John 2 - Overview and structure of the Gospel

today we discussed the basic framework and theme of the single most loved book in the Bible let's go [Applause] [Music] [Applause] welcome to branch together the channel where we read and reflect on one chapter of the Bible every weekday right here on YouTube we love the Bible and we love you and we care about you understanding it and reading it well and connecting with Jesus in your everyday life so that's why we do this right here if you're interested in reading with us you can subscribe right here in YouTube and click the bell so you get the message every day also if you're in the United States you can text the word together to 21000 and get a text message from us every morning with this new video yes so today is John chapter 2 but before we get in we're gonna I want to give you the theme and the framework of this book so the theme of this book is that Jesus is the promised Messiah and through faith in Him we receive eternal life now the book is set up to help us grow in faith so that we see this and understand this theme when when we see Jesus's actions and his words what he does throughout this book and what he says it brings us closer to faith or helps us grow deeper in our faith so let's talk about how John sets this up first is the prologue which Jared read yesterday that was the beautiful prologue it's in the in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god in him was like you know so I actually memorized that in a play that I did as a kid so I haven't memorized you should memorize it too it's good it's beautiful beautiful section of Scripture so that's the the prologue then there's this book of signs we call it and this book of signs is like the second section of this book it's where Jesus does signs and now I'm calling them signs because that's the way John describes the miracles that Jesus did when he does things that are miraculous they're signs to everybody else to show of his power in his identity after the signs there's the book of glory and the book of glory is the story of Jesus's glory here on this earth and his crucifixion and the things that go around with that and finally there's an epilogue so there's these four sections and the epilogue is kind of a closing the kid the the capstone on it so when we read this book and we see how how clearly articulated all that Jesus had done and what he said we can't help but grow in faith and that's what we expect to happen as we read this together so first let's pray and then we'll we'll jump into John chapter 2 God thank you for being with us and Lord we ask you to give us eyes to see the goodness and the beauty of your word to see to see Jesus to see you through this today and Lord speak to us as we read and teach us and help us grow in faith your name we pray amen on the third day a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee Jesus's mother was there and Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding as well when the wine ran out Jesus his mother told him they don't have any wine what does that have to do with you and me woman Jesus asked my hour has not yet come do whatever he tells you his mother told the servants now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish Pyrrha fication each contained twenty or thirty gallons fill the jars with water Jesus told them so they filled them to the brim then he said to them now draw some out and take it to the headwaiter and they did when the headwaiter tasted the water after it had become wine he did not know where it came from though the servants who had drawn the water knew he called the groom and told him everyone sets out the fine wine first then after people are drunk the inferior but you have kept the fine wine until now Jesus did this the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee he revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him after this he went down to Capernaum together with his mother his brothers and his disciples and they stayed there only a few days the Jewish Passover was near and so Jesus went up to Jerusalem in the temple he found people selling oxen sheep and doves and he also found the money changers were sitting there after making a whip out of cords he drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen he also poured out the money changers coins and overturned the tables he told those who were selling doves get these things out of here stop turning my father's house into a market place and his disciples remembered that it is written zeal for your house will consume me so the Jews replied to him what sign will you show us for doing these things jesus answered destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days therefore the Jews said this temple took 46 years to build and you will raise it up in three days but he was speaking about the temple of his body so when he was raised from the dead the disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scripture and the statement Jesus had made while he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing Jesus however would not entrust himself to them since he knew them all and because he did not need anyone to testify about man for he himself knew what was in man okay so I kind of set up the framework so you could see what we were jumping into today we started reading the book of signs yesterday was the prologue remember that in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God this beautiful introduction to this book I kind of I briefly mentioned before that I had memorized this for a play oh and I got to show you a picture of this so up on the screen right now is this this picture I was playing Jesus and and that's Tim he was playing John and it was a good time so yeah I don't know why I had to show you that but that's a little bit from the past but today okay we are jumping into chapter 2 and chapter 2 is the opening of the book of signs and the first sign that Jesus did is the wedding at Cana and what he does is he turns water into wine and when this happens so he does these miracles and people believed right we see that through the book that there's this theme that as Jesus did something miraculous people grew in their faith and I reminded you that this is a theme of the book and as we see what Jesus did in this book we also grow in faith but look at verse 23 it says something like many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing it when they saw what he was doing people believed in him so this miracle resulted in people in his in his present day resulted in those people having faith and that there is the purpose of this book of signs so that as people see the signs they grow in faith now God does signs in different places in different seasons you may ask you know why isn't God turning water to wine in new jersey in 2018 where I am right now recording this and he he does sometimes God does do miracles today but he doesn't do them as often in some seasons as he does in others when I was a kid I was on a trip in El Salvador and when we were there there was a boy that had never spoken from birth and my team was praying for him and he started speaking and he said I could speak I could play no habla I can speak I can speak in his native tongue and that was the first time he had spoken in his life and that was that was God doing a sign there in El Salvador where at the time the gospel was taking root and God was moving quickly through that area but we don't see that as much here in the States and you know there's reasons why that might may happen we're probably in a different phase of belief you know we've we've already seen the gospel move here and many have believed and many have rejected it's probably also why we see there's some stories that are pretty profound of people in Muslim countries experiencing dreams that where Jesus meets them in a dream and it's a radical conversion they have from from their faith to believing in Jesus because of what God does through those signs so we don't know why God the signs in different areas but we do know that in the book of John he did some amazing signs so that people could believe the people that read also can now believe so that's the the eyes of faith that we get through this so yeah I think that's that's good for today I want you to take it seriously that as we go through this book I want you to to read with us with open eyes and I want you to see because if we really if we really saw who Jesus for who he was we can't help but grow in faith and fall in love with him and that is the best place we can be in our lives all right we'll see you all tomorrow next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you [Music]

Channel: Branch Together

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Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 24 2018