Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction to John

I want to spend a little time on the author of John because.

John is one of the primary authors in the New Testament who’s authenticity has been attacked.

He states clearly that Jesus is God and the Messiah.

Paul is the other one.

Gospel of John is written well after the other three gospels are written so John assumes that the readers of his gospel will already be aware of many of the basic facts surround the life of Christ....IE his birth, miracles and so forth.

John’s focus is on bringing the reader..(non believer) that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life.

stated purpose of the gospel of John

Jn 20:

what makes Gospel of John unique to the other gospels.

other gospels gave life, times, teachings of Jesus.

John’s gospel is there so that we will know that Jesus is God and that He is the Messiah and we can have life through Him.

Gospel of John is written well after the other three gospels are written so John assumes that the readers of his gospel will already be aware of many of the basic facts surround the life of Christ....IE his birth, miracles and so forth.

John’s focus is on bringing the reader..(non believer) that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life.

The gospel of John works together with the other

other gospels gave life, times, teachings of Jesus.

Author: nowhere in the Gospel of John does John refer to himself as John.

John’s gospel is there so that we will know that Jesus is God and that He is the Messiah and we can have life through Him.

I want to spend a little time on the author of John because.

John is one of the primary authors in the New Testament who’s authenticity has been attacked.

He states clearly that Jesus is God and the Messiah.

Paul is the other one.

Author: External source

Like the other three gospels, the gospel of John does not name its author.

But according to the testimony of the early church, the apostle John wrote it.

Irenaeus (c.

a.d.

130–200) was the first person to explicitly name John as author.

In his work Against Heresies, written in the last quarter of the second century, Irenaeus testified, “Afterwards [after the Synoptic Gospels were written], John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia” (3.1.1).

What makes his witness especially valuable is that Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 5.20), who was a disciple of the apostle John (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.3.4).

Thus there was a direct line from Irenaeus to John, with only one intervening link.

Theophilus

not directly identified as author in the scripture.

no opening dialog as Paul did in many of his letters.

References in John’s gospel

nowhere in the Gospel of John does John refer to himself as John.

the word we seems to imply a personal observation LN 24.14

Author: Internal source

he who has seen…so that you may believe

the author was a jew

the one Jesus loved leaned back …rf 1

Messiah

Gave one he loved His mother

religious training

Author makes statement about Himself rf 2

relationship between suffering and personal sin

Samaritans

Author was a Palestine Jew

Bethany beyond Jordan as apposed to Bethany close to Jerusalem , Jn 11:1,8

Author was an eye witness

author made observations only recorded in Gospel of John

Judas Iscariot father

Loaves of barley

Jesus Tunic was seamless

Author was an apostle

knew what the 12 were thinking and feeling ,,

Author was John

Disciple who Christ loved

Present at the last supper

Only disciples were at the last supper

narrow down even further ,

Peter—can’t be peter since they address each other Jn 21:7

Thomas—are named in the text

Nathanael—named in the text

James—can’t be James since he is martyred before the gospel of John is written

John

two unnamed disciples—they would have mentioned John by name if it had been one of them.

can’t be peter since they address each other in

James is put to death by the sword before Gospel of John is written

Date:

Purpose:

There is nothing specific in the gospel itself to indicate when it was written.

Dates given by conservative scholars range from before the fall of Jerusalem to the last decade of the first century.

(As noted above, a date in the second century is ruled out by the discovery of the papyrus fragments p52 and Egerton Papyrus 2.) Several considerations favor a date toward the end of that range (c.

a.d.

80–90).

The gospel of John was written long enough after Peter’s death (c.

a.d.

67–68) for the rumor that John would live to see the second coming to have developed (John 21:22–23).

That rumor would have had more plausibility when John was an old man.

John does not mention the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple (a.d.

70).

If his gospel were written a decade or more after that event, it may no longer have been an issue to his readers.

(The temple’s destruction in any case would have been less significant to Gentiles and Jews of the Diaspora than to Palestinian Jews.)

Finally, although not dependent on them, John was aware of the Synoptic Gospels.

The later date allows time for them to have been written and circulated among John’s readers.

The testimony of the church fathers further confirms that John was the last of the four gospels to be written (e.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1.1;

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.24, 6.14).

According to the uniform tradition of the early church, John wrote his gospel while living in Ephesus.

Jn 20:30

other gospels gave life, times, teachings of Jesus.

John’s gospel is there so that we will know that Jesus is God and that He is the Messiah and we can have life through Him.

John