Episode 2: Intro: The Glorious Cross
We're diving back into John's gospel, and this time we're listening in to Jesus' final words to his disciples the night before he dies. Before we get there though, in this episode we consider the big themes that underpin all that follows: God's Glory and Christ's impending death.
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Give 12-17 a read. Underline or highlight what you see about the passover and glory in these chapters?
Are there particular things that have struck you as you've read through?
Ask the Lord to open your eyes to all that he's going to show you in these chapters.
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This episode is sponsored by 10ofthose.com.
10ofthose.com is a Christian book ministry that sells carefully selected resources that point to Jesus and are trustworthy and biblically faithful, they sell them at discounted prices to be accessible and affordable for everyone. They also host our Two Sisters bookstore at 10ofthose.com/twosisters where you can always find our top recommendations for each season.
So bookmark 10ofthose.com/twosisters and shop for you and others. Plus tell your friends about 10ofthose.com as the place to go for resources that point to Jesus at great prices!
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The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Sarah: You are listening to the Two Sisters in a Cup of Tea podcast, the Bible Study podcast for everyday life. We are here for a 20 minute burst of Bible chat over a cup of tea and an English style biscuit as we make our way through a Bible book, as we make our way through a Bible book over the course of the season and drive it to our hearts. And this season we're revisiting John's gospel as we get stuck into chapters 12 through 17 together. Whether you've been listening for a while or have just found us, we're so pleased you're here.
Felicity: This season, we're really grateful to be partnering with 10ofthose.com. As you know, we're passionate about scripture reading, and 10ofthose is too. They want to help equip you to get into the Bible with those around you by offering you a discount on some of our favourite Bibles. As you might imagine, we love a pleasing Bible and we both have a variety scattered around our homes. We use different translations, different styles, and we switch it up according to what we're doing. Tenofthose handpicks what they sell on their website and we've chosen some of our favourites from what they offer to recommend to you. Head to our bookstore on ten of those at tenofthose.com forward slash two sisters and you can get a 40% off any of the featured Bibles on the page. You'll need the code BIBLE40. So that's tenofthose.com/twosisters and the code is BIBLE40. This amazing offer is valid until the end of February.
Sarah: Welcome to the Two Sisters and a Cup of Tea podcast. My name is Sarah and I live in the UK and I'm here with my sister Felicity who lives in the USA and it's our joy and privilege to be back in your ears with a new season as we get stuck into the next chunk of John's Gospel together. It may be that you've listened to our other John seasons or it may be that you're just tuning in for the first time now. Either way you are so welcome here. Felicity, I've got some tasty Christmas tea in my cup today. What are you going for as we kick off this season? Yes! No, no, no, no, no! The box, the box is called Christmas tea and it's like, it really does smell of Christmas still, which is like lovely and also weird because we're kind of out of Christmas now, but it's like cinnamon-y and orange-y and you know, of mulled spices in a tea. Mmm.
Felicity: Christmas tea. I mean you're just labelling your tea Christmas tea. That's kind of elevating the tea a bit, right? Well that does actually does so. I imagine it'd one where I would really like the smell and maybe not the taste so.
Sarah: But you know, I'm actually enjoying it.
Felicity: Actually a very kind listener sent me some teas and I'm actually enjoying a blueberry one which I have to say was I know it was not what I thought I would be enjoying but I'm grateful actually for and because someone sent it to me I felt like I really should give it a go turns out it's better than I thought it would be
Sarah: So good. Felicity, it is our fifth birthday this month. The podcast celebrates turning five this month. Yay! There's so much we want to say about this, but we thought we might just kick off some of our of conversation with just a little reflection on what it is to turn five as a podcast. And the first being how we've grown as Bible teachers along the way. The nature of steeping ourselves in Bible study like this for the last five years has meant we've grown enormously in the way that we approach the Bible, in the way that we read the Bible, but also in our confidence to teach it. I wonder whether you can just speak into that a little bit for us.
Felicity: Yeah and I think something that we say to each other frequently along this five-year journey is well firstly we listen back to our first season and we just have that slight kind of like and frequently yeah I know frequently people say it's really good I'm starting at the beginning and we often want to say maybe start at the end because we've just we have got a lot better at I think articulating what we're seeing and understanding word. In many ways that is Bible teaching isn't it? To be able to take what we're reading and to be able to articulate it in a way that is going to help other people access God's Word and that has actually grown more and more to be our joy and it's been an interesting tension hasn't it because we are constantly encouraging you as our listeners to grab a friend, get the Bible open. It's not as complex as maybe we think it is. You can have confidence to do this. And the irony in that is that the more we've been doing this, the better we've got at it. And so if you've never done this before, we're probably just a few steps ahead in being able to do that. And we don't want that to kind of discourage you and to say, this is just, I can't believe I could never do this like the sisters do. But that is actually the fruit of continuing to do this. So it's not that we've sort of got some sort of silver bullet as to how we're able to get the Bible open and talk about it in these ways. But really, five years worth of regularly being in the Word together talking about it has really enabled that and we've grown in that. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Practice makes progress, doesn't it? That is our mantra in our home. that we have seen the fruit of that in our time. Five years pressing a record, but 20 years or so of opening the Bible with others. So we say that as a kind of for people listening in possibly for the first time, what we kind of keep on saying on the podcast is start where you are not where we are with what it looks like to approach opening the Bible with someone else or by yourself. Start where you are on your journey with the Lord and trust the Lord to be at work. But also, yeah, as you were saying, that kind of the reality is we are now teaching the Bible more in our local situations and further afield as well. And so we probably will come with more teaching in this than we did five years ago. And that's just the kind of natural progression of how we have grown as Bible readers and teachers in this. So I think it's just kind of helpful to say that. And we're just really grateful for how the Lord has grown us in this time, aren't we? We're just so, grateful.
Felicity: Yeah, I mean, it's really... So I think that we would say that again and again and again, we, that simply being in the Word, because it's not about really skills or any of those things, which are all helpful, but as God works through His Word by His Spirit. So we know that to be true. He's forming Christ in us in ways that He wasn't, as we were not in the Word as much. And now we're in the Word more frequently and therefore the Lord is at work. And I see that in Sarah and you see it in me and and the impact of that, not just in this conversation, but on our local context as well, I think is being, we just know the law to be at work through that. And so five years of just probably having the magnifying glass on it a bit and therefore seeing it. It's not that God wasn't working before then, we're just more aware. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah, no it's just that it's been more kind of yeah absolutely. Okay well we are getting into John chapters 12 through 17 in this season. It's a big few chapters Felicity!
Felicity: I know, I know as we've been approaching this we're like are we really gonna do this? Are we gonna have a conversation about these mighty chapters? It's huge isn't it? We've got, for those of you who are not aware of what's going on here, we have Jesus speaking with his disciples in this very intimate context and so these verses are an invitation to spend a few hours with Jesus' disciples listening to really his final teaching, his final words, overhearing him pray both for the disciples there and then, but also for us. I mean, it is profound in terms of where we're at in the Gospel account.
Sarah: Yeah, so this is called the Upper Room Discourse. That's the name given to this section in John's Gospel. We have grown in how we approach Bible study in John's Gospel specifically in the sense that we come to this part of John's Gospel to start at 12 verse 12 and we thought, why did we end the last season there? Most people end it at the end of chapter 12. Why didn't we listen to others? So just kind of to give a little glimpse into how we are continually in growing in this. I've been really struck by a couple of writers and how they've kind of come to this. A Puritan writer called Thomas Goodwin calls these chapters a window into Christ's heart. Calvin says John exhibits Christ's soul in these chapters. What we have is kind of it's profound words as you were saying because in 24 hours Jesus will be dead. That's the reality of where we are in this part of the gospel. The enormity of the task before us isn't there. We're not getting into specifics of chapter 12 today, we're just kind of going to give an overview but part of that overview is just saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, to what we have here. This section of John's Gospel has been laboured over by many scholars who've written many books on just these verses. I mean, yeah.
Felicity: Full stop, there has been much written and we are not seeking to add to anything that anyone else has written and on our website we're going to have a list of resources. There's a page with 10ofthose that's got loads of resources that we'll be pointing you to as we go along. But what we're seeking to do really through these conversations is to help you access these amazing verses. So we're praying and hoping that our conversations will be a springboard into you being able to dig deep into these verses. So just to confirm, we're not seeking to add to all those scholarly kind of things.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And also that we can't possibly do a full exposition of these verses. There's just too much here. So as ever, it's a starter of a conversation for you guys to go and take it off and chew it through with someone else. Let's get into some of the themes though, Felicity, that kind of make these chapters sing and tick. The story so far, shall I go for it? Shall I kind of set the scene of where we've got to up until chapter 12? Okay.
Felicity: Do take us, take us all the way.
Sarah: Okay. Well, in the first few chapters of John's Gospel, we've had this enormous introduction to how big a deal Jesus is, that he's the one who stepped into the world to reveal God to us and to reveal God's glory to us. He's come from the Father into the world. And we've had these kind of different responses to him. We've had the kind of come and see vibe from John the Baptist, from some of the disciples, from the Samaritan woman if you remember her, and we've also had the glimpses into the hardened hearts of the Pharisees haven't we? As we then move further on into the Gospel account we see some astonishing miracles that Jesus performs alongside astounding statements that he says he says he's the bread of life. He says he's the light of the world. He says he's the good shepherd, the gate, the resurrection and the life. There's so many rich sayings that he brings alongside the miracles. And again, increasingly we're seeing the kind of contrast between those who respond in faith and those who are rejecting him outright. So by the time we get to chapter 12, we've just had raising of Lazarus from the dead. This astounding miracle and we've got this momentum building. Passover is near, the second half of the gospel is getting underway, showing that the Jesus who had come from the Father is now going back to the Father via the cross. So that's kind of where we've got to. But Felicity, take us back to the word Passover because that's a really key phrase for us in this season.
Felicity: Hmm. Well, and throughout the John's account, we've had the rhythms of the Jewish calendar just kind of popping up at opportune moments throughout. And so that we found as these things have been mentioned, that that has informed our understanding of what's going on, of what is being signified in all these different moments along. And as we hit this moment, actually chapter 13, verse one, it just really clearly, John states it, it was just before the Passover festival. And that statement is loaded with meaning because as he says Passover, for anyone who had any understanding of the salvation story of what God has been doing, it takes us all the way back to Exodus. And that time when Israel was enslaved in Egypt under Pharaoh, that famous story, and the means by which God released his people through the leadership of Moses was through the Passover lamb, the lamb who was slain and the blood painted over the door frames in order that death might pass over Israel, taking the firstborn of the Egyptians and anyone else who did not have the blood of the lamb over their doorway. And in that, all the way through history, ever since that moment, God's people have been called to remember this rescue, this exodus from under slavery, from out from under death towards life, towards God's people being taken by God's, and to live under God's rule in God's land. All those promises that we've come across earlier on in the Bible, in Genesis, all the way through. And so when he says, over here, the full kind of weight of that rescue through God's work, through that lamb and his blood is just being brought to bear upon what Jesus is about to do.
Sarah: Really really helpful and what we're going to see through these chapters is that the cross is front and centre so as Jesus fulfills everything about the Passover the cross really shapes everything that he says we cannot get away from it it's kind of front and centre because it's there and particularly it's there in relation to the word glory we have glory scattered all the way through these chapters glorify glorified glory glory glory. I think one of the really surprising things about the weight of glory in these chapters is that it's always attached to the cross. It's always bound to the impending death and resurrection of Christ. Back as you were saying, talking about Exodus, back in Exodus the glory that we see is the glory of the Lord coming to dwell with his people, the tabernacle, the smoke, the thunder, the cloud, the fire, the kind of ostensible, of really big, big, big glorious moments. And we've got the son of man here mentioned, it's the glory should be grandeur and majesty and all the things. And I think increasingly as we go through these chapters we're going to see that actually what Jesus means to be glory, what the father means to be glory, is bound up in the cross and that is is going to feel increasingly shocking and surprising as we go through.
Felicity: Yeah, it's so big, it's so big. I mean, as you're prepping to be in these verses with us, it would be helpful just to trace through that word, wouldn't it? Just spot, where, glory, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, so in the midst of this as well, and what we have here is this idea of this group of people, the disciples, the apostles, and an apostle is someone who has witnessed Christ, so has been with him and seen what has been happening through this whole account. These disciples who are in the upper room with him and they are given Christ's final words. They are given this weight of passing on what Jesus is saying and we would call that the apostolic word. So through these verses that we're going to be reading through in throughout these chapters we've got the word that is given to the apostles, that it doesn't stop with the apostles, the apostles are then tasked with giving this word on to the world. I mean, this is the gospel kind of proclamation that is about to begin, isn't it, as the apostles go with what Jesus has told them. And there's a sufficiency to that, and there's a kind of perfection to that, this is exactly what we need, is the words that have been given to these people right here, right now.
Sarah: Yeah, which I think is really exciting, isn't it? As we've been affirmed in that, as we've kind of sat in that, I'm really excited about getting to those chapters and delving into that because actually the heart of the Christian faith is bound up in it. And I think that's something that's really struck us and we're looking forward to kind of exploring more as we go through the fact that we do have the heart of the Christian faith laid out for us in these chapters, knowing God as Father and that's brought about through the cross and the resurrection in no other way. It's through Christ heading to the cross and him rising again. And it's imparted to us in this apostolic word that we now have. We have the heartbeat of the Christian faith. We have everything that we need. And so as we kind of sit with that and are excited for that, yes, the enormity of the task is huge here, but the enormity of the privilege before us is so precious isn't it, it's so wonderful. This is holy ground that we're walking on as we enter into this room with the disciples and hear what Jesus has to say to them.
Felicity: It's just wonderful. It's just wonderful. We would highly, highly encourage, come and join us, get into these verses with us. And as we're always encouraging, why not grab a friend to come along with you, chew on these verses together. We have benefited already just through talking before we press record. Our hearts are more inclined towards Jesus as we've been chatting through these verses. So there are some massive themes. We're gonna be delving into these as we get into these chapters, our heads are gonna be spinning at times, but as you get into it, as you chat through it with someone else, as you kind of dig into these big topics, well, it's gonna be all the more rewarding. So don't be fearful in that, be excited, I reckon.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah it's coming with a posture of humility isn't it? Like we need the Lord to help us but also excitement of all that he's going to reveal to us in this. Felicity would you pray for that posture as we head into this season?
Felicity: Yeah. Heavenly Father, we praise you so much for your word, your precious word. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for the cross for glory that is shaped like this. That is exactly what we need. And Father, we pray that as we get into these verses, would you give us hearts that sit with humility before you? Please Lord, would you do our work in us and through us? Would we be thrilled by Jesus as we're in John's gospel? Pray that we would love to know you better as a result and we pray this in your name. Amen.
Sarah: Amen. Well, I'm really, really excited. As we mentioned before, it's our birthday this month. We've got some lovely giveaways going on. But we wonder whether you've got five minutes to fill in our birthday survey for us as well. Five years in, we want to understand who's listening and how we can best serve you. Everyone who completes the survey will be given a voucher to spend at 10ofthose and will also be entered into a draw to win a £40 or $40 voucher too. So click the link in the show notes or head to twosistersandacupoftea.com/birthday. We really do appreciate you taking a few minutes to serve us in this way. Thank you. And we'll look forward to seeing you next Friday as we get going in John chapter 12 together.
Felicity: See you then, Bye Bye
This episode is sponsored by 10ofThose.com
Two Sisters Listener: Hi, I'm Sarah from Australia. I love listening to the two sisters as they chew over the Bible. What's encouraging for me is the way that they help us not just have knowledge of God's Word in our heads, but having it sitting in our hearts as well. Letting the Bible
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