JOHN163 - Jesus Is Out Here Surpassing Everyone at Breakneck Speed

0:14 Did you know that Planet Earth, as of this month, has a new all-time box office champion? The person who was the highest grossing actor of all time has been dethroned. Before I tell you who it is, I'm gonna tell you about these videos I've seen on YouTube that visualize this box office race over the decades, right?

0:37 It's a very simple style of video. It's just a bar graph that reads top to bottom, left to right. Left to right is how much money a given actor has made. Top to bottom is just one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Who's the greatest box office grossing actor of all time or whatever?

0:51 The video I saw at least started back in, I don't know, 1940, 1950, a long time ago, right? What's fun about the video is when you hit play, then time starts to tick by. And so as the video plays along, the bar graph animates and it moves around. Then you start in 1950, and you got like Clark Gable and Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart and stuff on there.

1:14 But then you get into the 60s and new actors come on the scene and they have big successes. And maybe Charlton Heston launches up the charts real high. Maybe John Wayne succeeds, I don't know, Harrison Ford was a huge deal before the year 2000. But then the numbers get crazy once you hit the year 2000, and the current top 10 list just completely dwarfs the earnings and ticket sales of the old timers.

1:43 All right, have I given you enough time to figure out who the new highest grossing actor is? I'm gonna tell you who it used to be. Up until this month, the highest grossing actor, and therefore the finest actor in the history of film was Zoe Saldana. Did you see that coming? I mean, if you knew that, you knew that.

1:58 But if you didn't, that should have blown your mind a little bit. I guess she has Avatar and the Marvel stuff. I don't know. Number three was Scarlett Johansson. How about that? Right now, number four is Chris Pratt. Number five, Samuel L. Jackson, number six, Robert Downey Jr. Number seven, Tom Cruise.

2:12 Number eight, Chris Hemsworth, and number nine, you're never gonna get number nine. You know what? I'm not gonna tell you number nine. I'm going to extend the game. We're gonna talk about Bible things here in just a second. You can just think about number nine, and then at the end, I'll come back and I'll tell you who number nine was, but you're not gonna get it.

2:25 I'm telling you, you're not gonna get it. Number ten is Chris Evans. Number one, as of right now, is Tom Holland. His Spider-Man movie that came out a couple months ago as I'm recording this was so wildly successful that he's now he's now top-ranked. Good for you, Tom Holland. He seems like a really nice kid.

2:40 I like that. The reason I'm telling you about all this is one, because it's interesting, and I just like to do these kind of exercises with you from time to time because I like you and I don't know where else we're gonna do this kind of thing. But the second reason that I'm telling you about this is because I want you to visualize that surpassing bar graph animation style video that I'm describing here.

3:01 It's interesting both because of how it visualizes, but it's also interesting because we're always thinking in terms of superlatives. Who is the mostest this or the bestest that? I mean, we start thinking that way as a kid, right? Like this truck is big. Oh yeah, this truck is bigger. Well, this truck is biggest.

3:21 As we turn the page from this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus into kind of the last scene where John the Baptist is really in circulation in the Gospel of John, there is a pattern that is emerging, and it is a pattern of surpassingness, of greatestness, of superlatives, in the same way that once Tom Holland came on the scene, I guess he just shot up the charts until finally he was number one.

3:49 So, in all these different very important historical theological categories that existed in the mind of the original audience and in the mind of us, the Bible reader, Jesus comes on the scene and just rockets up the charts all the way to the top in all of these different categories, not just one like Tom Holland, but instead, Jesus in I mean, every single anecdote seems to demonstrate that he is going from somebody whose name people didn't really know yet, they didn't know who they were looking for to the most and the greatest of this thing ever.

4:24 What am I talking about? Well, imagine you got a YouTube bar graph that's showing the greatest things in all of the history of the world and Judaism for purifying one who is ritually unclean. And on the bar graph, time's ticking along, and it's got like ritual sacrifices and hand washing and cleansing, and it's got declaration of the temple authorities that you are clean.

4:52 Maybe you've got like amount of time not touching a dead body on there, and they're all just like moving around and stuff, and they're all pretty good. And then you get to John chapter two and the wedding at Cana account, and here's like this little one down in the number 10 slot, and it's like, who is that?

5:06 Jesus. And then, like, just a couple seconds of the metaphorical YouTube go by and Jesus launches all the way up to the top, and it's just this massively long bar on the number one spot with Jesus, and then there's a whole bunch of tiny little things that are basically zero underneath that. He destroyed the rankings.

5:23 Now, in fairness, not everybody after the wedding at Cana in John chapter two is gonna understand or believe fully that Jesus owns purification, that he surpasses all of the purification rituals, that he is the one who transcends all of that stuff, that he is the one who makes us clean before God. But the scriptures declare it loudly, right here.

5:46 That's why we have the ceremonial washing jars and all of the stuff about Jesus, purifying with merely a thought, with merely a word, all demonstrated in that miracle. And then we turn the page over here and next, we're in the temple at Jerusalem. Jesus walks in, he sees a bunch of shenanigans going on, he starts flipping over tables.

6:04 Get these out of here! How dare you turn my father's house into a market? And then his disciples remembered that it's written, zeal for your house will consume me. Then the Jewish religious leadership shows up and they're all mad and they're like, What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?

6:20 And Jesus says, Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. And they're all like, You mean the building? Like, that's impossible. It doesn't make any sense. But the disciples, they later put two and two together and they figured out he meant his own body. And all of this illustrates that that whole idea of God dwelling among us, which is theoretically what's supposed to happen at the temple.

6:41 Yeah, the idea that the temple is in the number one slot of the God dwelling with us bar graph video. Uh-uh, not anymore. That just got blown out of the water. It's Jesus. The word took on flesh and made his dwelling among us. Jesus is greater than the temple. Jesus is the greater mediator between us and God.

6:58 So now imagine this second YouTube video, that which most reveals the presence of God to us. And for a long time, it's temple, temple, temple in the number one spot just dominating. But as the video plays along down in the bottom at the number 10 spot, here's a little tiny one. Jesus. And then just within a few seconds, a video brrrrr all the way up to the top, boom, bar graph to a billion.

7:19 Everything else goes to basically zero. Jesus has surpassed everyone in this category. He's locked in as far and away, the number one demonstration of God's presence with us. Well, and we turn the page to the next thing and we get the conversation with Nicodemus. And Jesus references something Nicodemus will remember.

7:37 He talks about that snake in the desert that Moses raised up all those years ago. And how if anybody looked at it, the they would be saved, they would have life, the venom that was in them would be defeated. And then Jesus goes on to say that everyone who believes in him, that is the Son of Man, may have eternal life.

7:52 And then either Jesus says right after that, or John the evangelist comments on it, he says after that, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. And from John 3.16 all the way down to 21, it's just contrast after contrast.

8:10 Good and evil, salvation or judgment, life or death. But in all of it, this one thing comes through. Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus is life. Salvation only comes through him. So now we got a third YouTube video. Like, what's the most salvation-y thing ever in the whole history of everything in the world, in the Bible, and all religion and everything?

8:35 And the videos, you know, trucking along pretty well. And you've got like, oh, okay, uh, God just saves you because he picked you and he saved you. That's in the number one spot for a while. But then God's forbearance and grace as illustrated and delivered through the sacrificial system that shoots up to the top and it's there for a real long time.

8:52 But then you get to John chapter three as the video's trucking along, and a little tiny dot appears down in the number 10 spot, and it's Jesus again. And then you read through John three and right up to the top, to number one. And the Jesus bar as it pertains to salvation is infinitely long, and all the other bars basically go to zero.

9:11 He surpasses them all. He is number one all time on the question of salvation, so much so that there's no other way to eternal life. There's no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. Boom. Number one. So in just one and a half chapters, we got three hypothetical all-time greatest superlative top 10 lists that Jesus has shot to the top of, eclipsing everything that happened in all the Bible stuff before.

9:36 It all points to Jesus. Jesus is number one. We don't even really need a list anymore. And then we turn to the last half of John chapter three. And this passage is going to take us to a different hypothetical top 10 list, because in the previous three, very ancient things of God and the Bible have been at the top of the top 10 list.

9:56 But most recently, this top 10 list of baptism has been dominated by somebody who just showed up, John. He's been the hottest thing going in all of religion. For really quite a while now, he's put together an amazing career. He's ultra famous. But in John 3.22, the passage starts off like this. After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them and baptized.

10:24 Oh, so here's what's going to happen down at the very bottom of the top 10 baptizers, top 10 most meaningful baptisms that somebody has to give list. There's a little Jesus that appears down in the number 10 slot. And then as you read through this passage, right up to the top. And Jesus' baptism bar is going to go to maximum.

10:45 It's going to eclipse John the Baptist. And guess who is totally cool with that? John the Baptist himself, the guy who gets past, who very famously says, Jesus must become greater, and I, John the Baptist, must become less. John the Baptist got it. He understood that people think in terms of superlatives, they think in terms of highest grossing, most this, most that.

11:09 He is full send on board. This is exactly what must happen. Jesus is the mostest of all the things that God is doing. He's the centerpiece of God's redemptive plan. Of course, John the Baptist must decrease and Jesus must increase. More on that next time around. But before we're done, I teased you by saying that you were never, ever, ever gonna guess number nine on the all-time highest grossing actors list.

11:35 And now you've had time for you know to run background processes while we've been talking. Have you come up with anything? Did you get it? Did you get the weird one that was gonna be hard? Number nine, as I'm recording this, all-time highest grossing actor is Vin Diesel. What? I guess the 37 Fast and Furious movies and him playing Groot in the Marvel stuff, that'll get you in the top ten.

11:59 Congratulations, Mr. Diesel. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.