Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and this is part two of a split-in-half episode. This is the first time we've done this in our new season on John, but from time to time, I'll just get to rolling on a topic and yeah, I figure it wouldn't hurt to split it into two days. It doesn't all need to sit on the same day. This is one of those. So if you haven't caught yesterday's episode, you may want to, because today's going to make a lot more sense. But if you don't want to, here's where we're picking up. God made a deal with Abraham, and then a distant descendant of Abraham named Moses in the early going of the Old Testament. He said, Hey, all of these, this whole people group, the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews, I'm going to be your God. You're going to be my people. And all the nations are going to know it because if you obey me, I'm going to bless you like crazy. If you disobey me, I'm going to punish you like crazy. Either way, everybody's going to know that I'm God. And that's good because I'm not just the God of you ultimately. I am the God of everyone. And I am orchestrating history in part through my relationship with you, my chosen people, to make that evident to everyone and to redeem all of history. John one, that we've been working on, nods to that story, that theme that runs all throughout the Old Testament. And yesterday we were talking a bunch about that and we suspended operations. And now I'm going to have Jeff play some music, and we're going to keep talking about that. All right, here we go. This is all going to play out in front of everybody to be a blessing to the nations. Why? Well, because ultimately the same thing that we're getting in John 1, I mean, this isn't John 1 isn't new. John 1 isn't a departure from the themes of the Old Testament. It's a continuation of it. This was always meant for everybody. This isn't hinted at in the Old Testament. It appears in practically every book. Genesis 12, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 18, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed through Abraham. Genesis 22, in your offspring shall all the nations of earth be blessed. That gets reaffirmed later in Genesis 26 and 28 to Isaac and then to Jacob. Then you flip over to the halfway point of the Old Testament to the Psalms, and you see a ton of the same stuff. Psalm 2, ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage. Psalm 22, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. Psalm 46, I will be exalted among the nations. Psalm 67, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Psalm 72, all nations shall call him blessed. Psalm 86, all the nations you have made shall come and worship before you. Isaiah 19, Egypt and Assyria are seem to be included in the covenant blessing. Isaiah 42, I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations. Isaiah 49, I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. Jeremiah 3, all nations shall gather to Jerusalem. Jeremiah 16, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth. Micah 4 envisions the exact same picture as Isaiah 2, all the nations streaming toward Jerusalem, all of the plight of human history and politics and war, it's all over. Everybody has realized that this one thing is the truest, realest thing, and they're unified. They're coming together. The kings of the world are all seeing this at once. Zechariah is filled with this language. Maybe it's right up there, is my favorite book of the Old Testament. Malachi 1, from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. The great prophet Daniel in chapter 7, the pivotal, one of the pivotal passages of the whole Old Testament, all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. I know I've overdone it. I know that was a ton of Bible rapid fire. But my point is this: in the same way that my parents first and foremost built a home and had a unique relationship with the three of us kids, but also the way they treated us was an example to all of our neighbors and our community, and also their love and their compassion, all the same things they showed us, were also meant for everyone. The difference is, and this is where the analogy breaks down, they're humans, they only have so much to give. God has infinity to give. And that is the vision we see throughout the Old Testament. There is not just some little subtle nod that if you squint real hard, you can see in the Old Testament that makes you think, oh, maybe God was always going to redeem everybody and all the nations. No, I'm telling you, once you start looking for it, once your eyes are open to it, you discover this is everywhere. This is the trajectory of history that is put in place. And now the attentive reader comes out of the Old Testament, they turn over into the New Testament, they read some other gospels, and then they get to John 1. The attentive reader should be ready for this. Oh, there's that motif. This is America's team. God is for everyone. If you didn't listen to yesterday's episode, that analogy probably didn't make a lot of sense. God is for everyone. He's building something that's bigger, that's not just local and ethnic. He is the God of everything. And the fact that his own people rejected Jesus. Okay, we don't need to hit the panic button over that. That's consistent with the behavior we've seen through the whole Old Testament and the way God built his covenant and the way God is building out his redemptive plan and his relationship with humanity completely can handle all of these tensions that the original audience would have had in mind as they're trying to figure out what to do with Jesus, what to do with the fact that his own people seem to have not liked him very much and even pushed to have him killed by the Roman authorities. John here in the prologue in chapter one is doing a great job of acknowledging the reality. The original audience by this point. They'd heard that Jesus got crucified, they'd heard rumors he'd been risen again, but they also heard who it was who arrested him, who it was who wanted him crucified. It was the Jewish leadership. It was his own. He was supposed to be the king of the Jews. That's what the little sign said that got affixed to the cross, even. John rightly feels like he has to speak to that to this larger audience. They would have been wondering, why should we follow him as this universal God, the Logos, who is God, who made everything and sustains everything, who is revelation, who's God in the flesh. Why should we follow him if the people who knew him the best rejected him? He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. But then John goes on, yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Yeah, that's right, John is saying. You heard correctly, original audience. There were a whole bunch of people from that camp who absolutely did reject their long-promised king. They missed it. Okay, well, that's a them problem. Let's talk about you. Because for you, the opportunity goes like this. Anybody who receives him, anybody who believes in his name, he gives the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or husband's will, but born of God. I mean, that could apply on a few different levels, but the natural point there seems to be God's chosen people, they have an ethnicity to them. There's a list of descendants there, and there's paperwork, and yeah, we'll get into all of this more carefully tomorrow. But John here seems to be saying this is a status of sonship and daughterhood that goes beyond those lineages and those papers proving that you're descended from the right people. This transcends that and you are invited into this new family of faith. Yeah, his own rejected him. Mm-hmm. That occurred. Yes, God has this unique and special relationship with his people. There are parameters to that. Uh-huh. But this was always meant to be for all. This is still for all. And if you are reading this, John 1, if you are hearing this, it is for you. God's magnificent covenant with his chosen people in the Old Testament is first and foremost about God. It's about his character, it's about his glory, and it's about him revealing himself through a relationship with a deeply flawed people. No one should be able to get on their high horse and wag their finger judgmentally at the Jewish people of the Old Testament. Your people group would have screwed it up too. Your ethnic people group would have screwed it up. My ethnic people group would have screwed it up. You think the Vikings would have got this right? Of course we would have got that wrong. I'm also Scottish and Irish. You think they would have got that right? Nope, we wouldn't have got it. Nobody would have got this right. The Jews were screwed up the same way we would be screwed up in their shoes. And none of our precious little subgroups or non-ethnic affiliations would have got this right. Sin is a nasty cuss. Love of self is a nasty cuss. Love of the world is a nasty cuss. It got the best of the people in the Old Testament. It would get the best of us if we were in their shoes as well. God didn't make the deal because ultimately he knew that they would just hear it and be like, okay, well, now we'll just behave perfectly. I mean, after all, you've laid out the deal. We'll just muster our gumption and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And through exemplary effort and self-discipline, we will behave just like God, perfectly, for generation after generation, for thousands of years, and there will be peace and harmony everywhere. God knew that isn't how it was going to happen. He made the relationship to bless a given group of people, but first and foremost, he made the relationship to demonstrate things about his own character and to work out his own plan and to be a testimony to the nations, who, even though he did not call them his treasured possession or his children, he clearly had love for, clearly had an eye for, and was clearly ordaining all of history to come to this point where Jesus, the Logos, would come into the world, take on flesh, defeat sin by going to the cross, dying on the cross, being raised from the dead to prove that it was all true, and then giving life to all those who believe. In the same way that in the early going of Matthew, both Matthew and Jesus make it clear this isn't a new religion, this isn't a departure from what you just got done reading in the Old Testament, this is where it goes next. So John is doing the same thing. This is no departure. This is the fulfillment and completion of the prophecies, of the story arcs, of the law, of the character of God, of the behavior of his people. All of it naturally brings us to this point of the incarnation, of the light stepping into the world and of what Jesus is doing here. It's a pretty quick passing little reference here in John 1, verses 11, 12, and 13. But that quick passing reference is very important connective tissue, as we've talked about over the last couple of days now, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. So much more to come on this prologue. And you think this is fun. Wait till we get into the actual juicy story bits. John is a wonderful storyteller, and I mean the rest of this is all narrative. You're gonna have a blast with that too. All right, that is plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.