there with virgin birth too. If you understand we? I could talk more about this, but I don't. Again, I don't think we can get anywhere worth it. That matters, you know, in terms of how Jews understood birth, and you know that the body came from the woman but the spirit, the anima, came from the father. Well, they had, you know, just limited understanding of what was involved in being born and conception and all that. Anyway, it's not a fight. I want to fight. Okay, we're almost done. Let me see if. I just want to read a couple more sentences here. Yeah, 10 through 13.
Speaker 2:But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but, as it were, in secret. The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying where is he? And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying he is a good man, others were saying no, he is deceiving the crowd. Yet no one would speak openly about him for fear of the Jews. Now, all these people are Jewish anyway. So this word Jew here is not an ethnic Jew, it's those who are in opposition. Whenever you see that word, you just have to sort out which meaning it has, and it's usually very clear.
Speaker 2:About the middle of the festival, jesus went up into the temple and began to teach. The Jews were astonished at it, saying how does this man have such learning when he has never been taught? And Jesus answered them my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own. Those who speak on their own seek their own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true and there is nothing false in him. Again, this is the spirit of Christ the anointing in Jesus, fully in Jesus. As it says elsewhere, the fullness of the Godhead was in Jesus, as Paul says, a fullness, complete, and that is why he is the anointed one. He was absolutely human and if you recall the temptations in the desert, they'd make no sense. They'd be crazy to have temptations. If he couldn't be tempted and give into them, as a human, he could have given into them. He did not. He was fully obedient to God, even to death on a cross, and that is a model for us too, I believe, in terms of listening to the spirit of christ within us. You know, it may only be a seed initially, but if we feed on that eternal spirit, that flesh and blood, eternal flesh and blood in us, it will grow. We will grow spiritually into a more complete, a more fully developed, a more perfect state.
Speaker 2:All right, I think we will stop there for today and continue with verse 19. And the section we just read here about the flesh and blood. Again, compare what's being said here with what's said in the other gospels at the Lord's Supper. An important verse that friends made again it also occurs in 2 Corinthians is do this in memory of me until I come. And that is the spiritual coming that is being talked about and that again is what you see in Revelation 3, 19 and 20, dining with the Lord. If we allow him in and if we ourselves are, pure, undefiled grace is always there to help us if we are obedient to it. All right, well, thanks, friends. I will see you all again next week or maybe on Thursday, fifth day.
Speaker 2:So so take care. God bless Thanks everyone Bye, bye.
Speaker 1:This podcast has been a production of Ohio yearly meeting. It was hosted by Henry Jason and edited by Kim Palmer. The introduction and credits were read by Chip Thomas. The quote in our introduction is from the Queries and Advices section of Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline. A link to that book can be found in the show notes to this episode. We welcome feedback on this or any of our podcast episodes. We welcome feedback on this or any of our podcast episodes. No-transcript.