200328 Home Worship Service (Lent 5) Audio Recording <--click here for sound 200329 Lent 5 Home Worship Order of Service Document <--click here for order of service Our Gospel reading today comes from John’s Gospel. John is one of the twelve apostles. His brother was named James. It is believed that John is the only one of the twelve who died a natural death after living to be an old man. All the others were killed for preaching that Christ is the Savior. This does not mean that John did not suffer. He did. But perhaps God wanted John to live out his days so that as an old man he could write a fourth Gospel in addition to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which had already been written. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the four Gospels knows that John is different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As an old man and as the sole survivor of the twelve apostles, I believe that John wanted to speak of the things that he had seen and heard as Jesus’s disciple that had not already been covered by the other three Gospels. If the other three Gospels had already said what needed to be said, then he left that be.And so it is that we hear of many of the things that Jesus said from John who was an eyewitness. Something that comes out very plainly in John’s Gospel is that Jesus was very simple and clear in what he said about himself. Let’s hear some of these simple declarations.You are quite familiar with this one: “God loved the world in this way, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” God sent his Son to save, not so that the world would be judged and condemned. God sent his Son to save because the world already was judged and condemned.Or consider this declaration from a couple chapters later. “Amen, amen, I tell you: Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He is not going to come into judgment but has crossed over from death to life. Amen, amen, I tell you: A time is coming and is here now when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who listen will live.” Whoever hears Jesus and believes that God has sent him has eternal life. There is no judgment. Such a one has crossed over from death to life.Here’s another statement from the next chapter: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day. For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.”I’m not out of passages. I could easily come up with some more plain statements that Jesus is the Son of God who was sent from the Father so that we may have eternal life in him. Those who believe will not be judged and condemned. They will not perish eternally. They will be raised up on the Last Day to a superabundant life where all evil has been put away. This is as plain as plain can be. John reports what Jesus said.John also reports that in spite of Jesus being exceptionally clear, the Jews did not believe him—particularly the Jews in Jerusalem. Some people believed in Jesus in Galilee and even in Samaria, but the Jerusalem Jews were very hostile to Jesus. There were probably several reasons why the Jerusalem Jews did not like Jesus. I’ll mention just a couple. First of all, he was not from the big schools and big names in Jerusalem. He was from Nazareth of Galilee. What good can come from there? Jesus’s hometown is so prominent that it even gets painted as a mocking title over his cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.” Jesus was from the sticks. What would he know?This is related to a second reason why the Jerusalem Jews did not like Jesus: He didn’t know his place. He drove the money changers o