John, 1+2+3 John, & Revelation

I'm going home :) We reached the end of DBS and finished reading the whole Bible out loud! We ended this season with our speaker, Dallas Thom, telling us that the epistles are many ‘specific’ letters written to ‘specific’ people in a ‘specific’ place during a ‘specific’ time in history addressing ‘specific’ problems. There is a sort of investment that God has made. The idea of the return of Jesus (Parousia) is that He will come to see what we did with that investment. These are gifts or blessings such as if you can teach what did you with it? If you were born into money what did you do with that? Evangelism is not just words, it’s action, it's showing. Euangelion is the Greek root word for gospel meaning 'good news', but it's also the word for evangelism which means 'gospeling'. They go hand in hand and the point is to share the good news of Jesus. John’s gospel is written to a new generation of believers, one of Jews and Gentiles who were of one church. If you look at cultural customs around the time in the Bible, the Bible just so happened to be the most pro-women literature out there. Aramaic in that time was like English in today’s world. It was a lingua franca (trade language if you want to do business with the rest of the world).

After the Greco-Persian Wars were conquered by Alexander the Great, Hellinization was initiated (turning everything Greek). Hellenistic philosophy is still used today where we tend to place something's value on how humans interact with it. The idea is that 'we' are the measure of how the world functions. The American government was quite influenced by Rome when it was founded as we still have many similarities to ancient Rome in America today. Mark illustrates Jesus as a master of the four main pillars of Roman philosophy such as entertainment (storytelling), education (teacher), health (healer), and competition (winner of arguments). Orthopraxy refers to 'the right action' while orthodoxy is 'the right belief' (ortho meaning straight/correct). Most religions in the world today are orthopraxy (you don't necessarily have to believe the right things but you have to do the right things). Christianity is meant to be both. John tries to emphasize the physical signs that Jesus does to encourage the walk it out part in a society focused on right believing (right theology).

(Gen 4:1-16) Son of Man in a Jewish mind means son of Adam (Adam meaning man). The sons of Adam were Cain, Abel, and Seth. Abel was the first ever to receive injustice. When Jesus is giving a sermon right before some guys dig a hole in the roof to lower their friend to Jesus, Jesus is talking about forgiveness. So to heal the man Jesus says, “The son of man forgives you”. The Jews were expecting Abel to come back to bring justice, but Jesus is saying that the Son of Man will forgive. The one who received injustice will forgive (Luke 5:24). Ruth the Moabitess and Boaz the Hebrew/Canaanite both had come from sinful ancestry. Providing their story even more redemptive as Ruth and Naomi had lost everything yet decided to return to the Lord. Boaz redeems Ruth and they become the lineage of Jesus through their son Obed, the grandfather of David.

God created people with a rhythm for their lives (seasons/sabbaths). We need to start from a place of rest, if we don’t start from a place of rest then we’re doing it wrong. We are the seventh seven supposed to bring the rest/peace/Sabbath. We are the church/bride. Revelation is one giant chiasm. The literary structures of the Bible are so brilliantly placed that they couldn’t have possibly been put together without the help of God. In ancient literature, beasts with horns on their heads almost always represent kingdoms and their kings. The 666 represents the community of mankind apart from God. It’s not evil in and of itself. John gives the idea that if you’re not loving then what you have isn’t truth. Your motivation has to come out of love otherwise it's not true. Love is how you make the truth true. Without love, it’s a lie (1 Cor 13). Is your motivation out of love instead of fear? Perfect love drives out all fear.

The Bible isn’t about how we get to Heaven because that leads to the idea that it doesn’t matter what we do now it only matters what we do right before we die. The Bible is more about living right, here and now, and not what happens after. Trust that God has a plan for after, that all you are responsible for is living how He has called you to live now. If you read Revelation and are afraid of what’s to happen, you are reading it wrong. Revelation is about hope for those in persecution. We struggle to understand revelation because we aren’t under persecution. Apocalyptic literature is meant to bring hope to those in distress. 'Apocalypse' does not mean the end of the world. Apocalypse (Apokalupsis) is 'a revealing'. A good reminder is that this is a real book, from a real period in history, written to real people, in real places, dealing with real things. Ancient people saw justice as restoration and not about the bad guy getting what he deserves.

Prophecy in the Old Testament was about covenant faithfulness but we get this modern-day idea of prophecy based on oracles that can predict the future. We are not designed to read the Bible alone but together. The ‘age to come’ is ushered in but also coexists with ‘this age’, though at a later date, ‘this age’ will finally be done away with (This is what Jesus tends to hint towards)! We can only conquer the world not by dominion but by self-sacrificial love. Make loving others your main priority, not something such as making yourself healthy. Love others and let Jesus make you healthy. Hospitality is one of the most important characteristics of God. People from Sardis would castrate themselves in worship to a false Greek god but the Christians at that time would welcome them into a hospital and heal them. This is a true act of Christianity. We are meant to meet them where they are, bring them in, and help them. Stories are powerful especially when we can see God in the story. The past is how you tell the future. Do we become people of the eyes that only see the evils and horrors of the world or do we become people of the ears who hear Jesus and all His hope?