Before the days of modern internet and modern television, there was such a thing as cable. That was the only way that you could really watch anything. You would subscribe and literally somebody would come out, they'd attach a cable to your house, and instead of TV broadcasting through the air, and you'd you know pull it in with an antenna, instead, it would come to you via the cable, and you get a little box on your TV and you could click. And one of the advantages of cable television is that all summer long you could get usually two baseball games. But the downside was they were the baseball games of only two particular teams. If you had a local team you liked, you'd have to hope to get that on a broadcast or maybe catch them in a game of the week kind of thing. I think ABC had a game of the week or maybe a couple of those. But if you happened to like the Chicago Cubs or Atlanta Braves and you had cable TV, every single one of their games was available to you, regardless of where you lived in the country. And Cubs games were fun. They got Ivy on their outfield fence. It's a historic stadium. Looks like everybody's having fun there, whether they win or lose. Cubs games are pretty cool, even if you're not a Cubs fan, and I'm not. But the Braves games over on WTBS that Ted Turner owned, those were not as much fun. They had Astraturf. It never looked like people were having as much fun. The Braves weren't really lovable losers like the Cubs. They weren't really lovable winners either. I just nothinged the Braves all the way through my childhood, despite their games being readily available. Well, we didn't have cable, but if I went over to a friend's house, I could always watch the Braves. Well, I don't want to watch the Braves. Games are boring. Again, I don't dislike the Braves. I'm not mad at the Braves. Just shrug. One of the things, though, that I thought was interesting about the Braves as a kid is they would brand themselves as America's team. They said it all the time on that broadcast. The Braves are America's team. And as a kid, I remember thinking, no, you're not. I get why you would want to be. It would be really cool if there were an America's team that transcended all the local markets and everybody rooted for this team. I'd feel really bad for all the other teams that are being ganged up on by the rest of America. But I, you know, I get why they went for it. I get the promotional effort there. You know, if you could lay hold to that claim, that mantle that, no, this is the truer and greater expression of baseball. This isn't a local regional expression of baseball. This is baseball as it was meant to be for all people for all time. That would be a pretty big deal. And it would be paradigm-breaking if there were an America's team, because inherently the whole idea of pro sports is that each little town, each little region gets their own rooting interest. You don't root for America against all of the teams. Likewise, there were a whole bunch of little teams that people rooted for in the ancient world. Little gods, little cultures, I mean, they're all made up and fake, and most people, you know, wouldn't remember exactly which gods or which religion went with which tiny little foreign people group, but some of them captured people's imagination. Some of those religious franchises, if you will, really popped, like the Ephesians had a great run with the Temple of Artemis. Rome eventually built up their mystique and had a great run with the Roman gods. Athens, and just a little ways down the road at the Temple of Poseidon. Yeah, but most of the smaller attempts at local regional religions were they just came and went. No big deal. What no one could lay claim to in the ancient world, though, was the idea of being the world's god, not just some local little god like all these other chumpy little gods, but like the god of everything forever. People blustered about it. The Persians thought their god, gods, or religion was the religion of the world. And by force, they kind of made that happen a little bit for a little while. But the truly shocking innovation, the truly shocking claim of not just the New Testament, but also the Old Testament is that the God we're hearing about here, the God who is 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. And the big bold claim of the Bible is that that God really is actually the God who lays claim over everything. Nothing that exists exists apart from that God. And therefore, very simply, all the other gods, all the other religious franchises are fake. But interestingly, the narrative of the Bible has that God picking one specific family to play out his relationship with the world with, at least in the first place. And it's the family of this guy named Abram, who has his name later changed to Abraham. So way back at the beginning in Genesis, you get a period of history that is super, super, super ancient. This covers stuff like creation and the flood and the tower of Babel. But then the text moves more into time as we think of time. I would call everything before chapter 12 of Genesis the primeval age or the pre-ancient age. And then once you get to Genesis chapter 12, you're into ancient history as we think of ancient history. Abram gets called by God back in Genesis 12. And from there, the Bible takes a hard turn. It goes from sort of being the story of the pre-ancient world, then in chapter 12, well, the Bible is closely tethered to the descendants of Abraham, the Israelites, the Hebrews, eventually called the Jews, named for one of the descendants of Abraham named Judah. And the way that this plays out is that God picks Abraham. It looks fairly random in the text. Abraham isn't from Israel, he's from southern Babylon, so like modern day Iraq, maybe Kuwait, depending on how you draw the lines. God picks him and he tells Abram, Leave your country. I'm reading from Genesis 12, leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. And then God makes a promise to Abram, later called Abraham, that's gonna be the basically plot structure for the whole Old Testament. Heck, the whole Bible. The promise goes like this: I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all pe this part's important, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Abram's superpower is that he believed God. So God picks him and is like, go leave your country and do this. I'm making you this promise. The very next verse is So Abram left as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him, and the family goes, and we I mean, just Abram's like, okay, well, you're God, you said so, and then he does it. Abram is not perfect. He does some goofy stuff, his faith wobbles here and there. We get a as close a look at him as we do just about any character in the whole Old Testament. And by the time Abraham dies, God's promise seems to be in full swing. He has descendants, those descendants flourish. They have two kingdoms for a while in the Old Testament. The northern kingdom is called Israel, the southern kingdom is called Judah. The people of Judah get conquered by the Babylonians and taken into captivity in the 500s BC. Eventually, after that great calamity under Babylon, the Persians come along and let the Jews go back and rebuild the temple. And that's kind of where the Old Testament leaves off. Throughout the Old Testament, though, you constantly have in view that part of the promise that I said, this part is important back there in Genesis 12. That's the last part. The last clause of the promise to Abraham is, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Now, even though the Old Testament fixates very heavily on Abraham's descendants in this particular family, it never loses sight of the reality that God isn't just for the Jews. This whole God thing, the God of Abraham, the God who is I am, was always meant to be, and indeed always truly was, America's team. The God of all the gods, not just the God of the Jews and one more regional ethnic God who people reference before they go out and fight and try to assign some sort of theological meaning to what's happening. Oh, God is on our side. God wills it. No, no, no, no, no. God is bigger than that. He is not slave to his people. He's not a creation of his people. He's not a mascot for his people. These other cheap gods made of wood and stone, they are. This is the God. And the reason he's working with these people is one, because there is people and he loves them. But reason number two is because this relationship between God and his people is going to play out in front of everyone, and it will do so as a witness to the true reality of the trueness and fullness of God and as an invitation for all the nations down the road to come and be a part of America's team, worship this one true God. That analogy, it it pains me a little bit. It sounds a little bit weird to call that America's team. I think I'm just going to move away from that right now, but I think you get what I'm talking about there. And the reason I'm bringing all of this up is because in this prologue in John 1 that we're looking at, this idea of the world, like the whole world and its relationship with the one true God, is on display. We don't tend to catch it because we're reading this in the 21st century, and we are fully at peace with the idea that the God of the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, the great God I am, who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush, is the God for everyone. But in Bible times, not everybody got that. It wasn't a common way to think about how God is. People thought in terms of local religious franchises, not one God who is of the whole world and who invites all the people, even rival peoples, to come and worship him and eat at his table and be called sons and daughters and to share in his singular inheritance. This is a revolutionary idea, and it's not one that's made up as you get into the New Testament. It's one that's on display in practically every single book of the Old Testament. But for now, let's look a little more closely at this prologue in John 1 and consider this theme of the world. Okay, let's keep our antenna out as I read. 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. Okay, now consider that phrase we've read several times in light of this biblical motif we've been talking about today. God didn't just create the realm of the Jews. God created the realm of everything. He's Lord of everything. In him was life. Well, life is a universal idea. And that life was the light of the Jews? No. That life was the light of men. All of them, all of humanity. Once you start looking at this theme of the universal authority of God in John 1, you just start to see it everywhere. Let's keep going. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it or overcome it. There came a man who was sent from God. His name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light so that through him, ready, all men might believe. Now, look, it doesn't take a lot of translation here or a lot of looking at the rest of the context of the Bible to know that translations that go literal here and say all men mean all people. This is for all humankind. It's for everybody. It's for men, women, slave, free, Jew, Gentile, Greek, Roman, American, Canadian, African, European, South American, Asian, Australian, anywhere I've forgotten, and it's for everybody. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light, the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. Not one place, not one franchise, not one region, not our little team is going to be your little team. We're talking about something totally different here. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, he owns the whole thing, the world did not recognize him. So this isn't just a Jews rejected Jesus problem. The world rejected Jesus. He came to that which was his own. And this is what we're going to fixate on tomorrow, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God. You're seeing it, right? Once the antenna are out for this theme of God is the God of everybody, the word is becoming flesh for everybody. This isn't local, regional, ethnic specific. This is the God of all the world, and we are talking to all the world here. I mean, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. I mean, once you have your antenna out for it, it's everywhere. Tomorrow we're going to look at a few more places in the Old Testament that point to this theme in the prologue here in John 1. And we'll try to make sense of that phrase in verse 11. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Despite being sick, I am having a lot of fun with this prologue here in John 1. I hope you are as well. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.