Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Today we're actually going to talk about John 3.16. We're going to start talking about John 3.16 as it pertains to a list that I went and did some research on. I don't, I mean, this is an impossible, it's an impossible to quantify Bible list that I've put together here, but I'm going to run it by you. We'll see if it rings true for you. And I'm going to give you a little spoiler, a little hint here. John 3.16 is on this list. The list that I've assembled is top five most famous verses in the history of Christianity before 1900 AD. And the top five most famous verses in the history of Christianity after 1900 A.D. Which one do you want to do first? I can't hear you at all. So I'm just going to pick one. We're going to do before 1900 A.D. And my methodology here is trash. Like I Googled some people's opinions on it. I sat and thought about it for a while. I thought about like how Christianity was conveyed to people before 1900, before maybe even like 1800, before the Reformation. You know, so much of it would just be what was in an inscription or what would have been in the most repeated liturgies. So I don't know what I'm doing. I'm kind of making this up. But this is what I got for before uh 1900 AD, most famous Bible passages ever. Uh number five, Genesis 1.1. Probably everybody knew that back in the day. Number four, John 1 1. And the reason I think that would be on there is because it's very memorable. It's at the beginning of either the first or second most famous gospel. It seems like John and Matthew are always back and forth for that title. And it is a formulation of, you know, it speaks to the nature of Christ. And that's a very important question throughout church history. So I think even your normal laypeople would have had John 1-1. Luke 2, 14 is the glory to God in the highest stuff, the Gloria Inexcelsius Deo. It would have been sung a lot, it would have been repeated a lot. It was part of the religious or part of the Christian calendar, not just in uh Advent season, but it would have come up at other points during the year. I think people would have known that one. And then Matthew 28, 19, the in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that would have been said, you know, over every baptism and tons of other things. So I think that one would have been really famous. And then finally, the most famous verse in the Bible before 1900 is maybe still the most famous verse in the Bible even till now. I think even people who are not Christians or maybe once were and got discouraged or you know are maybe trying to decide what to do with it. I think even people who aren't Christians, just kind of the same way you can go on autopilot and you kind of know the Miranda rights, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can't, you just sort of know the words because they just flow together. I think Matthew 6 and the Lord's Prayer works that way. If I start saying, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy, like you've got it. You can take it over from there. Even if you're like, I don't, I don't have any single Bible verse ever memorized. Well, you might have that one. So that's before 1900. You'll notice John 3.16, which we're beginning to talk about today, is not on that list. Probably, I think all did you all know what John 3.16 is? Maybe, probably, right? I'm just I'm gonna read it because you know, maybe it's a little bit inside baseball language. Not ever, you know, maybe not everybody in the conversation here thinks in terms of chapters and verses and all of that. Maybe you're new to it. John 3.16 goes, 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. All right, now here's my list for famous verses since 1900. And I guess I'll tell you why I drew the line there after I give them to you. Okay. Uh here I used like, you know, stuff from publishing and search results and stuff like that. I I mean these lists, who knows if they're accurate, but this is what I got. Uh Romans 8, 28, all things work together for the good. Okay. Uh Jeremiah 29, 11. I don't think this should be one of the five most popular verses since 1900, but I think it is, for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. You know, I I don't think people are real locked in on what the context is there, but it's a popular one. Philippians 4, 13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Psalm 23 is what I have for number two, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, uh, I think in particular is one that people think about. And then number one, I would put John 3.16. And maybe even though repeating the Lord's Prayer in church isn't as popular as it used to be, I think it should be as popular as it used to be. It maybe it's still popular enough that that belongs right up there at number one with John 3.16, which of course, once again, is the passage that we're looking at. 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. Okay, I divided that by the way, at 1900, because that's when you see um illiteracy, not illiteracy, literacy go through the roof. It's when you see kind of popular Christian publishing in multi-uh medium, you get it in writing, but then very quickly into radio, television, the internet, popular publishing, magazines. I mean, there's this whole big push. And I do feel like a little bit uh market forces in that time skewed the popularity of certain verses in the Bible, maybe a little bit away from stuff that proclaims the glory and character and power of God, which you'll notice is everything that was on the top five before 1900 in my mind. And it post-1900, those market forces, I think they go a little bit, you know, lowest common denominator. And as a result, you'll notice that most of the verses on the more modern top five, I imagine, to have a little bit more to do with God's blessing in your life, which is still true, and it is still Bible, but you know, make of it what you will. Either way, I think it's great that John 3.16 is one that is so popular at this point. Why was it not as popular before 1900? Well, let me read it to you again. Let's see what you think. 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. I think that particular verse was still popular, though less popular before 1900, 1800, wherever you want to put it, because its contents were assumed. There is a God. This God is loving, this God loves the broken world. This God loves the broken world so much that he sacrificed greatly to solve the problems of this broken world, and that sacrifice that God has made by sending his one and only son is a sacrifice that is efficacious for you, transformative for you when your faith is in that God. Okay, I think people just assumed a whole bunch of that stuff pre-1900. Well, uh, yeah, great, there it is. Uh, maybe people didn't need that verse as much to lay it out. Yeah, there's a God, he's real, Jesus is God in the flesh, the Son of God, all God, all man. He came into the world, and uh yeah, you believe in God. That's how that's how life happens. Cool. I think after 1900, as the world starts to become smaller and ideas mingle and cross-pollinate, maybe that becomes a little less obvious as you get into the age of sort of secular modernism, sort of a post-Christian society. I think at some point in there it occurred to Christians this is this maybe a little bit overlooked, bold proclamation of the work of God and through the work of Christ, his son, all God, all man. Maybe that's a little bit overlooked. Maybe we should push that right back to the forefront because man, John 3:16 is a really succinct articulation of kind of the whole plot of the Bible and how it applies to the individual who reads the Bible. For God, okay, so there's a God forever, he predates the world, he predates the problem. God is love. We'll talk about how John fleshes out that idea more, you know, next time around or the time after or whatever. He loves the world that he made that fell so much that that he stuck with it. He didn't give up, right? I mean, in the early going of Genesis, you have God, the He makes everything, and then He makes people in His image, and then sin enters into the world, and with it, death and suffering and entropy. And then you have this unmarked moment of choosing there in the very early going of Genesis, where even though it doesn't show the moment where God's like, hold on, we got sin in the world now, time out. Jesus, Holy Spirit, come on over here. We're gonna three in one this thing. I mean, the Trinity's it's a mystery, it's difficult. I don't really know how to do this scene. We're it's probably why it's not in the Bible. Well, let's uh let's game this one out. What should we do here? Should we keep the world and fix it? Would that bring the most glory to me, us? Or should we just wipe the whole thing out and uh start over? Well, there's no scene like that because there wasn't a moment of choosing for God. God never learned anything, he's immutable, he's always known and is sovereign over all of it. He knew that creation would fall, and he knew that he would choose to redeem it to bring glory to himself, which if you or I do it, is arrogance and foolishness because we're not that great. When God, who is truth and who is being, does it, it's the most gracious, loving thing he could do because he's saying the ultimate truth, proclaiming his own glory. So there's a moment of invisible choosing that happens outside of time in the early going of Genesis after the fall, where God chooses to redeem. The world is broken, I'm gonna redeem it anyway. And then he does. That's what the rest of the plot of the Bible is. It goes all the way through to the New Testament, where Jesus is the pivot point, the cornerstone, the climax of the whole thing, and then it cruises on to look toward future things in Revelation. Revelation is often treated as you know, this bleak apocalypse, but revelation really is the summary of all of the theology of the Bible, and it's the conclusion of the story as this redemption is fully realized and God is victorious and his glory is known to all. I mean, it's a beautiful, cohesive, beginning-to-end story. And I think somewhere in you know, maybe the 20th century, Christians figured out dang, there might not be a better verse in the whole Bible that sums up exactly what the story of all of existence is, the story of our world, the story of the arc of each of us as human beings, and what we need to do in response to it better than John 3.16. One verse right there. And so people started, you know, you remember they used to put up signs and people would go get, they'd buy seats behind the goalposts and football games. They'd hold them up and just say John 3.16. And a lot of times that would be it. Tim Tebow used to write John 3.16 on his I Black. Athletes in particular really latched onto this, but also people would memorize it and to whatever degree a school would allow something kind of Christian to come in. John 3.16 would be like the if I can only communicate one thing to these kids, if I can only point them to one bit of writing, one Bible verse, John 3.16 is where I'm gonna point them. And so it could be tempting to say, all right, well, this is you know, this is the most popular verse in the post-Christian world, which is still a pretty new experiment. So it's a little cliche, and we get it. Well, how much do we really need to talk about this one? But the truth is, this verse is timeless and awesome. And whoever those people were who came before us who were like, hey, if we got to boil it all down to one thing and really point people to the true nature of God, the true story of humanity, God's redemptive impulse, the nature of Christ, and the call upon our lives to respond to Christ as King and acknowledge him for what he is, this is the verse we want to look at. So, John 3.16, like maybe just because of familiarity, we might treat it as a little bit cliche, but it ain't. Next time around, we got to talk about what role this amazing proclamation of the Christian, the biblical understanding of the world and God and salvation. Next time around, we got to talk about what this amazing proclamation is doing here in the text. What is the flow of thought in what Jesus is saying? Or I'm gonna teach you a little bit. What is the flow of thought in what Jesus has already finished saying? And that John the evangelist is now offering comment on. We'll pull on that thread more next time around. Uh, Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.