Two Year Gospel Study Week 90

The Gospel of John Week 12 Scripture: John 7:53 - 8:58. Pastor begins today's class with the story found in John 7:53-8:11, which is a controversial piece of the Bible because not all manuscripts have these verses. Pastor shares that whether originally there or whether they were added later, there's much to learn from these verses about who Jesus is. As this text opens we see that the Jewish religious leaders continue to struggle with unbelief in who Jesus is and work to discredit Him using religious traps. Their desire is to come up with reasons to show Jesus needs to be punished - put to death - so they continue working at setting Him up hoping for a major blunder that they can accuse Him of. But Jesus is too brilliant! This is a story with some wonderful truths about Jesus. We see the following behaviors of Jesus:     ⁃    Total Comprehension of all that is going on     ⁃    He shares a Full Disclosure     ⁃    He has Holy Compassion for the woman that is at the center of this story     ⁃    Gives True Forgiveness     ⁃    Offers a New Beginning As we continue at verse 12 of chapter 8 we read the story of the "dispute over Jesus' testimony." He says, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."   Pastor shares that when Jesus says that He's the Light of the World, He is in the Temple Courts in Jerusalem for the festival, the Feast of Tabernacles. Tabernacles is the most joyous of the major Jewish festivals. During this festival four extremely large golden menorahs were set up in the Temple court. Each was 75 feet high with a huge golden bowl. Each of the four bowls for the four stands was filled with oil and during the festival the menorahs were lit every evening at sundown burning through to midnight. From rabbinic writings we read how these bowls of lights could be seen from all over the city and people sang and danced while they were lit. This is then that Jesus cries out, "I am the Light of the World!"  Jesus is claiming to be Deity! But the religious leaders respond with a challenge to His testimony and Jesus responds with several truths and is very direct with them. Then He goes on to say, "I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come."  To the religious leaders Jesus goes on to say they do not know Him because they do not know God. And the dispute over who He is continues. Many people in the courts listening, believed, but the religious leaders continued in disbelief and their anger toward Jesus continued to escalate. In chapter 8 verses 31-47 we read the dispute over whose children Jesus' opponents are. Are they God the Father's or are they the devil's? Jesus confronts them with a description of the devil and that the devil is the father of lies. Jesus tells the religious leaders that they belong to the devil because they cannot see the truth of what He continues to tell them about who He is. In verses 48-58 the conversation continues with Jesus going on to make several more claims of who He is. Jesus closes with, "Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!"   Again Jesus claims deity so they become so angry they pick up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself and slipped away from the temple grounds. Next week we will read of Jesus healing a blind man. We will study the story of this physical healing but also explore spiritual blindness and how this story has much to teach us still today. Our website – https://www.awakeusnow.com Watch the video from our website! https://www.awakeusnow.com/2-year-study-of-the-gospels-upper Watch the video from our YouTube Channel!! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTaaqrC3dMOzMkhPyiNWwlJRpV6Bwpu01     ⁃    The Gospel of John study is part five of five of our Two Year Study of the Gospels.      ⁃    The Gospel of John may be one of the most powerful books ever written. Many people have come to faith after reading only this book of the Bible.  Scholarly and archeological discoveries in recent decades give us new insight on details in the Gospel of John. We can now understand it as the most Jewish rather than the most "Gentile/Greek" of the Gospels, and when we do that we see many things that we missed before. Our 2 year study of the gospels is great for large group, small group or home group study and can be started at any time!