Curt Harlow [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Bible Study Podcast. We have a very special podcast for you today because we are starting the Gospel of John. The let's go non synoptic gospel.
Wesley Towne [00:00:09]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:00:10]:
And of course, of all of the teaching and preaching pastors on all 10 of our campuses, I brought in the one that's got the biggest brain of all.
Wesley Towne [00:00:19]:
Not true.
Curt Harlow [00:00:20]:
That's the truth. It's the truth. Take off your hat and I tell you, I got Wesley Town from UC Davis, or just Davis. The whole town of Davis. Where you see Davis is. How's the church going out there in Davis, Wesley?
Wesley Towne [00:00:32]:
Amazing. We just had Easter Sunday. 24 people came to Jesus. We had the largest services we've ever had in our history.
Curt Harlow [00:00:40]:
Amazing pictures, man. It is amazing.
Wesley Towne [00:00:43]:
It was encouraging.
Curt Harlow [00:00:44]:
Well, you ready to jump into the.
Wesley Towne [00:00:46]:
I would love to.
Curt Harlow [00:00:47]:
I'm going to do a couple thoughts just on context. I'll do Context for Chapter 1, in context for the whole book. And then you jump in and tell me where I was wrong or what I missed and fill in the blanks.
Wesley Towne [00:00:57]:
I'm sure it's going to be amazing.
Curt Harlow [00:00:59]:
So I call the Gospel of John. I call it the soap opera gospel. So Mark is the FBI gospel. There's an old show back in the day. Just the Facts, ma'. Am, the facts. Just the facts. And then you got Matthew.
Curt Harlow [00:01:17]:
That's the History Channel, because he's gone back to all the. And then I got. I got. He's going back to all the Old Testament. And then I got Luke. And I call Luke the Learning Channel or the Science Channel, because he's a doctor. He's a doctor and he's the most precise writer of all of them. And it's almost like those three, all based on either Mark or another document, oral tradition, because they tie together so well much of the language and is obviously cut and paste and then edited for each of their purposes.
Curt Harlow [00:01:52]:
All of them serving such a great different thing. You know, like I said, Luke's a real investigator. Mark wants to get right to the point of who Jesus is. And Matthew wants to tie it to the Old Testament. Very, very good stuff. It's almost like this last Gospel John. His disciples looked at the. All the others and said, good job, boys.
Curt Harlow [00:02:12]:
Great job. Love it. But you're missing some of the emotion. You're missing some of the dynamic. You're missing the. The feel of when Jesus marched through Galilee and started doing miracle after miracle. And so you get all of this beautiful kind of interpersonal, heartfelt stuff. Even chapter one, the way Jesus calls three of these different disciples, it's.
Curt Harlow [00:02:40]:
You cannot help but imagine you're one of them all the way to chapter 21, where Jesus sits by a fire and restores Peter and how he does it. It's so human. It's so very beautiful and very human. So that's the. My bigger take on the whole book. What would you add to that?
Wesley Towne [00:03:00]:
I love all of that. Amazing. I think that the Gospel of John is built on two bookends. The first bookend is the first 18 verses of chapter one, which is unveiling to us that the purpose that John is writing is to unveil who God is. It's to help us to understand, to reveal the nature of God in the person of Jesus. And then it ends with what would be the action step toward understanding Jesus, which is chapter 20, verse 31. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. So understanding Jesus, believing in Jesus and having life in the name of Jesus,
Curt Harlow [00:03:48]:
and in that order. Yeah, that's good. Understanding, believing and having life, it's very, very good. That's what, what a great purpose. So if we ma march through all these podcasts, what we're going to do is we're going to get to know Jesus in his own words, we're going to understand him, we're going to believe, and then we're going to live the life that Jesus meant us to live. What a great promise. Let's get into it. So chapter one, I would say my comment on chapter one is this.
Curt Harlow [00:04:17]:
I think you can draw a direct line between the five verses we're going to read in this podcast to the creation of the Western world and, and the best part of our concept of what a human is, I think by talking about who Jesus is, John begins the implications of that are the most profound altering of the human conscious on what we are. The cause and effect, you might say, once we figure out who he is, we figure out we didn't know who we were. And those implications and have literally changed everything and not just now in the Western world. They've changed everything from the Mediterranean to around the world. And just give me a couple comments on that. Wes, what, what is so special about these first five verses?
Wesley Towne [00:05:14]:
I mean, so much. I think these first five verses are some of the most theologically dense, rich, helpful verses.
Curt Harlow [00:05:23]:
In how many weeks would you take to preach these five verses?
Wesley Towne [00:05:26]:
I would take one week for verse one, and I'd probably take one week
Curt Harlow [00:05:31]:
for the next insider baseball. We just had this debate in our campus leads preaching meeting. How long to take over this? So. So you think the most. It's the most theologically dense. Why? Why is that so the. What is he trying attempting here that makes it so theologically dense?
Wesley Towne [00:05:50]:
Well, I think John, obviously, each of the gospels is written to highlight certain aspects of the identity of Jesus. The identity, the teachings, so on and so forth. So every gospel gives us a different viewpoint into Jesus. John starts out his gospel basically saying Jesus is God, right? And his purpose is to unveil the nature of Jesus, but to help us to understand who God is. And he begins in verse one, basically saying Jesus is God. And we can get into all of that. Then he goes into verse two saying Jesus is the creator. Like he's God.
Wesley Towne [00:06:29]:
He's the creator. And then he continues in verse three, also emphasizing that Jesus is the creator. Then you get to verse 5. Jesus is the very origin of life itself. And verses 4 and 5, he's the light of human existence. He's the light of the world. He's the one who's shining reality and truth into humanity. So I think those first five, five verses.
Wesley Towne [00:06:57]:
I don't know if you can find a passage in the New Testament, maybe Colossians, chapter one, that helps to unveil and point out with nuance who Jesus is in this dense of a package.
Curt Harlow [00:07:13]:
Amen. Couldn't have said it better myself. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and read it, and then we'll start breaking it down. And. And it will not take us four weeks to break this down.
Wesley Towne [00:07:22]:
No, no, we'll do it in 30 minutes.
Curt Harlow [00:07:24]:
We're going to do it in 30. All right. The Gospel of John, chapter one, verse one. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. And the Word. I'm going to start this again. We're going to edit it again. Did I tell you that we taped this in the afternoons?
Wesley Towne [00:07:41]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:07:42]:
After a long time. The Gospel of John, chapter one. I'm not going to laugh. The Gospel of One. The Gospel of One.
Wesley Towne [00:07:52]:
We're on fire today.
Curt Harlow [00:07:56]:
Here we go. The Gospel of John, chapter one, verse one through five. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Curt Harlow [00:08:31]:
So, Wes, why start this way?
Wesley Towne [00:08:36]:
I think John just Starts out straight to the point, here's who Jesus is. And in verse one, there are so many elements of this verse that are absolutely incredible. In the beginning, this is creation language.
Curt Harlow [00:08:51]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:08:52]:
In the beginning, Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens, the earth. In the beginning was the Word. Now, John isn't saying that Jesus was created, you know, at that point of creation, John is saying Jesus has always existed in eternity past. So he's using the Genesis 1:1 language in a way to say Jesus is eternal nature. Now, if you want me to get nerdy here, I can get nerdy.
Curt Harlow [00:09:20]:
Get nerdy.
Wesley Towne [00:09:21]:
So the verb an was is an imperfect verb. And the idea of this imperfect verb in this context is that Jesus had a timeless continuous existence for all of eternity.
Curt Harlow [00:09:35]:
Imperfect, meaning, unresolved.
Wesley Towne [00:09:38]:
An imperfect verb in Greek has this idea of there's a continuous nature, there's an event that took place or some reality that they're trying to convey, but it has a continuous nature. And so that's the idea of what John is saying about Jesus is that there was no point in time that Jesus began to exist.
Curt Harlow [00:10:03]:
Right.
Wesley Towne [00:10:03]:
He always has existed.
Curt Harlow [00:10:05]:
So he starts out in the always ongoing beginning.
Wesley Towne [00:10:09]:
Yeah, he's always existed was the Word.
Curt Harlow [00:10:11]:
And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. Here's where we, our Jewish friends, start to get nervous. In the beginning was the Word. This is Logos. We'll come back and talk Logos. That's the Greek word, Logos. And the Logos was with God.
Curt Harlow [00:10:30]:
Okay, we're fine with that. So in the beginning, you know, I, I guess continuous, that continuous verb makes it feel a little eternal there. But at least he's with God. Yeah, he's with God.
Wesley Towne [00:10:42]:
Yeah, yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:10:43]:
So now at this point, we can have God, hero, Israel, the Lord, your God is one God, and there's something there with him. A person, a word, a logos, an order. Ah, then the last phrase of the sentence. And the Logos was God.
Wesley Towne [00:11:00]:
Yes. Which is shocking.
Curt Harlow [00:11:03]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:11:04]:
Maybe to some that would have heard this. And what's interesting about this is, you know, one like Jesus is eternal first part of this verse. Second, Jesus was in the closest proximity with the Father. That's what he's trying to convey. And, and then to say Jesus, the Logos was God is the most definitive statement of the deity of Christ.
Curt Harlow [00:11:28]:
Yes. And of the doctrine of the Trinity. Because here we have distinction and unity being expressed as reality, not in conflict. So the distinction is. Yes. The God that you know and love and worship did everything that he did in the Old Testament, that's distinct. And Jesus Was God.
Wesley Towne [00:11:50]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:11:51]:
And so we have this very uncomfortable for our brains duality here. Wait till we get to John 16 and Jesus says, the Holy Spirit's my identical twin. And. And then we get. We get the Holy Spirit added to the tree. We have this fully God, yet distinct from God, but God.
Wesley Towne [00:12:14]:
Maybe we should unpack that a little bit.
Curt Harlow [00:12:16]:
Yeah, we definitely should. Trent. I asked a friend of mine who goes to church every single week at Auburn, but he's like, I'm a Jewish convert and I come here because my family comes here, and I love it. I love your teaching. I love it, all this stuff. And he's the greatest guy in the world. Not critical, not argumentative, doesn't want to debate, just really smart guy. And so one day I said, you know, I mean, we've gone over these passages that in my mind clearly show Jesus in the Old Testament.
Curt Harlow [00:12:46]:
Why are they not persuaded, Persuasive for you? And he said, oh, easy. The Trinity can't do the Trinity hear over Israel, the Lord your God is one God. You Christians just wanted to bring the Greeks into it and have more than one God and got away from you. And I was like, it's a really smart answer, totally wrong. But the more I thought about it was, I have converted. I'm not just joking. How can we have this mystery of. With God? And was God?
Wesley Towne [00:13:16]:
Yeah. Well, I think defining the Trinity is important. The Trinity is three persons. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but one being or essence. So there's one God, one being called God, but in three persons. And the interesting thing about bringing up Deuteronomy 6, 4, which is the most famous verse that was repeated on a daily basis, morning and night, Jewish people, when he says, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The term one is a cod, and it's used in Genesis, chapter two of the man and the woman becoming one flesh. So if you study that, that Hebrew term throughout the Old Testament, it's used in plural context.
Wesley Towne [00:14:00]:
So it does validate the reality of a plurality in the Godhead or the triune nature of God, whatever term that we want to use. I think that that wouldn't, you know, if I were a Bible student studying Hebrew, that wouldn't trip me up because I understand that that term is used in plural context, like a man and a woman who are Akkad. God can be one God, but exist in three persons.
Curt Harlow [00:14:27]:
Yeah. And even that, as a good word picture, it is. It is limiting because those are two people. The way I often explain it is God is one, but he is more than you can conceive of. God is one, but he's more than you can conceive of. So for me to think in terms of my reference, what one individual is is a limited limiter on who God really is. And so I have no problem of going, how can there be three persons distinct? This isn't God just doing three different jobs or switching to three different majors, or having different modes. There is distinctly three different Godheads.
Curt Harlow [00:15:11]:
And yet there is only one God. How can that be? Here's, here's my answer. I don't understand God and should not pretend I do. Oftentimes when we make this claim of it's too much of a mystery, it's a cop out. We don't really want to study the context and the language and we don't want to come to a conviction. But when it comes to the nature of God himself, we should accept a certain percentage, not a huge amount, a certain percentage of unknowableness. Not in the sense that we can't know him personally and can't be in a relationship with him, but that my finite mind, existing in time, cannot conceive of how much more he is. So the size of God, the Bible says in somewhat poetic ways, but it gets the point across.
Curt Harlow [00:16:03]:
Is the span of my hand that is bigger than the universe. The span of his hand, I get this right, is bigger than the universe. So as Dr. Bob Utley was famous for saying, we want clarity. God wants tension. There is a tension between this idea. There is only one God, and yet God is more, distinctly more. And we could see in his revealed word, he's three more.
Curt Harlow [00:16:28]:
But even that, who is Jesus? Who is the Holy Spirit, who is the Father? That has a depth to it that I, I'll put it this way. Whenever I run across someone theologically that is absolutely sure they can give me the perfect definition of the nature of God in one sentence, I immediately think, cult. This is a cult because it's, it's. That's doing that is more about excluding people and isolating people than it is about looking at the passage and going, what the passage says is what I believe. Because clearly Jesus is God here. And Jesus is also with God at the exact same.
Wesley Towne [00:17:09]:
Yeah, he's knowable and mysterious at the same time.
Curt Harlow [00:17:13]:
Very much so.
Wesley Towne [00:17:14]:
Like, you can't plummet the depths. You and I can study the Bible all our life, but at the end of our life, we're going to look back and we're going to be like there's so many things I still don't know.
Curt Harlow [00:17:23]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:17:24]:
There's so many things I haven't perfected. He is noble, he wants to be known. That's why John is writing what he's writing. In verses 1 through 18, word are units of speech conveying meaning. That's the idea. Like the basic idea of the word, this metaphor for Jesus is that he wants to be known.
Curt Harlow [00:17:44]:
Right.
Wesley Towne [00:17:44]:
But there's a depth to God.
Curt Harlow [00:17:47]:
Right.
Wesley Towne [00:17:47]:
That is so weighty, we will never
Curt Harlow [00:17:50]:
perfectly fearful in the best way of it. So the miracle is not. There's so much more of God than I could ever know. The mystery and the miracle and the beauty is how can I know so much of this God?
Wesley Towne [00:18:04]:
Yes. That's a great way to frame it.
Curt Harlow [00:18:06]:
That is so immense. Okay, you mentioned it, so let's go to it. In the beginning was the word, this is the Greek word Logos. First of all, from the Greek point of view, just tell, tell me what Logos means and where Logos was in the Greek worldview.
Wesley Towne [00:18:21]:
Yeah. For the Greeks, the Logos was the rational mind that ruled the universe. And then to the Hebrews, the Logos was the divine revelation of God, or sometimes the Word of God or the word of the Lord. And to John, the Logos is the incarnated Son of God on earth, telling us through his teaching, his life, his interactions, how he functioned, his death, his resurrection, all the entirety of his life, telling us who God is. Literally in the person of Jesus, we get to know God. That's why later on In John chapter 14, when the disciples said, how do we know the Father? And Jesus is like, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, right. He is the greatest all the fullness exposition of God in human history.
Curt Harlow [00:19:18]:
So the Greeks were amazing. Let's give them their due before we move too far beyond this thing. The Greeks looked at a very chaotic, primitive world where the primitive gods were basically powerful adolescents. And they looked at all the violence and the war, they looked at the high infant mortality rate, they looked at lightning, thunder, earthquakes, all of that. And they were rational enough to see through all of that and go in this chaos. This cast is a thin veil. Underneath it there is order, underneath it there is cause and effect, underneath it there is logic, underneath it there is reason, underneath it there is hierarchy, there is preference, there is survival of the fittest. You know, they didn't have all those words, but they were the foundation block that said there's order here.
Curt Harlow [00:20:13]:
So the Logos in my mind is the force behind order, that, that now we take for granted because we're so steeped in science, scientific method, we are so benef. We've benefited so much from the industrial revolution, then the tech revolution, the data revolution. Of course there's order. And of course it's our job to go, you know, biopsy everything and loop ourselves around the moon to watch it closely to figure out what that order is. But in for the Greeks, just to make that leap was a huge leap. We owe science to the Greeks. We owe just any sort of sense of, let's analyze this and see beyond what our eyes can tell us. We owe all that to Greeks.
Curt Harlow [00:21:01]:
Do you think that was good enough? And if it wasn't for Jesus, we'd still be as Greekified as ever. We'd probably, though, still have slavery because they, they, they recognize that order and didn't want to change it. Especially the philosophers at the top, they're like, this is the right order, man. This is the right order. We're at the top, those guys at the bottom. This is the way the world should be. And then in comes the word, was an individual who could be with God. And who was God who created and then was with his creation.
Curt Harlow [00:21:43]:
So Luke Ferry, one of my favorite people to quote right now, who is a French philosopher and atheist, he's got a brilliant little book out there. I, Timothy Keller, quoted it once, and then I went and read it and I was like, no wonder Keller's the best. Basically, it's a brief, brief history of thought. And what he says is this. The Greeks were winning for 300 years because they had a truth. And the truth was there's order to the universe, the Logos. And there's a force behind this order. You know, we could call it the gods, or we could say that, you know, we're more ambivalent about what that force is, but I'm not sure it's personal.
Curt Harlow [00:22:25]:
Like a God in heaven is doing this. And then what the Christians did is they said, oh, no, no, we know what it is. In fact, we know who it is. The force behind the order of the universe became a person. And once the force behind the order of the universe was discovered to be a person, I believe two things happened. Our souls went, that's right. Because incarnately, in our deepest inside of ourselves, and when we stare at the stars, we feel a desire for relationship with not just an abstract force in the universe, but God. And so we went, it's dangerous, but it's right.
Curt Harlow [00:23:12]:
Then a second thing happened to us. We went, if the Logos, if the Word. If the force of order behind the universe is a person, how does that person treat people? And he didn't let them shoo the children away. And he placed his hand on lepers, and he told them that Caesar's image is on a coin, so that belongs to Caesar, but God's image is on you, so you belong to God. And he had to go see a Samaritan woman. The list goes on and on. And then all of a sudden, out of the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. An idea gets born that rips apart the Greek philosophy.
Curt Harlow [00:24:02]:
And here's the idea. Every single human being, no matter what level they're born at, no matter what disability they have, no matter what prejudice in the culture or world is against them, no matter what their gender is, no matter how much money they have, no matter who they're related to, every human being has the image of God, and Christ has died for them. That thought, that thought gives us. We should educate everyone, including women. That thought gives us we shouldn't let babies die on the street. We should take them in. We'll call eventually, call it orphanages. That thought says, well, if you're poor, you should also get medical treatment that invents hospitals.
Curt Harlow [00:24:51]:
That thought leads to, you should be allowed to worship whoever you want to worship. I should be able to say whatever I want to say. We should all have a vote. If we all have human dignity, we should all get a vote in what happens to our future. The underpinnings of every liberty we have in our world right now begins with the idea of universal dignity that comes directly from this verse. These five verses, I believe, and so therefore, this I dare you to find. Five sentences you can directly show changed the direction of the world more than these five.
Wesley Towne [00:25:31]:
Amazing. So well said.
Curt Harlow [00:25:34]:
I mean, I've been practicing.
Wesley Towne [00:25:36]:
Yeah. This is so good.
Curt Harlow [00:25:40]:
Yeah.
Wesley Towne [00:25:40]:
I mean, there's so much in here, even in verse three, where it says, through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that was made through Jesus. Everything that is in our human existence, the physical, tangible, time, space, matter, came from him. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all have been attributed to the creation story as the agents of creation. That's easy when you go to Genesis 1:1:3, because you see the Father and the Holy Spirit working in creation. But then you get to John 1:1, creation language, verse one, and then Jesus, without him, nothing was made that has been made. That's amazing. And back to your point, I think what you said is so brilliant, Kurt.
Wesley Towne [00:26:29]:
When God created the earth, the pinnacle of his creation was human beings. Everything in creation had value, purpose, order. But only one thing in creation was designated this. You've been created in the image and likeness of God. Human beings we were. And the only thing in creation that was given the mandate to rule and to cultivate and to. To bring beauty, cultivate the beauty of the raw materials of God's creation and harness all the, you know, science behind what God had created for human good and flourishing. We're human beings.
Wesley Towne [00:27:10]:
So the fact that John does this, almost as like a commentary to Genesis 1:1, all the way through Genesis 2, he picks back up and he's like, yeah, Jesus is becoming a human being, but he's also God. Which then will change every human being's view of human beings because they've been created in the image and likeness of God. That's brilliant.
Curt Harlow [00:27:36]:
And it changes our view of God. So now God, instead of being someone we have to go to, has come to us. Instead of God being distant and unpredictable, God is our friend, our brother. So relatable and. And now instead of God being someone we have to appease, I'll bring you sacrifices. Please don't hurt my crops or children. God becomes someone who says, no, you don't appease me. I come and sacrifice for you.
Curt Harlow [00:28:06]:
So our concept of God, this is what Jesus said all the time. Verily, verily, verily, verily, truly, truly. I tell you, you don't got to write. You think God is distance and. No, God is now fully man. When you were talking a minute ago, I thought of, you know who Phil Kagi is?
Wesley Towne [00:28:23]:
Songwriter.
Curt Harlow [00:28:25]:
He's a great songwriter from my era.
Wesley Towne [00:28:27]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:28:28]:
Brie, did you know who Phil Kegi is?
Wesley Towne [00:28:31]:
That's okay.
Curt Harlow [00:28:31]:
All right, all of you out there.
Wesley Towne [00:28:33]:
Donald, you don't know. Now you know.
Curt Harlow [00:28:35]:
So this theme of fully God and fully man, John is going to land on this theme over and over and over again. In our next passage we'll talk about next week, there's a reference to where God touches the earth from the Old Testament. And it's the same exact thing. But being that we're just a little bit after Easter here, I'll read this song, this. It's called Maker of the Universe, about Jesus. And here's Folkage's lyrics. The maker of the universe as man, for man was made a curse. The claims of law which he had made unto the utmost.
Curt Harlow [00:29:14]:
He then paid his holy fingers, made the bough which grew the thorns that crowned his brow. The nails that pierced his hands were mined in secret places he designed, he made the forest whence there sprung the tree on which his body hung. He died upon a cross of wood yet made the hill on which it stood the sky that darkened o' er his head by him above the earth was spread the sun that hid from him its face by his decree was poised in space. The spear which spilled his precious blood was tempered in the fires of God. The grave in which his form was laid Was hewn in rocks his hands had made.
Wesley Towne [00:30:03]:
Wow.
Curt Harlow [00:30:04]:
The throne on which he now appears was his for everlasting years. But a new glory crowns his brow and every knee to him shall bow the maker of the universe.
Wesley Towne [00:30:18]:
What powerful lyrics. Wow.
Curt Harlow [00:30:21]:
Isn't that just so beautiful?
Wesley Towne [00:30:23]:
That is beautiful.
Curt Harlow [00:30:24]:
Go back and listen to your 1970s Christian music. Back before it was all commercialized.
Wesley Towne [00:30:30]:
1970s Jesus.
Curt Harlow [00:30:31]:
People knew how to write some songs, man.
Wesley Towne [00:30:34]:
The Jesus movement.
Curt Harlow [00:30:35]:
Okay, so, Wes, what should we do about this? We could go on and on, and we probably should, but let's apply this right now. Like it's, you know, we read the Word, we get into original meaning, but what do we should do? What should we do about the fact that the Word was God and the Word was with God, and He created everything, and nothing that was created was created without Him. What do we do about that on Monday morning?
Wesley Towne [00:31:00]:
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I think obviously him being deity and creator leads to something here. He says, in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And that brings me back to my original framing of John. John's writing, that we would know the identity of Jesus so that we could believe in Jesus and therefore have the life of Jesus in us. And I think what this leads me back to is when we understand who Jesus is, and then we put our faith in the reality of who Jesus is. There's this famous saying, you know, the whole born again passage in John chapter 3.
Wesley Towne [00:31:51]:
Some people live once and die twice. So they're born once physically, but they're dead spiritually, and then they die physically. And some people are born twice and die once. They're born physically and they're born spiritually, and then they die physically, but their eternity is with God. And I think what I would say of these first five verses, the application would be, Jesus is pursuing us. He is the light of humanity, leading us to the life that he designed us to have. And if you want to flourish, if you want your soul to feel alive, if you want those empty longings in your heart to be filled by the very reality of your existence. You need to get to know Jesus, the real Jesus, not the Americanized Jesus, not the Western world Jesus.
Wesley Towne [00:32:50]:
Like the real Gospel of John, biblical. He really came to this earth and lived and died.
Curt Harlow [00:32:56]:
Jesus getting to know Jesus precedes transformation into, into life and light. I have a similar application. Usually I try to get really practical like the Gospel of Mark. Very early in the morning, Jesus got up and went to a lonely place and prayed. That's Mark 1:35. So find a place. Try to do it in the morning. Better in the morning.
Curt Harlow [00:33:21]:
Don't get beat. You know, that's. It's. You find lots of great applications like that in the Book of Mark. John, it's harder. And the reason it's harder is John is not pulling any punches of depth. John is a master Greek philosopher. John is an Old Testament scholar.
Curt Harlow [00:33:44]:
John is a psychologist who's examined the disciples and Jesus with a PhD in psychology. John is a history buff who knows Roman, Greek and Jewish history. And even the bar like John brings so much incredible expertise and insight into this. You, here's my challenge, here's my application. Do you challenge yourself to go deeper as a person who studies the Bible? Because you have to in John and it pays off to do it in John. Ask the questions, stop and go. I didn't understand that. Look at the context, see the stop in the minutia and go, I don't know that word.
Curt Harlow [00:34:29]:
And then lift your head up as we go through this and say, wow, why are these three stories put together one after another? And I want to tell you, if this, if there's any book where you'd say, I'm going to graduate up into the big kids class of Bible study, the Gospel of John is, is it? For years they still do this. People get saved and say, what's the first book you should read? Oh, the Gospel of John. I'm like, what now? You kidding me? You just gave them organic chemistry. I always give them Mark. I'm like, you could be done with this in 10 minutes.
Wesley Towne [00:35:04]:
True.
Curt Harlow [00:35:04]:
And I'll give you everything you need to know about Jesus. And it's equally as powerful from a different point of view, John. It's just, you know, a whole life of study and you are still seeing a subtle weaving in by the Holy Spirit of all those first century cultures to show how much Jesus is truly God and fully man. And so just up your game. And of course, the best way to up your game is to tune in here at The Bible study podcast on the Thrive Podcast Network. Man, really? And honestly, I know I say this every week, but let's go on this ride together. What if at the end of this you said, man, I know who Jesus is in his own words? That's what's going to happen if you stick with us. And by the way, don't stick with us alone.
Curt Harlow [00:35:58]:
Share this podcast I can't tell you how many people send me a podcast every week, say, you got to listen to this. And no one has sent my own podcast to me and said that yet.
Wesley Towne [00:36:07]:
So I'm Kurt's podcast with Kurt.
Curt Harlow [00:36:11]:
If someone sends me this podcast in a text this week, I might cry. I might just cry stoked. Anyway, next week, Bri, what's going on next week? Cameron. Cameron the Viking. The Holy Ghost Viking, I call him.
Wesley Towne [00:36:24]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:36:25]:
I have kind of a nickname for everyone. I got to get one for you.
Wesley Towne [00:36:27]:
Wes, I'm waiting.
Curt Harlow [00:36:29]:
I wanted to say the frontal lobe of Davis, but I already have Dina as the frontal lobe of Thrive College.
Wesley Towne [00:36:34]:
Yeah, that's great. So there's a lot of nicknames for me out there.
Curt Harlow [00:36:38]:
Yeah. What's the best one?
Wesley Towne [00:36:39]:
The Beanie Bishop. The Bald Eagle.
Curt Harlow [00:36:41]:
The Beanie Bishop. Beanie Bishop.
Wesley Towne [00:36:44]:
There's lots of them.
Curt Harlow [00:36:45]:
Are there any related to your great learning though?
Wesley Towne [00:36:50]:
Yes. Some people call me the smartest, dumbest person they've ever met.
Curt Harlow [00:36:56]:
No comment. I have no comment on that one
Wesley Towne [00:36:58]:
because I'm kind of blonde, but I did really well.
Curt Harlow [00:37:01]:
No, whoever came up with that one knows you well. But I'm not gonna join in. I'm not gonna.
Wesley Towne [00:37:06]:
You can join in on that one. No, I need self deprecating is good.
Curt Harlow [00:37:11]:
The scholar who knows how to holler.
Wesley Towne [00:37:13]:
Now that's the Surf Scholar.
Curt Harlow [00:37:15]:
The Surf Scholar. Okay, those are two S's. By the next time you're on the show, I will have a nickname for you. You're. I know for that for sure. You're not the Frontal Loba Thrice School and you're not the Holy Ghost Viking. That's Cameron. So, Cameron Wells, next week we're going to still be in chapter one.
Curt Harlow [00:37:31]:
We're going to look at the disciples that follow Jesus early and what that means to you. And I don't want to miss it. And as always, thank you so much for tuning in to the Bible study podcast.