This Week at Little Hills - John (March 29, 2026)

Jason looked to the Gospel of John to help us think about encountering Jesus as we begin Holy Week.

Watch This Week at Little Hills

Transcript

This transcript has been AI generated and may contain errors.

Hey everybody. I’m Jason. Welcome to this week at Little Hills. And today, I’m going to try to do the Gospel of John, to try to do it in one take. We’ll see what happens.

The gospel of John is our 4th gospel out of four. It was the last one written. I’m going to spare you some of the historical details in order to move more into the spiritual stuff. It was the last one written, which is why St. John doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining details of practices that the people would have already known. And because there were already basically 3 gospels in existence, it has a mystical character, it has a more symbolic character than the other 3 because in a sense, maybe he’s saying we can go beyond the obvious to the spiritual.

But then, at the same time, before we discuss where the chapters are going, you have this thing where he wants to reach you almost with an altar call, like if you’ve never trusted in Jesus, now’s the time, and John does this. They all do it. They all want us to know the life of Jesus and know the person of Jesus and believe in Jesus as God, but St. John really wants us to know that. It’s almost as if, and I think it’s fair to say the early church just went up to unbelievers and handed them John’s gospel. Like I could see that happening. So you have this mix between going beyond the obvious, for the symbolism, for the spiritual signs, and also this very direct appeal, like, now’s the time to believe in Jesus. If you haven’t, this is everything that you could possibly want.

So now I’ll move on to the details of how the chapters work out. Now, the 1st thing I want to do is divide the book in two. And I learned this outline way back in seminary, and I’m going to give it to you. It’s the most basic outline ever. The 1st half of the book, we’re going to call it the book of signs, and that leads us through chapter one through most of chapter 12, and then midway through chapter 12 of John’s gospel, we switch to the book of glory.

And so what we’re doing with the book of signs and why we call it that is that Jesus pretty rapidly starts doing miracles. And the 1st miracle is the wedding at Cana in chapter 2, where he turns the water into wine. And that starts the clock, so to speak, it starts the clock on the ministry of Jesus, the enemies of Jesus are ramping up. They are finding ways to make trouble for Jesus. They’re finding ways into his movement. They’re trying to weasel their way into the group of the apostles, the main disciples of Jesus. And you see that tension rising up as the gospel of John is progressing.

So the book of signs is the miracles that Jesus does to lead toward the book of glory. And the main glory of Jesus in the 2nd half of the book, of course, is the crucifixion, the resurrection, the historical term we use for all this together, all the work of Jesus together including the resurrection, is the Paschal mystery. He’s the lamb of God. He’s the lamb, and everything he does together is that Paschal mystery of his life, death, resurrection, ascension, sitting at the right hand of the father, et cetera, et cetera. And that’s why I’m gonna nominate Pastor Tim for the book of Hebrews to explain all that. That would be hilarious. Because it’s going to be a lot of work and who else should do it but him?

Anyways, so that 2nd half of the book leads toward the crucifixion, leads toward the cross, leads toward all the bad stuff for what appears to be the bad stuff until God, the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit get together and make obviously something beautiful out of it in the resurrection. So that’s your basic outline of the chapters.

Now, you’ll notice if you’re reading the other 3 gospels, and I think maybe Melanie led us through one of the other gospels, every other of the 3 gospels has a narrative where Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper. Every other one. Mark has one. Luke has one, Matthew has one. John does not have one. So what is he doing? Why doesn’t John have one? Well, many theories are that his chapter 6 where he talks about feeding on his flesh and drinking his blood replaces that institution narrative. And John knows that everyone would have if not read it, because that would have been early to be reading it, but a lot of people in the movement would have heard the words of those 3 gospels, they would have known the institution narrative. St. Paul’s letter, the 1st letter to the Corinthians, that would have been really early. So they know his chapter 11 where St. Paul tells us what Jesus told him when he instituted the Lord’s Supper.

So he might have been thinking, hey we don’t need one. Let’s think about it spiritually, which is what he’s inviting us to do however we interpret it, and it’s been variously interpreted by Christians throughout the centuries. We know that, and there’s debates all over the place. But the main focus is that Jesus is the person on whom we feed. When we do it physically in the supper and definitely when we do it spiritually when we do everything that we do as Christians in the church.

So let’s not miss the memo that Jesus wants us to focus on him. He tells them before he starts the end of the bread of life discourse where he talks about feeding on his flesh and drinking his blood. He says before that, he says, labor for the food that does not perish. And later on he’ll say, My words are spirit and life. So Jesus knows that whatever we do with the bread and the wine, whatever we think about the details of the bread and wine, we’re not eating normal human food when we do that. We are feeding on Christ who saved us. And he wants us to focus on him, even in the critical moments of what we do. The sacraments, they don’t pull us away from the life of Christ, they put us right in the middle of it.

So, and that’s the other thing is, we’re never going to get away from the cross, even as the celebration of the supper variously understood is a celebration of the resurrection. We’re never going to get away from that cross and we don’t want to. We don’t want to because the cross is everything that we have needed. To go to the cross is to receive Jesus in his fullness. He’s the suffering servant from the book of Isaiah. He’s the one that takes all of Israel’s journey onto himself. He’s the one that takes the abuse from the people, he’s the disrespected prophet, he’s all those things. He’s the one that’s not honored in his own hometown. But when he gets to the cross, and when that blood is shed, and then when it takes on that new meaning, because God the Father gives it that meaning. That’s the meaning of forgiveness, that’s the meaning of his love to us, saying that what we did to bring him to that cross is not the end. You remember that?

So because in the book of Romans for instance, you’re getting to the end of chapter 5, I’m going all over the Bible again, but you get to the end of Romans 5 and he says the wages of sin is death. So when we look at the wounds of Christ we should not only see, obviously we should see his love. We should think about his blood covering our sins and covering us and making us acceptable to the Father, all those things. But in human terms, what is that cross? It’s a man dying. And when he says the wages of sin is death, what he’s saying is that that violence that is displayed on Jesus is what sin has done to Jesus, if we had no grace, if we had no God making something good out of something bad. Then the only thing left for us would be death. That’s the truth. That’s what the wages of sin is death.

You get way more than wages. Remember, you get way more than wages with grace. If it’s just wages, why don’t we just go out and try real hard and that’ll be enough? But we know it’s not wages. We can’t earn anything from God. We never could. This is talking about friendship with God with the God of the universe. How are you gonna be friends with God in the 1st place? What are you even talking about? But when he gives us grace, that’s for forgiveness, but it’s also to raise us up beyond the merely human, to the spiritual. And then we are met, we become what we’re supposed to be. Because we weren’t just meant to live here and die here, and that’s the end. We have eternal souls.

You know, when he, in another gospel when Jesus introduces Gehenna, I’m thinking it was in the gospel of Matthew, that’s the place outside Jerusalem where the trash was burned. So the notion of hell is not a foreign notion. It’s there, but he uses that image of that trash dump in Gehenna to tell us what it’s like to be separated from God. It’s to be suffering, to be alone, to be separated from everything good. You’re just trash and you’re burning. That’s what judgment and wrath would be for us. You’re alone. You have nothing. You’re separated from the one who loves you.

And like another writer of one of the letters says, I’m confident of better things for you. Jesus is so confident of better things for us that he won’t stop. He won’t stop until we’ve received him. My brothers and sisters, don’t wait. Don’t wait. Let me say that. And then let me hit a couple of other high points in the chapters.

Don’t wait to receive him because he’s there. Anytime, any place. He loves you. He took on the worst so that you could have the best. That’s what it means. He calls himself the shepherd of the sheep, the great shepherd, the good shepherd in John chapter 10. He says that his own sheep will hear his voice and they’ll come to him and he says all that have come before me were hired hands and liars and fiends. Why does he say that? Is he saying stuff against the prophets? No, not the prophets, but the ones who would claim to sit in the seat of God and yet not speak the words of God. So he’s taken a shot at the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and bear in mind whatever merit there would have been in what they taught in so far it was true. They didn’t fully capture the truth of what the Old Testament said. They were out for their own interest political, religious, and otherwise. Jesus knew that. He knew.

So when he called them a brood of vipers. Why was he doing that? Was he saying that there’s no good in the Old Testament? Of course not. But he’s telling these guys who can’t even tell the people what it truly says that they’re just liars and false teachers and false guides and everything else. So that kind of explains his harshness and why he says that he’s the good shepherd and he’s the door of the sheep. He says that a little bit later in that chapter. Why does he call himself the door of the sheep? Because when you have a sheep pen, and there’s the door, there’s a gate. He says, I am the gate. He says that as well. Well, but whether you have a gate or a door, if you want to go into the pen and be near to the sheep, you gotta go through the door. Jesus is that door. That means you’re not gonna go in and find rest. You’re not going to find pasture like it says in Psalm one, unless you go through the door. That’s Jesus.

That’s why he says, let’s skip ahead to John 14, six. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the father except through me. Different translations, but it all means the same thing. If you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have anything. Yeah, and I gotta say that as kindly as I can, but it’s the truth. Jesus is the way to salvation, he is the life, he is eternal life. And he is the truth. If you follow Jesus. You don’t ever have to go searching for the truth anywhere else. Because he got it right there in him. I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Don’t let anyone try to tell you that Jesus never claimed to be God and Savior, because that’s exactly what he’s doing. That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s doing it right there in chapter 14. He’s doing it right there in chapter 10. He says everybody else before me was thieves and liars and hired hands. Who says that except God himself? Who could get away with saying that? That’s why I don’t listen to those people talking about Jesus as a good teacher and Jesus is one of many and all that stuff. Jesus said stuff. No wonder they were mad at him. Because if he’s wrong. If he’s wrong in the things that he says. Then, according to the law, according to the Jewish law and the word of the Old Testament, he would be a blasphemer.

But who better to explain the law of God than God himself? If he truly is the father’s one unique son. If he truly is the one to whom the father said, this is my son, in him, I am well pleased. Then he’s the one that we can trust in and we know that we’re doing the Father’s will because we’re doing what Jesus asked of us.

And then he goes to heaven, Jesus, and he lays down everything that he did for the Father, at the feet of the Father. And in that way, he submits to the father and he brings everybody that trusts in him with him. That’s why everything we do in the church is through Jesus. Because Jesus is that one who remains well pleasing to the Father. Think about it every time you pray. Every time you sing, every time you read the Bible. Think of the blood of Christ pouring down on you. Think of the blood of Christ pouring down on you and covering you.

It’s almost as if you can’t get away from Jesus. But then again, why would you want to? Jesus, the Lord? Jesus, the Savior, Jesus, the Lamb of God. Jesus, the one true sacrifice. Jesus, the bread of life. Jesus, the true prophet who cleanses the temple, Jesus, who tells us the truth of what the prophets meant and what they intended, and what the Father always intended for the people to do and to be. Why would you want to go anywhere else? Why would you want to trust anyone else? And don’t, not for your soul. Not for your soul, not for your life, not for everything that you are, trust in Jesus and him alone. That’s it. That’s the end.

We’ll leave this open if there’s questions this week. Let me know. Let Tim know. We’ll talk about it. Cool. This week at Little Hills. Have a good one, everybody.

Sermons and Devotionals