Gooding, David: 2 - Structure Revealing Meaning

Now, if in the first major story of this particular section, we find that Christ discerns in the low ebb of Jewish worship at Jerusalem, a desperate lack in their personal experience of the power of God. The second major story of this section seems to offer an explanation of this state of affairs. For it records a conversation between our Lord and one of the professors of theology at Jerusalem, and it is reasonable to suppose that the theological views held by this learned rabbi and his colleagues would eventually, uh, filter down to the masses and color their religious experience. Now, our Lord spoke to Nicodemus, so we are told, on the topic of that initial experience of the power of God that brings about personal renewal and regeneration, and so initiates a man into the kingdom and service of God. Significantly enough, when he broached this topic with Nicodemus, he drew a complete blank from the learned professor. Nicodemus did not know what was even meant by the term being born again, and still less did he understand what this means in terms of personal experience. Our Lord laid his finger on his inadequacy, an inadequacy both of knowledge and of belief. Said our Lord to him, art thou the teacher and i- in Israel and knowest not these things? Nicodemus, it seems, had inadequate knowledge. He did not know what was meant by the term. But in addition to inadequate knowledge, Nicodemus had an inadequacy in the area of personal faith. Devout and patient as his academic study of Holy Scripture had been, he had not yet learned what it means to believe, at least what it means to believe in the sense that opens up a channel between the soul and God, through which the mighty regenerating power of God may flow. Perhaps it was that in all his study, Nicodemus had tended to substitute thinking and reasoning for believing. Or perhaps it was that hitherto Nicodemus had not found God in such close focus as he could focus his faith. At any rate, our Lord's answer to this inadequacy was to present himself to Nicodemus using the analogy of the nation's earlier experience in the wilderness. Under Moses, the nation in the wilderness had sinned, and God had sent serpents among them, which bit the people so that they were dying. And in their desperate situation, God commanded Moses to make a serpent of bronze, put it upon a pole, and command the people to look to that serpent, and whoever looked found new life. So did our Lord gently suggest to Nicodemus that it is when a man comes to the end of his own spiritual resources, discovers his bankruptcy before God, and learns to cast himself entirely upon God and upon Christ's redeeming sacrifice. Then it is that a man believing God from the whole of his heart finds opened a channel, uh, for the redemptive energies of God to flow into his life. Now we move on to the third major incident in this section, which records a conversation which, uh, the bystanders had with John the Baptist. Actually, in my introductory remarks, I called John the Baptist a popular preacher, uh, which was a little unworthy of me, maybe, for after all, John the Baptist, according to our Lord, was the greatest of all the prophets. I called him a popular preacher simply because in his day, John drew tremendous crowds to hear his preaching, and his preaching was accompanied, as we may gather, by a good deal of e- emotion and, uh, religious intensity. It is, however, interesting to listen to this conversation and in it to deserve his principles as a preacher. We may sum them up in the words, the supremacy of Christ. John, in his witness to the crowd, uh, and to the inquirers, gave this testimony. He that cometh from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth, and of the earth he speaks. He who comes from heaven is above all. Added to this vivid concept of the supremacy of Christ and his unique authority, uh, John had a most intimate way of expressing his task as a mediator between God and the people. He said, speaking of Christ, he that has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now full. John likened his activity as a preacher to the activity of a man who introduces a girl to her future husband, and introducing that girl to her future husband, he sparks off, so to speak, an affair of the heart. Now this surely i- i- is the task of any preacher who would lead his fellow men and women, uh, into experience of God. Like John, he must keep in view the supremacy, absolute unique authority of Jesus Christ our Lord. But he must not rest until he has brought his congregation into this personal experience, this affair of the heart with Jesus Christ. Leaving John then, we come to the next major incident in this, in this section. And at once we are thrown into the middle of a bitter religious controversy. For in chapter four of John, we have arrived in Samaria, and there our Lord enters a conversation with a Samaritan woman. The conversation turns on the matter of worship. And of course, the question of worship was an exceedingly controversial and sore topic between Jews and Samaritans. It centered around the question of where was the right place to worship. And in this bitter argument, doubtless the Jews had right on their side, in the sense that God had laid down that Jerusalem was the place where men ought to worship, and our Lord does not deny this. In fact, to the woman, he eventually says that salvation is of the Jews. On the other hand, we must admit that the Jews, though orthodox in their belief, had been somewhat bitter and eh possibly cruel towards these non-conformist Samaritans, and there had grown up between them a terrible gulf socially and religiously, so that Jews would not even use the same eating vessels as the Samaritans. Now, it is evident that this woman, in the middle of the trials and disappointments of life, had found r- religion somewhat unsatisfying. Indeed, it may well have left, uh, a bitter taste in her mouth. It is interesting to trace, uh, the causes of this dissatisfaction with religion. In the course of her conversation, uh, she makes evident what her concepts of religion were. Uh, they were, first of all, that religious i- uh, religion is a kind of charitable social force. Uh, she talked of Jacob, her distant forefather, who had dug a well and given it to his children. And digging wells, of course, in those ancient times, was a very worthy, uh, task of social welfare. And of course, religion eventually will express itself, if it be true religion, in social benefit to the community. But true religion does not start with social work, and indeed its heart is elsewhere. Again, the woman, in thinking of religion, uh, speedily raised this aforementioned topic of the place where men ought to worship. To her, religion was a matter of denominational dispute as to the right way of going about things. And certainly, uh, there is importance in the topic, uh, what is the right way to worship God? But then the right place to worship God, uh, though it be an important topic, is not the heart of the whole business. All that the woman had, it would seem, in addition to this, is some vague idea picked up perhaps in the reading of the Old Testament that one day Messiah would come and settle all these disputes once and for all. But until he came, certainty could not be reached in anything, and hence the old disputes must drag on unsatisfactorily forever. This is the continuation of Dr. Gooding's tape on the structure and meaning of St. John's Gospel. Christ, that afternoon, leapt over the wall that had separated her from the Jews at Jerusalem, and not only so, but he turned religion and the worship and service of God into a vital and sparkling reality. It is interesting to watch how he did so. His words were to her, first of all, uh, give me to drink. In other words, though that she was a Samaritan, he was telling her that he wanted her, he needed her, he needed her friendship, that God in Christ was seeking that woman because, frankly, he loved her and needed her. And then when i- i- in her amazement she failed to give him that drink of water, he began to speak to her of a satisfaction that is deeper than literal water. He said, if you had known the gift of God and who it is that speaks with you, you would, you would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water. Again, I imagine this was a, a surprise to this woman, who probably thought that religion is concerned with what we give God. Whereas Christ was putting it now the other way round, true religion begins not with what we give God, but with what God gives us. God, says Christ, has a gift to give. It is living water, a water that bubbles up within the heart and satisfies. And this gift is not a something that we work up by spiritual discipline. It is something that Christ gives us as an initial sine qua non. Ours it is to recognize that there is such a gift, that we need that gift, and then simply and humbly to ask for it, whereupon, says Christ, he will give us that gift. Then our Lord talked to her about the nature of worship. God, he said, is a spirit, and they that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth. That is why, uh, the, uh, a man or woman who has never yet experienced this gift must, in the end, find the worship of God falling short of full satisfaction. If I am to worship God, I must in some part understand him. I must know the way he thinks, the things he likes, so that I might have intelligent fellowship with him. I can never know God in this intimate sense until I have his spirit, so that I may worship him in spirit and according to truth. One can illustrate this at the lower level. A man, for instance, may have a dog. Now, between that man and the dog, there is an area of common experience. The man likes a beef steak, maybe, the dog likes a beef steak. Put a beef steak in front of a man, put a beef steak in front of a dog, and you will get a somewhat similar reaction. But then, if you take that dog into his master's library and show him a painting by Rembrandt, the man will go into raptures over this painting. The dog will just sit there and look silly, because now you have moved into a sphere in which the dog cannot understand or follow his master, a sphere in which the dog can have no fellowship whatsoever with his master. And if you get a dog and discipline it to sit in front of the picture and waggle its tail, yet it will never mean anything to the dog worth meaning because the dog has not the man's spirit. So there are areas in which we may have fellowship with God simply as his creatures. We may admire God's artistry in a sunset, his music in the song of a bird, but when it comes to the deeper level of true spiritual worship, God, we are told, is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Now, no man knows the things of a man, say the spirit of a man, says Paul, writing to the Corinthians, and no one knows the things of God, say the spirit of God. So we see again how absolutely vital it is that Christ be allowed, first of all, to give us this gift of spiritual water, this wellspring welling up inside us that not only satisfies our own thirsts and desires, but gives us the capacity for understanding and appreciating God at this deeper and more intimate level, and so sets our hearts free to worship him meaningfully and with satisfaction. The final story in this section is a story that at first sight seems to have nothing to do whatsoever with the topic of the worship and service of God. And yet, a little deeper thinking will show us that it is fitting in its place at the conclusion. It is the story of a nobleman who, when he heard that our Lord had returned from his visit to Jerusalem, came some distance to ask him to come and heal his son. His son was critically ill. Now, this man imagined that our Lord would, at the best, have to travel back, uh, for some hours with him to his home, and then entering in, have to lay his hands upon his son for his son to get well. Actually, of course, there was no need for our Lord to do anything of the sort. Standing just where he was, he could pronounce the word, and immediately the son, though at considerable distance from him, would be healed. So when the man came, the Lord spoke the word, the boy was healed. But then our Lord said to the man, I suppose, except you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. You see, here was the good fellow standing on the road with Christ. Our Lord speaks the word of healing, but in the nature of things, the man can have no evidence that his boy is healed, except the naked word of Christ. Indeed, he cannot have any evidence for some hours afterwards until he has made the long return journey and finds that the boy, in fact, is well. The story is told us here, uh, to emphasize the need for willingness to believe without any evidence except the naked word of Christ. And this is a lesson perhaps we need to have emphasized when we are talking at this level of experimental religion, of personal experience of the power of God, of receiving this gift, the water of life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, that is described as welling up, bubbling up within us. For speaking of these things, many people will imagine that this describes rather emotional religion. Now, far be it from us to say that true religion, uh, can be experienced without any emotion. Yet we, it is important to see that the key to the receiving of these spiritual powers of which our Lord speaks is not to be found in emotion for its own sake. Indeed, it may mean for the individual who sets out on this path to seek this experience of God, it may well mean for him that he i- is obliged to start simply by coming to Christ, hearing his word, asking for his gift, and daring to believe that he has received this gift. On no other grounds than this simply, the naked word of Christ. But if a man is willing so to come, and so to receive and believe the word of Christ, he will, as the days pass, discover that the word of Christ is living and active and creative. That when a man is prepared to take into his heart that living, active, creative word of Christ, he will find that he has received within him a seed which grows and brings forth its fruit with constancy and perseverance until the final harvest. With this, then, we come to the end of this first section, which tells of our Lord's first visit to Jerusalem and his return. And I have sketched in at some great length the practical application of the message of the several stories in this section, because I wanted to illustrate as well as I could, uh, that all these stories in this section are strung along one common theme, the worship and service of God. And I wanted to illustrate as fully as I could my basic thesis that the structure of John and the building of the individual stories into this structure is designed to get across this particular message. The diagnosis, if it's true, will serve to bring out the message of the subsequent sections, for they record journeys that were all of them likewise made on the occasion of the Jewish festivals. The festivals differ, and if we would work this thesis out to its fullest extent, we must be prepared to observe the particular features of each of these festivals, so that we may see the background against which Christ is talking. On the second journey, for instance, uh, in chapter five, his activities and remarks are laid against the background of the Sabbath. I- I- in the events of the return in chapter six, uh, once more, the activity of the Lord is painted against the background, uh, of the Jewish Passover. And here, for instance, things are very clear. You talked of eating a Jewish Passover because it was the ritual in which eating the roast lamb, uh, uh, was required. And so in chapter six uh, we read of our Lord's feeding the thousands with the loaves and the fishes, and as they ate those physical loaves, he talked to them of eating in a deeper and s- more spiritual sense, and so holds out to them the spiritual realities of the bread of life, which are, uh, only dimly illustrated in the ancient Jewish ritual of eating the Passover. In the third journey, affairs are described against the background of another festival, this time the festival of Tabernacles. This is a most interesting festival, far too detailed to describe here, save only to point out that it both was reminiscent of the past when Israel were pilgrims in the wilderness, but it was taken by the later Jewish prophets as a prophecy of the future, when Israel and the nations with her should, shall have reached the end of their spiritual pilgrimage, and they come to the time when God makes the nations a feast of fat things. I quote Isaiah's prophecy here, and God shall, in fullness of time, destroy death itself. It is in this section that our Lord Jesus presents himself as the light of the world, as distinct from the, um, pillar of fire that guided the Israelites through the wilderness, and in which he presents himself as the conqueror of death, who promises to those who follow him that they shall not see death, but shall have the light of life. It is in this section that he offers himself as the source of those living waters which a man may come and drink simply by believing in him, in contradistinction to the waters which Moses provided for the nation in the time of their pilgrimage by striking the rock in the wilderness. Subsequently, uh, our Lord, uh, stayed on, or at least was present in Jerusalem at the Feast of Dedication. This was the feast in which, uh, the Israelites remembered the rededication of the altar after its desecration by that monster of impurity, Antiochus Epiphanes. It recalled a grievous time in Jewish history when the nation were split. Some of them were for accepting Antiochus and the rule of the Greeks, the Seleucid Greeks. Some of them, the more orthodox, were for resisting, uh, the Seleucids. And the ensuing disagreement resulted in fearful bloodshed, eventually in the rise of the Maccabees. In our Lord's time, as he stood, uh, in Jerusalem and in the temple at the feast of the rededication of the altar, the Jews were once more faced with a similar situation in deciding if this Jesus was their true shepherd or if he wasn't. To accept him as their leader, religiously and nationally, seemed to them to be running into the danger of bringing down upon them the repressive might of the Roman Empire. It would perhaps, uh, lead them into national disaster. On the other hand, if he were really the Christ, to reject him was to reject all hope of ridding themselves from the bondage of the Gentile rulers into which they had come. Our Lord at that stage offered his credentials to the nation, uh, to demonstrate that he was their true shepherd. He offered them the security of his sheepfold, the certainty of his leading. Yet we know they made the tragic choice of rejecting him, thinking thereby to, uh, save their nation and prevent the Romans coming and taking away both their place and their nation, as Caiaphas put it. And yet, in the event, it proved a tragic, mistaken choice, for in rejecting Christ, they fell victim, uh, to the zealots who eventually pushed them, all unwillingly, as we know from Josephus, into insurrection against the Romans with its catastrophically disastrous results in AD seventy. The final section of the book is once more laid against the background of a Passover, and here there is no doubt that John wishes us to read the work and ministry of Christ against this background. But instead of a Pharaoh, king of Egypt, holding the Israelites in bondage, we read of a far more sinister figure, the prince of this world. Instead o- o- of a literal lamb being sacrificed to provide a way of deliverance, we read of our Lord. At his crucifixion, we are told a bone of him was not broken, and in this, in the accounting of this, the regulation concerning the Passover lamb in Exodus twelve is actually quoted by the evangelist. Here in our Lord's sacrifice, then, is the Passover sacrifice which delivers men from the ultimate bondage to Satan, the prince of this world. Sketchily enough, then, I have, uh, drawn my thesis on the interpretation of the fourth gospel. Personally, I feel it is a legitimate way into the understanding of the message of this book. Indeed, in my boldness, I fancy it is the way in, because it depends on and follows the structure that the evangelist himself has contrived. Whether it is so or not, I must leave to your judgment, but I feel fairly confident, uh, that I may offer this suggestion to you as a suggestion worthy, at least, of your more detailed study of the text. After all, it is fairly easy to erect a thesis if one merely takes the salient points of the evidence and neglects the detail. Whether a thesis is proved true or not depends subsequently on whether one is able, in going through all the mass of detail, to find that the detail, as well as the salient points, uh, support the thesis in question. That That necessary necessary examina- examination of the detail is a task to which we may address ourselves in subsequent lectures in this series.