The Gospel of John: Overview | Whiteboard Bible Study

the Gospel of John is the fourth book of the New Testament and the last gospel in the Bible now if you're familiar with the Bible then you know that it falls into two large sections there's the Old Testament which primarily looks at the relationship between God and the Jewish people and then there's the New Testament which focuses on Jesus and what his followers did and said after him John tells the story of Jesus but how does John tell that story and why does John choose to tell the story that he does well that's what we're going to look at when we examine the story and structure of John but before we do that let's get a look at the book as a whole beginning with who wrote it now while the Gospel of John is named John nowhere in the book does it say that a person named John wrote this gospel in fact the author only refers to himself as the disciple Jesus loved now for a long time church leaders have associated this person with John the son of Zebedee and this was one of the leading disciples in jesus's group of twelve so although there are other theories as to who may have written John we'll get into that in a different video for now let's just say the author of the Gospel of John is John since that's what Christians have been saying for almost 2,000 years now what's more important than who wrote it is why it was written and were told that toward the end of the book the author says that he is telling the story of all these signs or these miracles that Jesus performed so that the reader will believe in Jesus now some interesting notes to keep in mind are that while the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke generally track with each other and cover roughly the same events John doesn't do this a lot of the content that you're gonna see in the Gospel of John is unique it's not going to be found anywhere else in the New Testament and also John was probably the last gospel written so keep that in mind as we look at the story and structure of the Gospel of John let's jump into that John falls to two very large sections with two smaller sections as bookends we have the prologue which is chapter 1 and then an epilogue which is chapter 21 that's that last chapter and then the bulk of the book of John falls into two big groups that Christians have called the book of signs which is chapters 2 through 12 and then the book of glory which is chapters 13 through 20 let's start with the prologue the prologue begins with in the beginning which is a throwback to the very first words of the whole Bible in Genesis but it goes on to say that in the beginning was the word which is a name that John uses for Jesus he's saying that Jesus is God he establishes Jesus as a divine being right from the get-go and then in this prologue we see God sending Jesus and Jesus beginning to call his disciples and from there were drawn right into this book of signs now remember the whole reason that the Gospel of John was written was to show us signs so that we the readers would believe in Jesus so we want to pay attention to these signs John lays out seven miracles in the book of signs we see Jesus turning water into wine he heals several people we see him feeding 5,000 people walking on the water and it all culminates with Jesus miraculously raising his friend Lazarus from the dead now while we're seeing these miracles take place we also see Jesus giving some very important teachings such as when he talks about how he is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the Sheep we also see the Jewish leaders responding usually with misunderstanding and sometimes some anger to the teachings of Jesus until finally even though Jesus has worked such powerful miracles even raising someone from the dead we get to the end of the book of signs and the Jewish people still don't believe in Jesus now this is very important because remember john has pulled together these miracles so that people reading this gospel will believe in Jesus but these miracles didn't convince the Jewish people to do that so remember that as we look at the rest of this book because that's going to be really important to us since the Jewish people don't believe in Jesus he withdraws and spends the rest of this book focusing on his relationship with his disciples in the book of glory now the book of glory is called this because in this section we see Jesus demonstrating his love for the disciples and also God the Father glorifying his name through the actions of Jesus it's a very very beautiful part of the Bible it opens with John saying that Jesus hour had come and he loved his disciples to the end it's very very beautifully written and we see Jesus comforting his disciples passing on new teachings to love one another he promises to send the Holy Spirit after him after he has died and risen again and then he prays for them in John 17 it's known as the high priestly prayer where Jesus prays on not only the disciples of his times behalf but also on behalf of Christians who come after the disciples very very powerful and then finally like the Good Shepherd Jesus dies for his followers it's very beautiful very surprising not the way people would have expected a king to act in the first century but plot-twists Jesus rises from the dead this is the greatest miracle of all he has defeated death and we have an empty tomb but similarly to how the book of signs ended with a resurrection from the dead and the people didn't believe him we meet a character that you've probably heard of doubting thomas one of jesus' followers still struggles to believe in Jesus after he rises from the dead and it's at that point that John tells us exactly why he wrote this gospel he wrote this gospel because he knows that we're going to struggle to believe in Jesus long after we're not seeing him so he's written all this down so that we need to make a choice and we can choose whether or not we're going to believe in Jesus and have life in him this brings us to the epilogue and in the epilogue we see Jesus visiting seven disciples including Peter who famously denied Jesus right before he died and also Thomas who is no longer doubting Jesus feeds the disciples and then he tells Peter because you love me continue to feed my disciples keep taking care of my followers and this is where the book of John ends John says that there's so much that could be written about Jesus but the world probably wouldn't even hold all the books that it would take to record what he did so that's what the book of John is about it's a very poetic and very artistic and very compelling book of the Bible that pulls together the acts of Jesus the teachings of Jesus and poses us with the question do you believe in him that's what the book of John is all about if you want to see more videos like this go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel this way we can notify you as soon as a new one goes up I really appreciate you watching and I hope this was helpful

Channel: OverviewBible

Views: 50,594

Rating: 4.932476 out of 5

Keywords: new testament, gospels, gospel of john, jesus, jesus christ, book of signs, book of glory

Id: 8M8XXzAplF0

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 27 2018