Lenski Resources - The Gospel of John - From the Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry

 

Preaching on John by R C H Lenski

Richard C. H. Lenski

September 2023  Lutheran Library Publications

PDF Buy LL a Coffee

“Preaching on John is a series of exegetical-homiletical text studies in which the person of John the Evangelist and some of his choice teachings are treated. After submitting each text to a thorough and satisfying exposition in which applications to present-day life are constantly made, the author presents some sermon outlines and offers homiletic hints.”

“There is an abundance of helpful material here for a series of sermons on the disciple whom Jesus loved.” — From the back cover

Level of Difficulty: Intermediate: Some subject matter knowledge helpful.

Book Contents

• Titlepage
• A word of introduction
• Contents
• The First Contact. John 1:35-42
• A Fisher of Men. Mark 1:14-20
• The Great Ambition. Matt. 20:20-23
• “Whom Jesus Loved.” John 13:21-26
• A Personal Trust. John 19:25-27
• God is Love. 1 John 4:7-11
• John’s Vision of Christ in Glory. Rev. 1:9-20
• The Thousand Years. Rev. 20:1-6

Publication Information

• Lutheran Library edition first published: 2023
• Copyright: CC BY 4.0

Lutheran Theology Gospels Sermons

Richard C. H. Lenski

(1864-1936)

PREVIOUS

The Story of Our Hymns by Ernest Edwin Ryden

We Long for Rain and Then Take It for Granted

 

 Photo by Tom Fisher

We had two days where it rained a bit, and that was appreciated. Before that, when Charli Sue ran or dug in the backyard, clouds of dust billowed from the clay soil.

But now we have an evening of severe thunderstorms coming up. Everything is green, rain barrels are overflowing, and few people feel a craving for more rain.

 Nine Clethra shrubs are growing and blooming, the smallest only knee-high.

God's Creation lays out a map for us, what we should expect in the long run. Jesus said, "The sun rises on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just (believers) and on the unjust (non-believers.

KJV Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

One readers likes to ask if my rain barrels are emptied for the next rain - without being mosquito maternity wards. Lacking rain, the barrels and the soil dry up, and sprinkling is only a little bit effective. Watering shriveled plants is discouraging, especially when we look at the current results.

Is this an herb brought over to America for its many benefits or "just a weed" filling the coffers of Scotts Lawn and Garden?

Be patient. This is all about congregations. The garden gets very discouraging at the end of summer, when few people buy gardening equipment and plants and tenacious weeds find many places to grow and thrive.

Spring brings a new look, especially when snow melt and sunlight prompt a revelation. The half-dead, feeble, dying plants show themselves as eager, growing, budding - elbowing and overshadowing the weeds. The roots work all winter and the bulbs popping up in the early spring add to the color and charm.

Discouraged gardeners mutter about all their problems. They openly suggest replacing the gardens with green-tinted concrete. That is the problem. Dis-couraged means lacking courage and faith. If the whole world responded with such pessimism, we would be eating frozen food made from algae. Mmmmm-yuk.

Joe Pye Weed is medicinal, attracts butterflies and bees. It improves the soil's nutrition and water storage.

God's Creation is full of surprises. Roots provide 75% of the organic matter added to the soil, much appreciated by the earthworms and an army of soil creatures, including moles, ants, beetles, larvae. Deep roots provide channels for rain and underground storage. Seven foot Joe Pye Weed is the trust fund for water and nutrition, farming the water supply and organic matter, giving and taking. Shrubs like Clethra (Cinnabon or Sweet Spice) need water and send roots down for aeration and storage, rewarding the soil creatures with mulch and leaf litter.

The congregational parallel is impossible to miss. There are two major church themes - essential and yet almost entirely neglected by Fuller dolts, synod officials, and rationalists: 

1. The efficacy of the Word and 
2. Faith in Jesus Christ.

Word of God - Effective

The Word of God is just as effective as the rain and snow - it never returns void, it accomplishes God's will, and it prospers God's will.

The Word of God is active and energetic in all its forms, because the Holy Spirit never works apart from it. The Word never lacks the Spirit, and the Spirit is never divided from the Word.

That means a church should emphasize the Scriptures in their best form (King James Version) and trust in their power. 

Faith in Jesus Christ, The Son of God, Savior

Pursuing the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in John's Gospel, I was struck by the practical advice given but clearly ignored by the soi-disant Lutherans. The work of the Holy Spirit is to teach sin - "because they do not believe in Me."

1. There are your Fuller DMins (pronounced Demons).
2. There are your phony success stories.
3. There are your millions of dollars wasted on carnival style snake-oil salesmen.
4. There are your dumb and lazy clergy who labor in the carnivals and bars, neglecting the vineyards.

Guess what? The Evil Four Bibles plus Beck deny these two elements - efficacy and faith in Jesus Christ. They have erased and distorted the eloquent and simple divine Word in favor of their own philosophies, dogmatics (yay the adulterous Barth and Tillich), and deism (no Trinity).

Faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begins when the Gospel Word is planted in our hearts. The Spirit dwells in us and keeps us within the flock, listening to faithful shepherds and following them to the green pastures of the Faith and the quiet waters of forgiveness through faith in Him.

Gardens are peaceful and beautiful in whatever form they take.

 Photo by Tom Fisher

The Gospel of John - Reflects the Church of Whats-Happening-Now

 

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Undecided -

I have concluded that the Gospel of John perfectly reflects the Church of Whats-Happening-Now.

Everyone knows the basics of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but John is entirely different. 

1. The Fourth Gospel assumes knowledge of the first three.
2. The Fourth Gospel has the simplest language and sentence construction, making it perfect for anyone learning a language or just getting started in language studies.
3. Most important, the Fourth Gospel is rather short on background - facts we have already learned from Matthew-Mark-Luke - but John is filled and overflowing with teaching (doctrine), often directly from Jesus Christ: Creation, the Trinity, the Father-Son relationship, pre-existence of the Son, the Virgin Birth, Mary's position, miraculous healing, miracles of nature, forgiveness through faith, salvation, Final Judgment, the Atonement, and Resurrection.
4. We can only conclude that faith in Jesus Christ is the prime lesson of this Gospel - confessing this truth freely, without mental reservation, or purpose of evasion. Lutheran officials, clergy, and professors practice mental reservation - just like Catholic religious - pretending to agree while sticking to their corrupt definitions.

This puts the individual in a unique position. He is either 100% for the message of John's Gospel, or 100% against it. That explains why the Fourth Gospel has been put on the bottom shelf and ignored, because every passage torments and challenges the pretenders, the rulers of the Church of Whats-Happening-Now. 

The pretenders are the clownish Pharisees (John 9) trying to get rid of the Healer and anyone who believes in Him. The ruling pretenders are the Jewish leaders charging Jesus with the crime of calling Himself the Son of God. They did so for good reason - Jesus identified Himself with the I AM of the Burning Bush, Exodus 3, so He could say - emphasizing Justification by Faith - "Before Abraham was, I AM."

We can hear today's murderous Pharisees saying, "We have Wisconsin for our Mother!" or "We have Missouri for our Mother!" The murderous Pharisees of the Lutheran tribe do not care that their frozen food hero broke up two marriages and mocked his wife in Forbes with his divorce decree - so she ended her life. No regrets - they mined millions from that David-like sin and praised him into heaven. His second wife returned to Catholicism.

In contrast to these murderous Pharisees, who oppose faith but welcome everything else, the Fourth Gospel quotes Jesus teaching the great I AM sermons:

I AM the Bread of Life.

I AM the Light of the world.

I AM the Door.

I AM the Good Shepherd.

I AM the Resurrection and the life.

I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I AM the True Vine.

Blindness and Light - The Fourth Gospel Survives the Biblical "Scholars"

I began Greek by mistake. Freshmen at Augustana College were not allowed to take the Greek class, lest it strain their mental capacities so early in the program. But I signed up and began taking the class from an Augustana Synod pastor, Harry Johnson, buying the textbook we use for Bethany's Greek classes - Paine.

That put me on an early course of facing false and dubious claims about the Scriptures and seeing the claims refuted. No one said, "Read Lenski," perhaps because the LCA and WELS agreed about Lenski (against) and UOJ (for!) even then.

 Paine

False claims about the Gospel of John:

1. The Gospel was written very late, 300 AD or later, because of obvious influences from Hellenistic philosophy;
2. It is not very reliable;
3. John does not agree with Matthew-Mark-Luke;
4. We have to rely on the Gospel of Mark for the rawest version of the life of Jesus;
5. John does not teach the Virgin Birth;
6. Tischendorf was a great scholar because he discovered Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, the earliest New Testament manuscripts.

Very Late?

• The earliest scrap of NT manuscript is in the Rylands Library, dated at around 100 AD, making it impossible to date John several centuries later.
• The style of Jesus' sermons is Hebraic, as if thinking in Hebrew while writing in Greek.
• The poetic style of Jesus' sermons makes them appear genuine, because that is the OT style and is easily remembered. In addition. some have translated the Greek into Aramaic.
• The geography of John is accurate, difficult to manage at a distance. If someone asks about the Round House in Watertown, he has been there.

Not Reliable?
This claim comes from the evolutionary philosophy of the 19th century. An early Gospel supposedly would not emphasize the divinity of Christ, "because we know Jesus did not consider Himself to be the Messiah or the Son of God. Those words were placed on the lips of Jesus."
Call it special pleading, circular reasoning, or begging the question - the assumption is self-serving and necessarily leads to false claims. Therefore, the Fourth Gospel is widely ignored - like Lenski and Luther.

John Does Not Agree with the Synoptics
Here we have a built-in contradiction among the modern scholars. The Synoptics (Matthew-Mark-Luke) agree all the time, but the multiple witnesses to the Virgin Birth and Resurrection are not taken seriously.
John clearly supplements what we already know from the Synoptics, without teaching against them. They have more prose narrative while the Fourth Gospel has more poetic sermons.

We Have To Rely on the Gospel of Mark

1. Like the pyramids, we have to wonder which came first - the famous three pyramids, perfect beyond belief, or the crumbling badly designed ones. Could those "early pyramids" actually be an attempt to make Egypt great again? 
2. Likewise, Mark could easily be a harmony of Matthew and Luke, not the "historical outline" of Matthew and Luke. Almost every word of Mark is found either in Matthew or Luke or both Gospels.
3. Mark's action-packed with " straightway: or "immediately" Gospel has plenty of miracles per chapter and relatively few sermons. Given a little more editorial removal, an apostate can peel away the real content to find The Historic Jesus. In other words, they create what they want to find.

John Does Not Teach the Virgin Birth

• Nor does Paul, except in the opening of his most doctrinal letter, Romans, where he also teaches UOJ rather than Justification by Faith. Yuk. Yuk. Romans 1 teaches the Two Natures, just as Exodus 3 does.
• John 1 transcends the Virgin Birth (assumed knowledge) and teaches the pre-existence of the Son and the Son's role as the Creating Word of Genesis 1. 
• With Paul and John, what the scholar does not see is the same as what he does not believe to be true. Almost all Biblical scholars are 100% rationalists, blind guides who cannot comprehend what is before them.

Tischendorf Was a Great Scholar - But Do Not Take Him Camping

1. Tischendorf made his reputation by claiming that the monks were warming the library by burning the leather NT manuscripts he rescued. OK, folks. When you need a brisk warming fire out in the woods, set fire to some old leather boots. Feel the glow? No? Tischendorf was a liar and his fans were fools to believe him.
2. Once again, rationalists trust only those documents that seem to agree with their perspective. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are outside the main tradition of manuscripts, so they must be the best.
3. Try this explanation - the manuscripts are for Christian worship so they would preserve the best ones and use them. Don't we still preserve and use The Lutheran Hymnal? 

The Christian Message - From Pastor Nathan Bickel

The Christian Message:

Question:

How did Jesus Christ come to be? What was [is] His origin?

Answer:

The Bible says: "In the beginning"
referring to the "Word," which is Jesus Christ. The Scripture again interprets itself, because in verse John 1:14, it explains "who" the "Word," is. Jesus Christ was not only present when He was born of the Virgin Mary; He was present in eternity - "in the beginning."

Scripture teaches that one of the Triune God’s “attributes,” is that He is a “spirit,” [John 4:24] -- [Also, that He is “Invisible” -- 1 Timothy 1:17] Scripture also, ascribes to God, the quality of being, “Eternal.” That means that He has no beginning and no end. [Psalm 90:1;2] Hence, Mary, the (earthly) mother of Jesus, cannot be what some, erroneously term, the “Mother of God.”


In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. - John 1:1;2

Read more on his site.

'via Blog this'

***

GJ - The Gospel of John is my favorite for many reasons.

The Gospel of John is from the "disciple Jesus loved," the one entrusted with the care of Mary, after the death and resurrection of his Savior.

The Fourth Gospel was written, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to create faith through the Word.

KJV John 20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

Also, the Gospel of John supplements the first three Gospels with priceless sermons from Jesus and additional information that helps us understand the historical context.

For a time the rationalists attacked the truth of John's Gospel by placing it several hundred years after the ministry of Christ. Research has shown that we have the earlier fragment of any Gospel from John, which places the author in the first century. The language and geographical details show John to be very early rather than late. Anyone who has read it carefully can feel the intensity of a first-hand account.

I realize how much this research can be debated, but I find it intriguing that the tools of the sceptics have been used to show how wrong they are.