Studies in the Gospel According to John1 By R. A. TORREY (These Studies are for careful study, not rapid and heedless reading) II. The Public Ministry of Jesus Leading Those Who Were of the Truth to Believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of God. Ch. 1:19—12:50 (continued).
with the words, “ Believe me,” a phrase that He, as far as the record goes, never used on any other occa sion. In founding this teaching upon His own say so, and demanding be lief of it simply because He taught it, the Lord claimed Divine authority for Himself; for the teaching that Jeru salem should be the center of wor ship was itself of Divine origin (Deut. 12:5-11; 2 Chron. 7:12, 15, 16), and now Jesus undertakes to abrogate the Divine commandment that was of au thority up to this time, viz., that Jerusalem should be made the center of worship. Our Lord’s use, as recorded by John, of the expression, “ The hour cometh” or rather “ an hour cometh” is worthy of study (see ch. 4:21; 5 :25, 28; 16:2, 25, R. V., 32 cf. 2 :4 ; 7 :30; 8:20; 12:23; 13:1; 16:4; 17:1). The thought of the expression is that there is a Divinely arranged .order in accordance with which each part of God’s plan is worked out, that each thing has itself an appointed “ hour” in the' 24 hours of God’s complete day. Up until this time and for a short time longer, even up to the crucifixion of our Lord, which brought Judaism and its claims to an end (Eph. 2:14-16; Col- 2:14-17) there was an appointed place of wor ship, or at least an appointed center of worship, namely, Jerusalem. But when He died on the cross, the hour struck when places and times and seasons came to an end, and the true worship was not that which was ren dered at .some particular place or some particular time but was that'
9. The Lord Jesus’ testimony to the Woman of Samaria that He was the Christ, and the Woman’s testi mony, He “told me all things that ever I did,” (ch. 4:1-39, continued.) V. 21. Jesus saith unto (rather, to) her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh (rather, that an hour com- eth), when ye shall neither in this mountain nor at Jerusalem, worship the Father (rather, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father). Our Lord did not directly answer the question of the woman as to the rival claims of Gerizim and Jerusa lem. He went far deeper and told her, that the claims of both Gerizim and Jerusalem were soon to come to an end, that the worship that would be continued in that mountain and the worship which would be contin ued at Jerusalem would not be true worship: that neither in that moun tain nor in Jerusalem would they worship the Father, and that, further more, a worship was being ushered in which was not at all connected with places, that the place would be an utterly unimportant question and that whether one worshipped in spirit and in truth would be the all-impor tant question. He told her that the time was at hand when her question as to rival places of worship would be utterly without significance. This teaching of our Lord was so utterly foreign to all the teaching that the woman had received from earliest childhood that our Lord prefaced it 1 Copyright, By R, A. Torrey, 1914
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