BONUS EPISODE - Matt and Jeff Review Chapter 1

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And the man who wrote the song that you just heard, a song that I guess is called Bonus Episode, is Jeff Foote. He edits this podcast and he makes music and he is joining me for this bonus episode. Thanks, Jeff.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Hello. I believe the official title is Bonus Episode Parentheses Bonus Episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

That's that's very needed. Yeah. And now I feel like I under I wouldn't have known what song you were talking about if it hadn't had the parentheses part. So thank you for that. All right, buddy, this is what I want to do. We just finished John 1 on the podcast promptly after 90 brief episodes. And my guess is that we're gonna pick up pace a little bit moving forward, just because the story picks up pace moving forward. But John 1 is some heavyweight business, and I wanted to bring you in and game it out, put your eyes on it a little bit, like properly commemorate our time in John 1, kind of think a little bit about what we're supposed to take from that going forward into John, and just get somebody else's take on things since it's a lot of me around here. So, question number one what happens in John 1? How would you break it down?

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Well, John 1 is it is the prologue, but it's also kind of the summary chapter of the whole book. Like we've been doing John at our church now for a year and a half, and I think easily 90% of the messages I've preached, I've referenced John 1. And we're up through John 17. Like you just keep going back to it. The themes are so deeply established in chapter 1. You really do have a lot of what the book is going to tell you by the time you're done with the first 51 verses.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

In all of John 1, you mean? Or do you do you lean more heavily on John 1 through 18, what we've been calling the prologue?

SPEAKER_03 2:49

No, I reference a lot over the months uh the Nathaniel stuff and the behold the Lamb of God stuff, and like you were been talking about the Son of Man stuff. I I think it's all there.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

I've heard some people say that it would make more sense if the people who made the numbers after the Bible was done, because the numbers, you know, they're not like God didn't give us chapters and verses and all of that. Somebody made that up later. I've heard people suggest that it would have been better if John 1 only had 18 verses and it ended at no one has ever seen God, but God the one and only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known. Chapter break, and then chapter two would start, and verse one would be now this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. What do you think of that? Would that be a better break? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Like I said, I I think all the themes are still happening in the second half. So I do think there's a flow. I mean, yeah, the prologue is broad up to verse 18, it's conceptual, it's philosophical, it's cosmic, and then you're starting to introduce narrative where people are talking and people are meeting. But I still think so many of the themes, like behold and believe, bear witness so that other people can behold and believe, like that's that's Nathaniel, that's Peter and Andrew, and those themes keep coming up. So even though it's happening in conversations between people as opposed to philosophical statements, broad statements, it's still thematically what the rest of the book is built on.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yeah, so maybe keeping them together. I mean, I I like the way it's broken down. I think chapter one is lovely just the way it is. But maybe keeping it together kind of communicates subtly that you know this is all one story, and some of this happens in the heavenly realm of abstractions and ideas, and then the exact same stuff is happening, and this is what it looks like when it plays out in conversations and in personal discovery, guided by God, as people's eyes start to be opened right away. I also think that theme of come and see is very important. And to put right on the back side of these big claims of the prologue, to put right on the back side of that, all of these people seeing it and starting to get it, it certainly inceptionizes that in the in my brain, in the brain of the reader, that like this is for you. Yes, that was a big challenging thing. You got right on the front end, but now you're gonna start seeing people who are made of the same stuff you're made of encounter this same story in real life, and this is what happens with them. So I kind of like keeping that all together.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Yeah, and John does that. Like in the book of 1 John, he starts off similarly, like, hey, God is light, there's no darkness, so he's got that light darkness theme. But again, he's like, hey, I saw this, I touched this, I was there. There's a presence, even in the first 18 verses of chapter one, it's well, no one's seen God, but you know what? We have, we have, because we saw Jesus, and then, like you said, this I saw him, we saw him, behold, I saw the spirit. Like I'm just scrolling through it right now. What are you looking for? Andrew goes home and tell Peter, we found him. You have to come see him. That cycle starts right away, and it's always part of how John is grounding these huge themes to say, this Lagos thing, it's not just some transcendental idea. It's a person and I've met him, and you should go see him.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

How hard is it for you when you're editing my episode at night and you're like, I don't think you're quite getting it, Matt. Do you just like swallow real hard and wipe a little sweat from your brow and keep going? Or do you usually call me?

SPEAKER_03 6:43

I I don't think I've called you hardly ever at all. It's more of, oh, sure, this this is a good angle on it. Whether or not it's the one I would have picked, it's it's fine. I don't feel like you've ever said anything that I would be like, oh, don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah, and a couple of times, it well, it didn't have to do with the Bible, but there are a couple things that I've said along the way where you're like, nah, it's not nuanced enough. Fix it. And I was like, I like it. And you were like, I think you're wrong, and I'm protecting you from yourself. And I was like, fine. And that was kind of fun.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Well, we did talk about that with um here in chapter one on the uh the darkness has not overcome it. The darkness has not understood it. Remind me. Well, because you did a bunch of episodes when you just kept saying the understood word, and we were chatting, and I'm like, I think enough translations say overcome, you might want to dig into that. And so you did.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah, which was the plan all along. Yeah. And I I think we hit that on schedule, but I think I probably should have hit it sooner. I think that would have been smart rather than letting that ambiguity linger for a while, especially because I use an old translation.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

Yeah, I don't think I've really pushed you or or pulled things out necessarily. But occasionally we'll talk about are we doing too many episodes down this rabbit trail or is there a rabbit trail we missed? But most of the time, you know, I trust your instinct.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Dude, you represent no accountability whatsoever on that front, by the way. Anytime I'm like, ah, I kind of want to do two more on this really important bit of theology, and I want to go look at these two prophets, and then I want to go over here to this New Testament thing. You're never like, no, Matt, it's simply too much Bible. At some point, it's just too much theology and Bible. You simply have to stop for your own good and for the good of your family. You've never said that. You're always like, I'm happy. We did have the conversation about John the Baptist here in John 1.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

What was that about? What were we talking about with John the Baptist? Well, because you've got so much of Matthew locked down, and so much of John the Baptist in Matthew is, well, Zachariah and uh John the Baptist's dealings with Herod and the buildup to John baptizing Jesus, and there's a lot of John the Baptist in Matthew.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

And the preview of Matthew 23 that you get in John the Baptist interactions with the religious leaders.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Yeah. And we were just talking that, you know, John the Baptist doesn't have a lot to do in John's version. It he just shows up, has a brief interaction with the scribes and the Levites. You don't actually even see the baptism. You get John saying, I saw the Spirit descend from heaven. That's why I know it's him. John the evangelist doesn't really have much more to do with John the Baptist. I mean, it's his whole role seems to be behold the Lamb of God. Yep. And then his disciples start to leave to follow Jesus, and then that's about it. Yeah, he comes up again. You know, he comes up again later on in the text, but in this scene, yeah, that's about it. And I think, you know, his famous line in John 3 where he says, I must decrease, he must increase. I think there's a piece where John the Baptist himself might have said, Matt, you're doing too many episodes on me, man. Get to the Lamb of God.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yes. You're using my argument about the occasional overveneration of Mary against me, but with John the Baptist.

SPEAKER_03 9:57

But again, more Bibles never a problem. And we do have the other three Gospels. And John the author, I think he assumed his readers had the other three Gospels. So I think it's okay to be like, okay, what do we what do we know from other Gospels about John the Baptist to help fill this in? Because I think that's one of the reasons John the Gospel Writer didn't give us more about John the Baptist, because he knew, hey, you have Matthew already. I'm I'm gonna cut to the yes, okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So putting a little math to it, right? 28 chapters, 800 episodes on season one on Matthew. I think about this. I don't think anybody else probably does. I don't think anybody else probably cares very much. You know, it's Bible stuff every day. Whatever, we'll get on to other books later. Maybe we'll do a little side jaunt in the middle of John. Maybe we'll go get the other Johns after we're done with this John. I don't know what we're gonna do. But then the pacing on John 1, I've thought a lot about it because I didn't do any introduction. None at all. We still haven't actually talked about who John the Evangelist even is, other than it looks like he's one of the original squad, the original party members that Jesus has assembled. We're gonna do that starting this week. Talk about who's the guy who wrote this, occasion and date of writing, the stuff that you normally get on the first page of the study guide or that you get in the chapter of the Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible. Right. We didn't do any of it. The first words of this season were as promised, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And then we were just off and running. So without even doing any history, any intro, 90 episodes on John chapter one. And I've thought about why, and it comes back to exactly what you're saying. I read John the same way. He assumes he's well aware of the other three gospels, he assumes his audience knows that stuff. There would be no reason all these years later to write another gospel and just say it again. Like here it is. Already the synoptics have all written to their respective audiences whose cultural rhythms they would feel the most. Everybody's been written to, they're well circulated, the story is well told, well established in the early church and in writing. So why is John doing this? Well, I think to uh answer the question and track with John, it is a little more necessary to go and glance at the synoptics from time to time than it is when you do Matthew to go and glance at John from time to time. Matthew doesn't assume the existence of John because John didn't exist yet. John does assume the existence of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I I think it's just, you know, for something like this, it just makes for a little different equation when you make a program like this.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

John isn't writing the same type of narrative. And he even says so at the end. You know, I could have written all sorts of things, not enough books in the world to hold what I could have written, but I wrote these things and implicit in this order because I'm bearing witness so that you can behold and believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that by believing you can have life in his name. So there's a strategy John is working that the other three, you know, whatever strategy they had, it was different. Well, what do you think the other guys were trying to accomplish? Do you think they would disagree with what John's going for? Oh, no, not at all. Didn't didn't Luke start his off with, I'm doing this to give you an orderly account of the events?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

So I think the end goal, yes, this is Jesus, believe in him and have eternal life. Yes. But Luke is sitting down as a documentarian and you did all the Matthew stuff. I'll let you speak to what Matthew's intent was. But differences in the first three are personality of the men who wrote it, but also for John, it's like it's not supposed to be read the the way the other three are as a chronological narrative. We're this, then this, then this, then immediately this, then immediately this. It's, as we'll get to, I'm sure, it's the seven I am statements, it's the seven signs, it's the light and darkness motif, it's the life and death motif. There's so much more conceptual meaning that John is wrapping up. He doesn't ever get to Jesus' actual teaching the way Matthew does. He doesn't get into parables the way Luke does. It's I'm putting these things together for a very specific purpose, and it's like a laser beam through this behold, believe, have life.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

So, what do you make of the achronological stuff? Like, for example, we're coming up on a purification of the temple. Here in not too long, Jesus is headed to Jerusalem, and he says, you know, get these out of here. How dare you turn my father's house into a market? And that's happening in John chapter two, but in the synoptics, when that comes up or is alluded to, that is happening, you know, it's in Holy Week. It's it's very, you know, it's right before he gets crucified. So what do you do with the chronology of John on things like that? Uh do you think you know the synoptics just left out a bunch of stuff? I mean, they're very short books compared to three action-packed years of a very influential life where stuff was happening every day. Did they just condense and they kind of went with the things that they felt were important to their audiences? And then John is giving us a different list of stuff, or do you think John is like, well, I didn't even mean to give you the impression I was doing anything chronological here? Like we're moving these pieces around to illustrate this point and to stack thing on thing on top of each other for you, the reader, after the fact, to add it all up, like more like making a case with different vignettes. How do you read it?

SPEAKER_03 15:41

A little of both. I don't think it's non-chronological. I'm actually looking forward to you doing that end of chapter two, so that I can help make my decision. Did he cleanse the temple twice or did John just put it out of order? As I've been preaching through John for the last couple years, what popped out at me that I'd never noticed before is how much he does around feasts and how much meaning he draws from what Jesus does at that particular feast based on what that feast is for. There's a feast of tabernacles moment, there's a feast of dedication moment, there's obviously Passover is huge, and that popped at me in ways I had never seen before. And so I think part of his chronology is attaching Jesus in Jerusalem to feasts, as opposed to, you know, the way Mark does it or Luke does it, you know, he sets his face to Jerusalem, and then you get the second half of the book. I think John is organizing around a different calendar in the storytelling. But I could be persuaded that he did it at the beginning of his ministry, cleansing the temple, and at the end. I know the jury's kind of out on that.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Ultra competent people we both studied under, studied with, people we don't know at all, but who are just brilliant, they see it differently, and I mean it all sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Like a lot of things in the Bible, how you interpret a given passage is kind of a litmus test for how you will interpret a lot of other passages or what you'll think about the world, or maybe even how you'll vote. But the single cleansing of the temple, dual cleansing of the temple issue, it doesn't correspond to anything. Yeah. It's no indicator of anything. Some people look at the data and land one place, some land in another. Yeah, no preview. We will unpack that together. But what do you make of the chronology that I've been pointing at that does seem to be obviously in the text? Because we're not into anything happening out of order yet, compared to the synoptics. What do you make of these time indicators that John keeps giving us in John 1 about the next day, the next day, the next day? To me, that looks intentional. I've treated it like it's intentional. Do you think it is, or are you just playing along with me in the edit? I think it's a reference to Genesis 1, honestly. Well, did you hear that sound in the background? Is it is that your house or my house? Is there thunder? Oh no, it's at your house because you just stole mine. Now I have to write a whole new episode about the whole days of the week thing and the beginning of Genesis. Sorry. Thanks a lot, Jeff.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

We read the same books, what can I say? Like the Bible. Like the Bible. But yeah, it's no accident. John starts off in verse one mirroring Genesis 1-1. Yeah. Then to use days of the week as a way to hang the events just makes perfect sense. Yeah. I'm okay with it being the next day. I I'm sure Peter and Andrew and Nathaniel and uh Philip were they were they were within a day's journey of getting this all sorted out and getting started. So I'm okay to say it's both real and poetic.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah. I'm great with that. I'm unthreatened by any of it. I mean, I have a little trouble kind of understanding how we go from whatever, maybe what we're calling Thursday or Friday, arbitrarily. It's kind of hard to tell how long after the come and see it takes for Andrew and uh John the evangelist or the anonymous disciple here to connect the dots and go and track down Peter. Like, is that overnight or how does that work? But I don't think it is terribly crucial to the story, but I do think these indicators are very interesting. And as somebody who's hung out a lot with the synoptics as well, I think it's kind of fun to get into John 1 and be like, oh, the next day, the next day, the next day, and compare that to the synoptics using phrases like immediately after that, right after that, yeah, those little uh time hints, each uh each gospel author seems to have a little time hint that they like to use to kind of indicate this just generally happened in this area. I'm not gonna waste a bunch of your time explaining exactly on the calendar where this fit relative to the story I just told you. Whereas other times they all seem to want to say, no, no, no, it's very important that you know that immediately, right after that, then this next thing happened. And after reading the synoptics, if you're reading straight through the New Testament, now you get to John and you start getting this the next day, the next day, the next day, and it it seems to echo that same intentionality. When the gospel authors want you to connect this chronic when it's important to them that you understand that this happened right after the last thing, they tell you. When it's not important, they use more vague language.

SPEAKER_03 20:23

Okay, so I have a question for you. All right. A geography question. If Bethany across the Jordan is on the south part of the river, like by Jericho, right? It's closer to the Dead Sea than the Sea of Galilee. Yes, but across the river from Jericho. Sure. In modern day Jordan. But Peter, Andrew, James, and John are from Capernaum, which is on the Sea of Galilee. Yeah, Beth Seda. And we know from the other gospels, the miraculous catch of fish seems to be when Peter decides to leave his nets and follow, which happened on the Sea of Galilee. Right. So are we picturing all these disciples still at Bethany across the Jordan and within earshot of what John is doing there? Or is Andrew finding Peter up in Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee? Or does the miraculous catch a fish happen later? Because what's happening immediately after chapter one, if it's immediately, is there up in Cana, which is in the north. Yep. So I'm just curious how your timeline with the synoptics and where the disciples are fits the next day, next day, next day.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Yeah, and I think John is doing one of two things. He's either condensing a longer process that happened with all of these people in the way you and I would condense a process. Like let's say you have a kid that graduates from high school and they're making a decision about where to go to college. And it's like an eight month decision. You're not going to tell me every movement of that decision. You're going to be like, you know. At first you picked this and then he picked this. You're going to condense it to get on with the story because the interesting part is where he was in life, what he was wrestling with, and what he came to. There isn't a lot of peer inside his mind. We can kind of fill that in. So I think it's, I mean, clearly to some degree, John is compressing this because we only have like 10 verses of these people deciding to follow Jesus. I kind of think the travel has already initiated. We do get a hint in verse 43, the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. So does that mean that what we need to know about that day is that he decided that that day? Or did he decide it and then it's already happening? And does this travel look like the travel in Luke 2, where there's a big giant group kind of migrating down to Jerusalem, and then Jesus, you know, ends up staying behind and hanging out with the teachers of the law and stuff. And somewhere in the caravan, he gets lost, and his family is like, you know, where's our kid? I imagine that's the scene that's happening here. And the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee doesn't even necessarily mean that we're still at Bethany beyond the Jordan here. We already, you know, might be traveling somewhere else, but now we're setting the arrow firmly toward Galilee. That's where we're gonna go. So I think that this scene is migrating. It's easiest for me to just picture it in one place on the east side of the Jordan and compress it in my brain the same way John is doing. But I think this is a moving sequence. I think it's a road trip sequence.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

Well, and I think we were talking about John writing to an audience he assumes has the first three Gospels, and we're gonna run into this again, because he spends what five chapters on the upper room discourse, four chapters. Luke gives it like three sentences, but even halfway through that, Jesus is like, hey, let's leave this place, and then we don't know where the rest of the conversation is happening.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

So I don't think John is really as interested in narrative time and place as much as he is interested in themes and signs and evidence for who Jesus is.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Well, and the journey of the book for you as a reader is an invisible journey. It it is a journey within through ideas, through claims, through stories, to get to the right place where you behold and believe. John to me feels like it doesn't feel mythical. I'm not saying that. I'm saying it just doesn't feel as tightly tethered to itineraries and locations as in particular Matthew, because Matthew's talking to Jewish people and the land means stuff. All the locations come with meanings, the same way all the names and the genealogy at the beginning, those all come with meanings. I think John cares about that, but like we talked about a little bit, he's writing after the destruction of the temple, after the end of the sacrificial system and programs that had been happening in Jerusalem since all the, you know, since 518, 516 BC at the Second Temple. And so John is writing to a different world, even if he's still writing to mostly Jewish people, and even if he's still mostly writing against the backdrop of the Old Testament, this is still brave New World territory. And I don't think we should underestimate how much that affected John's thinking and feeling like we need another gospel here. The other gospels are were all written with a pre-70 AD pre-destruction of the temple paradigm in view. Maybe people thought it was moot. Maybe people were so shook up they didn't know what to do with it. I mean, this is the biggest cataclysm since 586 BC that the Jewish people had experienced. Yeah, so John, John, I think, is writing to a scattered but still mostly Jewish audience, and he's cognizant of the reality that the Greek culture and Greek thought has affected everything as well. And so it's not as tethered to a place, it's not as tethered to the land quite as much as the synoptics would be.

SPEAKER_03 26:31

And I would say as well, John clearly, in all of his writings, revelation being probably the biggest one, is concerned with big ideas. At the relational level, at the at the detail level, it's always almost just love, get love right. But when he's talking about God and and Christ and what is happening in terms of salvation history, John wants to, like you always say, pinch zoom out. He wants to get the broadest meaning of what's actually happening. He says in both 1 John and in the Gospel of John, this is what I'm writing it for. You know, I don't want you to be confused. I don't want you to get lost in the weeds. I want you to see the forest. And it's Jesus is the Christ, he is the Lagos, the grand unifying theory of everything that everybody's searching for, the one through whom everything makes sense. And I'm going to give you evidence to believe that he really is that. And so that you will believe, and then he'll give you the right to be called the child of God, and his life will come into you, and that's eternal life. And like that's it. I I just don't think John is concerned about details the way somebody like Luke, you know, a doctor and an interviewer, in terms of making sure everything is crystal clear. I just think John's at the 50,000-foot view.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Do you think that is because of what I was just talking about, that being when John is writing relative to big events in history and the fact that three other gospel writers have already written before him? Or do you think that's just because of how John is, or something else, or both?

SPEAKER_03 28:05

I think it's both. I think he probably I don't know. Part of it is I am the type of person who doesn't think in details. So I love reading John because it's like, oh, this guy's speaking my language. So I'm probably projecting my own personality onto him, but I think the fact that the other three Gospels were in circulation, I think it was a chance for him to say, I'm gonna give you the other perspective on this, because you already have that. And I also think the upper room discourse is his way of saying, boy, those guys left out a lot of the one-on-one that Jesus had with us. And I'm just gonna make sure you get all that too.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

I think Matthew is still going to be my favorite book of the Bible, even after I'm done with John. I I really like Galatians, is I mean, I don't know. I just I really, really like the Bible. Anytime anybody would have anything critical to say about any of these books, I would immediately would be like, you know, all defensive about it, because I just adore this book. I think it's phenomenal the way the whole thing hangs together. And when you start to get into looking really closely at it and seeing the motivations and the personalities and the pressures behind why each of these books exists, they just get better. That only helps the humanity of the authors working in perfect God-ordained union with the spirit who is guiding them along, makes for something just truly unique in the grand history of books. So I like them all. I am loving our time in John, but like you said, oh, maybe I'm projecting because I just like John and I think like him. I think like Matthew. And the way Matthew is making a case that all of the story of everything, not just like, oh, this prophecy said this, and look, Jesus was there, just like the prophecy. There's that. But I find the prophecies that Matthew points to to be far more compelling that are more in the vein of look at this arc of this story over the course of a few thousand years. Like, come on, we've had forever to think about it. What would pay off the story? What needs to happen? It's it's not done. This story, what would what would be the perfect harmonizing way for that to round out? It's Jesus. Okay, now look at this story that involves all of these political things and all of these ancient news stories and all of these colorful characters who did this and these atrocities and wrongs left unwrited, and these you know, heroes, and you add up this whole arc of the story. Okay, it's not done though. What would end that story? What would feel I mean, what would dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, what would round it out? It's Jesus again! Look at that. And some of the stories is more obvious, and I can go and read Matthew and be like, I see the payoff perfectly. Other times, still, with all the time I've spent with Matthew, I look at it and go, Yeah, you see it, and the Holy Spirit inspired you to see it. I still haven't made the you know, the just awestruck connection that you made here, Matthew. I don't see it as well as you do yet, but man, you thought this was a really big deal. And so, yeah, it's just easier for my brain to compute with that Jesus completes the story kind of approach, maybe that it is to compute with John's dance steps, but I feel like it's making sense. I feel like I'm I'm tracking with it, even if I'm not wired like him.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Yeah, but how cool is that? That okay, God wants to reveal things to humanity, and he uses human authors to write it down, but he says, let's do four of them, because not everybody's wired the same. Like the fact that you resonate with Matthew and I resonate with John, and there's people who are listening to this who are like, I just like Mark because he cuts to the chase, or I like Luke because I like thinking about parables and conceptual thought. And it's like, you know, how great is that that God understood that we're all gonna come at it from a different angle.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Yeah, and I don't want the whole thing to run through one guy. I'm very skeptical of historic religious claims that all hinge on one guy doing things where there's not really a lot of accountability and it's it wasn't really witnessed, and I just kind of got to roll with it. Christianity does not have that pinch point, it doesn't have that super vulnerable point where it's like, well, but this one thing happened totally unwitnessed and totally in secret, and it is kind of the hinge point of the whole thing. It all just happens in front of so many people. Yeah, and then all these people who are completely different talk about it. I mean, for crying out loud, by volume of words, the biggest contributor to the New Testament isn't even Jewish. What? Yeah, I I love the way it's ordained.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

Let me ask you this are we gonna do 90 episodes on every uh chapter? I mean, that's 21 chapters. That's a lot of episodes.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

No, we're not. No, it is a lot of episodes, and we're not going to. I mean, we're gonna have some cool side jounts that I've already thought about coming up into interesting history things, but no, I I think the pace is gonna from here on out, it's gonna look more similar to Matthew pace wise. Why do you ask?

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Well, I was just thinking if there's one chapter of the Bible to spend 90 episodes on, John 1 might be at the top of my list. What would be ahead of it?

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Romans 8, maybe? Uh yeah, but I don't think you can just carve out Romans 8 and do that solo. Like I think you've got to run all the way through 11. Yeah, totally. Like, I don't feel as good about the arbitrary chapter breaks there.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

And again, you're going to be referencing John chapter 1 for almost every episode for the rest of this season. So digging as deep as you did, I think is exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

I may think about John chapter 1 every day for the rest of my life. It comes up all the time. I mean, I am married to the book of Matthew. I think in the rhythms of that book. I'm not like I'm not claiming like this. Somebody walks up to me on the street and it's like, what, what is like quote this chapter and verse? I don't, I don't have it memorized. I don't, I got a phone and stuff. It's on there. I I you know I remember a lot of it. Talk to my kid, he's got a whole bunch of it memorized. I just mean I feel the rhythms of Matthew, and I'm feeling the same way about John 1. So it's kind of like in the Middle Ages, you remember learning in seminary about the Sumas? Oh, yeah, that people would write, like the the scholastics would write these big summaries of all of theology or this or that. It feels like John kind of does that twice. Once in John 1. Here is the super fast summary of all of theology up to this point. But then my argument in my book about Revelation is this isn't, it's so sad that we fight about revelation all the time. Like nobody will know the day and the hour. Well, nobody until old Pastor Kip, because he solved it and now we're gonna fight about it. The revelation is supposed to be celebratory, it's a scary book, but a happy book because it is the summary of all of the theology of the Bible. Yeah. So, in a way, John kind of does the Summa twice. In John 1, he gives us the summary of everything we've seen up till this point and gets us a little bit into Jesus. In Revelation, we get the summary of all of theology of not just the Bible, but of the work of God throughout history. And that's kind of unique to John to have that big picture perspective.

SPEAKER_03 35:48

I've always loved that idea of I'm gonna find the secrets that are hidden in a book literally called Revelation. I know it's called the Apocalypse, but still, like, really?

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Yeah, the uh the irony is not lost. Do you remember off the top of your head? Because I know you're not you're not Catholic or Anglican or Orthodox, so it's okay if you don't remember this off the top of your head, but do you remember the symbols of the four gospel writers? I do.

SPEAKER_03 36:16

All right, what do we got? But if I need to if I need to pass this for my salvation, I I'm still guessing a little bit. Okay. Who's Matthew? Um, isn't that the is that the man?

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Yeah, the man with wings. And it's kind of weird that it's a man with wings, so some people say an angel, but yeah, that's it. Okay, then Mark. Um, one of them's a lion. There you go. That's Mark. It's all over Mark's the lion? Okay, all over Venice, St. Mark's Square. If you ever forget and you've ever seen pictures of Venice, just remember there are lions all over St. Mark's Square, so that works. And then Luke. I got the other two. Luke is an ox. Yeah. The workmanlike gospel. And then John is the eagle. It's the eagle. And so then you think about that in light of what we're talking about and observing about John 1, John in general, Revelation, that soaring 10,000 foot view, the pinch zoom, way, way, way, way, way out.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

Look at that. Like I knew what I was talking about.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

It's like that. In many ways, it is like that. That doesn't mean it is, but it's like that. Yeah. Do you think it's John, by the way? Where I keep film putting John in the text. Do you think that is John the evangelist, the this unnamed disciple?

SPEAKER_03 37:34

I do. I do. I think the fact that he never refers to himself by name, even when it gets to the one Jesus loved, he references himself so obliquely throughout. Like the very end conversation with Peter, where Peter motions to John, is like, Well, how's that one gonna die? And Jesus says, That's none of your business, Peter. You know, even that, John's like trying to fill in gaps, maybe that questions people had, without actually saying, Hi, it's me.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yeah, clearly. I mean, who else at the time John is being written would people be wondering about that? Which one's not gonna die? That had kind of been answered for the most part by the time the Gospel of John is being written. Yeah. Okay, what do you make of Nathaniel's confession? You said you come back to that a lot.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Well, I come back to the Philip finding Nathaniel and saying, You have to come and see. You have to come and see. So I think what I come back to in the second half of John 1 is that bearing witness to others to come and see, to come and behold. So that theme shows up again and again in the whole gospel. But Nathaniel's actual confession, I think you are right to spend so much time on it, you know. There's a lot of great confessions of Christ in scripture. People get Peter's as kind of the high point, like you said, but Martha's got a really great one, Nathaniel's got a really great one, but as I've been teaching through John, it's been a lot more of the come and see, come and see. And the fact that all these guys are different, right? And you did a good job of like, well, Nathaniel, he's kind of snotty. Can anything come out of Nazareth, right? He's gonna respond differently than John or Andrew or Peter or as we see later, Thomas. And I love that too. It's kind of like Jesus is willing to just speak the language of who is coming to see him. And sometimes it's Mary who just wants to cry, sometimes it's Martha who wants to argue, sometimes it's Lazarus who's dead. You know, Jesus is gonna speak their language so that they'll believe. And I think John is his starting that pattern right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

Yeah, and Martha's uh that's John 11, 27, is equally fantastic. And this is Martha, she's wrong about crap. Yes, Lord, she told him, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. That's pretty good. That's pretty good, and she's under a lot of duress when she says that. Um, dude, I heard a sermon the other day. Okay, again, this is for I'm not talking with you right now, Jeff. I'm talking with everybody else to bring him up to speed. Sure. On our inside baseball. My friend Jeff and I both appreciate anybody who would step up into a pulpit and make an effort to teach the Bible well. It's hard, it's intimidating, there's 10 billion ways to get it wrong. And by the grace of God, somehow his word does not return void. Even when people like Jeff and I say stupid stuff, you know, people are trying, but God's word is it's incredible. It just somehow it works, even in spite of people like me who talk about it. Still, even with that that attempt to demonstrate uh collegiality and um benefit of the doubt, the truth is look, whatever you do at your job, you see patterns, and there are things that you notice and you giggle at. They're like, well, that's kind of that's not great. That's kind of amateur hour. And we got a couple things that we laugh at, and one of them is using the well, what is it, Jeff? What's the best way to introduce a speech or a sermon ever in the history of writing? Webster's Dictionary defines. Yeah, that's one of them. Always every time, every time I hear the Webster's Dictionary defines, I picture your face and I laugh about it. I'm it was very creative once. Yeah, and then maybe my next favorite is the the sermon structure that is I'll just say whatever the thing is, and then I'll ask the question, what is the that thing in your life?

SPEAKER_03 41:43

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Who are the Goliaths in your life? Who are the Marthas in your life? What are the Egyptian armies in in your in your life?

SPEAKER_03 41:54

Maybe your El Guapo is a lack of education.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Yeah, like that. Okay. Oh mercy. What were we talking about? Probably John? Yeah, I think we're wrapping up. Yeah, I think we were wrapping up. What are we looking for here? Give me, just reel it off. Like the the five big themes that we're supposed to be taking from this, uh from chapter one that we should have our eyes out for for the rest of the book.

SPEAKER_03 42:25

Okay. Light versus darkness, yep. Acceptance versus rejection. Yep. The glory and life of the Trinity, behold and believe. Um I don't know, you want to throw in the fifth?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Come and see. I mean, that's kind of I guess that's kind of your behold and believe. But come and see as you were talking about it, like invite other people to come and see.

SPEAKER_03 42:50

Yeah. Well, oh, I would say the divinity and humanity of Jesus. The son of man idea then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

I lumped that into the uh glory and reality of the Trinity, but okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

So they double up a little bit. Man, what are you gonna do? And we're gonna talk about those signs and we're gonna talk about those I am statements. Mm-hmm. An awful lot as well that you alluded to, but uh okay. Last thing. Do you have do you have your shared folder there with the the music? I do. Can you pull that up so that I can relive and ask you a few questions about musical decisions you've made here over the past 90 episodes in John chapter one? Okay. Go for it. I no, I'm not gonna give any hints. There is a little piece that you put together that everyone I've played it for has had trouble figuring it out until I tell them what it is, and then they do that thing where they hit themselves on their forehead with their palm, and they're like, Oh, obviously. Sure. I'm sorry, how embarrassing. Can you play that? Do you have it right there?

SPEAKER_03 43:51

I do.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

Alright, I'm giving I'm stalling for everybody so that they can try to figure it out one last time before we blurt it out and ruin it. That's all the stalling I can do. That's the hallelujah chorus. It's handle. And it's weird. You just it's so obvious, but it feels all buried in cryptic. Camilla was guessing pop songs, and then I played it a second time, and then she was like, Oh, it's it's Handel's Messiah. You know, she eventually did the math on it. But it's weird. Why is it hard to find that?

SPEAKER_03 45:13

It's right there. My wife has a vocal degree and has sung Handel's Messiah I don't know how many times in her life. And I played it for her in the car, and she couldn't get it. And I couldn't decide did I succeed or did I fail? It's one of the three most famous melodies in world history.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

What are one and two?

SPEAKER_03 45:35

Oh. Beethoven's Fifth. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

High Above Me by Tal Bachman.

SPEAKER_03 45:40

Hathaway, What is Love? Let's do that one.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

That's up there. Dude, that's top thousand. Yeah. That it is troubling how high on the actual list of recognizable melodies What is Love by Hattaway actually ranks?

SPEAKER_03 46:20

So be careful. Are we comparing Handel's Messiah to Hattaway's What is Love? Is that what we're doing here? They at least came up in the same sentence.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

What is wrong with us? Yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know what you do with that. Okay, go back a little bit. What else did you do musically in this in this season? I don't remember. We've done 38 Special. Oh yeah, that was tight. That just sounded like 38 Special. You did a nice job on that. What else do you say? What else do we have? Ghostbusters. Have we never done Ghostbusters in whatever 1800 episodes? We've never done that before. Not till this season. And by Ghostbusters, I mean an homage to it. They're jefifications.

SPEAKER_03 47:44

They're pastiches. Jeefifications.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

They're homages.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

Nemo's mom getting eaten by a barracuda. Oh yeah. So yeah, that that was an excellent homage to that.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

It has the whole vibe. That's heart, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:28

That is very much heart. So yeah, we've done a lot of good stuff so far.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Well, yeah, and by we, I mean you. It's fun that I get to have ideas and contribute ideas, but you've been on a roll, man. This might be your most prolific, most successful musical season to date. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Oh, we did Friday. I almost forgot.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

We did the epic. I don't I still don't know if people got that, but now, but now they have. Maybe that maybe that'll get another round when we finish out the days of the week thing.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

If we're talking about Handel and Beethoven, we gotta we gotta bring in Rebecca Black Rebecca Black.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

It's memorable. I did hear back from some people on that one. Some people got that. That made me happy. Well, we'll keep having fun with that. Uh would you be up for doing another recap after chapter two? This is kind of fun. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Alright. We shall bonus episode it up again at the end of the next chapter, then, and it'll probably be a little sooner than 90 episodes. Sounds great. Cool. What do you got going uh music-wise right now? What's on the internet that's kind of newish from you?

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Uh not too long ago I did a live album, which was basically me here in the studio doing one song a day, rearranging some of my music as if I was a lounge singer in an airport bar. And it was hopefully sufficiently ridiculous and fun. But yeah, that's out there. Rooktown live at the Starlight Lounge.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Yeah, it's uh it's kind of like, you know, clinky ice and the cocktail glass sort of feel to it. Like the top couple buttons are undone, the the bow ties untied, but it's still around your neck. Absolutely. Would you link that so that people can go listen to it? Sure. Alright. That's it for John 1. I guess we'll start with John 2. Well, I don't know that we're starting with John 2 on Monday. I think we're gonna do a little Gospel of John background for a couple days, and then we'll start with John.

SPEAKER_03 51:08

I thought you were gonna say we're going back to the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

We didn't get it all. I mean, there's still meat on the bone. There's more we can do, but no, I'm not gonna do that to you. All right, that's good. Thanks for jumping in, buddy. I appreciate it. Yeah, good times. All right, we're calling it good. Monday, more John stuff. I'm Matt. That's Jeff. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.