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Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast, and today we are going to start with an illustration from Lord of the Rings. We have to be judicious when deploying Lord of the Rings likewises, though, because I'm told this is a little bit overused by people who talk about the Bible and preachers. I guess it's people who like the Bible also really like Lord of the Rings. And we don't want to be a cliche. So I'm only doing this because it's exactly the right likewise for today. There's a scene in Fellowship of the Ring where little Bilbo Baggins, he's got a ring, it's a troublesome ring. He's had the ring for too long. And he likes the ring, he pits the ring, he strokes the ring, and Gandalf is like, I think you've had that a little too long. Gandalf is like an old grandpa Lee type wizard, if you've never read these books or seen the movies. And Bilbo, who's usually a pretty mild-mannered, nice guy, is like, I don't, why should I? It's my ring, and he clutches all up, and Gandalf does not take well to that.

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And he says, Bilbo bargains, I'm a conjurer, cheap tricks. I'm not trying to rob you. I'm trying to help you.

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And then Bilbo softens and is like, Okie dokie, here's the ring. And that's how it works out. I saw a meme the other day, by the way, of this exchange between Gandalf and Bilbo, the I'm not trying to rob you, I'm trying to help you meme, where Gandalf says his line, I'm not trying to rob you. And then there's a picture of a dog with his tennis ball, but he doesn't want to give the tennis ball up. And Gandalf is like, I'm trying to help you. And then the meme doesn't conclude. I assume the dog did not give him the ball. Because dogs just don't give you the ball. Do you want to play fetch or not? What's the matter with you? The point is this. John, who's writing the Gospel of John, he's pretty grandfatherly at the time that he's making his contributions to the Bible with the Gospel of John, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, which are letters and Revelation, which is an apocalypse. I don't know, we'll get to that maybe someday. And throughout the five books of John, there is a very grandfatherly Gandalf tone. He's the only one of Jesus' disciples who made it to old age. The rest of them all died horrific martyrs, deaths. And but yeah, here's John living near Ephesus on the island of Patmos, very late in life. He's writing this stuff down, and just all of that vim and vigor of youth is gone. And it's replaced by the patience of a gentle old man who knows what it is to get things right and get things wrong. And I love the gentle urging and tone of John. And I feel like we're getting that gentle urging here at the beginning of John with this prologue, especially as it pertains to the Jewish portion of John's audience, who John is trying to convince that Jesus is their Messiah. They should believe in Jesus, and by believing, they would have life in his name. And so to accomplish this, John, in his prologue here, is using some Greek imagery, some Greek philosophical imagery, but he's also depending really heavily on the Old Testament because he's trying to gently help the clutched up, bitter, resistant. I don't want to believe in Jesus. He seems really good, but I don't want to believe in him. Because if I do, I got to give up on Moses, and I got to give up on the law, and it might be a violation of the Second Commandment. He's trying to coax them out of that bent-in on themselves ring-clutching posture that they've assumed. Surely the early Jewish audience was like, you know, don't bother me about the Jesus thing. You're trying to rob me of my religion. You're trying to rob me of my love of Moses. You're trying to rob me of my law. You're trying to rob me of my obedience to the second commandment, which is the one about idolatry and not worshiping other gods. But along comes old man Gandalf John, and he's like, I'm not trying to rob you, Jewish audience. I'm trying to help you. And one of the ways that he does that is throughout the Gospel of John, there is a very patient unfolding of this theme of Moses and the law actually pointing to Jesus. I'm not trying to rob you, I'm trying to help you. Here, Jewish audience members, look more closely at this. Moses liked Jesus. Moses is team Jesus. Moses is pointing to Jesus all along the way. And the first hint that we get of that is right at the end of the prologue here in John 1. It says, From the fullness of his grace, we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Oh, well, those are both good. The law is good, and grace and truth is good. This isn't any kind of adversarial framing that John, can you hear me banging my knuckles together? That's I make fists and then I pound them together when I say adversarial habitually. If you know what to listen for, now you'll know that I'm doing that in future episodes. There's there's no conflict here between Moses and Jesus. It's the first framing. Well, the original audience was probably like, no, there's a ton of conflict. Okay, so John's now introduced the idea that he's not trying to rob the audience, he's trying to help them. And as we go along, we see another Moses reference right over here. And it happens when Jesus is calling the first disciples. This is in John 1, oh, I don't know. Let's start in verse 40. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, We have found the Messiah, that is the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. What a line that is. Jesus looked at him and said, You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, which translated as Peter. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee, finding Philip, he said to him, Follow me. Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Betheda. Philip found Nathaniel and told him, We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And then the funny liner is Nazareth. Can anything good come from there? Nathaniel asked. Come and see, said Philip. You see what old man Gandalf John is doing here, gently leading his Bilbo-like audience to stop clutching their ring? He's like, Look, here's some guys. They're like you. They're Jewish. They're trained on the same stuff that you guys are trained on. They had the same concerns you had. But when they actually met Jesus, when they went and saw what they discovered was that he's the one who Moses wrote about in the law. So the law isn't just rules to Andrew and Peter and Philip and Nathaniel. The law is a story, the law is prophecy, and it all points to Jesus. I think it's remarkable how early on in the book of John we get this kind of a confession of who Jesus is versus how late we get that kind of a confession in Matthew. Now, the confession that we get here in John 1 is not as robust as Peter's confession in Matthew 16, but I still just think it's amazing that John is going to front load a scene like this. Why? Because I think he's gandalfing his audience. He's being very gentle and patient with people who are all twisted up inside and resisting Jesus. In John 5, Jesus does a miracle and it upsets the religious leadership. And Jesus gives this long talk. And Jesus gets to the end of his speech and he says, But do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say? Now, at that point, we're about the quarter turn of the Gospel of John, and old man Gandalf has he's bowed up a little bit, you know, in that scene. He bows up first, and then he's gentle. There's an ebb and a flow with Gandalf. He's a very dynamic character. And here Jesus is kind of gone big with them. He's confronting the Jewish leadership. He's confronting that that Jewish mindset that says, no, what you're what it looks like you are would be a violation of the second commandment. It would require us to reject our goat, our greatest of all time, Moses. It would require us to reject the law. And Jesus is saying, No, if you reject me, you are rejecting Moses. You are rejecting the law. And the one who's going to testify in opposition to you is the one who you're calling the greatest of all time. The goat is the one who you're saying you're so loyal to. Turn one page in John 6. Now there's a crowd gathered around, and Jesus is teaching, and uh they want a sign. So they asked him, What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And this is a very important passage that we're gonna unpack very thoroughly when we get there. But what initiates this very important passage about Jesus being the bread of life? Well, it's it's Moses, it's the manna in the desert. That was a pretty cool thing that happened out there on Moses' watch. But Jesus is saying his thing is a bigger deal, that his thing is the completion of what was set in motion or illustrated out there in the desert. Now I'm bouncing around a little bit, but just to stay in that theme. Over in John 3, verses 14 and 15, which is obviously right before the ultra-famous John 3.16, Jesus here is talking to Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who's come under cover of night. This guy would be a point of view character for John's audience here, who he's trying to gandolf into letting loose of the ring. And Jesus here says, No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. Let me just read a little more. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. This is seemed weird to not read it when you're right by the most famous verse in the whole Bible. Again, the idea is, hey, uh, Jewish dude who loves the law and loves Moses and doesn't want to violate the second commandment. Remember when that serpent got lifted up in the desert, and how cool you thought it was that Moses was used by God to do that? Okay, well, that's pointing to me, Jesus is saying. And all of this points to the love of God, and the love of God is manifest in me, Jesus, being here, tabernacling among you. So this is a good little taste, a good little sample of how John, the evangelist, is so patient with his audience here. You can see his hands are kind of up and he's coming at them gently. He's he's open for an embrace. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Calm down. Everything you say you care about, those are good things to care about. I'm not here to to rob you of those things. I'm not here to take those things from you. I'm here to help you see where all of those things are going and what they were all pointing to. You're a little twisted up right now. I get it. I've been there. I'm here to help. John is not here to ruin the Old Testament or besmirch Moses or make fun of the law or invite people into idolatry for his new religion. No, John is beautifully making the case to, I believe, a larger global audience at the same time that he's beautifully making the case to a specific part of his audience, Jewish people who cared about these things very much and were afraid that they would be deprived of them if they followed Jesus. And John is saying to them and to us, no, this is what it is to follow Jesus. Moses pointed to Jesus, the law points to Jesus, and to acknowledge Jesus and worship him is to positively obey and keep the second commandment. One other thing, and this is weird, I had a camera running from a thing I was doing earlier today, so I just left it on for the recording. I've never recorded, video recorded an episode of this ever before, but I did today, and I thought, you know what? Those of you who support the program at Patreon, you might enjoy the video version of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna get like carried away and make this a thing or anything. But if you like, if you want to see the video version, uh, I'll put it over there. And you can. Could be fun. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon, but I'm not sure.