Okay. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness hasn't understood it. That's ambitious. That's the opening line of the Gospel of John. I'm Matt, by the way. Nice to meet you if we haven't met before. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. We've been doing this for a while. This is the seventh season of this show. If you're brand new here, don't worry about the other six seasons. We can get to that later. This is episode one of the seventh season of this podcast. What we do on this program is we pick a book of the Bible, and then every weekday in 10-ish, some you know, usually a little longer, minute chunks, we just chip away at that book of the Bible. We work straight through it from beginning to end. And today we're starting on John. And I just read you the first five verses of the Gospel of John. And maybe right now you're sitting there thinking that, well, that's intimidating. That was pretty heady. That was pretty bold. Uh, maybe you're wondering if you are in the right place because it seems like a lot. Maybe you're brand new to this, and somebody invited you, and you were thinking, I was really hoping it would be more of a story with like characters and stuff, and not immediately super in-depth theology and philosophy that makes me feel intimidated because I haven't done much of this before. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're in the right place. This is gonna work, it's gonna make sense for you, and we're gonna talk about it like normal people. We're gonna use the kind of normal human language. The goal here is not to see how smart we can sound, the goal is to learn about a book of the Bible together. And I've been around the Bible for a long time. I went to school for this and stuff. I was a pastor for a long time. That went great, that ended well. Now I do internet stuff, I write things, I do this podcast, I do stuff on YouTube, but I'm around the Bible a lot. I'm really into this. And I was raised around it, and my parents were great, they still are great. That was a wonderful experience growing up for me. But I got into my 20s and the whole thing kind of broke a little bit. I had to kind of take it all apart and build it back together. So, in a lot of ways, I'm kind of in faith build 2.0 here, as I'm trying to take a really honest run at sincere faith in Christ with eyes wide open, trying to do honest Christianity. I've been around the Bible for a long time, and it keeps being more and more fascinating to me. And I keep marveling at how much this thing wants to be understood. It's a really big book and it looks intimidating. And maybe the language I just read to you from the very beginning of the book of John that we're gonna be working on here in this season, maybe that was intimidating. But as we work further through it and as we break it down into its little parts, I think you're gonna see the same thing that I'm seeing, which is this is a very ambitious book. It tells a very ambitious story with very significant implications for the world and for the reader. But also it makes sense. It wants to be understood. It's written in such a way that yes, it requires reflection, because I mean, we're talking about a book that's kind of the intersection between the eternal and also like us, you and me, you know, something a little more mundane, a little more limited. So, yeah, there's gonna be points of friction and there are gonna be parts that are hard, but that's a feature, not a bug, right? I mean, you would hope that when you go and interact with the divine and the eternal, that at some points it would take a minute to think about it. And so I don't know, John dips in and out of that intensity and easy accessibility really beautifully throughout the whole book. John tells the story of Jesus. It's one of the four books of the New Testament, which is the second half of the Bible, that tells basically the same story of Jesus. It tells about his life, it tells about what he taught, miraculous signs that he did, and it tells the story of how he basically came directly into conflict with all of the things you come into conflict with in your life, all of the broken stuff about the world, political things, economic things, relational tension, mortality, short-sightedness, mob thinking, all the stuff that you feel friction with, and if we're to be honest, that we also all contribute to, at least a little bit, all the things that feel broken, weird, and screwed up and frustrating about the world, Jesus is the opposite of all of that stuff. And so it makes sense that when he, who is light, gets dropped into that darkness, oh, there's gonna be some friction. And eventually, you know, they're on a collision course through all of John, the world system and Jesus on a collision course. Boom, that's the sound of my fists punching each other. They come into direct conflict in the second half of the book of John. And Jesus, as you'll see throughout the book of John, like he doesn't show up with an army or swords or anything like that, but he's ultimately convicted and he goes to the cross and is executed. And then, as he said would happen, he comes back to life. He's raised from the dead, and this isn't just the greatest parlor trick of all time. This has the biggest of implications for all of everything ever, because his resurrection from the dead it defeats sin and death, it solves the human problem, it corrects the corrupted arc of history to the glory of God. And it totally applies to you and me, even if you're brand new to this thing, it's for you. And rather than just getting a couple of verses here, it's like, now that's how the things are, we get it in story form. And rather than just having somebody show up and be like, Oh, I I promise this is totally what happened. Uh, I just heard from God all by myself alone, and this is this is the deal. This is how Jesus is. Instead, we get a story of something that happened massively publicly in front of everyone with all kinds of witnesses, and we get God in the flesh. And that's the real payoff here with John. Jesus is God, and John goes out of his way to make it clear that, yeah, he is God in the flesh. And if you believe in him, you have life. And John's trying to give you enough in this really relatively short book in the grand scheme of things that you would look at it and say, I see what you're saying. Those, John, were indeed very big, bold, ambitious claims you were making about how the things are, but I see it and I believe. Now, I know that there are also others of you here who are Bible veterans, you've been around church, faith, Christianity, the Bible for a long time. Here's one of the cool things about the book of John. I would argue that John is the best entry point in the entire Bible for someone who's coming into this thing completely cold, like many of you are. I would also argue that John is the deepest of deep water points in the Bible, in terms of super important, eternal, timeless theological truths that you can pick at and examine and consider and meditate on for an entire lifetime and still never plumb the full depths of the thing. I would argue that John is the best place to start in the entire Bible. And I would argue that John is the best place to linger in the entire Bible, no matter how long you've been around it. I do not say any of that at the expense of the rest of the Bible, which is rad. John is making the most ambitious claim of anything that's ever been written ever, relative to its credibility. But in terms of that intersection on the graph of ambition of the claims of the book and defensibility of the claims, I think John ranks number one in the history of humankind of anything that has ever been written anywhere. I would also argue that John is not just the most ambitious, defensible thing that's ever been written, but it's also the best thing that's ever been written. That's tricky. Because again, there it feels like I'm saying that at the expense of other books of the Bible. I don't know. We can call them all a tie if you want to. But in terms of how many people have read this, this has made more sense to more people than anything has ever made sense to people over time. I didn't say that very well. I think you know what's what I'm driving at here. John has made sense in people's brains from all across time and culture and language, all parts of the world. Different sets of sensibilities in terms of how many people have read this and how often it has made sense to them. I gotta think John is the most read, best thing that's ever been written. It is, at least in the conversation. Okay. Obviously, we need to unpack these ambitious claims. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and he was with God in the beginning. What does word mean? What's going on here? We're gonna have time to do that, and we're gonna start getting into that tomorrow. I'm not gonna do a great big introductory thing on this season where I'm like, okay, this is who John was and this is what he did. All of that stuff's just gonna come up naturally as we go along. I do not write these seasons in advance. I am learning in real time with you. And a lot of times I will be learning with the microphone on, and I enjoy that. The joy of discovery is a big part of the fun of all of this. So I guess the invitation, the value proposition that I would like to put in front of you as you're here on the front end of this great big season, is I would like to invite you to go through the entire book of John with me, one little bit at a time, each weekday. I think it's the best book, so I don't think you're gonna get bored. I would like to invite you to learn with me in real time as we do it. And there's just no getting around it. John throws down the gauntlet. There is a thesis to this book, and we find it right at the end of the book. So I'm inviting you to consider what John is inviting us to consider, which he says a couple of different times in a couple of different ways, but let me just read it to you right here. John 20, verse 30. Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. My invitation is for you to think about John's claim. So this isn't just coldly academic. There's no way to go through the book of John and not think about ourselves and the claims and what we do with them and where we're at with them. All right, so there's the invite. Let's make John a part of our daily rhythm together. Let's cut each other some slack and give each other the benefit of the doubt because if we want to do things with other humans, it means that we have to hang out with people who don't see the world exactly the same way, who aren't in the exact same place. Cool. I think that's awesome. I'm up for that. That sounds refreshing to me. And let's make this season of our lives a time where we explore the Gospel of John and even more so, explore Jesus and God and the claims that are behind it. All right, that's the invite. Hopefully, I'll see you tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again, sir.