JOHN039 - My Son Will Surpass Me, and I'm Good with That

John 1:16-18

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

My son is going to beat me at tennis soon, and I don't like it. Also, I really do like it. It's the natural way of things, but I don't want to rush it. The other day, he needed some encouragement. He's been in a little bit of a slump, tennis-wise. He's slicing his volleys. I don't. He's not quite committed to rotating all the way around to the continental grip when he gets up by the net. So he's kind of in that pancake grip. And so all of his volleys have slice on them, and they don't go very deep into the court, and then they kind of set up and just tee up for his opponents. And really, that's all he needs to fix. And he's going to take this huge leap forward. So he was discouraged the other night because he had a bad week at tennis. The season's just starting right now. And I went out to hit with him to see if we could get a few things straightened out and diagnose what was wrong. And there was a part of me that was like, you know what would be a really big encouragement here on the front end of the tennis season? Just lose to him. Give him that rite of passage win the first time he ever beats his dad for real when his dad's trying hard at sports. But I'm like, no, that's not how this happens. He has to overcome me. He has to surpass me. He has to look me in the eye and see the agony on my face of dang it, I lost and I lost for real. So I didn't give him the match. You know, I might have taken it a little easy to give some encouragement, some quarter, but you dads understand. He has to earn it, right? But also you dads understand it's going to be a sweet, sweet day when I walk under the court with my one and only son, having never lost to him, and then we're out there for a couple hours, and I lose to him, and then we come to the net to shake hands, and there's a new kind of eye contact, and I clap him on the back and I congratulate him for real. I look forward to that day. Because even though I like me, I want him to be better. I think it's easy to have that mentality when you're a parent and you're thinking about your kid. I think it can be harder to have that mentality when you're having one of these greatest of all time, goat debates about who is the greatest ever. In the last few days, we've been talking about Moses as the greatest ever in the mind of the Jewish portion at least of John's original audience. And yesterday we cheated ahead a little bit to go and look at how John demonstrates throughout his gospel that Jesus is not a threat to Moses. Rather, Moses always wanted Jesus to come along, and he always wanted Jesus to surpass him. Yeah, I'm sure Moses wanted to be great, but Moses was crystal clear on the truth that for him to be great was to point to the culmination of God's redemptive plan. And now John the evangelist is saying in his gospel the culmination of God's redemptive plan is here. Jesus is here. The one that Moses is pointing to, he is here. And so we kind of imagined yesterday John as sort of a grandfatherly Gandalf the wizard type, coming alongside this very sensitive and defensive Jewish portion of his audience and being like, hey, I'm not trying to rob you of Moses and the second commandment and the law. I'm trying to help you, trying to show you where it all points. And it all points to Jesus. But there's no ambiguity in John or the rest of the Bible as to what the pecking order is here. Jesus is better. Jesus is the completion of all of the story arcs and prophecy arcs put in place by Moses. Jesus is not a new Moses doing the same thing as Moses, but with an augmented plan because the old plan didn't work out. No, Jesus is other. And that comes through here, even in the language chosen by John the Evangelist at the end of the prologue. Listen very closely. I'm going to overannunciate John 1.17 to point out the difference between Moses and Jesus here. Here we go, John 1.17. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. I mean, I made that pretty obvious, but you got it, right? Like all the stuff of God that happened with the law and through Moses was given through Moses. God gave that. Moses was a conduit. Moses was a helper, a tool, even. I mean, I'm not trying to, you know, say, I mean, Moses was a dude, personality. He's like he's very valuable, he's made in the image of God, but he was a tool, an instrument in the hand of God to accomplish what God wanted to accomplish. But grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the bringer of those things. He is the deliverer of those things. And it's subtle, but even in that little verse and that little contrast right there, we see a hint or a nod to the deity of Christ that we've seen spelled out very overtly throughout the rest of the John prologue. Well, every day on this podcast is Bible Day, but some days are really Bible Day. And today is one of those days. Here's what I want to do. We're going to go zip around the New Testament, maybe even Old Testament, a little bit with our remaining minutes here. And I want to point out to you this recurring theme throughout the Bible that Jesus is better than Moses. Just straight up, Jesus surpassed him. The same way that I look forward to my son surpassing me at tennis, so Moses looked forward to Jesus surpassing him in greatness. So Jesus is better than Moses is the theme we're going to look at. And Moses is totally on board with this in the same way, maybe a bit more reluctantly in my case, I'm totally on board with my son passing me at tennis. In no particular order. Let's start with Hebrews three. Stalling, stalling, stalling, found it. Hebrews 3, starting in verse 1. Therefore, holy brothers who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest, whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house, and we are his house if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. Now that's in Hebrews. Who do you suppose Hebrews is written to? Well, probably a lot of the same people in the subsection of John's audience who are Jewish. This is one of the big books in the New Testament that is trying to be the connective tissue between old and new. It's trying to answer some of the same questions and the same even objections the Jewish members of John's audience would have had. And that is about as clear as you can possibly spell it out. Jesus surpasses Moses, and Moses is down with it. Now, if you keep reading through Hebrews, you go over to chapters eight and nine, there's another contrast between the covenant that was made with Moses, that being the old covenant, and the new covenant through Christ. And once again, the new covenant and the Jesus stuff is better. The old covenant, the people couldn't, I mean, the terms weren't quite sweet enough, even though it was very gracious and excellent on the part of God. The people couldn't keep up their end of the bargain. And that's why we have a new covenant, and the old covenant likes the new covenant. It points to the new covenant. All right, but following the breadcrumbs a little bit more on this topic here, let's go back to a verse we looked at yesterday over in John 1 45. This is when the disciples are starting to figure out what they're seeing in Jesus. I read it to you yesterday. I'm gonna read it to you again. Philip found Nathaniel and told him, We've found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And maybe yesterday you heard me read that and you were like, oh, that sounds like a reference to the Old Testament. I bet we're gonna go look that up now, but then just no. I don't know why we didn't. Maybe I forgot. Let's write that wrong right now. I think it's a nod. Back to really everything Moses said in the Old Testament was forward-looking. Moses was aware that the God was gonna do more redemptively and that there was one who was to come. Moses looked forward, but particularly in the book of Deuteronomy, which is the fifth book of the Old Testament, written by Moses, we've got a situation here where Moses is old and he is looking to the future. He is re-explaining the covenant to a new generation of young people who are going to carry, they're gonna carry the baton next in the big grand redemptive story of God. And as Moses is in the process of bringing them up to speed on all that stuff, he looks way forward for a moment and says the following in Deuteronomy 18, 15: The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him. For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of your assembly when you said, Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God, nor see his great fire anymore, we will die. And they were overwhelmed by the glory of God. The Lord said to me, What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. And then you remember the stuff a little later on in John that I read you yesterday, that was the Moses stuff about like, no, you need to listen to Jesus, or Moses will be the one who holds you to account because he was pointing to Jesus all along. I'm tempted to cut this short and just give you like just a little bit of Bible, but I I need to read you a lot of Bible and process it with you today in the episode we just did, and tomorrow. So we're gonna do the thing where we pause and we pick up right where we left off with more aggressive Bibling to get a sense of this whole Moses is excited that Jesus will surpass him thing. All right, it's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon, it's a good idea.