JOHN079 - Today It Is Friday

John 1:35-42

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

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Between John 142 and John 143, we get a great big gigantic anyways, because a story that feels like it should have a lot more to it just ends at the end of verse 42 of John 1, and then we're on to the next day, and a new story starts very abruptly in John 143. And to help us feel that vibe, I thought I would just start very abruptly today. No likewise nonsense, no little stories about my childhood. Just right into it. This is what we've been getting in John. It's John 1 is a week. Like once we get past the prologue, the big, great, glorious 10 billion foot view prologue. It looks like we're just getting a week's worth of activities here that describe Jesus coming onto the scene. So we've been saying, I don't know, I just arbitrarily picked a first day to start on. And we decided that day one is Tuesday. And that's the day that John was out testifying and that people asked him questions. Maybe that was a conversation that took multiple days, but it took at least one day. So we're calling that Tuesday. Then in John 1.29, we got Wednesday. It says the next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him, and he said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Behold, Wednesday. Then in verse 35 of John 1, we get Thursday. The next day, John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, Look, the Lamb of God. And when the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. And then it looks like the rest of that day they spend with Jesus. I think we're still on the same day here, and they're very moved by what they encounter. They're moved by the testimony of John. They're moved by the stuff that Jesus says to them. And these first two disciples, one who is named Andrew, and one who is not, maybe John the Evangelist, they are like, dang, this is the Messiah. This is it. And so Andrew makes his celebratory speed dial call to his brother, Simon, and he brings Simon to Jesus. And then what we looked at yesterday was ready rather than a lot of like formalities and getting to know you kind of stuff. Jesus looked right at Simon and said, You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, which, when translated, is Peter. And you would think that at this point in the story, there's a story beat here. We should hear what Peter had to say about that. He's a man who we will discover has a lot of things to say. You would kind of expect some kind of exchange here where Peter is like, Oh wow, that's it's nice to meet you. That's that's really nice. I was kind of hoping I could still be called Simon, though. Peter! Gather everyone for dinner. But it just it like there's not even an argument, there's not a debate. That's just it. Now your name is Peter. And then we just go to the next day. Okay. Okay. Uh cool. We're just rolling with that. His name is Peter now. It's been Simon your whole life. So everybody knows you. But you met this guy ten seconds ago, and he said, You're gonna be called by this other name, and now we're just we're doing that. Okay, we just accept it, we move forward in the narrative. So then we get this big anyways, verse 43. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. So let's keep our bearings here with this week that we're putting together. Because John, there's some reason that he's doing this. I'm sure we'll figure it out at some point, but he keeps telling us it was the next day. So we're pretending that day one with John the Baptist out there, that was Tuesday. Then behold the Lamb of God takes him in the sins of the world, that was Wednesday. Then this is the next day. Uh the first disciples is Thursday, and then now this new one, now we're into Friday. So yesterday was Thursday. Wait, Thursday. Today it is Friday. So then tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards. Okay, yes, I'm fully oriented here. And for whatever reason, on Friday, Jesus decides to leave for Galilee. And for reasons we'll discuss in a few episodes here, I gotta think that Jesus is getting up incredibly early here the next day to get going to Galilee because Galilee is quite a ways away. I'll just give you a little peek ahead. I think the reason that Jesus decided to leave for Galilee is because he had an invitation to a wedding, and his mom was going to be at the wedding, and he wanted to go to the wedding for reasons that I think will become evident when we get into chapter two and we get to this wedding. But the wedding ain't close. By my calculations, if you walk on a straight line from Bethany beyond the Jordan, you know, where we are guessing it's at, to where this wedding was located back up north in Galilee, you're probably looking at 60-ish miles. Then, you know, so they are they're gonna go hard to make this trip all the way up to the wedding. So it's it's interesting just to see here that Jesus of Nazareth, the the Lord of all creation, the master of time and everything that has been made, is he kind of dealing with a schedule crunch here as part of the plan that he's known since time immemorial, he's going to take on flesh and tabernacle with you know among people, and now all of a sudden he has to walk. Just straight up take his buddies, they're gonna be five of them who make this trip, and walk inconveniently, quickly, over a great distance, trying to keep a schedule to get up to Cana, where this wedding is gonna happen in chapter two. Uh it's just kind of interesting. So, in our rendering of the week, it is very, very early on Friday morning. Jesus gets up, he's gonna go to Galilee, and then the next thing it says here in verse 43, this is all so abrupt, by the way, just everything. Uh you are Simon, son of John, you'll be called Cephas. Okay. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Whoa, okay. Finding Philip, he said to him, Follow me. Whoa! Okay, well, let's see what Philip says. Nothing, absolutely nothing. We get no report back about how Philip felt about that calling. He just goes. It's really interesting to me. There's a pattern developing here where Jesus says things, it's authoritative, and then people are like, okay, John is crafting this such that you don't even really need to hear their answers. Their answers are obviously whatever you say, Jesus. Cool. So finding Philip, he said to him, Follow me. Now, Philip has come up. You know, he sounds like a very familiar character the way we're just talking about him with all this familiarity. He comes up earlier in the book of John, nowhere. There's just some guy now, and his name is Philip. And that's what we know about him. I guess he's one of Jesus' core disciples now. And he really is. And when you think of the core disciples, you think of James and John and Peter. They always clump together at the front end of the list. Andrew does too, and that's kind of interesting to me because you don't think of as many instances or little anecdotes that involve Andrew. I mean, maybe his coolest moment is right here, and then he's the one who brings Peter to Jesus for the first time. But those guys are listed first, and then usually in the disciple lists, Philip is he comes in fifth. He's the next guy up. So now, you know, we don't have 12 disciples, but we've got a band that includes Jesus, Andrew, Peter, John. Now we've got Philip, and then, well, I said there are five along with Jesus. The next one is Nathaniel, and he's going to come up in the next line. So here's what we learn about Philip. It ain't much. Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Beth Seda. Do I have time to talk about where Beth Seda is today? Yeah, but that might be all we get to. Yeah, let's just go with that. Uh, Beth Seda is okay, picture the Sea of Galilee, right? I mean, Israel is so easy to picture because it's just kind of this vertical slice that is big at the top and a little bit fatter at the bottom. So it's shaped like New Hampshire, right? Vermont and New Hampshire are the two states that line up right next to each other, and one's skinny at the bottom and fat at the top, and one's skinny at the top and fat at the bottom. And you know how I remember which is which? I thought of this myself. I'm really proud of it. Vermont looks like a V. So you can always remember the shape of those two states. Vermont, fat at the top, skinny at the bottom. New Hampshire is the opposite. Israel is shaped like New Hampshire. So just picture that kind of shape, and then just picture one circle close to the top, and then a line going out the bottom of that pretty round circle to a long vertical oval. The circle at the top is the Sea of Galilee, the line is the Jordan River, the long vertical oval is the Dead Sea down south. Jerusalem is west of the Dead Sea. There you go. We're kind of oriented. So Jesus is going from the long, the top of the long oval up the line and west of the circle at the top, which is the Sea of Galilee. That circle is round enough that we can think of it like a clock. And I have a map here in front of me that my buddy, my good friend, Dr. John Monson, made this map. He and his dad. And I tell you what, John's maps are the best. I legitimately, I think these are my favorite, the most impressive Bible maps I've ever seen. It's a whole curriculum. It's really cool. It's just beautiful. What is it called? Biblical backgrounds. I don't get anything for that. I'm just trying to make your life better. This is a great resource. And they do like their biblical geography stuff is like Sunday school, church curriculum for people who are sophisticated and really want to get it. It's gorgeous. Biblicalbackgroundsprobity.com, if you want to go and look up their stuff. It's great. At any rate, I'm looking at their beautiful map of Israel, of the Holy Land right now. And I'm looking at the Sea of Galilee. It's kind of round, like a clock, right? And so at the six o'clock is kind of where the Jordan River comes in. It comes in maybe a little closer to seven o'clock. And then as you go up north, you've got a little inlet that comes down into the top of the Sea of Galilee at like 12:30, almost one o'clock. And the historically it's believed that the little fishing community of Bethseda, home of Peter and Andrew and Philip, is right there on that little feeder stream, just a little bit inland from the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And I would put that at about one o'clock. Now, I have read recently that there's a competing theory that has come up in the last 20 or 30 years that puts Bethsaida like somewhere totally different, like maybe on the south side of the Sea of Galilee. I'm not sure. I don't know. I haven't looked into it much. I mean, professionals are excavating a site there. They know way better than I do. My great confidence that Beth Seda is where I just told you it is, stems from me seeing it on maps a gajillion times, and it stems from me going there once and looking at the limited excavations there with my eyes and touching it with my hands. But I gotta admit, I don't know that that was Beth Seda just because I went there and there were some signs or something. But traditionally, what I just told you is the historic little tiny fishing village. I think the name of it even means like village of fishermen or village of hunters or something like that. Historically, that that's where it's it's always been held that it is. So that's interesting trivia, but also it tells us something because if three of these first four initial disciples are from up there, that means they were willing to trek quite a ways to go and get baptized and be temporary disciples of John the Baptist or just people who kind of hung around in the orbit. I don't know that Simon was necessarily a disciple of John the Baptist, but he was there, he was curious. And now none of them are disciples of John the Baptist. Now they're all disciples of Jesus. Quite literally, they are following him because they met Jesus on Thursday, made up Thursday, and on Friday morning, he's like, and now we're going to Galilee. And as best as I can tell, everybody was like, Yep, great. Yeah, well, like I was saying at the beginning, this is kind of an anyways passage. Just one thing happens, and then we don't get really any reaction shot, and then the next thing happens, and then obviously the next thing happens, and we're just one day into the next day, and everything's perfectly logical and moving forward. And I think there is definitely some rhyme or reason to what we're seeing here, and I think that is gonna come into focus in just a few verses. All right. Well, I think we got some work done. That was fun. More tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.