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- [00:00]
Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes.
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Unknown Speaker
Or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan.
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Dr. Manny Arango
And join the journey.
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Unknown Speaker
To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry.
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Dr. Manny Arango
We are in the same boat.
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Unknown Speaker
And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church Plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests.
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Dr. Manny Arango
Walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads.
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Unknown Speaker
Or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code.
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Dr. Manny Arango
Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience.
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Unknown Speaker
So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a.
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Dr. Manny Arango
Free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down.
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Unknown Speaker
And show you how to start seeing.
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Dr. Manny Arango
New faces at your church this Sunday.
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Unknown Speaker
I'm in the trenches with you trying.
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Dr. Manny Arango
To grow the church.
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Unknown Speaker
And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full. The glory of Jesus. Let's go, boy. It's a good one.
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Dr. Manny Arango
Because we in the Gospel of John, if you can't tell from my level of excitement, okay, John's Gospel is my favorite gospel, probably my favorite book of the Bible. And so my challenge is gonna be to not talk for an hour. Okay. Cause I could talk for hours and hours and hours about the Gospel of John, but thankfully the ARMA platform has a course on John that goes really, really, really in depth. This is one of the courses I'm proud of all of our courses, but it's one of the courses that I'm.
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Unknown Speaker
Really, really, really proud of.
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Dr. Manny Arango
And so if you want to dive deeper into any of the stuff that we're going to cover over the next couple of days as we look at John's Gospel, then go watch our course. If you're not a subscriber, Obviously, you need to become a subscriber to watch the course, but if you are a subscriber, dive into the John course. I promise you won't regret it. All right, today, to start off John's Gospel, we are looking at John, chapter one, two, and three, first three chapters of the book of John. It is jam packed. If you have not done the reading for today, just go ahead, pause. You know, stop this. Go. Don't watch this right now. Go do the reading. John, chapter one, two, and three, Phenomenal reading. I'm going to say that every day, okay? Because John's Gospel is just packed. It's so rich, so good. If you have done the reading, let's dig in. All right, I'm going to give you a context clue. I'm going to give you a nerdy nugget. Going to give you a timeless truth, just like every single day. Here we go. Here we go. John, chapter one starts with these famous words in the beginning. All right, so I'm going to give you a context clue for in the beginning. This is probably not difficult to realize, but these words come from the book of Genesis. I want you to think about John's Gospel, okay? John's Gospel is not a synoptic gospel. Pastor Manny, what does synoptic mean? Synoptic means same eye.
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Unknown Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
Syn, like synonym means same. And then optic, like optometry. Okay, Optic. So synoptic. The synoptic Gospels are Mark, Matthew, and Luke because they all have the same perspective, the same vantage point when they look at Jesus. A lot of the same stories, a lot of the same sermons. The Sermon on the Mount is found in Matthew and Luke. A lot of the same healings or the same lessons that he gives his disciples.
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Unknown Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
The Mark, Matthew and Luke share a lot of content in common with one another. But then you get John's Gospel. And John's gospel is just very, very different. So it's not a synoptic gospel. I want you to think about it this way. Mark's gospel has no genealogy, right? No. No list that tells you who begat who and who begat who and whose baby daddy was this and who baby daddy was that. None of that in Mark's Gospel. However, when we get to Matthew's Gospel, Matthew traces genius, Jesus's lineage all the way back to the son of Abraham. So Matthew's big point is that Jesus is the son of David, the son of Abraham. Why? Well, Matthew's telling a Jewish story. Story. A Jewish story. So of course Jesus is going to get traced back to like two huge, like Mount Rushmore for like the Jewish faith, right? Abraham and David. But then Luke steps up to the plate as the only gentile author of the entire New Testament, of the entire Bible. And he doesn't trace Jesus's lineage back to a Jewish person named Abraham or David. He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This isn't just a Jewish story, Matthew. This is a human story. And so in Luke's gospel, the genealogy gets traced all the way back to Adam, Jesus, the son of Adam. Because before there was ever a Jewish people, there was a humanity, there was, there was a problem with all humans. And Jesus is the solution for that problem. And then John steps up to the plate and he goes, Luke, you didn't back it up far enough, bro. Actually, in the beginning, I'm not telling a Jewish story. I'm not telling a human story. I'm telling a God story. Telling a story about how the word became flesh, how the word was with God and the word was God. Oh, man. I'm telling a story about this human that we know named Jesus, and how he is God. There's this creature or beast, I guess you could say in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation. And, and the beast has four sides and on one side is an ox, on the other side is a human, on the other side is a lion, and on the other side is an eagle.
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Unknown Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So those four kind of images of the ox, the, the human, the lion and the eagle. There's a lot of differing opinions on this, by the way. So if you like, were to Google this, you'd probably find a lot of like, contradicting opinions about this. But the way that it's been taught to me has always been that Mark's gospel is Jesus as the ox, okay? He's a burden bearing beast. Jesus is the one who can bear the burden of our sins. And he didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom, okay? And ox is the one who's serving the farmer. And so second, Luke's gospel is Jesus as a human. He's the most human. He's sweating blood in Luke's Gospel, in the garden of Gethsemane. In Matthew's Gospel, he's king, okay? He's the Jewish Messiah, which means he's the lion of the tribe of Judah. And then finally in John's Gospel, he's transcendent. He flies above all of it. He's the most divine. His divinity is clearly on display in John's Gospel. And so John's gospel is portraying Jesus as the eagle. And so context. That's a lot of context, okay, for why John's gospel is different, why it's unique, why it's special. And so these words in the beginning, in the beginning, what does this mean? Okay, it's funny. I was talking to one of the guys on the team maybe a year or two ago, and I said, through the Wire. Or actually I said through the fire. And they were like, you mean through the wire? And I was like, no, through the fire. And they said, like the Kanye west song. And I was like, no, not like the Kanye west song. Like the song Kanye west sampled, like, through the Fire by Chaka Khan. And they were like, what are you talking about? And I said, you don't realize that, like, Kanye sampled a song. Like, this is not an original thing for Kanye. Kanye sampled Chaka Khan's music and that artists, rappers, especially, sample music all the time. And sometimes you can be so familiar with the sample that you don't realize that that sample comes from an original. And so John is sampling Genesis. Okay, DJ John in the booth, okay, sampling Genesis. And he's saying in the beginning, and why is he using those words? Every person who would have read John's gospel in context would have gone, whoa, you're telling a new Genesis story. And what John is announcing to the world and to his readers is that the same God who spoke the world into existence in Genesis, the same God that hovered over the surface of the deep, the same God who brought order to chaos in Genesis, that God is now here. That the God who created this world is now here to recreate the world. The God who spoke the original creation into existence is here to bring about new creation. And so the book of John is a new creation Genesis, a new start, a power that is able to bring a new origin story into your life and into my life. That what Jesus is doing in his three years of public ministry is the same exact thing as what Yahweh was doing in the seven days of the original creation account. And so we'll get into this tomorrow. The number seven is going to be really, really, really important for. For John. Okay? So that's our context clue that Genesis is back. John is giving us a brand new Genesis. That's our context clue. We have to know that to help us really interpret what's going on in John's gospel. Cause things are not gonna be completely obvious, but things become way more clear when you go, ah, John is seeing Jesus through the lens of the book of Genesis. And John is looking at Genesis through the lens of the person of Jesus.
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Unknown Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So Genesis and John, or John is framing the person of Jesus and the scroll of Genesis, the book of Genesis, to almost interpret one another. John is going to use Genesis images and symbols to interpret the person of Jesus, and then he's going to use the person of Jesus to reinterpret the scroll or the book of Genesis. And it's brilliant. And to me, that's the key that really kind of unlocks the book, in my opinion. So that's our big context for. Here's our nerdy nugget. Okay? John is the only disciple to see Jesus crucified.
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Unknown Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So John has a special relationship with Jesus. And I think that when John writes about the love of God, I think he's the only disciple to actually see the love of God demonstrated on the cross. And so I think John and then one John and the Book of Revelation have a flavor to them that is Johannine in nature. Second thing that kind of makes John's gospel really, really unique is not only is he the only disciple to see Jesus crucified, but he's the only disciple or the. He's the only gospel writer out of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. He's the only one to write a gospel to combat heresy.
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Unknown Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So he's the last gospel writer to write. And John is an old man at this point when he finally pens the gospel according to John. And at this point, there's heresy that has seeped into the church. And the heresy that has seeped into the church is called Gnosticism. Now, Gnosticism is a system of beliefs. It's a gre. It's a Greek idea that really is founded on dualism that the spirit is good and the flesh is bad. Okay, the physical material world is evil, but the spiritual world is what's real, and the spiritual world is good. And so you are going to see over and over and over and over again, like John, chapter 1, verse 14, where John is going to specifically use the word sarx. Sarks. That's the word for flesh. And John is writing this knowing what Paul has to say about the flesh. And John is adamant the word became flesh. He could have used any word for became flesh. He could have. He didn't have to use the word sarks. He didn't have to use the word flesh. He could have said Jesus became a human. He could have used any language to describe the incarnation. He said specifically chooses the word sarks because he is proving a point that we as Christians do not believe in Greek dualism, we are not Gnostic. We believe that this material, physical, fleshly world is good. That when God made it, he said it's good. And Genesis chapter three does not make this stuff down here evil or wrong. And there's so much Gnosticism that's actually still in churches today. People who think that they're going to die and become angels or die and float off into space. There's an escapism that is at the root of Gnostic ideas. And for Jesus and for John, they want to ground what the spirit of God is doing in earth earthly existence. Here's what the Greeks believed. That your body is a prison that your soul is trapped in, and that death actually frees your spirit from the prison of your body so that your soul can finally be what it was designed to be. And there's a lot of preachers and pastors and Christians who actually just think the exact same thing. And we want to combat heresy because here's the reality. If Jesus did not have a physical body, then that means he could not become a ransom, a propitiation, an atoning sacrifice for your sins. Jesus needed to physically die and have a physically bodily resurrection. And we believe that he will be in a physical body forever. Okay, this idea that the physical realm is bad and that the spiritual realm is good, that is not Christian. That is Gnosticism. Okay, I could talk a lot about Gnosticism, and I do talk a lot about Gnosticism on our course on John. Okay, so go watch that course.
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Unknown Speaker
Bible nerds. I have an announcement. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos releases May of 2025 and pre orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I'd been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really, God's solution to chaos is never peaceful, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into, it's something that you intentionally step into. And that starts with aligning your life with God's order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID head to the link in the show notes to pre order or head thecrushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book.
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Dr. Manny Arango
Now back to the podcast. Let me give you a timeless truth. Gnosticism could almost be our timeless truth for the day. Because there's a lot of us who that is. We, we, we have Gnostic ideas and we don't even know that we have them. It's funny, my wife, after giving birth to my son, I remember we were like, my son was probably a month or two. My wife said, I just don't feel that close to God. Like, you know, my wife hadn't been to church. Like, we had our son in the middle of worldwide pandemic. And she, she was also just like at home taking care of our son. And I was like, you just did the most spiritual thing on the planet. You pushed a human out of your body. You, you gave birth to a human. How do you not feel close to God? But that's the dualistic mindset. In order to feel close to God, I need to be doing spiritual things. No, God says, I've endowed creation with my presence. That the most spiritual thing you can do is earthly stuff like this material physical existence is endowed with God's power and presence and glory and spirit. That his breath in these jars of clay is actually the thing that he, he wants to get his divine presence to be inside of this human, earthly dirt existence like that. Gnosticism is there. It's like it's been in the church since John penned this gospel and for 2000 years, like Gnosticism has just kind of like lived. And a lot of us don't even have the spidey senses to detect when an idea is not Christian, but very, very Gnostic. And so over the next couple of days, I'll be talking about Gnosticism a lot. Cause it's everywhere in John's gospel. Let's get to our timeless truth. Our timeless truth comes From John, Chapter 3. Jesus is interacting with a man by the name of Nicodemus, okay? And he says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. And I love this because Nicodemus is a wealthy, high status Pharisee who's a male. We know just from archeology that men, Jewish men in this time period would have been praying this prayer every day. Thank you Hashem, King of the universe, for not making me a woman. Thank you, Hashem. King of the universe, for not making me a gentile. Thank you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not making me a slave. So a Jewish man creates his identity around his maleness, around his religion, around being Jewish as opposed to gentile, and around his status or wealth. And none of those things are good identity markers. And so Jesus says, whoa, you, you, you weren't, you weren't, you were born into all that. You just got lucky. Like you, you hit the lottery in heaven and you were born a wealthy Jewish male. And if you're going to be born again, these things that give you status in this worldly system don't give you status in my kingdom. Are you willing to be born again? And that statement, I think sometimes we over spiritualize being born again, like, like we make it only about like salvation. But really Jesus is giving an invitation to die to the identity markers that you were born with in your first birth and to pick up new identity markers and say, yeah, like these things make me important in the world system based on the way that the world ranks people. But these things don't make me important in God's kingdom. When God sees me, he doesn't judge me based on my first birth, he judges me based on my rebirth. And I have to humbly accept this idea of being born again. And for a lot of us, we don't wanna be born again because of the way we were born the first time. For some people, that's good news, right? Of course I want to be born again. You know, like my story, right? My dad was on drugs, he was incarcerated, My mom was pregnant when she was 12. Like I was born into a broken family. So when I heard the gospel of being born again, I was like, sign me up. Because I know the family I was born into the first time is jacked. You know, I am a slave, I am a gentile, you know, but if you're born with status, it could be difficult to say, man, until I drop, like literally drop my name, I can't actually accept the name that God has for me. And so this is the invitation. Nicodemus, can you leave behind the things of this world and actually pick up a new identity as you enter into the kingdom? Can you be born again? And that is a challenge for you. And that is a challenge to me. That's our timeless truth for the day. I gave you a context clue, gave you a nerdy nugget, gave you a timeless truth. Hey guys, 67 days down, and I think that means we got less than 300 days to go. I'm super, super proud of you. I think according to my Math, I guess that's 298 days to go. But remember, I'm not a mathematician, just a theologian. Hey, I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 68 as we continue our trek through John. I'm so proud of you. Love you guys. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast.
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Unknown Speaker
You can find us online and learn.
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Dr. Manny Arango
More about the show at the Bible and on Instagram Hebible Department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.