John 1
MSB Book Notes:
John's name does not appear in the Gospel of John.  This is interesting...never heard it before.  The early church father Iranaeus (AD 130-200, just barely after the crucifixion), was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John.  Iranaeus says that on the authority of Polycarp, John wrote this gospel while he lived in Ephesus, and was very advanced in age.  So the life of John, who walked with Jesus overlaps well into the second century AD.  MSB dates the book in AD 80-90, about 50 years after Jesus' earthly ministry.  And before he wrote 1-3 John, or Revelation.

It is "accepted" that when John wrote his gospel, he was aware of the three Synoptic Gospels.  Part of the evidence for this is that John's is a "spiritual" gospel, more than a history.  Also, John's gospel contains a lot of unique material, not included in the other gospels.  Also, John fills in some details of the "gaps" in the other gospels.  MSB mentions that the Synoptics start with Jesus ministry in Galilee, but imply that he had started before that, elsewhere.  John fills in with information about Jesus ministry in Judea and Samaria.  There are many other reasons to believe John's gospel was written with knowledge of the other three - so later than them - but he still writes as an eye witness, recording events as he saw them.  He includes, however, more theology, and lots of other big words, indicating that he wrote after this theology began to develop in earnest.  

John's gospel centers on the life and work of Christ.  It is about Jesus' life, and he also focuses on belief, so that he can convince his readers that this is the way of salvation and the way to receive eternal life.  There are also 7 emphatic "I AM" statements in John which identify Jesus as God and Messiah.  MSB lists these references.  (Rummage preached a series about the 7 Miracles of Jesus that are found in John.).

2022 - I am expecting an interesting read this year.  I have always seen John as a stand alone gospel in the sense of the changed perspective it would have.  It is the last of the gospels to be written, long after Jesus' death and resurrection.  It is written by an old man near the end of his life, unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  It is written from Ephesus, the home of the temple of Diana.  The theology of the church is being hammered out, articulated, and the truths of Jesus' teaching are being sorted out.  That's how I've seen it in the past.  I've never thought this was a good book for a new Christian to read "first", after being saved.  This is a deep, complicated book that you need a lot of foundation to appreciate fully and understand at all.  You need some Greek to understand the subtlety of what John is really saying about the Logos.
And now, after reading Chapter 2 of Cullman's Christology of the New Testament, I will read the book with awareness of Cullman's view that this gospel was written as a polemic toward a group called the sect of John the Baptist.  These thought John the Baptist was the end times prophet, and that Jesus was in fact an imposter, and not the Christ.  John's gospel, according to Cullman, is to set out the serious problems that the sect of John the Baptist, and establish the credentials of Christ as primary to John.  To show that John came as forerunner of the Messiah not of the Kingdom of God.  So John will be telling us who Jesus was, and who John was NOT in this book.  
Yes.  It will be a very interesting read this time with all that in mind.

2023 - As t the date when this gospel was written, I would certainly accept the word of Iranaeus that it was late, and that John wrote it from Ephesus.  BUT, I would point out that nowhere in the book is there a mention of nor implication of knowledge about the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.  How many books say "It must have been written before 70 because they don't mention the fall of Jerusalem".  The gospel of John doesn't mention it either, and neither does Revelation, which is supposed to have been written even later...I think.  The point is, any time the date of writing of a NT book is "supported" by the fact that it does not mention 70 AD ought to be viewed with a highly skeptical eye, in my opinion.  It doesn't mean a thing!

Chapter 1
A completely different introduction.  As noted in "The Forgotten Trinity", by James R. White, John opens by establishing exactly, theologically, who Jesus is, and what his relationship to the Father is.  That book says that in these first 18 verses, John is giving us the "lens" through which we are to view all that he is going to tell us about Jesus.  It starts like this:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [Jhn 1:1 ESV]  It starts like Genesis, before there was anything.  "Trinity" makes much of the use of "logos" here for Word.  It had a lot more meaning than just "word" to those John was writing to.  This "Word" was both God, and with God, telling us right away that this is something different.  Two are one.  Different in function, the same in person.  Because He is God, and that is how He chooses to reveal Himself to us.
Jesus pre-dates all that is created.  All things were created through him.  Nothing created "bypasses" him.  It all came through him.  We are told this twice for emphasis.

2022 - This verse:
3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. [Jhn 1:3 ESV]
"Through" is the little word "dia".  It appears 646 times in the KJV.  241 times it means "by".  As in all things were made BY him.  But 88 times, it is translated "through", as in ESV, and pretty much everything else EXCEPT the KJV and NKJV.  So someone must have written a paper that firms up "through" as the correct translation, OR they found something in Qumran - something older - that makes "through" a better translation.  If you think about it, if something is made "by" someone, it is just about the mechanical act of making.  If things are made "through" someone, then that person is like a funnel through which all the the current contents were poured.  I have always had some confusion regarding these verses.  Clearly, in Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth.  So it would seem that, contrary to the KJV, all things were made by God and not By "hoytos".  Vs 2 made it clear that the masculine pronoun here is about the Word, not Theos.  So it is possible that the ESV and others changed the translation of "dia" from by to through in order to leave some wiggle room for what this all means.  AND, let's not forget the possibility - the possibility - that John is being "apologetic" about this in order to refute some doctrine of the sect of JtB.  
If "all things" were made through him, then that includes angels, does it not?  If it turns out that the stars and planets were made billions of years before God began his work on earth in connection with man, then the stars and planets were made through Jesus, though BY God.  Perhaps John's real point here is that Jesus pre-dates all the prophets, and so could not be the reincarnation of an OT prophet in the sense of "Elijah must come first".  If we think of this from the viewpoint of a polemic against that sect, then John would need to negate their view of Jesus as a false prophet, or even possibly as some no name prophet, by establishing that Jesus was BEFORE all the prophets, and before everything else for that matter, in that he WAS in fact God and so participated in the creation of all things.  The Word was God.  God was the Word.  You cannot separate the creations of one from the creations of the other.  So perhaps Jesus' future position in the Trinity requires that he be the "choke point" through which all things are related to the Father.  Even rocks and dirt are connected to the Father "through" Jesus.

2022 - So the first 5 verses establish who Jesus is in relation to all creation, and in relation to God.  Then look what comes next:
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. [Jhn 1:6 ESV].  John makes it clear that JtB is not on the same level as the Logos and Theos.  The word here translated "man" is the Greek anthropos.  I means that John is a part of "mankind".  He has no "special properties", no pre-birth history of relationship with God.  John the Apostle starts off talking about the Baptist by CONTRASTING him with Jesus.  not by COMPARING.  John's role is described next.  He came as a witness, to bear witness, about the light.  The Apostle is saying that the Baptist came as forerunner of Christ.  That is where he is going.  His intention is to show that the Baptist was here to talk about one greater - about one who WAS God - and not about the Kingdom of God.  Vs 8 lays out the thesis:  "He was not the light...".

In vs 6, John refers to John the Baptist as a witness from God about the light that had come into the world.  This verse:
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. [Jhn 1:9 ESV]  Then this verse!:
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. [Jhn 1:10 ESV]
He was "entering" the world that he himself had made - incarnation from a spiritual world and residence to being a physical flesh and blood "creature" in the physical world he had created.  Jesus crossed that line.  He was there before it - as God, as creator - and now would enter the created world as man - as creature.  He would leave spiritual existence for corporeal.  He can do that.  He was with God and WAS God.
He was sent to his own (Israel, the covenant people), but they rejected him.  Covenant was two-way.  God sent Jesus for his part of the contract, the nation of Israel refused to shoulder their obligations.  So that covenant failed at this time, and instead:
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. [Jhn 1:12-13 ESV]
The church is born.  Based only on belief, and populated with those God chooses.  As He chose a stiff-necked nation, He chooses the church.  It is still His choice.  Is the church referred to as "children of God" in other places?  As "sons of God"?  Is this the "adoption"?  Certainly this is the introduction to being "born again".

2022 - This verse:
15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'") [Jhn 1:15 ESV].  First, why is this verse in parentheses?  Do the translators do this for some reason?  Does the Greek do it?  Why would this be so?  But then note the point being made.  The Apostle is quoting the Baptist as saying that another will come after him.  Presumable the Baptist is prophesying about a later prophet, who is a greater prophet than he himself.  So the Apostle is saying not to just take his word for it that Jesus is the greater of the two, but that John himself told them that Jesus was coming and would be greater.  So how can they see Jesus as a fake?

So much here....this verse:
17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. [Jhn 1:17 ESV]  A clear distinction between what the law offered and what Jesus offered.  Between the law and the church.
vs 18 says that none EVER saw God, but saw the Son - also God.  The Father can only be seen via the Son.  The Son occupies the position between man and God.  Only through this "access" can man see God.

2022 - Both the mGNT and TR, in that last phrase of John 1:1, put the order as "and God was the logos".  I understand that many languages are less restricted on word order than English.  But the case of the nouns tells us whether they are subject are predicate.  So based on that, what does this sentence say?  Both are nominative singular masculine.  Every translation listed in BLB renders it "the word was God", and yet, the underlying word order is the opposite of that.  Why would they do that?  Ahh...they are maintaining the word order present in the previous phrase, which was "and the word was with God". so therefore, even though the word order is different, that last phrase - according to all translations - is also word then God.  John could also be slowing down his readers, and making them hold up, as I have done today, and sort out why the word order is flipped in that last phrase.  Perhaps - and I think this is probably it - his whole point is that the word order IS, in fact, INTERCHANGEABLE.  God is the word.  The word is God.  The word was with God.  God was with the word.  No...in the phrase where it says the word was with Theos, Theos is in the accusative case, making it a direct object.  This middle phrase can only be rendered in one way.  Therefore, the last phrase is also rendered with Theos as object in English...but I emphasize that the case DOES NOT make the word order certain.  And that is what John meant for it to say.  The word is God, and God is the word.

2022 - vs 18 is confusing in the ESV:
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. [Jhn 1:18 ESV].  Here is the word to word, in the order of the mGNT:
God no one has seen at any time the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father him he has explained.
To get this, I think we need to look back to vs 14:  14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [Jhn 1:14 ESV].  The Greek word translated "of the only son" in vs 14 and "the only begotten" in the literal wording of vs 18, is the same word - monogenes.  
Vs 14 establishes this title - monogenes - as referring to Jesus.  Jesus is the Word.  The Word IS God.  With that in mind, vs 18, is again about who Jesus is:  No one has seen Theos.  But we have seen Logos, who is one and the same as Theos, but who entered the world as a man.  By having Jesus sitting at God's right hand, John is still asserting that though both Logos and Theos are God, Logos is Son, and Theos is Father.  And it can only be through Logos, since we are all created "through" him, that we access the Father.  So...Theos is God triune, and Theos is God the Father.  (Not sure about that last sentence.)

Vs 19 turns to history, and opens with John the Baptist - long after the birth of Jesus.  John knows we have already been told about the birth.  When asked, John says he is not the Christ, and he is not Elijah, and he is not "the prophet".  All he will answer is that he is "the voice of one crying in the wilderness".  (Isa 40:3).  (Note:  "the prophet" is from Dt 18:15-18.  See the MSB note.  It is a term used of Jesus, not of a second forerunner.)

2022b - While reading "The Christology of the New Testament", the first chapter, and particularly pp 23-29, goes into a lengthy reasoning as to why this passage is here in John.  It says that John's disciples, after he was dead, began to see him as the final eschatological prophet who would come before God established his kingdom on earth.  As I understand it, this means the last one before the new heaven and new earth, at the end of the Millennial.  These did not therefore believe that any appearance of any further Messiah was necessary, because John the Baptist, in their eyes, had fulfilled that role.  So what John is saying here in 1:19-23 is to REFUTE the disciples of John who were still around and saying this.  John the apostle is saying that John the Baptist himself denied that he was Elijah - and Elijah must come before God comes, that he was not himself the Christ, with the idea that the final prophet can be both Elijah and the Messiah, both prophet and messiah in one, and that he is not "the prophet", as foretold in Moses time in Dt 18:15-18.  John himself claims to be NONE of these, but merely "a" prophet, not and of the three "the" prophets that have been foretold.  John knew that he was a prophet, that he represented the first appearance of A prophet in 450 years, and he knew that the reappearance of prophecy had eschatological significance in that it signaled the beginning of the end times.
I was not aware of all these possible interpretations of who John the Baptist was, nor did I realize that the followers he left behind became such a problem.  The problem?  According to their interpretation of who John was, NO MESSIAH WAS NEEDED!  They saw Jesus as a fake and an imposter...because John the Baptist had fulfilled the role that Jesus claimed to fill.  On p. 28 of "Christology" it says this amazing thing:  "It can be shown that the whole prologue is directed against those who wish to set the Baptist in opposition to Jesus; that is, against the predecessors of the Mandaeans.  For this reason the prologue emphasizes that John was not himself the light."  The prologue refers to early verses of John 1.  There is also a reference to where we would look for this "showing" about the prologue, which is in a footnote that says "See W. Baldensperger, Der Prolog des Johannesevangeliums, 1898."  Look at that.  1898 and they'd recognized this problem, and I have NEVER even heard of this!  How much is out there, and vitally important, that we just don't hear about on Sunday morning at preaching service?!?!?!?!  
2022b - One last quote from the "Christology":  p. 25, "Thus it is certain that the Synoptic Gospels consider John the Baptist to be the Prophet of the end time - in some passages as the forerunner of God; in others as the forerunner of the Messiah.    I am not sure, but I believe the point is that Jesus, at the second coming, is the prophet who will be the forerunner of God.  There will be the Millennial, which will spend a thousand years cleansing the earth and separating the saved from the lost, and then the last of the lost will be destroyed in the final battle, Satan will be thrown into hell, and then the new heaven and the new earth show up, and the Temple of God descends from heaven, to be always on earth.  I may be talking heresy here, but that is what I think at this point (6/3/22) the Christology is saying...and just a few minutes later, this, on p. 29 of the Christology:  "The Fourth Gospel, therefore, undoubtedly has a tendency strongly to underline the fact that John the Baptist is not THE Prophet.  We understand this tendency even better when we note that this same Gospel emphasizes that THE Prophet is Jesus.  In the Johannine Jesus all the functions of all those sent from God are united."  Emphasis mine.

This discussion with the scribes and Pharisees takes place "in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing".  The maps I found say Bethany is really not very close to the Jordan.  So we need to read this as written by someone who is on the eastern side of the river, referring to a town on the western side, and the Jordan is not mentioned as being right there, but as the place John was usually baptizing.  2020-The "sense" of this is better in the ESV, which renders the verse: 28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing. Jn 1:28 ESV.

Vs 29-34 are about John recognizing Jesus, and testifying that the Spirit of God remained on Jesus.  2020-This verse:
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" Jn 1:29 ESV. This tells us that John already knew Jesus' purpose in becoming a man.  He would be the lamb to take away sin, the sin offering.  Sin offerings die.  John did not see Jesus as the conquering King, but as suffering servant, in the world to die for the sins of the world.  John already knew this, but he couldn't make people understand.  The Pharisees likely didn't have a clue that this had to be done.  

2023 - This verse:
34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God." [Jhn 1:34 ESV].  There is a note in the TCR ESV saying that some manuscripts end the verse with "the Chosen One", rather than "the Son of God".  If I remember right, "Messiah" is "the anointed one", but you can see where that might easily be "chosen" instead of anointed.  Both the TR and the mGNT have it as "the Son of God".  Both of them!  So...why even mention the manuscripts that say otherwise?  Are they supposed to add to the translation?  Are we supposed to think that "all" the manuscripts are correct - meaning that he is both Son and Chosen?  Because apparently no manuscript uses both words.  Or shouldn't we figure out which was "original" to John's own handwriting and stick with that?  You know, I like knowing that other manuscripts are different, but I would like the footnotes to explain more about those other manuscripts - older?  newer?  complete?  partial? - so that I can make at least a judgment on how much credibility to give them?  Are the older, better manuscripts, or just something they found written on the back of a candy wrapper?  Ya know?

2022 - So John tells them he is neither Elijah, nor the Prophet, nor Christ.  He is none of these, but then in vs 30, the Baptist points out that Jesus IS the one that he came to foretell.  Jesus is greater than John.  The Apostle does not stop there though.  He further quotes John as saying that Jesus is "the Son of God".  So if you take the position that the gospel of John is a polemic refuting the Baptist as the primary of the two, then these first 34 verses can certainly fit that description.  In fact, they fit it so well that it becomes difficult to say that is NOT what this gospel is about.
And it continues!  Look at vs 37:  36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. [Jhn 1:36-37 ESV].  John says "Lamb of God", TWO, count them, TWO disciples of John heard John say this, and THEY followed Jesus instead.  So the Apostle is saying hey, these two guys who, unlike most of you, were actually there when this happened, knew John personally, and are still around so you can confirm what I am saying, LEFT John, on John's first hand recommendation, to follow a GREATER than John, that being Jesus.  
The Polemic just fits.  Why has no one ever told me this?  How can such deep things never be taught, never be preached, never be heard?  Why are these things hidden in seminaries?  This book is from 1959, the year after I was born.  But I don't think for a second that this view of John's Gospel originated at that time.  The book isn't even about this sect of John the Baptist, is a Christology book, and all this sect information is brought in as INCIDENTAL to Christology.  It must have been there.
2000 years later, and I fear we are still drinking milk.  

God had told John to look for this sign - of the Spirit descending as a dove.  This would identify the person as the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.  John says this man is the "Son of God", or "The Chosen One".  

John describes all this as happening very quickly.  The Pharisees talk to John the Baptist one day, the next day Jesus shows up and John sees him and recognizes that he is the Christ, and the very next day, John points out Jesus to two of his own (John's) disciples.  The two follow Jesus, and one, but only one, becomes a disciple of Jesus.  This is Andrew, Peter's brother, and the first disciple.  Andrew goes and gets Peter, and brings him to Jesus, the second disciple.

vs 43, starts with the next day.  So day four.  Jesus calls Phillip and Nathanael.  

2022 - Look at vs 45:
45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." [Jhn 1:45 ESV].
This would indicate that Philip at least saw Jesus as the prophet Moses predicted in Dt 18.  I suspect the point is that Philip did not believe John the Baptist was the prophet foretold by Moses, but he did believe that Jesus was that prophet.  Then in vs 49, Nathanael gives Jesus two titles:  Son of God and King of Israel.  Where did Nathanael hear these things?  I am not aware, from the Christology book, at least not yet, that it was widely believed that Jesus was a king.  We know it will come later, but how would Nathanael say this so very early?

Chapter 2
2022 - At the end of chapter 1, the 12 had been chosen, and in 2, this historical recounting continues.  This chapter starts with "On the third day...".  Looking back to the previous chapter, Jn 1:43 began with "the next day", which is the day the apostles were chosen.  So they have been together now as a group for three days and they all go to Cana together.

2023 - Or John is reminiscing about how things came about 60 years before, and is putting things in order without necessarily meaning the very next day.  I am pretty sure the other gospels put the choosing of the 12 as occurring over a more extended time.  There is probably an argument saying that Greek writing in that time often did things this way without being so completely literal as to mean consecutive 24 hour periods.  Recall that in 1:35, John the Baptist sees Jesus.  Andrew and the other guy "go home" with Jesus.  So they aren't on any kind of journey.  So the literal part of this is that Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael were chosen on this day.  We don't know exactly where John was baptizing, but it was in the Jordan river somewhere near Bethany.  "On the third day..." they are in Cana for a wedding.  How far is that?  East of Bethany, but in the Jordan, would be right at the area where the Jordan runs into the Dead Sea.  Cana is on the West side of the Sea of Galilee.  On a modern map, that distance is about a 30 hour walk as best I can tell.  So two very long walking days, or three long walking days.  Point is, you cannot get there walking in a single day.  So...the whole today, the next day, and the third day should be read one day, another day, and yet another day, all pretty close together.
2023 - In the Harmony, these first two chapters of John are pretty much shown as stand alone.  They are not correlative exactly to the Synoptics.  I note, for the first time really, that John does not tells us about Jesus' baptism, even though he tells us a lot about John and what John was saying at the time.  I also note for the first time that the word Cana - the place name - only occurs in the gospel of John.  None of the other gospels mention the place.  How did I not know that ONLY John records this first miracle?  And why would that be???

The wedding at Cana, Jesus' first public miracle, though it came ahead of schedule...as if that is possible.  It is here, and presented that way, not so we can think Jesus didn't expect it, or know that it was coming, but so we can see that he was compassionate, and that he responds to our sincere petitions on other's behalf.  And perhaps also to demonstrate the commandment to honor our father and our mother.  John tells us that Jesus' disciples believed on him because of this miracle.  So perhaps here was the real reason.  So that those closest to him would have no further doubts about him.

After the wedding, Jesus and his mother and his "brothers and sisters" went to Capernaum for a few days.  I quote brothers and sisters because it is translated as that in a footnote in ESV, but does not actually read that way.  I think "brothers" here is about those men traveling with Jesus, not his own brothers.  It mentions that his mother was at the wedding, and that he and his disciples were invited, but it says nothing about siblings.  If his mother and his brothers were there, surely there were women with them also.
2021 - Looked at the interlinear this year.  The word translated "brothers" in the KJV, and "brothers and sisters" here, is the Greek word adelphos.  This word is a masculine noun.  There is nowhere in the KJV where sisters are included.  This is an ESV thing.  Here is the verse:
12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days. [Jhn 2:12 ESV].  

2022 - So...my note is wrong, ESV doesn't translate this word "adelphos" as "brothers and sisters".  But it does have a footnote - that constantly repeated footnote, pretty much every single place adelphos is used, and it is used 346 times in the NT - that says "or brothers and sisters", with the long explanation about context.  

Note that both brothers and disciples are listed.  Based on that, I believe adelphos here refers to his familial brothers.  That is what is in view here.  This verse is not about whether Jesus' familial sisters traveled with him also on this trip.  There is nothing sexist here in the mention of brothers but not sisters.  Doesn't say they were not included, so maybe they were, but to insert a feminine noun in addition to the masculine noun that is really there is, in my opinion, adding to the word for modern cultural accommodation.  Maybe it isn't, maybe the masculine adelphos in typical written Greek of that time commonly referred to both sexes.  But that is not what the footnote says in ESV.  The footnote specifically says what it can mean in "New Testament" usage.  No examples are given however, to give any weight to that statement.  And as I said, in the KJV, translated in a time when cultural accommodation did not include feminist concepts, it isn't translated that way a single time in the NT.  It does not belong here.

2022 - Apparently I get twisted off about this footnote on a regular basis.  I think asking why both adelphos and mathetes are included is a good question.  Brothers and disciples.  So if this does not mean his brothers - other sons of Mary - then what does it mean?  Those traveling with him who were spies and hooligans as contrasted with disciples?  Those who were just curious and had the free time to travel from Cana to Capernaum just because they thought something was going on?  Why separate Jesus' entourage in such a way?  No.  His mother went also.  His Mom, his brothers, and his disciples.  I will give you that disciples almost certainly included women, and I get this from the context over and over again, but the footnote is NOT about mathetes, which I think often includes women, but is about adelphos, which I think ALWAYS means exclusively males.  I will keep an eye out for where this word includes women.  I don't think it is here.

Jesus goes to Jerusalem for the Passover.  This is the first Passover he attends after beginning his ministry.  When they get there, traders, and vendors - sellers of livestock, and foreign exchange brokers, had their little "booths" - I'm thinking about events like the State Fair - where they were doing business. They were there to make money, but they were set up inside the temple itself.  Jesus gets angry about this, drives them out, makes a mess.  John quotes a scripture about "Zeal for your house will consume me."  This is Psa 69.9.

MSB notes explain more about these merchants.  People came from all over the world to be at Passover.  They came so far that it was not convenient for them to bring their unblemished sacrificial animals with them.  Local livestock dealers seized this opportunity to sell sacrificial animals at a high markup.  Also, this was when most people paid the annual temple tax.  This tax had to be paid in specific coinage, which those traveling from far away would not have had.  So the money changers put them into the right currency for a fee.  An extravagant fee.  Their "customers" have no choice but to pay it.  And to pay the high markup on the lambs.  The Jews have turned worship into a business.

The temple officials demand that he show them his credentials giving him the authority to run off the merchants.  They were likely kicking back a percentage to the priests.  The credentials they demand are miracles.  They want a demonstration of Jesus' authority in the form of a sign from God endorsing him.  They do not believe who he is.  Jesus says to destroy the temple and he'll raise it in three days.  He meant his own body, but again, they are too literal, since they don't believe.

MSB note says that John talks about a temple cleansing at the beginning of Jesus' ministry while Matthew and Luke put it at the end.  MSB says the facts surrounding these events makes it plain that they cannot both be resolved into one cleansing.  Therefore, Jesus cleansed the temple on two occasions.  

2021 - The whole "destroy this temple and in three days" verse - 2:19 - also does not show up early in Jesus' ministry in the other gospels.  In those, Jesus says this during his last Passover in Jerusalem.  John's gospel explains what Jesus meant by these words.  It is almost as if some of Jesus quotes were well known but still not understood.  Perhaps Jews who refused to believe in Christ still used such misunderstood quotes from Jesus to say that he could not have been the Messiah.  The Messiah would never claim he could do something like that.  So John - who was there the day Jesus said this - tells them first hand what Jesus meant by that quote, and that he did something far more miraculous than putting up a building in three days.

2022 - We saw beginning in vs 1:29, that John is giving us time stamps.  The next day, the next day (35), the next day (43), and the third day, (2:1).  But in 2:12, he lets us know that he is no longer trying to be precise as to time.  In 2:12, they went down (he doesn't tell us whether this was one day or several, but it was about 15 miles, so almost certainly took two days at least.  Ten they stayed there a few days.  So John has come unstuck so far as precisely laying out a timeline.  Note that we have cleansing the temple, Nicodemus, Jesus' baptism, and then the woman at the well all here right together.  No timestamps are given at all.  Even so, I  think these stories are probably chronological - we can't really be certain.  It seems to me most likely that Jesus cleansed the temple twice.  But this first time was so early in his ministry that few even knew who that guy was.  The next time, EVERYONE who saw it knew who it was and so remembered what he said about it.  I think this is the most likely scenario.

Vss 23-35 are sort of a "note" from John about this time in Jerusalem.  Jesus apparently was doing a lot of miracles/healings while he was in Jerusalem.  And because of those miracles, many believe in Jesus.  But they believe in the miracles, not in the man.  They crave the "blessing" but not the "blesser".  They recognize the miracles as real, but do not connect them with the fact that Jesus is the Messiah.  Then the last part...Jesus doesn't need anyone to tell him who is infatuated with the signs vs who is a true believer.  Jesus already knows and recognizes them individually.  Only Jesus could do something like this.  He required no witnesses.

2022 - This verse:
23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. [Jhn 2:23 ESV].  The phrase "believed in his name".  I think it is stated this way to show that many saw the miracles and considered that Jesus was something special.  A prophet like those of old or something along those lines.  I don't think that many called him Christ at this early point, and that is John's point.  They began to talk about this man Jesus and to wonder whether or not the miracles were real, but they surely knew that something was going on.  They believed in the name of Jesus as some also believed in the name of John the Baptist, who was also seen as a prophet, after a long absence of prophets.  

Chapter 3
Nicodemus comes to see Jesus at night...so no one knows he talked to him.  Nicodemus recognizes Jesus as a teacher sent from God, as witnessed by the miracles that only God could send.  (But he does not recognize him as Messiah.  He does, however, want to be part of what Jesus is doing.  That is, Nicodemus wants to be saved, and he recognizes that such salvation will not come from Jewish law.  So how then can he be part of it?  Like the verses about salt and light, this story also shows the stark contrast between the old law and the new covenant that Jesus offers).
2021 - This verse:
2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him." [Jhn 3:2 ESV].  Only God could empower what Jesus was doing.  Nicodemus is missing that Jesus is God.  There is no concept of Trinity at this point.  I would love to explain how the "roles" of God are three, yet God is only One.  How He can be both Father and Son.  But it is not explainable.  It is no wonder Nicodemus has trouble here.  

2020 - This verse:
3 Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." [Jhn 3:3 ESV]  In what way does Jesus mean you cannot "see" the kingdom of God.  If he means physically see it, then it must be something far in the future, that only the saved will see.  That pretty much has to mean the new heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem.  There will be lost people during the Millennial, and right up to the end of that last battle at the end of the thousand years when Satan is finally locked away forever.  So if Jesus is being literal here, he means that the Kingdom of God is the New Jerusalem, when perfection is restored to all creation.
But what if he means only those born again - who have the Holy Spirit - can discern the kingdom all around them.  Only the saved can see the stark contrast between saved and unsaved, between truth and lies, between light and darkness.  Only we can see spiritual things, because they are spiritually discerned.  Like understanding the Bible.  You really can't, if you're not saved.  You understand it like Jordan Peterson in "12 Rules....", as a collection of awesome unique stories.  But not as the playing out of God's plan in the history of man.  You just don't see it the same.  Could be either of these.  Could be both.  Jesus told his mother that his time had not yet come.  He will later tell the woman at the well that she will never thirst if she drinks the water that he offers.  This was surely speaking of spiritual things.  You can't really be born all over physically, so this too was speaking spiritually.  So I think probably the second idea is the one Jesus had in mind.  You cannot see spiritually the kingdom of God.  That's my opinion today.  The rest of the verse bears it out.  You cannot see the wind.  But the wind is there.  It is something that you know, as the kingdom of God is something that you spiritually "see".

Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again.  Nicodemus takes the literal route, and denies even the possibility of such a thing.  Jesus clarifies that one must be born of the Spirit also, and that this second birth is the one that matters.  

2021 - 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' [Jhn 3:7 ESV].  An ESV footnote says that "You..." is plural here.  Jesus wasn't just telling Nicodemus what was required of him, but is saying that all - all Jews, all Gentiles, any who want to see the kingdom - must be born again.  This is the message of Jesus, this is his evangelism.  He does not say "If you want to be saved...." but "If you want to see the kingdom."  I think he makes that plainer in the next verses, he gives us some insight into this kingdom.

Then Jesus talks about the wind, and not understanding how that works, and says the Spirit is the same way.  It does what it does, and is not dependent on our understanding in order to do it.  So...you don't have to understand all about the Bible to be saved.  You have to do what the words say to do.  You have to believe and be baptized.  This rebirth will be a beginning of understanding, that will continue to grow so long as we follow.  So long as we are nourished by the Word the Spirit will lead us.  Jesus is asking Nicodemus to surrender to the unknown.  People have a really hard time doing that.  Like strapping into the seat of a "ride" at Six Flags without knowing what the ride is going to do.  You have to "trust".  Or bungee jumping or sky diving.  You don't know, but you trust.  We do it all the time when it really doesn't matter - though even there we can have a hard time with it - but we hesitate even more to trust the Bible.   

2021 - Here is the verse:  8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." [Jhn 3:8 ESV]  I think this implies that the kingdom is an invisible thing on earth.  I think those in this kingdom - those who are born again of the Spirit - are connected/part of/residing in this earthly but invisible kingdom.  And because of that, we understand things on a gut level, a level we cannot really explain, that give us faith, and assurance and peace when all about us are in fear and panic.  We are changed inside, in our souls perhaps, and through that part of us - that science cannot discern - our souls connect us to His kingdom.  But the connection is still "through" the corrupting physical body, and so is still imperfect.  At the resurrection, the physical body goes and is replaced by a new spiritual body connected directly to the Kingdom of God, unfiltered, and only then is his full power and glory discernible to man.

2020-This verse, and the MSB explanation of it:
13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. [Jhn 3:13 ESV]  This phrasing is found elsewhere, in the OT, here:  4 Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son's name? Surely you know! [Pro 30:4 ESV]  I think Jesus is clearly referring to this passage, so not just that first phrase, but the whole verse - perhaps the whole Psalm.  MSB says that Jesus is saying that he is the ONLY first hand witness of the things of heaven.  He is distinguishing himself from Mohammad, from Joseph Smith, from Buddha (?), from those who claim near death experiences - and how many others who claim to have some special revelation?  Jesus cuts out the middle man because he was there himself!  Jesus is saying that he came down from heaven and can testify to heaven.  Jesus didn't start on earth, go up to heaven for revelation, and then come back down to tell what he saw.  Jesus STARTED in heaven, before time began, and is now come down to man as a witness to the truth.  I never understood this before, but I always wondered what that verse in Proverbs was about.  There is also an MSB note on Pro 30:4.  It says all these questions that are posed can only be answered by revelation from God.  We can observe and to some extent understand the "what" of creation, but we cannot learn the "who" by observation.  Only by revelation, in the scriptures where God has chosen to reveal Himself to us.  MSB gives a list of references where this conclusion is reached over and over:  The conclusion was reached by Job (Job 42:1-6), Solomon (Ecc 12:1-14), Isaiah (Is 40:12-17; 46:8-11; 66:18, 19), and Paul (Ro 8:18-39).  His son's name, Jesus Christ.  Cf Jn 1:1-18.
This is a very profound thought for a FB post.  If I can condense it down and make it plain.  Perhaps this is the last post before Christmas?
Next day - it occurred to me that Mohammad claims to have have ridden this white horse up to heaven and seen things up there and presided over a prayer meeting with Moses, Noah, Jesus, and so on while there.  They put him in charge over all of them to lead the prayer.  (2022 - Oh my...so the one who came after had the preeminence!  Mohammad insinuates himself into the prophecy of John the Baptist, and so makes himself THE Prophet!).  So 600 years after Jesus said no one has ascended except he who descended, Mohammad stakes a claim that he too ascended.  (2022 - But as far as I know, Mohammad never claims to have descended...never claims he came from heaven, never claims to be deity.)  This is his claim to prophethood over and above even Moses.  AND, this says that Islam MUST view Jesus as a mere prophet - who's claim here would have to be false, right? - or else it would have been Jesus leading Mohammad in prayer, not the other way around, and if they do that, then the NT, with its insistence on the one way would have to be incorporated into Islam.  They can't allow that.  This is the claim of Islam that I don't believe any other religion makes. This is their "refutation" of the uniqueness of Christ.
2023 -  ....and ALL false religions teach a different Christ than the one in the gospel.  It is foundational to a false religion to make Jesus other than he really was.
2023 - Muslims sort of "believe" the OT because Mohammad told them to do so.  Start with the verse in Proverbs and show that it was about an expected one.  They would agree to that point.  Then show the error in thinking that says Mohammad is the expected one.  It is wrong because he did not begin in heaven as eye witness.  And Mohammad, even in the Quran, did not gather the wind or wrap up the waters.  This is not just about visiting, but about having power in heaven.  In fact, this is about STARTING there.  What is his name, and what is his Son's name?  Only God can do these things, that is his name.  Surely you know His Son's name - Jesus, NOT Mohammad.  
Then tie John to it.  Jesus says NO ONE has done this ascending thing but the Son of Man.  When Jesus says this, he has not yet ascended himself...has he?  Perhaps it should be understood as saying no "man" can ever ascend and stay in heaven, witness and understand all that heaven is about, and THEN come back down.  The only way to understand heaven is to be FROM heaven in the first place.  Then you can come down, and go back.
I would really like to get this "straight" in my head so that I could talk about it to a Muslim.  So I could show that the book they believe ties directly to the words of Jesus saying HE is THE PROPHET.  HE is the one foretold.  Jesus is the one with preeminence not because he was a "better man" than John the Baptist, but because he was NOT just a man, but a divine incarnation of God AS Man.  It's here...the connection that makes Jesus THE Prophet instead of Mohammad is here.  It I could state it correctly, it should create either doubt or rage in any Muslim.
2023 - You would need to know all the prophecies of THE Prophet in the OT, and be able to link them unequivocally to Christ, and not to Mohammad.  Thereby you could show that Mohammad was a usurper, trying to BE one who had in fact already been.  Does he ever say, in the Quran, that he is THE Prophet, or is that title always assigned to him by others?  This is important too.  

These verses conclude the section:
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. [Jhn 3:14-15 ESV]
Jesus example for Nicodemus, to help him understand, is not about parachutes or bungee jumps, but refers back in Jewish history to the wandering in the desert.  God had cursed Israel, and the curse took the form of poisonous snakes.  The people were dying for their sins - of snakebite.  The only cure for this was to look up at the brass serpent up on the pole.  You had to trust in something that could not work.  You had to believe in something outside logic, outside rationality.  You had to believe that even though B was wholly unconnected with A, you could do B and make A disappear.  Belief, and trust that you literally "bet your life" on.  Bungees and parachutes are like that.
2021 - We do trust things in this life that can kill us if our trust is misplaced.  Yet we trust.  We believe in things we cannot begin to explain.  Kids - that is, little children - trust their parents this way.  When Daddy throws them in the air, they have complete trust that he will catch them.  They aren't cringing in fear at the top of the throw, but squealing with abandon, with no doubt of their safety.  This is how we must trust in order to have eternal life.  And that is really what salvation is about - eternal life, being a child of God, and being in His Kingdom, here on earth, and forever in heaven.  This is the "flow" of it all.  To quote from another note, faith is not about saying you trust something that you really don't trust.  Faith is truly trusting though we cannot explain logically why we trust.

2021 - There is an ESV note saying that some interpreters end Jesus' quote at the end of vs 15.  They say the print should not be red but black beginning in 16.  So it is John saying "Whosoever...", not Jesus.  They see vs 16 as John's explanation of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, not a continuation of Jesus' words.  Interesting also that only Jesus and Nicodemus were in the room for this meeting, yet we have the word for word.  Could be John and Nicodemus became friends, knew each other.  Could be inspired text.
2022 - Or, as in "Chosen", it could be that John was waiting outside the room and was writing down the conversation, which he preserved, and then included in his gospel 50 or more years later.

Then probably the most memorized verse in the New Testament:
16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. [Jhn 3:16 ESV]
This is the answer to "why".  Because God loved, he did it this way.

2021 - 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. [Jhn 3:17 ESV]  In this verse, we see "salvation", the word not the concept, mentioned for the first time.  Christians use this word a lot and I think it often puts people off.  I have heard the word thrown out with 5 or 6 syllables, sarcastically making fun of it as a nonsense word.  But here is where it comes from - at least one of the places.  Would we be better asking people if they want to be part of the Kingdom of God?  Or maybe ask if they want to be a child of God?  I've not really seen it done this way in any "tracts".  But maybe it has.  Also in this verse, Jesus...or maybe John...makes clear that Jesus is God's Son, and that this is part of the belief that saves.  You have to believe in the Son to believe in the Father, because they are one and the same.  You cannot believe in God the Father and reject God the Son.  They are the same, they do different things but are the same.  They cannot be separated at the belief level.  John will emphasize this to a great extent in Chapter 8.
2022 - Could we say that this first time, the Son was sent to save the world, but when he comes again, it will be to condemn the world - at least the sinners - and to destroy them?  He sits on his throne on earth at that time, and he will judge the world.  There will be only sheep and goats, no middle ground at all.  So is John explaining that Jesus is the suffering servant in the first century, come to save all who come to him, but when he comes back, he will be the conquering king.  Did John just leave out the words "this time" after "Son" in vs 17?  I think it's a real possibility.

In these next verses, Jesus overhauls Jewish law, making the sacrifices the law required, and the rules contained in the law, of NO EFFECT WHATEVER in reconciliation with God.  Belief alone is required.  Just this.  No wonder the Pharisees were upset.  Their entire way of life and teaching was being thrown out like dirty dish water.  Jesus was setting aside the Mosaic law in favor of the gospel, the new covenant in HIM!  The Law had to go, completely.  Beyond radical.  So the covenant is to work this way:
19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. [Jhn 3:19 ESV]
Come to the light, or love the darkness and die.  This is the new covenant.  Jesus, the man, the incarnate God, is the one and the only light.
2021 - Not only that, but here is why rejecting Christ sends you to hell.  God has judged the whole world, and His judgement is that we love the Light, or we are condemned.  He has not left room here for works, for the Law, or for any other way.  God Himself has judged and only those who love the light will be saved.

(When you go sky diving, you choose to do something that could result in your death.  Jumping out of an airplane at 10,000' will surely kill you.  BUT, you trust that parachute on your back to mitigate the consequences of your decision.  That parachute will save you from the certain death that awaits you otherwise.  To reject Jesus is to take the parachute off and jump anyway.  There is only one end to this sad story.  You are required to jump out of the plane.  Your only decision is whether or not to strap on a parachute, and trust it.  This could be worked into an invitation.  But the plane has to be crashing too.  If you don't choose to jump, you still die when the plane crashes.  You will eventually die, we all do.  No...not a good analogy.  Stick with the first one.  Don't add too much to the story.)

2022 - These verses:
20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." [Jhn 3:20-21 ESV]
These seem pretty difficult to understand.  I get that bad people don't like daylight.  I understand that.  What I'm having trouble with is that last phrase.  "...his works have been carried out in God."  What does that mean?  Is that Calvinism?  The only good we do is the good that God puts in us, and that makes us seek the light?  That doesn't seem right.  MSB doesn't even have a note about these verses.  Look at the sequence implied...You are already doing what is true, and so you come to the light (to salvation?)...why?  So that God is shown to be the author of all that is good and true?  I am not getting this at all...

Vs 22 is a change of narrative.  From the Passover, Jesus and his disciples go into the countryside and start baptizing people.  This verse clearly says that Jesus was baptizing.  I think there's another gospel where it says he himself didn't do any baptizing.  MSB note says that's in John 4:2.  Jesus baptized no one, but his disciples did, and John the Baptist was at another place, and he also was baptizing people.

John reiterates that he is not Messiah, but Jesus is.  John says he came to announce, not to be.  And now that Jesus is here, he will gain in prominence and John will decline.  This is as it should be.  It is the bridegroom that is celebrated, not the best man.

2022 - This verse:
26 And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness--look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him." 27 John answered, "A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. [Jhn 3:26-27 ESV].
Why is this the answer to that question in 26?  And does 27 tie right back to 21, in that those doing good seek the light?  Is this about irresistible grace?  The called must be saved?  
They are asking John if he is jealous or resentful of the fact that his disciples are leaving him and following Jesus instead.  Ahhh...and his answer is that Jesus is receiving them because God has given them to him.  Why would he be jealous of Jesus on account of the disciples that God sends to him?  
So...keeping vs 21 in mind...those who were previously following the Baptist were repentant, and seeking truth and light.  That's why they came to John in the first place.  John had told them to keep looking, because John was clear to them (as he reminds them in the next verse:  28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.' [Jhn 3:28 ESV]) that he was not Christ, but was FORERUNNER to Christ.  So they were to keep looking, and to follow the greater one when he came.  BECAUSE John, as prophet, had led them to the truth.  That is what prophets do.  
So back to 20, 21, a prophet, a preacher, begins the process, and motivates those who, through God's election and grace, are to be saved, and this craving that arises in them for something better  - this search for the light - leads them to the Son, who is the light of the world.  BECAUSE they want to do the works ordained by God.  I think it works very well when understood that way.

2022 - Note also in vs 28 that John tells them he is not the Christ.  He is also pretty clear that he is not the forerunner of the Kingdom of God - which was the role of the long awaited Prophet discussed in Cullman's book.  John the Apostle is showing that John the Baptist himself denied being THE Prophet, and denied that he was Christ.  What he says he really is is the forerunner of one greater, of the Christ.  John's understanding of his own place, his own role, is pretty clear here.
Look at 29b:  29 ...Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. [Jhn 3:29 ESV].  The Baptist is saying - is quoted as saying - that with the appearance of Jesus, his purpose is accomplished.  The one who's appearance he prophesied is now here.  
Isn't that interesting...if this was so, then what would John have done with the rest of his life, had he not be beheaded?  His work was all done, so God brought him home.  Not in a way that we perhaps would consider best, but in view of Jesus' evaluation of John, his reward in heaven surely outweighed the death he suffered on earth.  I had never seen this before, that John's death came at the appropriate time, at the completion of what God sent him to accomplish.
Possible FB post.

2020-Here is another connection I have not see before.  John the Baptist also understood that verse in Proverbs.  He says this:
32 He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. 33 Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. [Jhn 3:32-33 ESV]  I have never really thought of Jesus as "bearing witness".  But Jesus was a flesh and blood man, but a man who came from heaven, had been in the presence of God, and knew firsthand God's thoughts and plans.  He came down to earth to say "Hey, all this scripture stuff about a God in heaven is real, I know because I came from there and I have seen it myself!"  No one else can say that.  Jesus was a unique kind of preacher.  What Jesus knew of God was not revelation through scripture, but first hand knowledge.  Only the Son of God could claim such a thing, and THAT is why belief in Jesus is saving.  To believe the witness is to believe what he testifies about.  This is new...this is a seed...this I need to think about a lot more.
2023 - This again ties back to Proverbs.  Jesus did more than just say "Hey, I rode this horse through heaven and met some cool people!"  Jesus says "I lived in heaven, I was there from the beginning.  I know how the wind works, how the water works, how the planet works, because I was there, in communion with the one who had all that done."  Mohammad was a visitor to heaven.  Jesus was a resident!  And yet the Quran claims that Jesus bowed to Mohammad.  There is no way that is right.  I really need to condense all this and put together a "speech", a "sermon", that I can deliver in a clear statement, and I need to teach it, preach it.  I need to be bold and risk the backlash.

2022 - We keep seeing that his testimony is rejected.  It keeps saying that "no one" receives his testimony.  Is this rejected message that he is Messiah?  Or that he is the Son of God, or the Son of Man?  That he is Christ?  Jesus message is what is in view, but specifically, what is it that they keep rejecting?  He bears witness to the things of heaven, things he has seen in heaven that no man on earth can or has seen.  That is what is in view.  No  man has ascended and come down, the one who came down was there at the beginning.  The word was with God and the word WAS God.  I think that is what is being rejected.  That Jesus was himself God.
This would stand to reason if the Apostle is refuting the sect of the Baptist in this book.  Certainly John the Baptist never ever claimed to be God incarnate.  But the Apostle is saying that Jesus did exactly that, and no one believed him.
2023 - So...if John is here refuting the claims of the Sect of John the Baptist because they  have wrongly made John "The Prophet", doesn't it stand to reason that these are equally good argument to refute Mohammad as "The Prophet"?   That is why these are hitting home so solidly.  They refute the same false claim!

2021 - These verses:
35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. [Jhn 3:35-36 ESV]
Again, this is why it is belief in the Son that matters.  Because God has "transferred" all things to this earthly manifestation of Himself.  God is still God, and Jesus is His earthly, fleshly manifestation.  Jesus, at that time, was "sight", not faith.  Those people, in a way, saw God.  And because man is the way man is, it is that visible manifestation of God that we are to believe in.  That is the one who could be seen and touched and heard.  It should be easier to believe in Jesus than to believe in a wholly spiritual God.  People had an easy time believing in idols, but Jesus walked, talked, and breathed.  He was more real than idols, and He is God incarnate, imbued with all the judgement and power of the living God.

2022 - The Apostle drives home his point in this last verse of the chapter.  The Son is the key.  If you don't believe in the Son - if you reject the witness of the Son, if you don't believe that he is who he says he is and continue to elevate the Baptist to the preeminent position, then you are not saved, and God is against you.  
If we see Chapter 3 in this light, then why the Nicodemus story?  What facet of the beliefs of the sect of the Baptist does the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus refute?  It would have to be introduction of the idea of a spiritual kingdom in contrast with the physical kingdom the sect expected, based on their belief that John was the eschatological prophet.  They could have been asserting that if Jesus was the Christ, the kingdom would be established, and look around, it ain't here.  Their assertion based on that would be that Jesus was not the Christ, and that John's position as eschatological prophet was unchallenged by Jesus.  So John the Apostle tells them that Jesus, this time, established a spiritual kingdom, populated by those born again in spirit - the church in fact.  That this kingdom is invisible, and yet exists, just as the wind exists.  The physical kingdom, when the Christ is sent to judge the world rather than to save it, is yet future, and another prophet, another Elijah, will come then, and be the forerunner of the physical kingdom.  I keep remembering that verse where he says: 16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, 17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared." [Luk 1:16-17 ESV].  John came in the spirit of Elijah to announce the spiritual kingdom.

Chapter 4
Jesus hears that the Pharisees are making a big deal out of Jesus' disciples baptizing more people than John the Baptist.  So Jesus goes back to Galilee.  

2022 - Note that Jesus had been to Jerusalem, and had talked to Nicodemus there.  From Jerusalem, he goes "into the Judean countryside", Jn 3:22, and continues to teach and minister.  And the disciples of John, and I'm sure many others, go to him and are baptized, so much so that word gets to the Pharisees that, as if John the Baptist wasn't already a big enough problem, now Jesus has even more followers than John.  So here, while things are apparently going well, Jesus decides to head home to Galilee.  Why?  So that the confrontation with the Pharisees would not happen yet.  It was not time.  It was not the Passover, Herod and Pilate were not both in town, and so on.  Jesus heads home  And they go through Samaria, instead of skirting around it.

On the way, there is the woman at the well near Sychar.  A lot goes on in this conversation.  Jesus' witness is that He has the water of eternal life.  He "turns" the conversation from physical thirst to spiritual thirst.  He is talking to a female Gentile, showing that this new covenant will not be exclusive to Israel.  Another contrast between the Mosaic and the New.  Then Jesus tells her about her sin.  First, he instills a desire for the living water, and then he declares/reminds/convicts her of the sin that keeps her from that water.  
She switches to talking about the place where the Samaritans worship, and points out that the Jew's say you have to worship in Jerusalem.  She is saying that what the Jews have is denied to the Samaritans, and the Jews say that the Samaritans worship in vain, because of where they worship.  Jesus answer is this:
21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. [Jhn 4:21 ESV]  
He says that before long, the WHERE of worship won't matter - to either Jew or Samaritan.  Jesus says that up to that time, salvation was for the Jews.  This is the verse:
2020 - 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. [Jhn 4:22 ESV]
MSB says the Samaritans didn't really understand God, but the Jews did, through their OT scriptures.  How would that be true?  It was always faith that saved.  How can that be what this means?  True, those resettled to Samaria by the Assyrians worshiped both God and the gods of their homelands.  They mixed God with gods.  So those early ones truly did not completely understand God.  Even before, the Samaritans worshiped the two golden calves set up by Jereboam.  So I guess their history from the separation after Solomon's reign was incomplete.  As a people, they never really understood that "The Lord our God, the Lord is One".

The plan was for the Jews, through the Mosaic law and the temple and the sacrifices.  Through the scriptures that they had, and that they partly  understood - as through a glass darkly.  Sure, those who joined them and worshiped likewise were in favor, but the plan was for the Jews.  This all changes with Jesus' appearance, with the New Covenant.  Geography won't matter any more, birthright won't matter any more.  Worshiping in spirit and truth will matter.  Jesus tells her that he is the Messiah.

2022 - These verses:
23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." [Jhn 4:23-24 ESV].  I think, this year, that these verses tie back to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, and the idea that Jesus, this time, as Suffering Servant, is about a spiritual kingdom on earth.  That is the same Kingdom John came to proclaim.  Elijah does announce the coming of a Kingdom, but not THE earthly Kingdom of the promises.  "worship the Father in spirit and truth" is surely about the church, the age of the Gentiles.  Because God is spirit, He must be worshiped in spirit.  Or...through the Spirit?  "en" is just a little word.  No need to over complicate it.  Vs 23 also gives us a sense that Jesus knows his purpose.  A time is coming, when worship will change completely, from Mosaic sacrificial worship to spiritual worship anywhere at anytime as church - a supernatural spiritual kingdom called the church.  That time is in fact "here", in that Jesus is in the world to usher in that kingdom.  John was here as precursor to the Messiah.  Jesus was here as precursor to the spiritual kingdom of God on earth, a Kingdom over which Jesus presides.  It was coming, but it was here.  Jesus had full knowledge of it.

2022 - And then this profound verse:
26 Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." [Jhn 4:26 ESV].  Jesus tells her that he is himself the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.  So in these short verses, and to the Samaritan woman at a well sunk by Jacob the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, Jesus tells us that he is the Messiah, and that he is the prophet before the Spiritual Kingdom of God.  His own Kingdom.  The liberals might say that these verses were inserted later, to sync John up with Paul...but they usually only say that about the Synoptics.  What do they say about John?

I don't really get vss 34-38, and the MSB note about it does not help.  It might mean that all that has gone before - from Adam and the fall through Noah, Moses and the law, the prophets - all these things - all this labor - was to bring the world to this very point,  Now, finally, the redeemer is here, and all that has pointed to him is about to be fulfilled.  That is, the spiritual harvest of what was planted at the creation of the world is now ripe to the bursting point.  Jesus is here for the harvest, and the disciples will participate with him in reaping the results of all that has gone before.  (2022 - Or the harvest is about the Gentiles, about the rest of the world outside of Israel?)

Jesus stays there for two days.  Many many people in this little town of Sychar are saved, from the woman's witness and from Jesus' teaching while he is there those two days.  (2022 - We can surely call this the beginning of revival among the Gentiles.  The first door opening to the Gentiles in the world, and to a worldwide spiritual kingdom.)  
2022- Jn 4:42b, what they believed, exactly, is that Jesus was the Savior of the world.  Does that title equate to Messiah or Christ?  They believed him to be far more than the return of prophets to the land.  They saw him as unique and unprecedented.  That is how we ought to see him also.
Possible FB post.

Then he continues to Galilee, where he is welcomed by people who saw the things he had done during Passover.  

The story of the official from Capernaum who came to Cana where Jesus was and asked Jesus to come and heal his son.  Jesus heals the son without making the journey, and the official determines that at the moment Jesus said "Your son is healed" in Cana, the son was healed far away in Capernaum.  So the father believes along with his household.

The chapter concludes with John telling us this was the second sign in Galilee.  Surely there were many signs when Jesus was in Jerusalem, as evidenced by vs 45.
2022 - 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. [Jhn 4:54 ESV].  But...what was the first?  The prophecies about the woman at the well?  Was that a miracle, or is John implying that there was another one that he hasn't told us about?  Do the other gospels talk about it?    No...there is nothing in the harmony that precedes this.  All four gospels record the great Galilean ministry of Jesus.  The introductory words are very "sweeping" in the Synoptics.  But John records the first "event" we know about.  The Harmony does say that so much happened it is hard to keep things in the right order.  So perhaps there is a miracle in there before this one in John...we just cannot know.

Chapter 5
2020-I noticed in my Harmony of the Gospels that John is the only one who relates the events of this chapter.  Only John gives us the speech that Jesus makes in vss 19-47.  This is interesting in that Jesus here does everything but come right out and say "I am the Messiah".  But he stops short of that.  He gives all the evidence, calls all the witnesses, but leaves the conclusion - the inescapable conclusion - to the hearers.

2022 - But he told the woman at the well that's who he was in the last chapter.  Why did he tell her, but won't tell these?  He is in Jerusalem itself, after all.  

Starts with "after this".  The previous chapter ended with the official whose son was ill in Capernaum, and the father goes to Cana where Jesus is and asks for help.
So "after this", Jesus goes to Jerusalem again for a feast.  It does not specifically tell us what feast.  MSB says that from 5:1-7:52 describes the rejection of Jesus as Messiah.  It says that at first, it was doubted, then when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, the controversy intensified and came out into the open, then in Chapter 6 many of his own disciples abandon him - after he says only the chosen are saved - and then in 7, the religious officials attempt to arrest him.  The shift is observable in John's writing.  More specific to this chapter, MSB says this is the only feast that John talks about without identifying.  All the others in his book are named.

Jesus comes to the pool at Bethesda, near the Sheep Gate.  Invalids are lying around nearby, believing that the spring has healing powers.  Jesus asks one man, who's been there 38 years, if he wants to be healed.  He says he never gets to the water in time after it is disturbed.  Jesus tells him to get up and walk, which the man does.  
Wow...ESV does not even include verse 3b and verse 4.  It skips from 3a to 5.  MSB notes say these were obviously added later, since early manuscripts don't include them at all.  So the ESV doesn't put them in.  This is the part about the angel disturbing the water, and healing the first one there.  Information we do have includes the possibility that intermittent springs fed the pool, which would show up as the water being disturbed.  Also, some sources say that the water was so rich in minerals that in appeared to be red - so they thought it had medicinal value.  Apparently this "belief" is very old, and still survives.  

2022 - KJV does have 3b and 4.  Why did they include them if, as MSB says, they were "obviously added later"?  When did we learn that was the case?
2022 - This healing is much like the one in Luke 13.  In that case, recorded only in Luke, the stooped over woman, who's been that way for 18 years, is straightened on the Sabbath, and Jesus is rebuked by the chief of the synagogue.  Now we have this healing, of a man lame for 38 years, also on the Sabbath, and recorded only in John.  How many instances of Jesus "breaking the law" of the Sabbath are recorded in the gospels?  How many in the synoptics vs in John?  How many are recorded in multiple gospels and how many in only one?  Why is this "breaking of the Sabbath" such a huge deal in the gospels?  Why so many instances recorded?  This is a study that ought to be done.  I need to put this study together.  In my notes, in the gospels, I have used the word Sabbath 10 times.  Those 10 might be a really good place to start.

This healing was on the Sabbath.  So when the Jews saw this lame man walking, instead of being amazed, they told him he shouldn't be carrying his bed around on the Sabbath.  They were not about real life, they were about the rules.  So many today are the same.  The lame man blames the healer.  Says the man who healed him told him to carry his bed.  They try to find out who the "guilty" man is, but the lame man didn't even get his name.  

2022 - Hmm...Jesus told this man to take up his bed and walk.  Jesus told him to carry his bed.  I believe I had this right before when I determined that the truth of the matter is that it is never against God's intention to do the right thing.  To do what is needed or appropriate.  In Luke 13 Jesus points out that the Pharisees are willing to untie their donkeys and take them to water.  Because you do that.  And if you've been healed, you grab your stuff and leave because you no longer reside at a mystic pool that doesn't work anyway.  The 10 say Honor the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.  It does not say never for any reason do any work at all on the Sabbath, even if people have to die because the doctor refused to sew them up that day.  

Later, Jesus talks to the man in the Temple, and tells him to sin no more, lest something worse than being lame for 38 years occur.  Instead of taking this to heart, the man goes and tells the temple officials the name of the man who told him to carry his bed on the Sabbath.  Because of this, because he openly and blatantly promotes dishonoring the Sabbath, the "Jews were persecuting Jesus".  

2022 - These very important verses:
15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." 18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. [Jhn 5:15-18 ESV]
Perhaps these verses answer the question above about why "breaking the Sabbath" is recorded so many times.  It is because it was right out there for all to see, and with multiple witnesses, and was the only "trumped up infraction" the Jews could find.  AND, it is important that Jesus in each case defends his actions by comparing them with instances of the Pharisees "working on the Sabbath" that they did NOT consider wrong.  These incidents made the Pharisees hypocrites in reality, but they used them to accuse Jesus.  And then Jesus adds to that by saying he and his Father both work on the Sabbath (see below).  Note that at Jesus' trials later, they don't even bring up his violation of the Sabbath.  That is not the main charge against them.  His assertion that he is the Son of God is the one that tears the High Priest's robe.  John clarifies all of that here in these four little verses.

Then Jesus says this:
17 But Jesus answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." [John 5:17 ESV]
The Jews believed that God "broke" his own Sabbath by keeping the sun, stars, and so on moving, even on the Sabbath.  So when Jesus tells them that he also is working, he is saying that like God, he too is entitled to work on the Sabbath.  To the Jews, this was Jesus claiming God as his literal Father, and made him equal with God.  This is about the deity of Christ.

2022 - Does John include this as part of his polemic against the Sect of John the Baptist?  Is he showing that while John denied any such claim to deity, he ascribes deity to Jesus using John's own words, and now using Jesus' words?  I don't think that is the main point in this episode, but I can see where it would be a bit related.
2022 - I have to take a break and fix breakfast for the grands.  In fact, I am late.

vss 19-47 are in red.  This is the rest of the chapter.  I have a feeling there will be a lot here for John to have recorded so much.  The first part is a response to the Jew's outrage that he made himself equal to the father.  Jesus starts like this:
19 So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. [John 5:19 ESV]
Seems to me that Jesus is saying that He and the Father never pursue conflicting interests.  They never disagree.  Though Jesus is a man, and on earth, while the Father is spirit, and in heaven, yet their "conduct" of the world's business is exactly in sync.  This is because they are both God.  The function of each is different, but not the goal of each.  The only way they could have different "wills" would be if they were not the same.  If they were individuals rather than one God, they could have different plans.

This verse:
21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. [John 5:21 ESV]
Only God can raise the dead.  He can work in and through others to do so, as with some of the prophets, but the resurrection was always attributed to God, not to the prophet.  (2022 - Well...not really.  There aren't just a whole lot of OT raisings of the dead, but the ones that are there are credited to prophets.  They weren't to "affirm" the that Elijah and Elisha were truly sent from God, there was no doubt of that anyway.  All knew God worked through the prophets, and that the power to raise the dead came from God alone, but it was the prophets who "raised the dead".  I think I had previously misstated that.)  Here, Jesus says that He too can give life.  It seems likely to me that Jesus is talking about physical resurrection first, but is also talking about eternal life.  I think this is so because Jesus goes on to say that God has turned over the judgement of men exclusively to the Son.  This is to "redirect" honor due the Father to the Son, because of what the Son is about to do in the work of redemption.  Because the work of the Son is to redeem man from sin, it is also his right to judge sin.  Then, since God has so honored the Son, those who refuse to do likewise don't just dishonor the Son, but in turn dishonor God.  

2022 - I think Jesus is also distinguishing between physical raising from the dead and spiritual eternity in heaven or hell.  Jesus has been given the power to give eternal life through grace, and to give eternal life by paying the penalty of all men.  Until this time, all men have died without sufficient atonement to spend eternity in heaven.  They, without us, could not be made perfect.  But here is Jesus, to perfect the atonement, and so "release" all souls, both OT and NT, to eternity in heaven.  God up to this point has only raised the dead physically.  Jesus has come to do so spiritually, in accordance with the will of his Father.  So here again, John is trying to bring out the spiritual nature of this manifestation of the Kingdom of God, and distinguish this time of the church age from the time of the Law.  The Law was all about the physical - the temple, the priests, the sacrifices, and Moses.  But the church is a kingdom that cannot be seen, that requires no physical manifestation in order to belong, and is quite freeing in terms of required ritual.  

These verses:
22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. [Jhn 5:22-23 ESV]
Here is a verse that separates Christianity from all other religions.  This man who walked on earth is to be honored as God is honored.  I am reminded of how Absalom set himself up as a judge in his father David's kingdom, and won "supporters" to himself because he exercised that judgement.  In these verses, Jesus first makes it clear that, unlike Absalom, all that he does is in accordance with his Father's will.  The Father has given all judgement to Christ specifically to garner the honor of position that would otherwise be exclusively for the Father.  God is "promoting" his son in the eyes of all who know either of them.  And, to withhold the honor due Christ is to withhold honor from the Father.   I suspect this is analogy to spurning a son being also an insult to that son's father.  If you hate my son, you also hate me.  

2022 - Vs 23b could be a part of the polemic against the Sect of the Baptist.  It is absolutely unequivocal here, from John himself, the beloved apostle, who spent actual time - days and nights and years - with Jesus that to put the Baptist above Jesus, or to say that Jesus was a fake prophet riding on the coattails of the Baptist, is to refuse to honor Theos.  Jesus, in John, goes on to say that only those who hear his (Jesus') words can pass from eternal spiritual death to eternal spiritual life.

Then there is the way of salvation, expressed in Jesus' own words:
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. [Jhn 5:24 ESV]
Hear this truth - that Jesus and the Father are One, and believe in the Father and the Son.  The Father will only accept what the Son has judged acceptable.  The Father accepts the Son's judgement, and does not himself judge.  Remember that John told us in chapter 1 about the Word.  Belief.  True belief, not just in God - as Jews and Muslims both do - but also in His Son.  This was always God's plan in the OT prophecies, but the Jew's never really saw it.  Now, as it comes to pass, they are under God's wrath, and the redemption is most notably accepted by Gentiles.
Jesus tells them that sometime in the future, He, Jesus, the Son of Man, is going to raise everyone from the dead, and He will judge them, deciding who has eternal life and who receives eternal judgement.  Surely this was understood by them as making Himself the final decider.  The Supreme court in our government, in that the last say belongs only to him.  God has included the role of judge with the role of redeemer.  This is why there is no salvation without Jesus.
Note that in these verses, 25-29, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man again, looking back to Daniel, and he is given the power to judge, and to give life.  To decide who will go into eternity in heaven and who will die the second death.  God is not the one who decides this, Jesus decides - even though Jesus always decides in the same way God would decide.  The Pharisees could have little doubt about what Jesus was claiming here.  They knew the OT scriptures.  They "got it" when Jesus called himself the Son of Man, which he does over and over.  

2022 - Hmmm.  I don't know why I haven't pulled out vs 25 before:
25 "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. [Jhn 5:25 ESV].  Isn't this an interesting verse.  Doesn't this verse confirm the comment before vs 22 above that until this point, NO ONE has received atonement sufficient to enter the presence of God?  But now, the time is here, with the arrival of Jesus, when those long dead OT saints will finally be covered by the blood of an acceptable, fully atoning sacrifice, and enter into the presence of God.  When they will "live" as man lived before the fall, in full fellowship with God as his perfect creations.  Those who have chosen to love him will be with him.  Not ALL the dead, but those who hear.  And you cannot hear if you have not been called.
This idea is repeated in vs 28:
28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice [Jhn 5:28 ESV].  Surely this says that ONLY JESUS can get you to heaven, and that this was true even for those long dead.  
Now here is another interesting implication of this...Would this not mean that even the OT saints are "in Christ"?  It is important, because if they are, then they are raptured along with the church, they are judged at the bema seat, and only the lost and the survivors of tgt will stand before the Great White Throne of God.  So this is a pretty big question, and the implications of 25 and 28 are very far reaching, and again, it is only the gospel of John that records this discourse of Jesus.  AND, if nothing else, this elevates Jesus still further to a unique position among men.  The Son, the only way, the only authority that can grant life...how many other unique roles for Jesus does John mention here?
I would also add this verse to the "in Christ" question:
29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. [Jhn 5:29 ESV].  Where else is this language used, language of a resurrection either to life or to death?  Not the rapture.  That is only to life.  Only the saved are raptured to stand at the bema.  So OT saints are NOT going to be raptured.  Nor will they stand at the pre-millennial judgment, because ONLY the living will be judged then.  So Jesus' choice of words here seem to be pointing exclusively at the Great White Throne.  And that means that OT saints are not resurrected UNTIL that judgment, to be judged BY Theos, not by Christos.  Is this phrase "resurrection of life" used anywhere else?  No...only here, and it is this in both KJV and ESV.  So what I first thought was a "clouding" as to my opinion of who will be raptured turns out to be a pretty good proof to solidify my opinion on that.
2022 - Another day...I wonder, if vs 25 is a reference to those who are in Christ - because the hour is now here - and who will be raptured and go straight to heaven when Jesus returns, and this is contrasted, in vs 29, with the OT saints - who's hour is coming (but NOT here yet) - who will be resurrected at the GWT?  Wow.  That surely does seem to make good sense.

2022 - And what about vs 27...
27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. [Jhn 5:27 ESV].  Jesus has this authority BECAUSE he is the Son of Man.  Ezekiel is also called son of man.  Did Ezekiel execute judgement also?  Did he have some kind of authority to judge in his day, or will he have some future specialized authority to do so?  How is it that only Ezekiel and Christ have this title.  Is it in Cullman???  (Yes.  Chapter 6, Jesus the Son of Man.)  I will look forward to that.)

A new section starts, titled "Witnesses to Jesus".
Jesus reiterates that he is not acting alone.  He is not just some man.  All that he does is according to God's will, because He is God, in perfect harmony.  Then this verse:
31 If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. [Jhn 5:31 ESV]  I believe Jesus here is quoting the Law of Moses to them, which required two witnesses.  Jesus recognizes that because of this law, they are not going to believe him on the basis of his own claims only, but they will require more.  So Jesus reminds them that they asked John the Baptist who he was.  His answer isn't quoted here, but we know that John said Jesus was the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.  John said Jesus was the Messiah.  Jesus reminds them that they believed John, when he came on the scene, believed he was a prophet from God, and so believed what he said.  But Jesus points out that he is greater than John, and the evidence for this - the witness - is found in the work Jesus does, in the miracles he performs.  They should take John's word as a witness, because they believe his is truthful, but John is just a man.  The miracles point to a far more authoritative witness - God Himself.  Only God could do such miracles, yet Jesus does them.  So the witness of a man, and the witness of God himself through the miracles that Jesus does.  
This verse:
37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, [Jhn 5:37 ESV]
MSB references three accounts of Jesus' baptism, where the Father said "This is my beloved Son...".  So not only the miracles, but a voice from heaven - and to Jews, only God ever spoke from heaven in this way - testifies that Jesus is the Son.
But why then would Jesus continue by saying they've never heard God?  If he was referring to the voice at his baptism as the witness of God from heaven, why then say that they couldn't have heard it?  
Maybe Jesus is talking about their skepticism.  They don't like what John told them, so they decide he wasn't trustworthy.  After all, he is now a criminal, thrown into prison, not to be associated with any longer.  How can they accept his former testimony in light of current fact?  But they also heard the very voice of God, and now they say it couldn't have been God, because no one hears God directly! With both John, and the witness of God from heaven, they are putting their conclusion before the evidence by repudiating credible witnesses.  Even so, the miracles have not been repudiated.

2022 - Ok, wait...If we take as fact that John's gospel is written as a polemic, then John is using this speech Jesus gave to the Pharisees as evidence of who he was as evidence to the Sect of the Baptist as to who he was.  The sect is likely still following Mosaic Law also, so John would bring that up.  Jesus here says that HE is not a witness for himself.  I am pretty sure elsewhere that he says he IS a witness.  Anyway...Jesus reminds them that at first, they believed John the Baptist's witness as to who Jesus was.  This would hit both the Pharisees and the Sect.  Now they have decided to discount what John said.  If the Sect does not believe that John was truthful, then why would they follow him in the first place, much less go to so much trouble to override John's own teaching?
Then vss 35,36, with reference to the sect:
35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. [Jhn 5:35-36 ESV].  This is almost addressed directly to the Sect.  Sure, John was a big deal, and a bright light, and you followed him.  And HE TOLD YOU I would come, and now look at the confirmation in the miracles that says I am a greater!  John told you.  The works tell you.  I think this is important because we have so many places - I think some in the Synoptics...that story where they want to ask Jesus a question and he says "Let me ask you one first...".  I am not sure the Pharisees ever accepted that John was a prophet.  He called them vipers.  Surely they were enemies from the start.  I believe that Jesus made this speech to the Jewish religious authorities.  Note that John does not say "Pharisees".  So...Jesus says that at first they believed John was a prophet, and then changed.  John uses the same discourse to remind the Sect of what Jesus said this day, in public.  This would have been well known.  
John the Baptist has no recorded miracles.  That is why 36 is there, because of all the miracles recorded about Jesus.  Jesus is OBVIOUSLY greater than John.

 
Next Jesus turns to scripture.  He says they search scripture as the way to eternal life.  Jesus says they are in fact correct, because those scriptures are yet another witness as to who he is.  They foretell his coming, but the Jews still refuse to equate Jesus with the prophecies of the Messiah.  Jesus tells them that they don't have to recognize him as Messiah for him to be Messiah.  He requires no endorsement from the religious elite.  Two witnesses remain authoritative,  Two they have not been able to repudiate.  The miracles that Jesus does, and the scriptures that foretell his coming.  These two still stand.

Then a very pointed accusation.  Jesus tells these people that they don't have the Love of God in them.  They love their scriptures - their rules, their hierarchies, their positions - but they cling to that rather than loving God directly.  God has sent the Son, as their scriptures tell them He will.  Yet they will not believe, even with more than sufficient witnesses to identify him as their Messiah.  So Jesus says he won't judge them, their own precious scriptures will condemn them - Mosaic Law condemns them - because they won't believe the witnesses.

2020-I think part of Jesus' point here is also that the truth of what he is telling them, and of who he is, is spiritually discerned.  Since these Pharisees and religious leaders are so focused on the ritual of the Law, they do not see the reality of the law.  They don't see the law in physical form.  They are spiritually dead because they are not really seekers any more, except in the "researcher" sense.  They think they know all there is to know, and they are not really looking for the Messiah in their time.  He publicly accuses the religious leaders, who's livelihood depends on the peoples reverence for their learning and knowledge, of not having clue one about what they are teaching, and in fact says that they are violating the rules that they hold so dear in refusing to believe what the scriptures say about the man that is right in front of them.

2022 - I am tired.  There is a lot in 5.  The last verses use scripture to establish that Jesus is the Son.  That Moses own words, besides those of the Baptist, point to the son.  I am too tired to pull it all out...but I think that's what it is about.  Hopefully more time next year.  Isn't it interesting that for the last two years, I had distractions when I got to this chapter...

Chapter 6
2023 - All I can say is, buckle up, because this chapter is heavy with doctrine, with foundational teaching, with explanation.  This one is worth reading over and over.
2021 - It has been several days since I read John 5, where Jesus lays out the proof that he is the Messiah, and that the reason the people disbelieve him is because they disbelieve Moses.  He is connecting himself to the Law.  I see from the next line that the chronological Bible also leaves a big time gap between John 5 and 6.  So apparently quite a few other things happen between these chapters, and likely much of it is covered in the other gospels, but not in John.

Note that it has been almost two weeks since we read a chapter from John in the Chronological Bible.  And Chapter 5 was unique to John, relating things that none of the other writers cover.  John rejoins the historical narrative at the feeding of the 5000.

Jesus goes up on a mountain, but the people follow.  He and his disciples see them coming.  

2021 - I noticed for the first time that vs. 4 says it was almost time for the Passover.  And here is the Lamb of God sitting up high on a mountain, and people from all over are coming to him and are hungry, and need to be fed.  I had never before noticed the symbolism of the feeding of the 5000.

Jesus asks where they are to buy bread for so many.  

2022 - This year, this vs got my attention:
6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. [Jhn 6:6 ESV].  I think we see here that a lot of time has passed since these events, and John the Apostle has had time to look back and to better understand some things about Jesus words back then.  John is explaining to us that Jesus already knew the answers.  He is telling us that Jesus was omnipotent, and knew all things that would happen in the future.  Perhaps some were saying that this question implied that Jesus was not divine, nor even a very good prophet, if he was having to ask the disciples where to get food.  And these same skeptics would likely say that it turned out everyone brought a sack lunch anyway, and that there was no miracle here.  John is trying to refute that, by telling us that Jesus already knew what would happen, and uses the question to teach a lesson on faith, and a lesson on who he really is.  In Matt, Mark, and Luke, this question is not included.  In the Synoptics, Jesus just says they can feed them right here.    

Andrew locates the 5 and 2.  Jesus tells them to have everyone sit down in groups.  Jesus blesses the food, then feeds them all.  The people are amazed, and Jesus sees they are about to take him and make him king.  So he goes back up on the mountain.  Jesus had not come to be King.  That is yet future.  He came to die this first time, to be the perfect sacrifice.  John is the only one who tells us this part, which explains why Jesus sent the 12 away so quickly, even though they had just returned from their mission.  Also note that this large crowd had completely missed the point.  They wanted to make Jesus a political leader, a King.  They might have really declared him King of Bethsaida, or some such area, which would immediately have brought a strong reaction from whomever was the current King of that region.  Jesus would certainly have been located and locked up indefinitely - if that were possible.  

Note that all accounts of this event include the number 5000.  They all agree that this is how many men there were, plus women and children.  They were from the nearby towns and villages, so probably a "normal" distribution of men, women, and children.  There had to be 10,000 t0 15,000 people there.   What does a crowd of 15,000 look like out in the countryside?  How do you address so many at once with no "sound system"?

2022 - Oh my.  Look at this verse:
14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, "This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!" [Jhn 6:14 ESV].  These people believed that Jesus was "the eschatological Prophet", Elijah if you will, who would proclaim the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God.  This is John the Apostle pointing out that John the Baptist had come and gone, and here was this large group of people, with Jesus himself present, who believed that Jesus was that prophet, not John the Baptist was that prophet.  Surely this is a profound confirmation that there was a widespread belief in Judea at this time that a prophet was coming.  Then the next verse:
15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. [Jhn 6:15 ESV].  But...why were they trying to make "the Prophet" King?  There was nothing about that aspect of things in Cullman.  Unless they associated the coming of the Prophet with throwing off the foreign rule of the Romans and re-establishing independence.  It is true that someone would have to rule.  But I kind of think these people were mixing their metaphors.  Still, it makes sense that the Apostle would be making the point that, to these people at least, Jesus came nearer fitting the role of the Prophet than John the Baptist had.  And note further that Jesus moves away so they won't proclaim him King, NOT so they won't proclaim him Prophet.

Walking on water.  In John's account, the disciples set off in a boat for Capernaum.  MSB note says that Matthew and Mark both have the boat going west to Capernaum.  As I read it, in Matthew they were going to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and in Mark they were going to Bethsaida, which I think was probably east of the desolate place...but it could be that they'd gone out of town to the east instead of west.  So they would not have been "between Bethsaida and Capernaum" but east of Bethsaida.  If this was the case, then whether they were going to Bethsaida, Capernaum, or the place they actually ended up, which is Gennesaret.  He says they rowed three or four miles and then Jesus comes walking on the water.  They were rowing because the wind was against them.  Seeing Jesus walking on the water, they are afraid, but when they see that it is Jesus - which he tells them - they get him in the boat.  Then they are miraculously at the land to which they were going.

2020-All four gospel writers talk about the feeding of the 5000 and three about walking on the water.  I think.  Certainly at least three talk about each.  As I sit here this morning, I am confused about where that boat was, where it was going, and how close it must have been to shore.  When confused, time should be taken to unravel the confusion.  They are all talking about the same event, so somehow, the accounts are all consistent.  I am bothered that MSB is not really specific enough for me to understand.  I want to come back to this story, and dig deeper into it, until I understand how this all unfolded.  How do you start for either Bethsaida or Capernaum and end up at Gennesaret?  That is what I need to unravel - and I'm not missing that some kind of miracle took place as to where they actually arrived.  But this is Sunday morning, so time is a bit limited, and I am moving on.
2021 - John says in vs. 17 that the disciples were going to Capernaum when they got into the boat.  Vs 21 says the boat miraculously arrived at the land to which they were going.  It is possible that despite their plans to go to Capernaum, they arrived at a difference place once Jesus joined them.  Maybe they arrived at the place he was going.  John really never says where the boat landed.

The people, next day, figure out that Jesus has gone.  But boats show up where they are.  The "crowd" gets in these boats and sets off for Capernaum looking for Jesus.  (More clues about the boat trip here...not getting bogged down in it again, but note that they thought Jesus was at Capernaum, but they found him "on the other side of the sea".  It does not say in Capernaum.  And Tiberias, where the boats came from, was way around CCW, south of Gennesaret, which is further around CCW than Capernaum.)

2023 - Found this map:


So if you were going to Gennesaret, but you were from Capernaum, as many of the 12 were, you might plan a stop for lunch - or a bed for the night - in Capernaum and then go on in the morning.  When Jesus came walking on the water, and miraculously took the boat to its intended destination, it landed at Gennesaret.  How did I never see that before?  Makes perfect sense...as it ALWAYS DOES!  So the only remaining problem is Mark saying they were heading to the other side - to Bethsaida.  There is no longer a Bethsaida on modern maps.  But there is some kind of park about where Bethsaida is shown on the map above.  Bethsaida is not on the shoreline though like Capernaum and Gennesaret.  Even so, the Jordan River flows into the Sea of Galilee right at this point also, so Mark's use of "the other side" might mean across the Jordan.  Today, the DMZ line between Israel and Syria runs through here, east of the Jordan.  Maybe in Jesus' time, the Jordan was the border between Galilee and Syria.  So "other side" could mean from Galilee to Syria.  And though it is a bit of a stretch, maybe the apostles went to Bethsaida to pick up a few things - gifts and such - to take home to their families in Capernaum, before going on to Gennesaret.  Remember that the 12 had just come home from their "mission trip".  They had likely not been home to see their families in quite some time.  It would make sense that they did not want to come home empty handed.  Google maps does show that the area is quite hilly west of the Jordan, but there is a very large flat deltaic plain to the east of it.  AND, why had I not thought about this....where did the apostles get their boat?  They had just come back from their mission trip.  Jesus tried to find a desolate place where they could get some rest.  But the crowds found them.  The 12 would have been tired, exhausted from their trip so Jesus told them to go over to Bethsaida and hire a boat to get them back to Capernaum for the night, get some rest, and then they'd go on to Gennesaret the next day, or maybe a few days later.  So they went down and crossed over the Jordan, going into Bethsaida to hire a boat.  Many were fishermen, so they probably had contacts here, and were known to be able to handle a boat on the Sea of Galilee.  Once they hired the boat, they sailed down the Jordan to Galilee and turned east for Capernaum.  The storm came up, Jesus walks on water, and miraculously moves them straight to Gennesarat.  Only John picks up directly after they landed in Gennesarat.  In Jn 6:22, John says "On the next day...".  So the day after they landed in Gennesarat.  We see that the people from the desolate place set out to search for Jesus, and they themselves sail not to Gennesarat but to Capernaum.  There, they find Jesus, and he speaks to them and teaches them.  At the end of the teaching, in Jn 6:59, John tells us this teaching took place in the synagogue at Capernaum.  So the story ties right up nicely with no loose ends.  They did go to Gennesarat, but they did not stay very long.  They went right on to Capernaum, so the apostles could see their families, and the crowds once again, in boats from the desolate place, showed up and wanted him to give them some more bread.  They get irritated that Jesus says HE is the bread, sent down from heaven, trying to lead them to spiritual sustenance instead of the purely physical - and the miracle of free food - that they were seeking.  So finally, on my eight reading of this passage, a coherent timeline emerges.  Eight years it took for me to make sense of what now seems so very obvious.  I so love my Bible!!!

2023 - To be clear, Matthew 14 does not have Jesus telling the 12 where they were to go.  It does say they arrived at Gennesaret.  In Mark, it is worded this way:  45 Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. [Mar 6:45 ESV], but it clearly says they landed at Gennesaret.  In John, we do not have Jesus' instructions, but it says this:  16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. [Jhn 6:16-17 ESV].  Luke talks about the feeding of the 5000, but not about the boat trip or the walking on water.

The Crowd themselves...couldn't have been all of them surely?  MSB says people were still at the site where they'd been fed, and OTHER people, on boats from Tiberias, came by looking for him.
MSB also says vss 22-58 are a discourse of Jesus, and contain the first of seven "I AMs" we will find in John.  John shows Jesus is Messiah, but further, wants to show that he was more than just a miracle worker, He was the Son of God.
Jesus sees that many are just looking for another free meal.  The meal was a miracle, but they are interested only in getting fed, and have completely ignored and discounted the healing miracles that Jesus is also doing.  They are focused on the physical needs of the day, on food they don't have to pay for.  Food to eat.  They don't recognize at all the eternal aspect of what Jesus is offering them.  Jesus tells them not to work for physical food that perishes, but for the eternal food that never perishes.  He tells them to feed their spirits not their bellies.  They ask him how to do this.  This is the whole answer:  29 Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." [Jhn 6:29 ESV].  There is nothing here of saying a prayer, of asking forgiveness, of confessing the name (2023 - or of being baptized).  Belief in Christ is the core of salvation, the ONLY essential of salvation.  

2023 - This verse:
27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal." [Jhn 6:27 ESV].  What is this seal?  What does it mean?  Perhaps a clue can be found in this verse:  3 saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads." [Rev 7:3 ESV].  Perhaps this sealing protects from harm from any source, AND the one sealed is a very specially purposed conduit through which God draws his chosen to himself.  In John, it is Jesus, sent directly from God, born into the world, to lead many chosen to salvation.  Then in Revelation, the 144,000 are there to bring the children of Abraham, finally and for all eternity, into the promised kingdom of God.  I had never picked up on Jesus saying he was sealed before!  This goes in my Rev 7 chapter notes too!  Look also at vs 37:  37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. [Jhn 6:37 ESV].  Dare we say that the Father will give souls to the 144,000?  It surely seems to tie.

So they ask him to show them a sign whereby they can believe him...like maybe make them some manna, as in give them free food every day from now on, like when they were in the desert.  I think they misquote and attribute the manna to Moses.  Jesus again tries to steer them away from the physical to the spiritual.  He tells them that HE is the bread that God is sending them, the HE is the manna they are looking for, He is the daily sustenance that they need, but that it is NOT physical.  In 35-40 he tries again to explain it.  

2023 - This verse:
33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." [Jhn 6:33 ESV].  The note above is wrong.  In 33, Jesus attributes the manna to Moses, and points out that manna was physical only, and did not save.  Moses - the Law - cannot save.  The real bread, the REAL MANNA comes straight from God, from heaven, and gives eternal spiritual life.  That manna is not "edible", that manna is the person, the life, the work of Jesus Christ.

2021- This verse:
35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. [Jhn 6:35 ESV]
This is not about anything physical.  It is analogy, symbolism.  This is about the restlessness, the discontent, the lack of peace that we all sometimes experience.  Jesus says that he is the "food" that nourishes that king of hunger.  Spiritual hunger and thirst.  We must feed our spirits just as we must feed our bodies.  The food the spirit needs is belief in Jesus.  Believing in Jesus brings peace to our spirits.  He had also said this is vs 33.

2021 - These verses:
39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." [Jhn 6:39-40 ESV]  The purpose of Jesus in the world is explained here.  

2023 - We can also see this as a reference to the rapture.  If you look on the Son and believe in him, you have eternal life - already, with no further requirement.  Jesus says this pre-crucifixion.  And if you believe, you get raised up on the last day.  Interesting.  The only thing "last" about the rapture is that it is the end of the church age.  The entire church is taken out along with the dead in Christ that believed in him.  I think the rapture is about the church, not about all the saved of all time.
2023 - Later...Found an internet discussion of "last day" and saying that the "last day" means the last day of the church age disagrees with it.  Here are all the relevant verses.  They are ALL in John, meaning he is the only one who uses the term, and it meant whatever John was thinking it meant when he wrote it down.  None of the other gospel writers quote Jesus using this specific term.  Only John.  See more on 12:48, the last usage, below the verses...
39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." ...
44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. ...
54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. [Jhn 6:39-40, 44, 54 ESV]
24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." [Jhn 11:24 ESV]
48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. [Jhn 12:48 ESV]
If 48 is right, the last day is a judgment day, and in this verse it is a day when the lost will be judged.  There are no lost people at the bema.  So when else will there be a judgment of both the saved and the lost?  The GWT qualifies if and only if the rapture is only about the church.  And then you have to say that the ones Jesus is talking to in John - and promising to raise on the last day - don't count as "church people" yet.  So they don't get resurrected until the GWT:  Here's what we know about the GWT:
12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. [Rev 20:12-15 ESV].  So...who will be at the GWT?  If you were dead in the sea, you were raptured, so the raptured won't be judged at the GWT.  If that is right, this can only be the lost that show up for the GWT...and any saved during the Millennial...maybe.  I mean, why do they need the book of life if no one there is even in it???

This is surely a proof text for perseverance of the saints.  Those who are to be saved are given to Jesus, and he keeps us/protects us/holds us secure against all things, Satan especially, so that on the "last day", we can be resurrected to eternal life with him.  This is the purpose
of Christ.  He has all power to hold us.  His place is primary right now, he is making the rules and running the universe.  It is all in his hands now so that he can preserve what he's been given, and resurrect us to eternal life.
Last day?  The saved come out of their graves at the rapture.  Then the saved who are alive go up.  It seems to me that we should understand this as the "last day" of the Age of the Gentiles, or the last day of the "Church Age".  Jews will be saved after this, believing in Christ as the means of that salvation - just as Gentiles have.  But this is the last day, not last days.  It must be the rapture, and the rapture is an end.
Interesting that MSB has no comment at all on the meaning of "last day".  Seems like it's pretty important.

He ends with vs 40:  40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." [Jhn 6:40 ESV]  So a bit has been added to vs. 29.  Well....maybe not.  It may be again that Jesus is talking only to those standing right in front of  him.  After all, in vs 36 Jesus says "You're looking right at me, you've seen me and the miracles I've done, and YET you do not believe."  So here in 40, he is saying to those assembled that they must SEE him for who he really is, and recognizing him, they must believe.  If they will do this, the father will save them and Jesus will raise them.  

In 41, the Jews resort to the Nazareth argument.  They "know" Joseph and Mary, and this guy is their son.  He could not be from God if he was born to Mary and Joseph.  They go back to the literal, to what they physically know, not to what is spiritually discerned.  How could he have come down from heaven if he was born in the normal way to Joseph and Mary?   Jesus replies in vs 44:  44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. [Jhn 6:44 ESV]  How is this the answer to "Isn't this the son of Joseph and Mary?"  
2021 - It is the answer because it moves back again to the spiritual things that he is talking about.  They ask a physical question, in the time frame of mankind, Jesus answers in the time frame of God - this is about something bigger than Mary and Joseph.  This is about God's plan for the universe, and Jesus is the cornerstone of that plan.  He is here to gather those whom God wants to save, and to preserve them against all things until that last day, when the proof of Jesus - that he can keep all he has been given against all things, that he is more powerful than Satan, that he is the Chosen of God - over and above Satan, that he is capable of doing what Satan could never do - when all that is accomplished, it will be the last day.

Jesus says this:  45 It is written in the Prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me-- [Jhn 6:45 ESV], and is referring back to this verse:  13 All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children. [Isa 54:13 ESV].  Taught by the LORD.  By God himself.  Jesus is teaching them, and showing them that believing in him is the way to eternal life.  He is indirectly saying that he is GOD, teaching them as prophesied.  He makes a distinction in vs 46:  46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. [Jhn 6:45-46 ESV].  Jesus says he is NOT God the father.  But has seen the Father, and he has come down from the Father.  He came from heaven, where God is, sent down like manna in the wilderness, that all who "eat and drink" of him will live forever.
Further, this is about election by God.  Those taught by God will be drawn to Him through the Son.  God must first call, and the elect will hear.  

vs 47...47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. [Jhn 6:47 ESV].  Two truly's here, that belief leads to eternal life.  Only belief, only in the Son.  That is all of it.  Jesus goes on to contrast physical manna with spiritual bread - he is the spiritual bread.  His flesh is that bread, and he is going to give his flesh for the life of the world - eternal life, as manna was given to sustain physical life.  

2023 - Even though John does not have baptism in view here, we ought to remember that John wrote this gospel probably 50 years after Jesus died.  He wrote these things that Jesus said, and Jesus never says baptism.  John, for his part as writer of this gospel, does not feel any compulsion at all to insert this "now understood requirement" for salvation.  Wouldn't he have done so, if the gospel had "changed" after the resurrection, so that baptism was then required, wouldn't John just pretty much HAVE TO say something about it, somewhere???  Yet it isn't here.

2022 - This verse:
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." [Jhn 6:51 ESV].  This verse indicates that Jesus was well aware of what lay in store for him at this time.  He knew that he was to be the perfect atoning sacrifice.  Those who say Jesus was just a man who bent circumstances to make himself greater, or those who say Jesus had no idea that he would be "elevated" as an atoning sacrifice by his followers, even though he was completely unaware that this would happen, must say that this verse was added/inserted later.  That John, by this time, as the doctrines of the early church were being formed, purposely added this in there.  Because if Jesus did really say this, then it is certain that the gospel is from God himself, and not an after the fact construct of his followers who wanted to stay in power and be supported by the people.  

So now the Jews think he is talking about cannibalism.  How in the world do you go that far off the tracks?  Jesus explains again.  He is bread, his blood is drink.  We must eat his flesh and drink his blood to live.  We must make Jesus part of us.  He must abide in us and we in him.  Jesus is very obviously speaking spiritually, relating physical things as symbolic of what must happen spiritually.  Jesus will be crucified.  His body and blood will be given up.  He will die.  We must participate in this death - we must eat bread and drink blood - that his finished work may be a part of us, incorporated in us, so that we also gain eternal life.

(2023 - I have written elsewhere about this whole "drinking his blood" idea, because this was never done in the OT sacrifices.  The blood was drained and sprinkled on the altar, but NEVER EVER was it to be consumed.  We eat his body, as the sacrifices were eaten.  We drink his blood to incorporate his perfect life into our life.  I saw a preach on YouTube last night that said something like "When God looks at us, he sees the perfect life of Christ.  When God look at Christ, he sees the sins that we all committed and for which Christ dies".  God never sees the saved as sinners.  But this is because "the life of the flesh is in the blood", and we consume the blood, the very life of Christ, and it becomes "us".

John says this speech was delivered at the synagogue in Capernaum.  So either that is where the boats ended up, or he came back from where they landed to Capernaum, and we are told nothing about that.  Which seems unlikely. (2023 - Why unlikely?  It makes perfect sense if you see it this way!!!).

2020-I am out of Sunday morning time.  Will just read through the last 12 verses.  I think there is a lot in those last 12 verses.  I hope I can spend more time on this chapter next year.  I have a lot of trouble with John.  Maybe because it was written so much later, and John includes the increased understanding of Jesus purpose that unfolded with time, that the other writers do not have.  So he seems to be talking about different things entirely at times.
2021 - I missed the meaning of the note at top.  I have burned myself out again before getting to the last verses.  But I did see a lot more in the earlier verses.  Maybe this is necessary before I can begin to understand these last 12.
2021 - One more thing, from MSB.  There are four "I am" statements in this chapter (vss 35, 41, 48, and 51).  All four are essentially "I am the bread of life", repeated four times.  And then in vs 51b, Jesus explains what he means:  51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." [Jhn 6:51 ESV].  The crucifixion is the food of eternal life.  The nourishment that sustains forever is the flesh.  It is his sacrificial death and resurrection that makes the bread efficacious.  Anyone could have died on a cross.  But only Jesus, come down from the presence of God, and living a perfect sinless life - by free will - in order to preserve those given to him by God - could make the cross efficacious.  

2021 - These verses:
53 So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. [Jhn 6:53-56 ESV]
Dare I call these the "cannibal verses"?
Jesus is still speaking spiritually.  He is speaking of complete, total, incorporating belief in him as Son of God.  To believe is the eat his flesh and drink his blood, which are going to be sacrificed.  The lambs, bulls, goats, etc are killed and then eaten in the Mosaic Law.  There is that one kind of sacrifice - firstfruits? - that people took to Jerusalem, and then ate it all right there in the temple.  Is this what this is about?
This verse is where I am:  60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" [Jhn 6:60 ESV].  There is so much here, so much I think I get but cannot put into words.  Things perhaps only understood on a spiritual level.  This chapter of John is indeed a difficult one, because it is so dense with truth, with doctrine.
2023 - Just look at the end of vs 56!  "Whoever feeds...and drinks...abides in me, and I in him."  At the Lord's supper, THIS is what we are showing symbolically.  We incorporate Jesus body and blood into ourselves when we are saved.  God looks at us but sees Him, because he is part of us, he abides in us, and we abide in him.  Clearer and clearer.

2022 - As I read through the gospels this time, it seems clear that very much of what Jesus says is about the spiritual kingdom that he will rule from heaven.  This I would contrast with the physical promises that God made to Abraham, and that will be fulfilled in the Millennial.  We might say that Jesus' one physical connection to the world is at his physical death on the cross.  And the resurrection is about how the physical never ever really had any hold on him.  He was always about a spiritual kingdom, inhabited by those with new bodies, made both of flesh and spirit.  Angels are spirit only, not flesh.  Only men - and Jesus - combine the two.  Wouldn't it therefore make sense that the OT prophecies would find their culmination in BOTH a physical sense and a spiritual sense?  And we see now that the spiritual fulfillment comes first, and later the physical will also be fulfilled?

Just reading it out from here....

He tells them the called could come.  Today, it seems the hard part was this whole eating flesh and drinking blood concept.  Physical as the "shadow" of spiritual.  Bread for the body, flesh for soul.

Then vs 63 seems to say this almost directly: 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. [Jhn 6:63 ESV].  

2022 - Then this:
63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. [Jhn 6:63 ESV].  More evidence that this appearance of Jesus is all about spiritual fulfilment.  The flesh cannot be saved.  The flesh is corrupt from Adam's day.  It absolutely must die.  BUT, the spirit can still be saved, and the flesh must be changed.  Men are made of both.  To save man, both parts must be perfected.  (I also note that there is nothing here about soul.  There is flesh and spirit.  Two parts.  Not a third.)  
"the Spirit" is ho pneuma.  The definite article is used.  This is the Holy Spirit.  In the church age, all who are saved are given the Spirit as earnest.  This only occurs in the church age.  So once again we see that Christ's kingdom - at least THIS kingdom - is a spiritual Kingdom.  He will return, in future, and assume Kingship over a physical kingdom.  But this is not that kingdom.  And there is no "Kingdom of the Soul".  

2022 - This verse:
64 But there are some of you who do not believe." (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) [Jhn 6:64 ESV].  Another parentheses from John the Apostle, who from a distance better understood Jesus' meaning.  This parenthesis is the ultimate proof text for predestination.  Jesus knew who would be saved.  If Jesus knew God knew.  If they knew the Spirit knew.  This  is what Jesus is talking about.  BUT, I think a good case can be made that those who turned back at this point did not do so because of their dissatisfaction with predestination, but because they were not interested in cannibalism.  These people took literally that they had to eat body and drink blood.  How many times had Jesus just said exactly that?  vs 35, 41, 48, 50, 51 and then even more "cannibalistic", vss 53-58.  This passage MUST be understood as being about spiritual things.  But many, if not most of those standing around heard it as physical.  This in the same way that only the "called of God" understood the parables.  It was not given to most of these to be saved, and so they perceived these remarks as physical.  And they just couldn't bring themselves to eat human flesh and drink human blood.  THIS is the hard saying.  To hammer this idea  home, note that it is in vs 60, immediately after these verses, that "many of his disciples said "This is a hard saying".  They didn't mean it was hard to "believe", nor hard that God wouldn't choose "everyone" for salvation, or even that it just didn't seem fair for God to choose only some.  These questions, these difficulties, didn't arise until much later when we called them Armenianism and Calvinism.  What these people were shaking their heads and going home about was cannibalism.  And then Jesus all but tells them in vs 63 that he is NOT speaking literally of eating flesh.  "The flesh is NO HELP AT ALL".  So he cannot mean to literally eat flesh.  They had missed the entire point!
Finally!  I have never understood this before!

BUT, Jesus closes with this verse:
65 And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." [Jhn 6:65 ESV]
So both parts are "hard".  It is not our will but the Father's, that leads to salvation.  Very hard to just be helpless to save our own souls.  To only participate, never to initiate!  That is the phrase!  We must participate in our salvation, but we can never initiate it!  But...I think that view is an age old heresy.  Perhaps catholic.  I heard about it on those tapes.  Don't buy this phraseology just yet!!!

Because of these things, many of his disciples turned back, and no longer followed him.  
Jesus addresses the twelve, asks if they too plan to turn back now.  Peter answers for them.  They know Jesus is the Holy One of God.  They have no doubt He is the Messiah.
Jesus points out that though He chose the 12, one is a devil.  Does this refer to only the Father being able to give to Jesus?  The Father makes the plan, provokes the details, and the Son obeys as is His function in the whole trinitarian scheme of things?  Is Judas the proof that it is God who chooses - the Spirit that leads - and not the Son?  The Son redeems the chosen of the Father who are drawn by the Spirit.  The three functions of the Godhead.  

Maybe I have this right...
This is limited atonement I think, in a nutshell.  Proof text for it.

2022 - One last verse...the last verse.  There are no wasted verses in John.  They all matter:
71 He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him. [Jhn 6:71 ESV].  Yet another explanation by John from a distance of something that was not understood at the time.  Another place where John is saying that Jesus had foreknowledge of his purpose and mission.  It was NOT all made up after the fact, and "matched" to OT prophecy.  Jesus himself knew.  But if you don't believe the Bible, you have assert that John - or someone even later - went back and inserted this into his gospel.  But...they'd have to insert it in every manuscript AND they'd have destroy every manuscript that did not include it.  You have to get down to one, and then re-expand the number of copies from there.

Chapter 7
John 6 ended with many of Jesus' disciples turning away because of his hard sayings.  My summary was that the Son redeems those chosen of the Father and drawn by the Spirit.  The functions of the Trinity, all in one chapter in John 6.
7 opens by telling us that Jesus couldn't move about in Judea anymore because the Jews were now actively trying to kill him.  Hard to imagine that he was under death threats from here on for healing people and giving sight to the blind.  All the Pharisees knew was that he was a blasphemer according to their laws.  

This verse:
5 For not even his brothers believed in him. [Jhn 7:5 ESV]  Those following Jesus in Galilee urge him to go to Judea and demonstrate his power to the "brothers" there.  They thought Jesus wanted to be famous and adored by everyone.  They didn't know who he was at all, though they were with him and followed him, saw him, and heard the very words he spoke.  If these so close to him could remain in disbelief, and not recognize him for who he was, how much  more difficult today since we believe by faith and not by sight.  2020 - The phrasing here makes it seem as if this is about his actual brothers and sisters at home.  They still think he's nuts.  But if he is real, he should go and prove it in a "real place" not out here in the boonies where he's always wandering around.  They are sort of "calling his bluff" I think.  Those who followed him would not have been called brothers I don't think, either.  So this is his family urging him in this way - to go get famous, or stop all this nonsense.  That's how little they understood.  But it also seems that they go to the feast, leaving Jesus behind.  If these are his family, where are the 12 and the disciples at this time?  Perhaps he took a little time off and went home, and they left him there.
2022 - This year, I notice that vs 3 confirms that the brothers were his family, his half brothers.  Here is the verse:
3 So his brothers said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. [Jhn 7:3 ESV].  His brothers tell him to go prove himself to his disciples.  So brothers and disciples are separate groups entirely.  And that means that the MSB note here is entirely incorrect.  John did not mean "brothers and sisters" when he wrote brothers.  He MEANT brothers - male relatives!

2021 - This verse struck me today:  6 Jesus said to them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. [Jhn 7:6 ESV].  My time, your time, is always here.  Jesus had a specific purpose and a timeline that would lead to the fulfillment of many prophecies.  His time was tied to those.  We, however, are to work every day, do every day.  It is always "our time".  We don't need to wait until next year to witness, to tell, to teach, to share.  It is ALWAYS our time!
Good FB post.
Later...MSB indicates that Jesus is here talking to his own half-brothers.  They don't believe in him at all, and are urging him to circumvent this timeline to prove something to his disciples.  Jesus saying "your time is always here" doesn't mean they are always to be working.  It means their time is worthless because they are part of the world and not doing God's work anyway.  So it means the opposite of what I thought it did.  I did not post it.

So his brothers and sisters went to the feast, but Jesus did not accompany them.  But after they'd gone, Jesus went to the feast incognito.  He didn't go with the brothers because this would have caused a scene and put those trying to kill him in a frenzy.  Jesus knew it was not yet time for things to culminate.  There was much speculation about Jesus at the feast, some saying he was "a good man", others that he was leading people astray.  They saw him turning Jews away from the many tedious laws and interpreted that as him making apostates instead of restoring the intent of the law.  They were happy with their rituals, because ritual doesn't change lives.  About half way through the feast, Jesus goes to the temple and begins teaching.  They don't recognize him there, but marvel that one not educated by them in their own schools has such knowledge.

2022 - Don't these speculations sound a lot like what we hear today about megachurch preachers?  Some are always saying "He's preaching it wrong", while others are head over heels that everything they say is gospel.  I don't think that makes these preachers impersonators.  They don't claim to be Christ, and I rarely hear of one that anyone thinks is Christ, with the notable exception of Jim Jones.  Perhaps we are to understand this as the "go to" argument of those who lack discernment.  After all, both the "good man" group and the "lead astray" group are wrong about who Jesus really is.  Isn't it the same today with those who salve their conscience - or who actively avoid controversy - by granting that while Jesus was a good man, it is silly to say he rose from the dead?  All these are unsaved.  Today, we have the advantage of an indwelling Holy Spirit to help us distinguish true from false teaching.  Today we have prayer and we have the written word, both OT and NT.  We have a spiritual yardstick that can be applied, and we have a written standard that can be applied.  We don't need to speculate, as the lost do, about who is a good man and who is making apostates.
Wow...vs 17 (Jn 7:17) makes the above true even in Jesus time.  (see below).  If we are God's, we know.  You know, we ought not be ashamed of what we know.  This doesn't just apply to false vs true teaching at church or in Sunday School.  If we study, if we pray, if we are practiced at seeking God, then we recognize truth vs apostasy when we hear it on the news, when we read it on FB or watch it on Twitter.  Where in the Bible are we told to keep this understanding secret?  Why do we not speak up in the face of recognized lies, heresies, and apostasies?  All the things are being proclaimed publicly, and the best argument against them is the Word.  They are wrong because they are inconsistent if not entrenched for battle with the Bible.  
Possible FB post.

Jesus tells them that he is speaking God's will, because he is sent from God.  This verse also:
17 If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. [Jhn 7:17 ESV]
This seems to be about our spirit communing with God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, though at this time we are well before Pentecost.  Perhaps those chosen and called even before the Holy Spirit came, knew truth when they heard it.  There is a note in MSB on 16 that says the rabbi's teaching was based on a long chain of human teaching, passed man to man, over hundreds or thousands of years.  Theirs was a historical religion.  Jesus' teaching was directly from God, today, and so was different in almost every way from what the rabbi's taught.  Jesus point is that he is separate from them because he is sent from God, and gets his teaching from God, NOT from any rabbinical school.

2021 - 19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?" [Jhn 7:19 ESV].  Here again Jesus tells them they are not keeping the Law.  Surely the Pharisees believed that they were keeping the Law better and more correctly than anyone before them ever had.  They considered themselves the generation of greatest knowledge, enlightenment, understanding.  And Jesus is telling them they don't even have the old law right, much less understand this new one.  Part of this, in the verses just prior, is that one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory.  This is what the Pharisees are doing.  They are not looking at what Moses said, and trying to do that, they are instead re-interpreting, emphasizing different parts, teaching what Moses "really meant", according to the Pharisees.  And they are trying to kill him.
Good FB post.

2022 - This verse:
20 The crowd answered, "You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?" [Jhn 7:20 ESV].  This reeks of conspiracy.  It implies that the crowd in general has no idea of the agreement among the religious elite that Jesus ought to be killed.  The crowd is still debating about whether he is a good man or not, but the elite have already pronounced him a threat so serious that he must be killed.  The crowd did not understand how evil their leaders really were.  Do we?
Possible FB post.

Jesus also tells them they aren't keeping the law of Moses anyway, since they are seeking to kill him.  They deny any conspiracy.  Jesus answers that they have been trying to kill him for healing on the Sabbath and making a man well, even though they themselves will do a circumcision on the Sabbath in order to comply with the letter of Mosaic law - the eighth day.  

2022 - Here is the verse:
23 If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? [Jhn 7:23 ESV].  Again we have the whole healing on the Sabbath at the heart of the plot to kill Jesus.  Remember that when he healed the withered hand on the Sabbath, that's when it changed.  Then the stooped woman, and the hatred of Jesus intensified tremendously.  Because nothing more clearly held the Pharisees up as hypocrites than that.  Perhaps that is the whole reason for it.  It was public.  It was easily understood by the crowd.  It was permanent - the lame could still walk the next day and for the rest of his life.  And it showed the hypocrisy of the religious elite.  I think Jesus is saying that doing the right thing is never wrong.  If the 8th day is a Sunday, you know that it is ok to obey the Law on a Sunday.  God's intent is never for man to suffer - not even lost men and women.  To let them suffer when you could fix it is therefore sin.  But the Pharisees were teaching that doing good was the sin.

Then this verse:
24 Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment." [Jhn 7:24 ESV]
Jesus states clearly that the law of Moses was a guide to right living, but that its rituals and commands were not an end in themselves, but was to steer them toward holiness.  If we do what is holy, we recognize holiness, as a bank teller recognizes genuine currency vs counterfeit.  That's the "sensitivity" the law was to hone.  But they'd lost that part of it entirely through the rabbinical traditions.

In vss 25-31, John tries to convey the rampant confusion as to who Jesus was.  He tells us about the various opinions and what those are based on.  If the Pharisees wanted this man dead, how could he be teaching right there in the Temple, and not be arrested???  Surely the Pharisees must believe in their back room discussions that he was really the Christ.  What other possible explanation for their lack of direct action?  2020 - Notice vs 26.  The very fact that the Pharisees won't come and arrest Jesus makes the crowd think the Pharisees believe Jesus is Christ.  They are trying to figure out who he could really be, and even such contorted reasoning enters into their speculations.

2020 - No, that previous statement is wrong.  They did not believe he was the Messiah.  They believed him in league with Satan, or that he was a blasphemer from someplace, but even the Pharisees would not have killed him  had they believed he was the Messiah.  They never once believed, not for a minute.  Or at least most did not.

Others say he cannot be the Christ because no one will recognize the Christ when he comes, as everyone knows.  An MSB note says this is based on a misinterpretation of Isa 53.8 and Mal 3.1.  But tradition said the Messiah would be born in a place that scripture prophesied, but that he would be totally unknown until he appeared in power and freed his people from oppression.  So since they knew who Jesus was, where he was from, and much about his life, he could not be the Christ.  He had too much history with them to be God's own Son.

2022 - I am not sure whether it is better to just assume that the tradition that said no one would know where he came from was just wrong, whether it was in fact true, because surely no one knew that the Messiah lived in Nazareth and was working as a carpenter for three decades before he began his ministry, or whether the tradition applies not to the first coming but to the second, when he comes to free his people from the oppression of the Man of Lawlessness.  At that time, he will appear in power, from the sky.  He will not be born and grow up in that time.  He will just appear.  Any of these, or all of them, seem to have some basis.

Jesus says they know him, but they do not know the one who sent him.  Jesus makes their tradition true in a way, in that they don't recognize the sender.  He means they are lost, and that God is not revealing the truth to them.

There were some who did believe, because of the miracles.  They didn't see how anyone still to come could ever do more than Jesus had done.  They were convinced by the miracles that Jesus was from God, was the Messiah.  That is, after all, what the miracles were about.

2023 - This year, I think the point of the above is that they knew superficially who Jesus was.  They knew his parents, his hometown, and like that.  But they interpreted Isaiah to mean that they wouldn't even know the Messiah's name.  In fact, Isaiah is exactly right - as you might expect.  They did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.  They did not recognize the most foundational thing about him - that he was from God and in fact WAS God.  They - the Jews - won't recognize him as such until the time of the end, as his second coming approaches and the 144,000 evangelize and bring home the nation of Israel.  So Isaiah is right...but those of Jesus' time didn't understand that.

The Pharisees hear about this rampant speculation and do finally send officers to arrest him.  But Jesus says he will be there a little longer, and then he will join his father, and that they cannot come where he is.  They will seek him, but not find him.  He is speaking of heaven, and those who do not believe cannot come there.  They will still be looking for the Messiah, not realizing that they have missed him entirely.  He might also be talking about how those who do recognize him, will long for him, as a bride for the bridegroom.  They will miss him, and seek him, but he will not be physically here anymore for a long time.
2021 - I don't believe the interpretation above is what was meant by "You shall seek and not find".  Here is the whole verse:  34 You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come." [Jhn 7:34 ESV].  I think he means that after he returns to the Father, they will still be trying to wipe out his teaching.  They will be trying to remove the name of Jesus from history and go back to their own teachings about the Mosaic Law.  They will want to squelch his teachings, but they will be less able to do that than they are in finally getting him crucified.  They will ultimately kill the man, but they will never kill what he is about.  They still haven't, and they are still trying!

During the ceremony where water is poured out, Jesus says this:
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" [Jhn 7:37-38 ESV]  John tells us that Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit, which had not yet come, but Jesus was telling them about it.  Belief in Jesus "releases the flow" of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and he dwells in us, and because of this, we do the will of God also.  His Spirit works through us to accomplish His will.
2021 - When Jesus talks about water, he is referring to the Spirit?  Is that what John is telling us?  As we read Jesus words, anytime he mentions water he means Holy Spirit?  Is that the water he offered the woman at the well?  So she would never thirst?  Never be alone because the Spirit would be with her?  This is different than "eat my body and drink my blood".  This is water.  This point might help interpret many passages.  Try and remember this!  There is also that last phrase...The Spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.  Was he not glorified until 40 days after his resurrection?  Or is that too literal?

2022 - This is another example of John including hindsight in his gospel.  He remembers that people didn't understand the words at that time, but that now, we understand that he meant the Holy Spirit.  Thinking about Cullman's book, here is yet another example of what some could claim is an insert to go back and have Jesus "prophesy" about something that really came about after the fact.  Many of these explanations by John have the look of later insertion, you have to admit that.  So why does John do it?  It may be that this was a refutation of a specific teaching of the sect of John the Baptist, and the Apostle thinks it a big enough deal that he must explain it.  I don't know what exactly this statement by Jesus refutes in the teaching of the sect, but it has the look of being aimed at them.  

After these words, the confusion and discussion gets even more energetic.  MSB says that then, as now, there were five reactions to what Jesus said.  I list them here:  1, Some believed, 2, some were contrary, 3, some hostile (they wanted him arrested), 4, some were just still confused, and 5, the religious authorities reaction.  In the middle of all this, those sent to arrest Jesus return to the Pharisees.  The Pharisees ridicule them for being taken in by Jesus.  But Nicodemus stands up among them and says they are judging Jesus without hearing him, and thus violating the law of Moses.  So they accuse Nicodemus of being from Galilee too.  

2022 - Look at this verse:
40 When they heard these words, some of the people said, "This really is the Prophet." [Jhn 7:40 ESV].  This is the second time the phrase "the Prophet" has been used by the people in the Gospel of John.  They had previously seen the Baptist as the Prophet, and now they are attributing this to Jesus.  We could see this as still another refutation of the continuing teaching of the sect that John the Baptist was the Prophet.  Many moved on...so should the sect.
Further, in vs 42, it sort of points out that the reason many doubted that Jesus was the Christ was because he was from Galilee, and did not match the prophecies of the Messiah.  John has them saying Jesus is not from David's lineage and is not from Bethlehem.  But by John's time, it would have been widespread knowledge that Jesus DID meet those two criteria.  So John here associates the ignorance of the crowd in Jesus' time with the still ignorant beliefs of the members of the sect who deny that Jesus was the Christ,

Chapter 8
There is a note in the ESV saying that Jn 7:53 - 8:11 is not even in the earliest manuscripts.  But they do include it.  They put vs 53 in chapter 8 though.  These verses are the story of the adulteress caught in the act.  She was brought before Jesus while he was teaching in the temple, not just out in the streets someplace as it is usually depicted.  

2021 - There's a pretty long note in ESV, the above covers only a part of it.  In "later" manuscripts, this story shows up, but in several different places.  It seems from the note that it only shows up in one place in each manuscript, and most of those places are in John.  It can also show up after Luke 21:38.  Matthew and Mark don't mention it at all in any manuscripts, in other words.  They would have been the two oldest gospels.  The story is suspect because it seems "unattached" anywhere specific, but jumps around.  It shows up after Jn 21:25 in some manuscripts - which makes it the very thing John wrote in his gospel.  Also means it could have been added on later.  I have not seen that manuscript to see if it is written in another hand...guess all of it would be though, since we don't have John's own handwriting.  A scribe might have done it anyway.  The point is that building sound doctrine on something like this is very sketchy.   We should read and study it, but we should not decide that Jesus always lets sinners go, even when they are rightly accused.  Building doctrine on this discounts the rest of what he says.  

2022 - This verse:
5 Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" [Jhn 8:5 ESV].  Look at just how evil this is.  It seems to me that they had probably not stoned anyone in Jerusalem for a very long time.  They had "outgrown" such barbaric consequences, and considered themselves enlightened for doing away with what was specifically written in the law.  Now, they tempt Jesus to "reinstate" the law, and they were probably willing to kill this woman and then afterward make it all Jesus' fault and portray him as a cave man for recommending and participating in such a thing.  And if Jesus says to let her go...well then he is a false teacher because he does not honor Moses.  This is quite a dilemma, and Jesus' handling of it is profound.  So.  Even though this story is not in the oldest manuscripts, it is hard for me to believe that it was entirely fabricated by men - both in the posing of the question and in Jesus' handling of it.  Maybe it was well known, but not included because it confused so many people in its implications.  That would mean it was inserted later, but is nevertheless a true account of something that Jesus did.  Maybe we should think of this passage as "needing" to be in here, but not until later.  This is, after all, another example of it never being wrong to do what is right.  This woman was thrown at Jesus' feet not so that judgment could be pronounced, but so the judge himself could be convicted.  On how many levels would it have been wrong to stone her, but not the man caught with her?    But...on what basis was she freed?  Perhaps that the purpose of stoning people was to discourage sin in others.  To stone this woman would not even have begun to accomplish that purpose.  It would be a wasted death.  That is why Jesus asked for the one without sin to cast the first stone.  In Moses time, the people who threw the stones were in fact more innocent than the one stoned, and while the procedure was barbaric, its purpose was to cleanse the people of sin, and to discourage further sin.  This was clearly NOT the noble purpose of the stone throwers in this scene.  This is why they walked away, convicted that the whole exercise was as wrong as the sin of the woman.  Or...it is hard to make sense of this because it was inserted by men after the fact.

Jesus begins teaching again after the incident.  This verse:
12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." [Jhn 8:12 ESV]
Jesus does not claim to be salt, he claims to be light.  These words of his draw a contrast between him with the Mosaic Law.  His is a new covenant, different from the old in all it's aspects.  No more ritual, no priests, no daily sacrifices.  Each man in a direct relationship to God because of the Spirit within him to interpret for him, and each man addressing the Living God as a son and heir, not as one too impure and unholy to enter the Holy of Holies.  Read an MSB note here, and it says this was likely spoken during a "lighting ceremony" that was part of the feast of booths.  This was done in the court of women and included torches, music, and dancing.  So after the claim to be water at that ceremony, Jesus now uses the lighting ceremony to declare himself the very light they are seeking.
2021 - Jesus previously told them to eat his body and drink his blood.  Now he tells them he is light.  He's moved on to a completely different analogy.  Since he is light, those who walk in/with him will not be in darkness.  Since Jesus said "I am the light", he is "bearing witness of himself".  No
one else has said he is the light, so he is just making it up.  No one else testifies to it.  But we know this wasn't true even then.  That phrase maybe, but there were countless witnesses to his works.  

2022 - Here again is that phrase "I am..." in English.  Looking at the Greek, the transliteration is ego eimi, the same phrase elsewhere translated I AM HE.  None of the available BLB translations makes it anything but I am the light.  The JSB doesn't render it I AM HE either.  So.  How do you tell whether it just means I am, as if I was the one saying it, or it means I AM HE, as in "I AM GOD", as it is sometimes rendered?  All I can figure out is that it must have to do with either the position in the sentence, or the "lack" of a predicate.  I is the subject, AM is the verb, and there needs to be a predicate.  In vs 12, teh predicate is supplied by Jesus.  The predicate is "the light".  So how does it look in vs 58:  58 Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." [Jhn 8:58 ESV].  There is no predicate supplied.  This is a compound sentence I think....We might distill it down to "I say I AM".  Subject is the first I, verb is say, predicate is a sentence within a sentence.  This second sentence has as the subject, "I", AM is the verb...and there is no supplied predicate.  And the ESV does not supply one, since it is a literal translation.  BUT, in this case, the literal translation, at least into English, has no way of making the distinction that could be made in the Greek.  Well...no.  Those who interpret in combination with translation add words to show that leaving off the predicate makes this Jesus pointing back at himself as God, which you might only really recognize if you spoke Hebrew and knew what it said in Exodus.  Have to remember that we really don't know what language Jesus used when he said this, but our Bible is getting it from the Greek, and translating it into English.  
I think the KEY to understanding the phrase is the lack of a speaker supplied predicate.
And once again, I am running out of time on John 8.  An hour and twenty minutes on 12 verses.  I have gotten further before.  I am going to read on through it...try again next year.

The Pharisees say that Jesus is not to be believed, because only he testifies as to who he is, and two witnesses are required.  Jesus' answer is extensive.  First he tells them that his own testimony is true, because of who he is.  He is Messiah, from heaven, sent by God.  All that he says must therefore be true.  He says that the Father agrees with him, so this is two witnesses.  They ask where his father is, perhaps sarcastically, knowing that Joseph is dead and cannot bear witness.  So Jesus tells them they don't know his father.  Has to be a reference to God as his father - and the hard hearted Pharisees don't know God - rather than to Joseph as his father.  Also indirectly testifies to the virgin birth - if Joseph was not his father, then who was?  That is what he is posing to them.

2022 - This verse:
15 You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. [Jhn 8:15 ESV].  Is Jesus referring back to the scene with the woman?  The mob had walked away.  The woman had walked away.  So in vs 12, when Jesus begins talking, is it to those bystanders who witnessed what just happened but were not participants?  Does vs 12 really follow from what happened in 11?  
I think it is better to see vs 12 as beginning a whole new scene, unrelated to what happened with the adulterous woman.  I think so because we have the Pharisees back, and feeling their oats, and accusing him again.  These would almost certainly be a different group of Pharisees, as the others were all shamed and walked away.  What if you take out the "suspect" verses?  Does 8:12 have better continuity with 7:52?  That would make it follow the speculation that followed Jesus saying he is living water.  Then we saw the officers sent to arrest Jesus coming back empty handed.  Then [the adulterous woman], and then "I am the light of the world...".  After Jesus says he is the living water, John explains what he meant by that.  Then there is all the speculation and division among the people about whether Jesus is "the Prophet", or ought to be arrested.  And if we leave out the woman, next would be Jesus saying "I am the light", and John introduces this scene with "Again...".  And note that in vs 20, John again inserts an explanation of what is going on and why it is going as it is.  
So I think this year, I am going to just say that the scene with the woman "did not actually happen right here on this day between these two statements of Jesus".  John's use of "again" rather than "right after that" means he is not trying to be strictly chronological but relating events of this trip to Jerusalem, though not necessarily in order.  So...moving on.
Jesus is saving those that God has chosen.  Jesus isn't deciding who to save.  The Pharisees judge people by how closely they conform to the Law of Moses, which is a physical, earthly, fleshly, performance based law, or at least that is what the Pharisees have made of it.  Jesus is saying that he isn't doing what he is doing based on the earthly physically observable facts.  What Jesus does is done for spiritual reasons.  He does not judge, he just does as he knows God wants him to do.  God is true, so doing precisely as God wants is also true, and the doer is true.

Jesus moves on, and we find these words:
21 So he said to them again, "I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come." [Jhn 8:21 ESV]
This is the second or third time he's said this.  I think maybe it means they will keep looking for Messiah after Jesus is gone back to his Father, but they will never find him.  This is about the continued blindness of the Jews.  MSB does not mention this.  It says that Jesus statement that they will die in their sins is ominous.

2022 - Vss 23, 24
23 He said to them, "You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins." [Jhn 8:23-24 ESV]
Uses I AM three times.  The predicate is supplied the first two times - I am from above.  I am not of this world.  But the third time, there is no predicate supplied.  In this usage also there is a sentence within a sentence.  The whole phrase beginning "I am..." is a predicate "sentence".  And no predicate predicate is supplied.  "Unless you believe that I AM..."  Here, even the ESV yields to make this important distinction in what Jesus says.  Here is another way to see it:  Unless you believe that I AM GOD, you will die in your sins".  This is what he was really saying to the Pharisees.
Vs 25;
25 So they said to him, "Who are you?" Jesus said to them, "Just what I have been telling you from the beginning. [Jhn 8:25 ESV].
They know what they think he said, but they cannot believe anyone would say that.  Perhaps just a figure of speech.  So in vs 25, they want him to clarify just exactly who he is claiming to be that they should believe in him.    This is confirmed by John's explanation to us in vs 27.  Then in vs 28, Jesus once again used the predicateless phrase, "I am...", and ESV again translates it so that we understand the significance of it, "I AM HE".

(I am wearing out.  There is soooo much here.)

I just read straight through vss 25-59 in 2019.
And in 2022, I read straight through from 31-59.

All below from 2020, on these previously rushed verses -
This verse:
38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father." [Jhn 8:38 ESV]  Jesus has been talking since vs 13 about who he is.  The Pharisees had challenged him by saying they knew who he was and where he was from.  He's a Galilean - even from Nazareth.  And Joseph...or someone...was his father.  They are saying that since they know these things about him, he cannot be the Messiah.  He has not retaliated at any point that he was born in Bethlehem.  He has not told them that he is descended from David on both sides of his family - nor have they inquired after his lineage.  So these two items that might have established some facts in Jesus' favor just don't come up at all.  Perhaps because there was no one else but Jesus and Mary who know first hand where he was born.  They went to Egypt for a while and returned to Nazareth - so no one in Judea or Galilee really knew where he was born, except those shepherds, and the wise men a couple of years later.

Instead of these things, Jesus keeps telling them that they do not know his Father.  Jesus insists on keeping things on a spiritual plain, not physical.  In vs 14, he lays out his case:  First, his testimony about himself is to be considered true because he himself knows where he is from, and they do not know where he is from.  Maybe Jesus means that they lack any basis on which to call him a liar?  They also have no witness that will testify that Jesus was born and raised in Nazareth.  They  have no contradictory testimony, so what Jesus says about himself should stand.  
Second, he talks about judgement.  I don't get this part.  They judge according to the flesh, Jesus judges no one.  But if he did, his judgement would be true - because it is the judgement of two.  The judgement of he and the Father.  He summarizes by saying he testifies of himself and his Father testifies.  I do not follow the "logic" of the argument here that starts with judgement.  There is an MSB note for vss 14-18, saying three reasons are given.  They are listed.  They don't make sense to me there either...that is, I don't see how you get from the words in the text to the three reasons the MSB lists as coming from what Jesus says here.  I do not follow.

This verse:
34 Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. [Jhn 8:34 ESV]  Another example of Jesus speaking spiritually here.  He tells them they will be free if they follow him.  You might think he was going to lead a rebellion.  But the people respond that they don't need to be freed, they have never been enslaved.  So they are talking only of their own generation.  Jesus' answer is that he is speaking about slavery to sin - spiritual slavery and bondage - and not about the flesh.  

And then it closes out with this verse:
38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father." [Jhn 8:38 ESV]  This seems to be the perspective that should be key to the whole passage.  Jesus is a first hand witness to God and what God wants.  These people he's talking to have learned, not from seeing God, but from the teaching of their fathers.  And that teaching is from man, because things have deteriorated so far since the time of Moses.  Jesus is the better teacher - and the better witness - because what he learned was first hand from God.  At least I think that is what the conclusion means.  Still, it does not unlock the logic about witnesses and judges for me.  That argument has to be spiritually based, and if you try to logic it out like Aristotle, you're going to get lost.  I think there is also a lot of Jewish tradition in there that I am not getting.
Maybe the two testimonies are Jesus, who does the works, and God who endorses Jesus by granting the power to do the works to him.  Jesus says he is who he claims to be, and the fact that he does these miracles that could only come from God, means that God himself says that's who Jesus is.  And if God is witness for him, then how could his own witness to what God is witnessing be false?  Jesus and God are witness to the same thing.  To call Jesus witness false is to call God's false.  Is that what is being said here?  

[[[[
I just couldn't go on without figuring something out.  When that last sentence of the second paragraph above popped out, and it hit me that there might be something "Jewish" that I was missing, I got another source to help me.  I ended up going backwards quite a ways, but oh so much came into focus finally!

Went and got the Jewish Study Bible.  This Bible puts some emphasis on certain...well, here is vs 23 as the JSB puts it:
23 He said to them, "You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I AM, you will die in your sins." [Jhn 8:23-24 ESV]  So somehow, in the way this was phrased, Jesus says that he is Adonai.  This is a little plainer.  Jesus point is that he is God, not that he is Messiah.  He distinctly separates himself from them.  

(((I did some more study on that "I AM" phrase.  The key seems to be when it is translated I "AM HE".  It is the second part that is distinctive.  So both times in vs 23, where it says "I am", this key construction of the phrase was not used, even though it is the same two words from Strongs.  It just means I am.  But in 24, that specific construction of Strongs 1473 and 1510 into a phrase is translated "I am he" in the ESV.  It puts no special emphasis on it to help you decipher that something shocking has just been implied.  We just don't see it in ESV.  In the JSB, the phrase is rendered in all caps with an extra, like this:  I AM [who I say I am].  This is what God answered when Moses asked what His name was!  I AM that I AM!!!!!  Without seeing this, so much is lost in the passage!!!  I clicked on the (PHRASE) of these two words as used in vs 24 in my Blue Letter Bible on line.  A new window opens up showing everywhere that phrasing is used in the Bible, original language notwithstanding.  It is used in 19 places in the Bible.  Many of them are from the OT, and leave absolutely no doubt that this signifies "The Name of God" when it is used this way.   It does not just mean "I am".  So look for "AM HE" in the ESV translation.))

Apparently this statement - this separation, this claim of being Adonai - shocks them.  And perhaps, in order to trap him in this, they ask "Now who did you just say you are????"  Because if he says God, they have him on blasphemy.  So Jesus' answer is, "Just what I have been telling you along!"  He doesn't answer them directly, but reiterates that he's told them before anyway.  They know what he is claiming, but are looking for a smoking gun.  
Next, in vs 26, Jesus tells them that he's not here to judge.  He could judge them.  He knows enough about them and what they do and how they operate that he could most certainly pass judgement on them.  And he'd be right, as compared to the judgements they are trying to make on him, which are all completely wrong anyway.  That is probably the same thing he meant back in 15 when he brought up judgement.  Their whole purpose in talking to him is to "bring him to judgement" before the Pharisees.  They want to judge him, and find him  unworthy, and condemn him.  He could, but won't do that to them, because he was not sent - this time - to judge.  This time, he was sent ONLY to do the will of his father, and to carry that out.  That will is to save those who should be saved, and for him to die a perfect sacrifice for sin on the cross.  That is the ONLY reason Christ is there, at that time, in that place, and he is restricting himself to what God has sent him to do, and foregoing for now the power that will be his.  

I think that is finally getting to what all this is about!

In this verse, he says it again, per JSB:
28 So Jesus said to them, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. [Jhn 8:28 ESV]  Here is that phrase again.  "...you will know that I AM HE..."  Again, in the JSB, it is translated I AM [who I say I am].  Absolutely no doubt here.  ]]]]]

Continuing on from 34...Jesus is still trying to tell them that they are missing the point.  They are still locked in on their heritage and their rules while he tries to tell them it is the heart for doing the Father's will that really matters.  It is understanding what God meant, rather than getting down in the weeds of every jot and tittle, which only obscures the bigger picture.  So when he says they hear their fathers, he means the traditions of the Rabbi's and Scribes, and honed and perfected for THEIR own uses, with complete loss of the Godly meanings of it.  
2021 - This verse:
38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father." [Jhn 8:38 ESV]
Are we back to witnesses here?  Jesus is the better witness because he has seen with the Father. He was with the Father.  They  have only heard, and that from Moses, passed down.  There information is less, because they were not there.  Jesus was there.

Again, in vs 39, the appeal back to their ancestry.  They just have blinders on about it.  Jesus is still talking spiritually, trying to make them "see", instead of "hear".  
(2022 - to be first hand witnesses rather than hearsay witnesses.  They are all about what is read to them from the scrolls of Moses.  Jesus is telling them what he saw firsthand.  Moses is long dead, and only the written word remains of him, and this can only be comprehended by interpretation - which comes from men.   Jesus is telling them that his words are NOT interpreted but are quoted from the source and explained as the source explained it.  Anyone who says Jesus never claimed to be God ought to read and understand this chapter.)

He tells the again that Abraham's children would not be trying to kill him, because Abraham would welcome him.  That because Abraham would recognize him in his heart, which these people do not.  He gets much more forceful here about their standing before God.  If they were God's they would understand.  They just would.  But they have "chosen" to hear Satan, and they are locked into that.  Jesus is telling them that they are essentially excluded from the Kingdom.  He is still saying that only those God wants will be in heaven, and that those listening to Jesus who aren't understanding are prevented from understanding.  Maybe this too is a key to this section in John.  Many of Jesus disciples had already turned back over this concept of having to be chosen, instead of "earning" their way in by following the law.  

(2022 - I have revised my thinking on why so many turned back.  I believe that was in Chapter 6.  They turned back over cannibalism, not election.)  

This justification by works is essentially what the Pharisees had turned the Law into.  Jesus not only told them that would not work, but that in fact it wasn't really in their power at all to get to heaven, UNLESS God first called them.  He is saying that same thing again here.  Before, your works don't matter, God's call matters.  Now, your heritage doesn't matter, God's call matters.  And the very/only reason that you don't have a clue that I'm telling the truth, is because God has not called you.  This is what it means.  You are not dumb, you are not foreigners, nothing like that.  The problem is that you are not chosen, and I (Jesus) am only here to save those that God has selected for His own reasons.  

Wow.  This could really have ticked some people off.  No wonder those turned away in 6.  So they counter with "You are a Samaritan!"  They knew - or thought they knew - that he had been born up north.  So now they disparage him that way.  And he says, I honor God, and your calling me a Samaritan dishonors me...and so dishonors God.  Because they were wrong.  Also, again, they accuse him of being demon possessed for the things he is saying.  (I wonder if demons often spouted inaccurate doctrine to confuse people?)  Jesus is still talking spiritually also.  He tells them about eternal life.  Now they are surely convinced he has a demon.  Abraham died.  Everybody died.  Now Jesus says this?  Definitely a crazy man.  And they say his object in all this is to make himself more than Abraham and the prophets.  They think this is about Jesus wanting accolades for his greatness compared to those.  

So Jesus answers in like manner.  He tells them it is not His own glory he seeks but God's glory for him.  Glorifying yourself means nothing, why would anyone try for that?  Jesus tells them that Abraham knew Jesus would come and understood it, and was glad.  So now, literal as they are, they accuse Jesus of claiming to have known Abraham - as a man.  And he counters with a spiritual answer again.  This verse:

58 Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." [Jhn 8:58 ESV]  Hmm....does not use the phrase I discussed earlier (2021 - Yes it does.  In Greek it is ego eimi.  That is the construction.  It was obviously clear to the Jews what he meant, because they pick up stones to kill him.  They now saw - no beating around the burning bush anymore - that Jesus claimed to be God.  Not just Messiah, but also God Himself.  

2021 - Always too rushed.  John 6-8 are probably a one year study by themselves.  But I always count it enough to just read them in their turn.  I have time for more...why don't I do more?  I have many ambitions to write things from my studies, but I never write them.

Chapter 9
Jesus has just "disappeared, sort of" from the temple because the Pharisees were about to openly publicly stone him for his claims.  As he passes by, he sees a blind man.  Blind since birth.  The disciples wonder whether the man or his parents committed the sin that made him blind.  Since he was blind since birth, wouldn't this man's blindness be a curse for his parent's sins?  He was blind before he'd done anything.  This is how they thought about things that needed healing back then.  If you had problems, they were the punishment for your sins.  Jesus says in this case it was neither.  Doesn't say that our problems are never sin, says sin was not the problem in this blind man's case.  This one was blind so God could show his healing power.  So Jesus could heal him someday as he left the temple.

2020-I think more should be made of this whole concept of sin causing physical problems.  This is what people believed in Jesus' time, perhaps not only about blindness and bloody issues, but about colds also.  If you were not in perfect health, perhaps all considered that you must have either sin or a demon.  Surely back in Job's day they thought all his problems were due to sin.  Now if they thought that, and Jesus was going around healing people right and left - without payment, without repentance, without sacrifice in the temple - and doing it for those who clearly did not "deserve" it, then...how would the Pharisees see that?  They would see Jesus as removing the consequences of sin, and no price paid.  They would see grace.  So the miracles - the healing - proclaimed that Jesus was forgiving sin.  How can the consequences of sin be removed unless the sin is forgiven?  So is this right?  Is blindness caused by sin?  Jesus says that it certainly was not in the case of this blind man.  So how is Jesus separating the healing miracles from forgiveness of sin?  Saying the miracles show the power of God over the physical world, but that power to save sinners is a different thing.  A faith based thing.  
The Pharisees couldn't heal.  They could do only a poor and temporary job of exorcism.  Jesus could do both.  He could do what the Pharisees could not...so he was getting help from somewhere.  Either from God or from Satan.  If healing implied forgiveness of sin, whose realm was sin?  So in their eyes, Satan was consorting with Christ to deceive the people by...what?  Unsinning these people?  By "releasing" those in his power to make Jesus look good and lure people away from the true friends of God?  They had to be seeing it something like this.  This is how it would tie together.  Because it was either that, or his power to heal was from God, and if from God, perhaps he truly could forgive sin also.  And if so, then they were going to be shortly out of work.  They were truly on the horns of a dilemma.

2020 - This verse:
4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. [Jhn 9:4 ESV]
KJV translates the pronoun at the start of this sentence "I".  NASB and ESV use "We".  I wonder why?  KJV translates the word "I" 365 times, and never "we".  What in the world would make ESV and NASB go against such overwhelming precedent???  Because night is coming when "no one" can work?  So they didn't think it should say I work or no one works?  They thought it more likely Jesus meant "We work now, because none can work later"?  The word used for "We" here is transliterated "ego".  Our word "ego" always refers to self doesn't it?  MSB ignores this word, and moves on to the meanings of "while it is day" and "night is coming".  I think those are discussed below...
5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." [Jhn 9:5 ESV]  Neither of the I am's in this verse use the pronoun ego.  For all I know, it would be grammatically incorrect and that is why it isn't used.  
These next comments are from last year, as I tried to unravel this.
2021 - Vs 4, continued.
All the modern translations use we instead of I.  Young's and Darby's used I, as did the KJV before them, but right in here about Darby seems to be where it changes to we.  In the Interlinear page that opens, it says that ego is a primary pronoun of the first person I (only expressed when emphatic).  When you look at the actual words in the interlinear, it says ego is accusative plural.  If it is plural, it has to be "we" and not I.  So did KJV deliberately change that?  The accusative is the object of the verb.  The verb action is about ego.  I think we have to make the use of we here a "royal" we.  Who must work?  WE must work - but we in the first person.  I think this is the second time I've seen this kind of usage, where the subject was "one", but was referred to in the plural.  If we take it this way, then what Jesus is saying is that he, and the Spirit, and very possibly also the Father, are all working...no.  He separates out the one who sent him.  So the we here is Son and Spirit.  But night is coming when "no one" can work.  That wouldn't apply to the Spirit would it?  Jesus is the light as long as he is in the world.  So when Jesus is gone, the light is gone.  We are not speaking spiritually here.  John - I think - is talking about the physical presence of Jesus.  He is God in the world.  As such he is a light unique in all of time.  And when he left, it was the light that was leaving.  Physically bodily.  He left the Spirit here, but the light is no longer here.  So the we is Jesus, and Jesus was working the deeds he was sent to work.  It isn't that big a mystery when you dig a little deeper.  It is that plural first person that gets you.  I tagged it here, and searched for the other place I saw it, but I didn't find it.

2022 - Jesus, in vs 4, says "We must work the works...", and then he restores sight to the blind man.  So if we look at this literally, if we take the simplest easiest most direct interpretation of this, the works Jesus is talking about are miracles.  I think that plural "I" is about the Son doing the will of the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  These three are doing these miracles for a purpose - to show that God incarnate is in the world by doing what has never been done before, and what cannot be done now.  He goes on to say that night is coming, and right after that he says he is the light of the world.  So again, if we don't try to overcomplicate things, Jesus says it is he, himself, who is going to leave.  If the light leaves, it will be dark.  These works, which I think are inclusive of the miracles done by the apostles and others in the early church, were to show that Jesus was from God, because only God could do these miracles.  And since then, we must take it on faith that these stories are true, and that, if true, they show that God was on earth as a man in the person of Jesus Christ.  We are released from the Mosaic Law, but from us, faith without sight is required.  
2023 - None of the above deals with "when no one can work".  It says that too.  Could it be that when Jesus said "we" his reference was to himself and his apostles, and indirectly to those coming later in the first century who would have the power to work miracles?  While Jesus was in the world, he could "convey" this power to others.  He did so with the 70 and then he did so again with the 12.  We know that some upon whom the Spirit first fell could do some miracles and also had pronounced, recognizable gifts bestowed on them.  The light was present, and we might think if this unique power over physical laws as "spreading" from Jesus - as it's source - while he was here.  But once he was gone, this power began to fade.  Over time, these miracles ceased entirely and darkness returned.  Today, there are only charlatans pretending at miracles.  Eyesight does not come to those born blind, nor hearing to those born deaf - unless it is through medical procedures.  There are no miraculous healings.  So finally, in 2023, and when looking not just at the "We" vs "I" argument, I think I see what Jesus meant about working while it was light.

Then Jesus seems to jump subjects.  He says to his disciples that "we" must work while it is day, for darkness is coming.  I took this to be a reference to the miracles.  That these would continue for Jesus and his apostles for some time into the future, but that darkness is coming, when there won't be any miracles for a long time.  MSB doesn't say that.  It says it was light as long as Jesus was on earth.  MSB goes on to reference Jn 1:4,5 notes and 1 Jn 1:5-7.  John uses "darkness" 14 of the 17 times it is used in the NT, per the 1:4,5 notes.  It contrasts with the light of spiritual truth.  Darkness is lack of spiritual truth, both in the world and in individual lives.  1 Jn is about walking in the light.  And it says there was no darkness in Jesus.  Still, ESV says "we" must work.  Only Jesus was about to die.  Why wouldn't he have said "I" must work if that's how he meant it.  I think it is about miracles.  After all, he was about to do one, and the man was blind just so Jesus could heal him. (see 2023 note above.  MacArthur's explanation could also be correct, but I think the miracles are in view.  Jesus wasn't speaking spiritually about a literal miracle they were about to witness.  The real thing was there, at that time, but would not be later.)

To accomplish this miracle, Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud (a poultice?) and applies it to the man's eyes, then tells him to go wash it off in the Pool of Siloam.  The man does, and comes back with his sight.  He had never before "seen" anything at all.  People who know him question whether it is really him when he shows up able to see.  (2021 - This miracle is so unprecedented, so unexpected, so impossible, that people doubt their own eyes.  They find it easier to believe that this man that used to sit and beg - that they've seen around for decades possibly - now has a look alike who can see.  No one says "Well go get the blind one then and let's look at them side by side."  Surely they would have known the blind man's routine and exactly where to find him at that time of day.  Was he there or not?  This "seeing" man should not have been as difficult to identify as they make it.)  But the man says "I am he!", confirming that he was once blind.  And he tells them it was Jesus who healed him (on the sabbath again), but that he doesn't know where Jesus is now.  
They take the man to the Pharisees, and he tells his story.  Some of the Pharisees are upset that he was healed on the Sabbath.  That is where they go with it.  (2021 - remember that in the last chapter (?) Jesus points out that the Pharisees are perfectly willing to circumcise on the Sabbath if it is the 8th day.  That is also work, but they think that is ok.  Breaking one law to keep another is ok.  But there is no law for healing, so healing on the Sabbath is wrong.  As Jesus said earlier - it was in 7:24 not 8 - "Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment".  He was trying to break them out of religion by rote.)  Since it was done on the sabbath, the one who did it cannot be from God.  I hope I have not lost so much taste for salt that I don't recognize it when I see it.  But others said that such a miracle could not have been done by a sinner.  So at least some of them are waking up.  They ask the blind man, and he says Jesus is a prophet.

They decide this can't be the same blind man, but his parents testify that this is him.  But they are afraid to say Jesus healed him, lest they be put out of the synagogue.  A principle here?  Cares of this world preventing salvation?  They were worried about being kicked out of the synagogue, and would rather deny Christ than leave the synagogue.  Do we therefore stay in a church that does not teach Christ crucified?  Where is the line.  Surely these people should have risked being put out in this case?  Or were they like Peter...and repented later?
This blind man, with no education, is questioned again.  They tell him that they know Jesus is a sinner.  The blind man poses an irrefutable logical argument to these learned men.  First, an undeniable fact:  I was blind but now I see.  They ask how it was done.  The man answers that he's told them once already.  Why are they asking, so they can be Jesus' disciples also?  The Pharisees are offended at the suggestion.  They deny Jesus outright and say they are Moses' disciples, not Jesus'.  The blind man says that no one, since the beginning of the world, ever restored the sight of one born blind.  It has never been done.  Therefore, since this man Jesus did what had never been done before, he MUST be from God.  So they tell the blind man that he is such a sinner that he was born blind as a result, and has no standing to contradict them in their holy sinless purity.  

2023 - Wow.  Somehow this kind of argument sounds familiar.  Even though the blind man is making perfect inarguable sense, he MUST be wrong because he disagrees with their "reality".  Today, no matter how much sense we might make, if we are not woke, then we are racist and wrong.  Facts don't matter.  Observable, demonstrable, provable truth doesn't matter.  You must agree with "US" no matter what your eyes tell you, or we will excoriate you publicly.  Surely the point for us from this passage is to stand firm on the truth no matter the firestorm it ignites.  WE serve One who restores sight to the blind.  Shall we fear those who refuse to see what is right in front of them?
Possible FB post for 7/24 Monday before the trip.  This is from John 9.

So they throw the formerly blind man out.  He has lost his church (synagogue) but gained his sight.  He lost his sin and gained salvation.  The principle is that we are to follow Christ whatever it costs us, because what we lose to do so is valueless compared to what we gain.  This principle is stated many different ways in the NT.  The pearl of great price comes to mind.
Jesus finds the man and asks if he believes in the son of man.  The man asks who that might be, and Jesus tells him "It is me".  The man believes.  The Pharisees hear Jesus say this.  Jesus tells them that if they were blind, they would recognize him, but because the claim they can "see", they remain blind.  Much spiritual meaning here.

2020 - Is it only John who "orders" things this way?  It seems that in John the Pharisees ask Jesus a question, and Jesus gives them an answer that no one would understand.  It comes across to me as two different conversations - the Pharisees are doing one and Jesus is doing the other.  They are talking about completely different things and trying to communicate with each other while doing it.  What Jesus is saying just sometimes does not seem to be a response to their questions.  Yet John presents it as if it is exactly how Jesus answered that exact question.  John wrote this gospel very much later than the events.  John puts in a lot of the developing theology of Christ.  He seems focused on the fact that only the called can come, and that the reason so many reject is because they are not called.  He seems focused on the theology that says God must give you the spiritual ability to understand the spiritual meanings of what Jesus says in reference to spiritual things.  Is he focused on that as a response to Gnosticism in Ephesus where he was writing from?  Did he write this gospel to show that spiritual discernment was from God to individuals and not from "High Mucky Brilliances" who understand it and can reveal it to whom they will, but it has to come through them?  For instance, the last verse of this chapter:
41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains. [Jhn 9:41 ESV]  Isn't this almost the definition of a Gnostic????
There's nothing wrong with the gospel of John being inspired to refute the cult of Gnosticism.  Why wouldn't this early assault on the foundations of the church not be met by a refutation from one who was with Jesus, and knew first hand that Gnosticism was Pharisee in disguise.  They were still doing the same thing.  So that may be why John is here, but if so, we need to read it with that in mind.  Hmm...MSB intro to the Gospel of John says not one word about Gnosticism.  He does say that the book is deep, and profound, and must be meticulously studied. I am in agreement with that...and apparently I have a long way to go.
So two things today in 2020.  That whole sin causes blindness/lameness/illness thing, and so if you associate with the sick you associate with sinners.  Not to mention that if you heal them, you are releasing them from the consequences of their sin idea, and how that can be folded into a "league with the devil" to throw down Judaism and the Pharisees with it.  AND, John may have as a not so subtle theme of his gospel that Gnostic and Pharisees are very much alike.
All I know is that I feel really bogged down in John for the last few days.
2022 - Or, as Cullman says in his Christology of the New Testament, John is written as a refutation of the claims of the sect of John the Baptist, as I have discussed in previous chapter notes in John.


2021 - vs 41 again: 41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains. [Jhn 9:41 ESV].  This is about all those, of whatever religion, whatever code, who believe they have found the way without Jesus Christ.  Anyone who says they "know", that they are enlightened, that they are guides to the blind, yet does not make Christ the door - the only door - that person is still guilty before God.  That person is not headed for heaven, and is not leading anyone else to heaven.  Those who have knowledge of Christ - and that is pretty much the entire planet at this stage of history - and decide that they don't need him, but can have a worthy life without him, are guilty before God.  Justice will come, today as it did to those Pharisees who were also blind, with the light shining right on them.  They still couldn't see it.
Possible FB post.

2022 - In vs 39:
39 Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind." [Jhn 9:39 ESV].  This is the "why" of Jesus healing this man.  It says first that Jesus is here to "sharpen" the line between those who see and those who don't.  Between those who love God and those who profess to know him but do not.  Those who accept Jesus receive their sight.  But those who reject him are blind forever, and know it.  He follows up with this verse:
41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains. [Jhn 9:41 ESV].  If you have never heard the gospel, and have not rejected the gospel, you are lost, but not yet condemned (I can't think of a better way to say this...perhaps that you can still be saved, opportunity can still come, until you're dead.  If you die in your sins, it is then that you are condemned).  But if you have heard it, and are too smart to accept it, meaning "you see, but you reject" to the point that salvation will not be offered again, then you are certainly judged and condemned.  We have seen this concept before:  
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. [Jhn 3:18 ESV].  The blind who now see are not condemned.  Those who choose not to believe - and who will not be "invited again" are already condemned.  There is a third group, I believe, who have not heard at all, who have not been invited at all.  These are those we must tell.

I believe that those who die having never heard the gospel still go to hell, because the sun and the stars tell of His glory, and God reveals this to them at least once in their lives.  But surely hell is a far worse place for those who heard and pooh poohed the gospel than for those who never heard.  Wouldn't it stand to reason that if the saved are judged for their works at the bema seat, and receive in proportion to their works, then those who are lost receive punishment in proportion to their guilt?  Surely that is how that works.
He was blind, and the opportunity to see just showed up.  He didn't have to seek, opportunity just came.  But in order to see, an act of faith was required.  He had to go and wash.  And when he did - when he put action to faith - he gained sight that he had NEVER BEFORE POSSESSED!  THAT is why it is important to note that this man was born blind.  He represents those unsaved.  Who have never been saved.  And once he could see, he could see from then on.  His sight was not temporarily restored, conditioned on daily washing at Siloam.  It was a once for all kind of thing.  With that in mind, vs 39 says that the gospel came into the world so that all might receive salvation.  It provides a way for all.  BUT, since the gospel is here, a choice is REQUIRED.  You accept the gospel and see - and are saved, or you reject the gospel and lose any chance to ever see.  Permanent blindness is eventually you're lot.  It is about judgment, it is either/or.  There is no middle.
2023 - Vs 41.  Jesus is telling them that if they had never heard at all, their guilt, though still present, would be small.  But they are studied, the know the OT scriptures, and they have SEEN THE SON with their own eyes, and yet CHOOSE not to see him.  Therefore, they are not just guilty, they are supremely guilty.  There is is disbelief by virtue of ignorance (a misdemeanor), and there is aggravated unbelief, (a felony) which has a much graver penalty.

Chapter 10
Starts with these verses:
1 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. [Jhn 10:1-2 ESV]  So is this about usurpers?  About false religions?  Or is it about those who will claim to be Messiah and are not?  MSB says this discourse by Jesus in Chapter 10 is a response to the Pharisees who claimed to be "shepherding" the spiritual lives of the Jews, but were in fact leading them away from the truth.  Jesus declares himself the only true shepherd.   Jesus says the sheep know the voice of the shepherd and follow only him.  His disciples follow him.  John then tells us that those listening did not understand the metaphor.

2020 - So it was a metaphor.  If MSB is correct, there is a full break here between 9 and 10.  We have moved to something completely different from healing people born blind, and are now discussing the role of and identification of, true shepherds.  Fundamentally, we can say that sheep know their own shepherd's voice.  Who is this "gatekeeper" that opens the gate and lets the shepherd in?  Is the point that the Pharisees are supposed to be gatekeepers, to recognize that the "Shepherd" has arrived, and open the gate while standing aside and present him to his sheep?  Hmm...that seems to work pretty well so far...And once in the pen, some sheep recognize that this is their Shepherd, and they follow him.  And they don't stray from following him.  Jesus "saved" those chosen and given to him by God, and Jesus will never lose them.  And those Gatekeepers should be helping with this by giving this shepherd access to the sheep instead of crawling over the fence and stirring everybody up.  But John says "they" did not understand his meaning.  So next...
2021/22 - The subject has not changed at all from Chapter 9.  There, the teachers are blind and cannot find their own way, much less lead others.  Their reinterpretation of the Law is leading people away from God's plan, not toward it.  2022 - That is, they are indeed false shepherds/teachers, who have "broken into" the sheep pen and intend to lead the sheep.  But, knowingly or not, these would-be shepherds are bringing the wrong message and rather than saving souls, they are ensuring condemnation for the sheep.  They are stealing souls in service to Satan (it is in this sense that they are thieves and robbers), while believing they are the pinnacle of religious learning, while patting themselves on the back for their great service to God.  You have to be blind to not see that you have it all wrong - and blindness is Jesus' whole point!  These Pharisees, who are so certain that they see, are blind, and the sheep - when approached by the true shepherd - recognize which is which!  When Jesus showed up, the people in the villages and towns knew who he was.  They knew it right away, as sheep always know the shepherd and recognize his voice.  So they are turning to follow Jesus in great numbers, they are abandoning the Pharisees and their teaching, because the true shepherd has come in through the gate and is saying "Follow me!".  2022 - This 21/22 interpretation works so very well if we tie it back to the question the Pharisees asked in 9:40, and we say that Chapter 10 is a continuation of Jesus' answer, which began in 9:41.   
This might be a good continuation of last Thursday's post.

2023 - The gatekeepers are the teachers, the proclaimers, the ones we look to for wisdom, explanation and direction.  They tell us what is true and right and they identify the false and they don't let them in.  They protect us from them.  If a false teacher gets past the gatekeepers, if the gatekeepers allow danger to enter, or if some bypass the gatekeepers and sneak in another way, then those who enter are thieves and robbers, bent on "stealing" the sheep from  their true owner.  And when the true shepherd does arrive, and speaks, his own sheep know immediately who he is, and they will follow him, right out of the pen, past the gatekeepers, because HE is the ONE TRUE SHEPHERD.  They will know that for all the goodwill and help and protection of the gatekeepers, it is the SHEPHERD that we are to follow.
2023 - This is the first time I've noticed, but there were also gatekeepers assigned to the temple by David - in 24 shifts, so that there was always someone checking those who entered the temple.  Thieves and robbers would have been turned away.  Those with any ulterior purpose would have been turned away.  Just as here.  Just as in heaven.  
2023 - So some of the Pharisees set themselves up as discerners of who was legitimately teaching and who was was not.  Brother John from Bethsaida is teaching as we do, he is worth listening to, and we will have him as our special guest on Sunday.  These same gatekeepers though, said Jesus was in league with the devil, that he cast out demons by the power of Satan, that he made himself God and was a blasphemer.  The gatekeepers did NOT recognize the true shepherd.  So when Jesus says "If you knew the Father, you would know me", he is saying they completely lack discernment, and are unqualified even to be gatekeepers much less shepherds.  To recognize the Son, you would first know the Father.  Is that right?  Or is it backwards?  That they cannot know the Father if they do not first know the Son?  How could they recognize the Father since they  have never seen him?  But the Son has seen the Father, and can testify to them ABOUT the Father, and teach them what the Father says.  Because Jesus is no gatekeeper.  Jesus is the Shepherd.
2023 - That whole thing about getting in another way...That makes you think this is about salvation, but it is not.  It is about false teachers.  They bypass the gatekeepers because they know their teaching is wrong, or they know they will be recognized as thieves so they try to bypass the gatekeepers.  So...are the gatekeepers the Pharisees after all?  Or are the Pharisees the ones climbing over the fences or tunneling under them so that they can steal some sheep?  In this metaphor, the gatekeepers are also "right".  They know the true shepherd and let him in to get his own sheep.  They recognize him always.  It is the Pharisees, who are terrible shepherds, so bad at it that they actually are a harm to the sheep, who are coming in the "wrong" way, and bringing harm to the sheep - stealing them.  Don't make the gatekeepers correspond to any group.  They are part of the metaphor.


2022 - This verse:
3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. [Jhn 10:3 ESV].  Who is this gatekeeper?  Do we need an explanation, or is this just part of the metaphor in that in those days, there was always a "guard" at the gate of the sheep pen, and who's job it was to open only to the shepherd?  MSB talks about the role of the gatekeeper in Jesus' day.  He was an undershepherd who opens the gate for the shepherd, assists in the care of the sheep, and especially guards them at night.  MSB goes on to say that the shepherds would stand around at different locations and each had a unique call, to which the sheep belonging to that shepherd would respond by gathering near where that shepherd stood.  I suppose a shepherd come to retrieve his sheep would then lead them around to the gate and collect them.  MSB goes on to talk about how the shepherd also had a name for each individual sheep that was his, and he recognized them, and they recognized him, though there might be many different flocks and many different shepherds.
So.  In this sense, we might want to see that gatekeeper as Theos.  God has chosen, and has "destined" them.  The Gatekeeper most certainly knows the shepherd - since he sent that shepherd to collect those sheep that the Gatekeeper has given him.  Maybe...2023 - No. Theos is not the gatekeeper.  See three 2023 notes above this for a better interpretation.

2022 - In vs 6 John sort of comes in as narrator again, as he has done several times before to explain what Jesus meant by something he said.  This time, John introduces a "complementary" explanation of his meaning, since they didn't understand what he meant the first time.  This will be another metaphor, a different metaphor, with the same underlying meaning as the sheep in the pen metaphor.

Then he says he is the door.  Only Jesus had entered by the door, as only he was the shepherd.  The others had come in another way.  They were thieves and robbers because they hadn't used the door.  But now Jesus is saying that he not only entered by the door, but that he is himself the door, and the only door.  He says his sheep go in and out the door, and find good pasture.
2020-He definitely switches metaphors because they didn't understand the first one.  The second metaphor goes from vs 7-9.  Jesus now seems to say that he is the very door.  Not the shepherd, but the door to the pen.  Not the gatekeeper who decides to open or close the gate, but the gate itself.  And then it breaks down.  In and out?  I see that Jesus is the only way...but how does this connect with the first metaphor?
2022 - There is only one door.  Jesus is that door.  The sheep pen has a door.  That door stays closed to false shepherds - they can only enter by another way.  False shepherds may break in another way, and then leave the same way, but they cannot "steal" the sheep from the pen.  Furthermore, that gate serves both to corral the sheep safely behind this gate until such time as the shepherd chooses to collect them, and then to allow them freedom to roam and eat and drink.  To live live more abundantly.  I think I finally understand what Jn 10:10 means!  It can only be understood in the context of these sheep being released from the pen to find pasture!  The false teachers cannot let the sheep out, cannot steal them out, cannot offer them ANYTHING of pasture.  In freedom, rather than locked always inside the pen because the false shepherds have no access to the gate.  The sheep in this pen are the saved - they are only the sheep that belong to the true shepherd, and Jesus is the gate - the door that opens a better life, an abundant life, and not just the muddy pen all the time and a little hay.  This gate opens to green pastures, sunshine, and running water.  10 also contrasts the intention of the good shepherd with the intentions of the false.  I think he is indicting the Pharisees on a very fundamental level here.  Jesus is not allowing that they may have good intentions but have chosen a bad methodology.  Jesus is saying they are thieves and robbers.  You don't steel sheep by accident.  Your intent is evil.  Jesus is saying that these Pharisees KNOW they are misleading - probably because they have heard and rejected Jesus' message!  He is standing there telling them the right way, and they are stubbornly refusing to embrace it, fearing the consequences to themselves in this world - the loss of prestige and income and so on - more than they fear the spiritual repercussions of their actions in the next.  Jesus does not mean that ALL the Pharisees are bad - perhaps that is why we have the story of Nicodemus, to show us that the Pharisees had ample information to understand that Jesus was the good shepherd, that he was the gate, but they KNOWINGLY rejected that knowledge.  It was this decision that turned them from well intentioned but misinformed to thieves and robbers.  So now THAT makes sense to me also!

This next group is pretty old, 2020 I think...I really wasn't seeing it right back then:
In vs 10, he seems to start a new metaphor...Contrasting himself with thieves. (2022 - No...in vs 10 the metaphor is over, and Jesus is applying both metaphors to real life.)
In vs 11, he says he is the good shepherd.  Another switching of metaphors?  I cannot keep up.  The good shepherd will die for the sheep, the hired hand will run when the wolf approaches.  
Then Jesus says there are other sheep (besides the Jews he is talking to.  At least this seems like the most reasonable way to listen to what he says.)  He has to bring those sheep also.  
vs 3 - he calls his own sheep by name.  They recognize his voice.
vs 14 - I know my own, my own know me.
vs 16 - I have other sheep.  They will listen.  (But do they also know him, or just listen?)

2020 - I am bogged down.  Next year, read through 9 and focus on 10.  But for today, I'm going to read on out of 10.  
2021 - This year, a different reading plan, so I only have this one chapter.  I think it is key that John tells us the Pharisees didn't understand, and then vs 7 starts with "So, Jesus again said..."  He is most definitely explaining to them with a different metaphor.  Just look at these verses:
9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. ... Not the same door he went through in 1.  Here, Jesus isn't going through the door, he IS the door, the only door into pasture.
11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ... This is the difference between the Pharisees - any false teachers - and Jesus.  None of them is going to die so others may live.  There is only one Good Shepherd, and the Pharisees are not him.
14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ... This is election.  We choose because we know.  God knows what we will choose because He has put in us the ability to recognize Him.  We have eyes to see the Spiritual.  And we choose Him, because we are able to recognize Him.  This is why it is still choice, even though He knows how we will choose.  We will choose because of irresistible grace.  We hear his voice- we recognize it - and we respond.  
16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. [Jhn 10:9, 11, 14, 16 ESV]  Here is maybe "the" verse on racism.  Not Jews, but still his sheep.  They hear, just as the Jews hear, and the flocks are combined.  There is not a Jew flock and a Samaritan flock, and an African flock...no separate pens in heaven depending on what color you were or where you were from on earth.  We will all follow the same shepherd.  Quit looking around to see who's here and watch the Shepherd, so you don't get yourself lost!
Many possible FB posts here.

2022 - Vs 11 is like a thunderclap.  "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep".  Jesus is not prophesying as to his future, his role, his purpose.  He gives himself the title "Good Shepherd".  Beginning in 12 he contrasts the actions of a good shepherd with a hired hand.  Again, I think we need to see the hired hands as those who truly understand who Jesus is and what he represents but have chosen to keep the flock locked in the pen.  They want captive sheep.  And their unwillingness to assent even to the kind of changes that Jesus is calling for shows how unlikely they would ever be to even die for their flock.  Jesus says he is willing, and in fact will die for the sheep, but what Pharisee would ever die for the flock?  Vs 12 tells us still more insight into the minds of the Pharisees.  They see the wolf coming.  They understand things so absolutely clearly that they KNOW that if the sheep continue to follow them, then the wolf will get them.  They will be fodder for the evil one.  And even so, as hirelings, they choose to hold on to the past.  Vs 14 is another I am, again Jesus names himself the Good Shepherd.  I wonder if Cullman is going to show me how that ties back to something in the OT?  
In vs 17, Jesus shows us that this is all done by the Father and the Son.  The Son is carrying out the will of the Father, in order to save these sheep.  Jesus is willing to lay down and take up his life for the sheep.  The Father is willing to sacrifice the Son for the sheep.  NEITHER OF THEM has to do what He is choosing to do.  Jesus points this out in so many words in vs 18.
2022 - Ok, I did pretty well this year I think on 10:1-21.  Reading through the rest.

((2021 - Look at this wording:
21 Others said, "These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?" [Jhn 10:21 ESV]  Always the proof of Jesus' claims to be from God comes back to these miracles.  These were unprecedented even in Israel where they knew the Red Sea had parted, that the dead had been raised, that foreign invaders had died overnight in the thousands.  These people knew about miracles, and knowing this, they knew that the things Jesus was doing were unprecedented.  Interesting that the dead coming to life had been done before, but no one blind since birth had been able to see.  I believe the scale of the miracles performed was also unprecedented.  Elijah did miracles here and there, Jesus healed EVERYONE who came to him, and did so on more than one occasion.   
Possible FB post.  The age old argument - Was this man really who he said he was?  Here is the conclusion of it:
25 Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, [Jhn 10:25 ESV]  The miracles are the key.  And he finishes this up with an unmistakable claim to be God:
30 I and the Father are one." 31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. [Jhn 10:30-31 ESV]
It has always seemed to me like Jesus avoided the question of whether he was Messiah.  There is no mistaking this answer, and he is not avoiding anything.  Oh my...now look at these verses.  They UNDERSTOOD what he meant!
33 The Jews answered him, "It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God." [Jhn 10:33 ESV]

2022 - I think the way this is all laid out, from back in 9 where we are talking about the blind, through the first part of 10 about sheep, and now into 10:22 and beyond, must have all come very close together chronologically.  Jesus seems to just build and build on this theme.  Here again, in vs 26, Jesus tells his "accusers" that they are not his sheep.  His sheep know him by his voice.  These people see miracles yet do not believe.  The only possible explanation is that they are "choosing to be blind", as discussed above, or they belong to some other shepherd's flock.  They are still sheep, but they follow a different shepherd.  This would bother me, except that we know from earlier that Jesus has said they "see", but their guilt remains, he said they understand and choose status quo, that they see the wolves coming for the sheep, yet they will not intervene.  They are not his sheep, but have in great measure refused to be his sheep.

36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'? [Jhn 10:36 ESV].  He surely admits his claim to be the Son of God.  There is no doubt.  Were there no witnesses from this time when they got to Caiaphas' garden?

Again, the summary argument that Jesus uses as proof of who he is:
37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father." [Jhn 10:37-38 ESV]
Did the miracles happen?  If they did, Jesus is doubtless who he says he is, and he plainly says he is the Son of God.  ))

2023 - And if you want to disprove who Jesus was, you have to take the position that these miracles did not happen.  You must take that because even today the miracles - as described - do not and cannot happen.  If someone showed up today and started healing every disease, fixing lame limbs, curing cancer people had for years, curing those with diabetes and alcoholism, and he just cured them right and left without exception and in a way demonstrable to still be in effect in the long term, how would we take him?  Would we know that he came from God and his message was therefore true?  Or would we call him a charlatan...AHHHH!  That's the thing!  They ALL KNEW that the miracles were real!  You can bet the Pharisees DID follow up on those "cured" by Jesus, especially the lepers - which was a completely incurable thing in those days.  They DID check, and that is why they NEVER accuse him of faking the miracles.  They try to claim the miracles are from Satan and not from God - see how lame that sounds! - but they never accuse him of fake miracles.  Why wouldn't they????
This is a good FB post using vs 37!


Vs 22 switches to the Feast of Dedication.  It was winter.  Have we moved ahead in time now from the feast of booths to dedication?  Yes.  This feast is Hanukkah, and is about the Hasmoneans, during the 400  year intertestamentary period.  They light candles.  
2020 - But just how much time has elapsed here????
As Jesus walks in the temple, he is challenged by them to tell them in so many words that he is the Christ.  This is his answer:
25 Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, [Jhn 10:25 ESV]
Why answer the question again?  Look at the miracles?  Only the Messiah could do these things, and you don't believe these either.  

2020 - And here is this theme again:
26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. [Jhn 10:26 ESV]  Again with the "you are precluded from believing because you are not my sheep".  You shouldn't expect to be able to understand.  Did Jesus say this to whole crowds of people?  Is it only John who puts it so abruptly????

vs 27, My sheep hear my voice, I know them.  Jesus is telling the questioners that if they were his sheep, they'd know who he was.  He is telling them that they are doomed to hell.  That they are blind and that they can't learn the truth because they are NOT his sheep.  The Father chooses, the Spirit draws, the Son redeems.  But if they are not the sheep - not chosen - then the Spirit won't draw and the Son won't redeem.  
This would be very difficult for the Pharisees, who believed that by their own works and compliance with the law, they were good enough to get themselves in.  Jesus tells them no amount of learning and good deeds will suffice if they are not chosen of God.  If they are not his sheep, they will never see.
What were they to do?  I have been asked this question recently.  I said expose yourself to the word, study, read, listen.  Plant the seed.  Try.  If you don't try you can never see.
Jesus says "I and my Father are one", and the Jews start grabbing rocks to stone him.  Jesus asks which of his miracles they are stoning him for?  They say it is not for his works, but for his blasphemy in making himself God.  Who can deny that Jesus claimed to be God?  They must deny this verse, this chapter, this book, this Bible.  Jesus claimed to be God, not just a prophet, not just a preacher, not just a man of great understanding and wisdom.  He said he was God.
2020-They were going to stone him in Chapter 8, now again in 10.
2023 - Possible FB post above, applied to disbelievers today.  Look at what the Pharisees are like.  They refuse to believe because they want to depend on their own works, their own ability.  They do not want to trust - more than that they do not want to FOLLOW anyone or anything besides their own ideas, their own constructs.  And Jesus makes it worse when he says "You are not called" or you would already KNOW!  This is a tough one, but could be quite powerful.

2022 - This verse:
41 And many came to him. And they said, "John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true." [Jhn 10:41 ESV].  John the Baptist never did a miracle, not one.  They believed John was a prophet of God though, even without miracles.  Now here is Jesus, doing miracles, and some still will not believe.  They are confirming that John's testimony was true, that everything John prophesied is coming to pass.  
If we are still to understand the gospel of John as a polemic against the Sect of John the Baptist, then we need to read this verse and the next one as the Apostle showing once again that the Baptist himself pointed to Jesus as Messiah, to Jesus as the greater of the two.  And then the last verse:
42 And many believed in him there. [Jhn 10:42 ESV].  John is telling the Sect that many believed in Jesus.  That many set Jesus in the greater position BECAUSE OF what John had said about Jesus.  John is again making the Baptist a follower of Jesus, and NOT the other way around, as the Sect claimed.

2022 - What an awesome chapter this is.

Chapter 11
Starts this way:
1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. [Jhn 11:1 ESV]
We know from other places that Lazarus was brother to Mary and Martha.  John surely knew this also, he'd stayed at their house with them.  Why wouldn't he just say that?  Because this is about the man and not about his sisters?

Then we have verse 2:
2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. [Jhn 11:2 ESV]
I don't think the ointment and the hair thing has happened yet.  I thought that particular Mary had some problems.  That is going to happen in chapter 12, but John mentioning it here implies that he expects his readers already know about that, and this fixes the location for them.  

There are seven miracles recorded in John.  MSB says this one of raising Lazarus is the biggest of all, because Lazarus had been dead four days.  The son of the widow of Nain and Jairus' daughter, had only just died when they were raised.  Lazarus' resurrection, given that more than a little decay and decomposition would have to be reversed, is beyond human action.  It is not even a distant possibility today.  The miracles John records are these, from MSB:
Water into wine, healing the nobleman's son, restoring the impotent man, multiplying the loaves and fishes, walking on the water, and curing the man born blind.  The raising of Lazarus is seven.  Many many more miraculous things are referred to, such as Jesus "healing them all" and so on, are mentioned, but these seven are specifically recounted with some detail.

2021 - This verse:
4 But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." [Jhn 11:4 ESV]  So according to John at least, Jesus knew all that was going to happen here, the whole sequence.  Lazarus did really die, and those who knew and loved experienced the full weight of grief that death brings.  All that happened in order to glorify the Son of God.  What we have to realize is that even when there is no miracle, and there isn't in our time, the Son is still glorified in all things - in some aspect, some sense, some place, whether we see it and recognize it or not, just the same the Son is always glorified.

Mary and Martha send word to Jesus.  He does not come.  John's recounting indicates that Jesus let the messengers know that he was aware of the situation, of how it would turn out, of the details of what He would do, and that it was all about glorifying God.  Jesus said the illness wouldn't lead to death - but it did.  Could be something interesting with the verb tenses he used.  And ultimately, the death was just a passing thing, and did not "stick".  
2021 - Looked at the interlinear.  It is a simple present active indicative verb tense.  But the wording is more like "does not end in death".  That was entirely true.  Lazarus would die, but that was not going to be the end of the story.  Wording it "does not lead to death" is, I think, a poor translation.  Several versions translate it with the "does not end in death" phrasing - NLT, NIV, CSB.

After two more days, Jesus tells his disciples they are going to Judea again.  They oppose this because they know the Jews there are actively trying to kill Jesus.  Jesus response:
9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. [Jhn 11:9 ESV]
Seems to say that if we are doing God's will, it is to be done openly, flagrantly, and not hidden or disguised.  Things done in the dark - with intent to hide - may well go wrong.  
2021 - It is likely that those who rejected Jesus were saying that Jesus was not coming to see Lazarus because he was too busy looking after himself.  They'd be saying he was afraid to come.  They'd be saying he let his friend die rather than risk being killed by the Jews.  Perhaps part of Jesus' delay is so they would say exactly this.
2022 - I would include this verse:
10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." [Jhn 11:10 ESV].  I think understanding these two verses requires understanding that this is Jesus' last trip to Jerusalem.  He is going to be arrested, tried, and sentenced on this trip.  He does not say "you're right, we should stay here because my time is not yet come."  That's all over with.  His time indeed has come.  Not only that, but there is much that still has to be done during the next week or so.  He needs the 12 hours a day to do that.  Further, in 10, he contrasts the phrase "...he sees the light of this world" with the phrase "...the light is not in him".  What Jesus must still do is physical.  It is about earthly things that must be fulfilled.  These things will stand for all time, and must be done in daylight when all can see them.  There will be other deeds though, done by the lost and the evil, and all their plotting and planning will be done in darkness - the darkness of this world - but done that way BECAUSE they are not believers in any sense.  These are enemies of the light, and enemies of deeds done in the light.

In vs 11, Jesus tells them that Lazarus has "fallen asleep", and they are going to wake him up.  Jesus surely saw physical death as a temporary thing.  He looked to eternal death and eternal life, to hell and heaven, as the permanent state of things, as the state that we need to address.  That Jesus sees things this way is restated, very literally, in this verse:
25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" [Jhn 11:25-26 ESV]
"though he die, yet shall he live" drives this home.  So earlier, when he said Lazarus illness was not unto death, this is what he meant.

2021 - Also these verses:
23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." 24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." [Jhn 11:23-24 ESV]
The eschatology of Christ.  When Martha says she understands that Lazarus will rise from the dead on the last day, Jesus does not argue with her.  That will happen.  But he goes on to tell her that he is the author of resurrection, and has the power to effect it whenever he will.

2022 - So what resurrection is Mary talking about?  If Lazarus had stayed dead, though he was a believer, Mary says he will be resurrected on the last day.  That does not sound at all like a reference to the rapture.  I don't think the rapture is EVER called the last day.  The last day is here:  11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. [Rev 20:11-13 ESV].  So I think this verse tells, indirectly, that OT saints are NOT resurrected until the GWT.  The rapture is about the church.  The NT church.  It is about those who lived and died in the Spiritual Kingdom of Christ, as he reigns from the right hand of God.  Our judgment will be at the bema seat in heaven, where Jesus will be our defender at the judgment seat of God.  Lazarus would not have been resurrected until the GWT.  But now, since he is included in the Kingdom, he will be raptured with us.  His time of resurrection was changed by Jesus' actions.

vs 39:
39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." [Jhn 11:39 ESV]  Martha was sister to Lazarus.  John just has an odd way with stating these relationships.  He has said Mary and Martha are sisters, 1, that Lazarus is Mary's brother, 2, and now that Lazarus is Martha's brother.  But he has not mentioned all three together as brother and sisters.  Just seems odd to me.  
Lazarus comes out after four days, bound in the burial clothes he's been unable to get out of, even with the cloth still over his face.  

2022 - This verse:
42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me." [Jhn 11:42 ESV].
This verse bothers me a little.  I don't think there is any other verse in the gospels where Jesus explains why he is doing what he is doing.  This seems more like the little inserts we have seen from John throughout this book where he explains in hindsight why things happen as they did.  Perhaps the disciples of the Baptist were saying that if Jesus was Messiah he would not have needed to thank the Father for hearing him.  If he was also God, he would not have needed to say this.  So...Jesus...or John...explain that this was for the benefit of those standing around.  Should this verse really be in red?  If we leave vs 42 out entirely, it still reads just fine.  Almost like a scribe somewhere read it wrong and changed it from another Johannon insert to words in red.

Many who see a man dead four days walk out of his tomb believe in Jesus at this time.  I think we are talking about belief that he is Christ, the Son of God, as Martha said in vs 27.  But others, who saw the same thing, instead of believing decide to go and tell the Pharisees in Jerusalem what Jesus has just done.  As it reads, upon hearing about this, the chief priests and Pharisees gather in council.  The scene shifts to this meeting as they discuss what to do about Jesus.  Wonder if John had first hand information as to who said what at this meeting?  

2022 - He sure might have had inside info.  After all, when Jesus was arrested and taken to the house of High Priest, John was able to just walk right in, while Peter was questioned first.  John was either on a first name basis with the High Priest, or with someone who ranked quite high in the power structure.  So it is believable that John was told what the Pharisees said at this meeting.

They have heard about Lazarus coming back from the dead.  There is no indication that they doubted the truth of this.  They believed it had happened, and they believed the other miracles that Jesus had performed were also real.  Their problem was that they did not connect Jesus' work to God, nor did they see Jesus as Messiah.  They were so focused on what they had always been told about the Messiah - as conquering king - that they just wouldn't consider the tremendous amount of evidence though it was right in front of their eyes. Surely this is a severe case of cognitive dissonance.  They chose to fear the consequences of Jesus' actions rather than to embrace the implications of Jesus' actions.  This verse:
48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." [Jhn 11:48 ESV]
This does not seem logical.  Why would the Romans react this way to a man raising people from the dead?  MSB says that what the Pharisees foresaw was a popular rebellion of Jesus' followers - which were likely getting pretty large in number at this time.  The Romans would surely put down such a rebellion and in the process, clamp down on the freedoms allowed to the Jews.  Again, they gave no thought to why Jesus was really there.  And in the end, it was not the Romans who put down Jesus' ministry, but the Pharisees themselves.  The Romans found no fault in Jesus at all.

2020 - Noticed this verse:
51 He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. [Jhn 11:51-52 ESV]  What is John trying to tell us in this verse?  That when Caiaphas said this it was prophecy instead of his own thinking?  That it was God in fact predicting what was going to happen, not only for the nation but for all?  MSB note on 51 points out that originally, it was the High Priest who made the will of God known to the people.  So this is God indeed sending prophecy as to his redemptive plan through the high priest.  The evil intent of Caiaphas' words are laid at his feet, but the prophetic revelation of God's plan also came from his mouth.  By one man's death, the whole world will be saved.  This certainly indicates that John knew what was said in the meeting, he knew who said it, and he saw the connections that were there.  Even in the conspiracy that planned Jesus' death, God spoke.  He was there.