This second section of chapter 1 continues the elaboration of the fundamentally divine nature of Jesus the Messiah.
Many small items in scripture add up to a magnificent interlocking edifice of evidence to the supernatural, long-timespan, matrix of paths to the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
Pastor Barry told us the reason that John included what he did (and left out much). “What he’s given us is the key things, the things that the Holy Spirit had instructed him and laid upon his heart to communicate that we would have this record.
And he says, "but these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name.
That is an incredible verse.
It's telling us that John's written this stuff, that everything contained here is enough for us to know that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah: God manifest in the flesh.
He's the Son of God.
It speaks of the Trinity.
... and that believing - and that's all we have to do, just simply believe in Jesus - we will have life, eternal life through his name.
And this is why John is writing this Gospel.
There is a section on the dating of the writing of the book (much earlier than some scholars suggest).
A section on the Bible stating that Jesus IS God (and many ramifications of that).
In a section dealing with an old questoin, Pastor Barry reiterated that no man has seen God as he truly is.
"For now God has chosen to reveal himself through physical manifestations, as we've noted already in Scripture, and Jesus is the ultimate and final physical manifestation of God.
In the Old Testament, all those other examples we've quoted or spoken of, they are what some people refer to as a Christophany: it's an Old Testament appearance of Jesus.
There's the second person of the Trinity that appears in a human form, that speaks to people, wrestles with Jacob, speaks to the parents of Samson, and so on, but nobody has seen God the Father, and that's why Jesus says he's come, to reveal him.
There is a substantial treatment of “The Transfiguration” event (Jesus taking Peter & James & John up the mountain and meeting Moses and Elijah). The significance of “two men” and the question of where that mountain is was answered by sifting through the evidence (the contrasting nature of Mount Nebo and Mount Hermon was also dealt with).
Several instances of “Witnesses” were examined (from Deuteronomy Ch9v15 to Revelation Ch 11v3-6) and the importance of the concept related to this chapter.
John the Baptist gets a fairly extensive treatment: he came to prepare the way for The Lord (as prophesied 700 years earlier by Isaiah).
The nature of our own, personal coming to faith was discussed and elaborated (variety of routes and experiences, but all with one common feature).
Pastor Barry also dropped in a tantalising little hint of exciting things to come: “Some of the things, personally, I’ve been studying at the moment, are just blowing my mind. At some point, I’m going to share with you some of the things that the Lord has been showing me from his word, about his creation. I am enjoying studying the scripture at the moment in a way that I’ve not done for many, many years. There’s just so many wonderful things.”
In conclusion Pastor Barry gave us a quotation from Adam Clarke (an expansion-cum-commentary on verse 50) and explained that this shows “what God wants to do with each one of you: Reveal more of himself to you, so you are in absolutely no doubt whatsoever who Jesus Christ is. He is God manifest in the flesh. He has come to light the way back to the Father that we can have this walk that God intended from the beginning that we would walk in.”
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TRANSCRIPT OF THE SERMON
To download the transcript text-file, click on the “button” labelled “Save Video” (or “Download Video” sometimes). See below (“PS0” for full info)
PS2: ::: The latest development on the “Transcript” section is that the text-file will be subject to far less editing than before. It will still be converted to sentence-column form as before, but any trimming and polishing will be left to the user (according to their own taste of format, etc). Any shortcomings in the transcription software should be pretty obvious and so not a problem in getting the meaning (and the audio file will provide the necessary clarification if required 😀🎧 )
PS1: ::: {not-so-}NEW FORMAT of the transcript.
To ease the processing and preparation of the transcript, and we hope improve the readability of the text, a new format was been adopted in mid October. This breaks the text into sentences instead of arbitrarily-sized “paragraphs”. When the reader opens the file in a program such as Notepad (in MS Windows), then the appearance can be just like a newspaper column. The format is such that the user has many options available, depending on preferences and what software they like to use.
Any feedback on usefulness, improvement suggestions, or whatever, would be most welcome.
PS0 ::::: TRANSCRIPT OF THE SERMON >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There is a “button” labelled “Save Video” (or “Download Video” sometimes). This actually links to a text-file to download. It is a transcript of the sermon. At present it is at an experimental stage: it is an aid to getting the most out of the sermon audio. There is no substitute for listening to the verbal delivery of a sermon. However, searching through an audio file lasting the best part of an hour can be somewhat difficult. When you approach the search knowing that you’re sure there is something about “redemption”, for example, then a transcript text-search can take you right there and show you the time in the recording where you will find it! The file is simple “text” rather than a more sophisticated form so that you can edit or reformat as you prefer.
This transcript is in 2 forms (in the one file). One half consists of normal text arrangement. The other section is short bunches of words (8 to 12 nomally) beneath the TIMES at which they occur (for the whole sermon).
This facility is in development (“experimental” as mentioned above) so any feedback on usefulness, improvement suggestions, or whatever, would be most welcome.
