It was a
blessing to open the Word to the book of John with you on Sunday. I heard from many of you that the series is
coming at just the right time. May the
Lord use John 13-17 to stoke the fire of our hearts to love Christ more and
more.
As I
mentioned then, I’d like to answer a few questions that the new series may have
raised. It is unusual for us to study a
chunk of a book rather than the whole thing.
There are twenty-one chapters in John.
We’re studying five. So, some
obvious questions:
Why aren’t we doing the whole book?
There are couple of reasons.
First, I desire to keep a broad representation of the counsel of God in
front of you. One way to do that is to
cycle through different parts of the Bible on Sunday mornings. It’s possible no one has noticed this, but
there has been a pattern to the books I’ve preached in the last almost ten
years – Ephesians, Joshua/Judges,
Matthew, Philippians, Exodus… We’ve
gone so slowly that the pattern may not be obvious, yet. NT
Epistle, OT Book, Gospel, NT Epistle, OT Book, Gospel, NT Epistle… I’m not married to that pattern, but I like
it. (As I mentioned Sunday, I was
leaning toward James or Galatians until about a month ago, so the pattern isn’t
set in stone.) So a Gospel was next in
line, but having just spent almost six years in Matthew, I wasn’t ready to
launch into another multiple year series just yet. So, doing a smaller section allows us to
spend time in a Gospel without being there for several years.
Second,
these particular chapters have been on my heart and I felt led by the Lord to
put them in front of you now. The
numerous testimonies I heard on Sunday (“this is so timely”; “I need this so
much”) would seem to confirm this is the right time for this particular part of
John.
Are we in danger of taking things
out of context? If you’re thinking this, good. Context is essential. We should always have it at the front of our
minds. It is my responsibility, no
matter what text we study, to keep the context in mind and present it to you. You’re right to be concerned about this. I’ll just ask you to trust me to handle the
text carefully, while you commit to being good Bereans, checking for yourself to “see if
these things are so” (Acts 17:10-11). While
we are not walking slowly through the whole book together right now, I have
studied the whole thing and am comfortable saying I know this Gospel well. We’ll be using all of John to help us
understand this section.
Will we ever study the whole book
of John together? I certainly hope so. Lord willing, it will be years down the road,
but I fully intend to study the whole thing with you at some point. My bucket list doesn’t have things on it like
“skydiving” or “bullriding.” It’s got “preach
Romans, Hebrews, and all of John.” All
in the Lord’s time.
May the
Lord bless our study of His word and help us to live in light of it.
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