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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 4th Quarter 2024: Themes in the Gospel of John

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 Signs That Point the Way

02 Signs of Divinity

03 The Backstory: The Prologue

04 Witnesses of Christ as the Messiah

05 The Testimony of the Samaritans

06 More Testimonies About Jesus

07 Blessed Are Those Who Believe

08 Fulfilling Old Testament Prophecies

09 The Source of Life

10 The Way, the Truth, and the Life

11 The Father, the Son, and the Spirit

12 The Hour of Glory, The Cross and Resurrection

13 Epilogue: Knowing Jesus and His Word

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We are now headed into the fourth quarter of 2024 and we're starting a whole new study series, this time about themes in the Gospel of John.

Now as we've mentioned before, our previous quarter study was from the Book of Mark, which is also a gospel of Mark.

And this time we're not leaving the life of Christ, we're revisiting it with a new approach and a different book.

And this time I'm really eager for this study of Jesus' ministry from this perspective.

Well, you put together the talking points here, so why don't I pray, and then you talk about how this quarter's gonna be a little different, and what our talking points are.

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful again for the testimony of your word.

We do pray now that the Spirit of truth whom you promised would be present with us in our presentation here, as well as with every teacher in every class who will be studying this lesson, that it would be for the enrichment of your people to motivate us to service and hasten the coming of Jesus, for we ask and pray it in his name.

Yes, this new quarter of studies is based on the gospel account, this time of John instead of Mark, and you might think, well, we just did the gospel, why would we revisit the same thing?

Yeah, so are we now walking through the gospel of John?

Right, well, not exactly, because as we did march right through the gospel of Mark, right, and if you notice...

Yeah, well and that's apropos for the style of writing that he has.

He packs a lot in there, says boom but this happened, this happened, and it's been noted that Mark is the gospel of action, right?

And so it kind of, I think, lends itself to just this happened, then this happened, then this happened, so a sequential chronological study fit the the book of Mark.

When we get to the gospel of John, Of course, John is the disciple whom Jesus loved.

That's not to say he didn't love the other ones, but the introductory comments in this week's lesson talk about how Jesus did have a special relationship with John because John was most receptive to that relationship that was being offered.

He's not 1 of the synoptic Gospels where essentially Matthew, Mark, and Luke are covering a lot of the same territory.

There are stories and encounters that are recorded in John that aren't recorded in the other ones.

So he's an older man at this point, been through a lot more experience.

I don't know how many of the other apostles were living when he wrote his gospel.

Right, well he was also a first-hand witness, of course, being as Mark and Luke weren't.

So there are many differences between Mark and John, and 1 of the key ones is that John writes not just to record a chronology, but he does write more in themes.

He talks about love and he talks about, well, and the lesson frames it.

In fact, the title again is not just the Gospel of John, it's themes in the Gospel of John.

And as we go through, you're gonna scan through the table of contents or look through each week's lesson, you'll find that each week doesn't highlight a single story or move chronologically through the- Or a single chapter.

It picks things out and thematically arranges them.

So thus our title, Themes in the Gospel of John.

So, little interest is this quarter we are studying the Gospel of John, not sequentially or chronologically, but thematically.

The focus of this first lesson then is how miracles helped establish people's faith in Jesus.

Our theme is establishing faith in Jesus, which well let's go through our talking points and revisit it.

Okay, talking point number 1, faith is based on evidence.

Okay, now that comes from Sabbath all the way through Friday and you're gonna find that for each 1 of these.

I didn't say this, these 2 days work with this 1.

These are themes I saw thread through the entire lesson.

Talking point number 2, Christ exemplified tact in dealing with people.

That he had a way, a wisdom about him that was careful but clear when he dealt with people, and we should learn from that.

And talking point number 3, temporal help prepares the heart for spiritual truth, that Christ always did the things that he did with the ultimate purpose of seeing faith established in God.

So, we go back to this first idea that faith is based on evidence.

And I would like you to, I know we haven't done it ahead of time, but I'd like you to read the memory verse.

Now I know that's counter to our philosophy here, We like to have recite the memory verse but for these purposes if you just read John chapter 20 verses 30 and 31 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that believing you may have life in his name." Now clearly, obviously we're not starting right in the beginning because this is taken from towards the end of John, John chapter 20, but what it testifies to is that there were plenty of things that John could have drawn from.

He says many other signs that he did in the present disciples, but he didn't record them.

But he said these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ.

The whole purpose of John writing his book and especially documenting the things, the signs, the miracles that Jesus did, was to establish faith in Christ.

He was going to demonstrate, he didn't just come claiming to be God or claiming to be the Messiah, he gave evidence to that fact so that people could believe.

So, such faith in Jesus was established in his disciples and others in large part because of the miracles that he performed.

The first of which, if you open our Bibles to John chapter 2 was the miracle of changing the water to wine, or of course we understand grape juice, at the wedding feast at Cana.

Why don't you just go ahead and read chapter 2 verses 1 through 11.

Okay, on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there.

Now both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding.

And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to him, They have no wine.

Jesus said to her, Woman, what does your concern have to do with me?

His mother said to the servants, Whatever he says to you, do it.

Now there were set there 6 water pots of stone according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing 20 or 30 gallons apiece.

Jesus said to them, Fill the water pots with water.

And he said to them, Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast.

And the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from.

But the servants who had drawn the water knew the master of the feast called the bridegroom and He said to him every man at the beginning sets out the good wine and when the guests have well drunk then the inferior You have kept the good wine until now this beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him." And his disciples believed in him.

It doesn't just say, and the people or many, it says the disciples.

Now these disciples, this is John chapter 2.

There's only 1 chapter before that and that's talking about the calling of those first disciples and they were not called because Jesus did such miracles like, oh they're muslims.

They had heard the testimony about Jesus from John the Baptist.

In fact, they were followers of John the Baptist and John the Baptist said, that's the 1, that's the Lamb of God.

But they hadn't really seen anything beyond just the word that this is the guy.

And it's almost like they're following him out of curiosity at this point, but now...

Or allegiance to John, or even Nathaniel, you go back to it, and he had, I saw you sitting on the fig tree, so I don't know if that's quite a miracle, but it's enough that he was, it gave some sort of credibility that Nathaniel followed him but here, Jesus does a miracle.

And I'm not gonna get into whether or not it was, you know, he says, my time has not yet come, what does that have to do with me?

But his mother, I love the response, whatever he says, you do it.

I just, I couldn't help but looking at, think of my mom.

You know, I don't know if your mom does that kind of thing as too.

It's like, you know, mom, did you not hear what I said?

Because in essence, what she's saying is, you know, he's like, my time hasn't come.

But obviously, somehow in the wisdom of God, there's no discrepancy between the heavenly father plan and his loyalty to his earthly mother and his earthly parents.

So he can keep the fifth commandment and somehow does it, right?

But the point was that Jesus did not necessarily apparently intend for this, but he's like, all right, we'll do this thing.

And he's at the wedding and the lesson goes into a thing about the importance of of the wedding and Marriage and Jesus clearly is the 1 who established marriage at the creation Remember John's gospel is the 1 that starts with in the beginning was the word he refers back to creation and here his first thing Is that a wedding?

It's very similar to the creation story and Jesus endorses it with his presence and anyway blesses it with this miracle But the whole point of it was to establish belief right if you go to chapter 4 a much shorter story is found in verses 30 46 and and 54 we don't read that 1 Yeah, the Bible says so Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where he made the water wine and there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.

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Talking Points 4th Quarter 2024: Themes in the Gospel of John

01 Signs That Point the Way

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

Talking Points 4th Quarter 2024: Themes in the Gospel of John

05 The Testimony of the Samaritans

30m

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Talking Points 4th Quarter 2024: Themes in the Gospel of John

06 More Testimonies About Jesus

30m

Emmanuel Institute Bootcamp

1. Orientation: Intro to Prophecy

2h 43m

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

02 A Day in the Ministry of Jesus

29m

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

05 Miracles Around the Lake

29m

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2024: Psalms

13 Wait on the Lord

28m

Jesus Cares

48m

Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2020: Making Friends for God

08-Ministering Like Jesus

30m

Talking Points, 2nd Quarter 2021: The Promise, God's Everlasting Covenant

13 The New Covenant Life

29m

Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2020: Making Friends for God

05-Spirit-Empowered Witnessing

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