JOHN, THE SON OF THUNDER

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Mark 3:13-17

4-27-86    10:50 a.m.

On the radio and on television, we invite you to turn to the second Gospel, Mark.  And in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 3; and we are going to read out loud with us here in the First Baptist Church of Dallas.  Mark, chapter 3; we will read verses 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17.  Do you have it?  Mark 3:13-17.  Now let us read it out loud, together; Mark 3:13-17:

And He goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto Him whom He would: and they came unto Him.

And He ordained twelve, that they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach,

And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:

And Simon He surnamed Peter;

And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and He surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The Sons of Thunder:

[Mark 3:13-17]

And the title of the message is John, the Son of Thunder.

We begin today, a series on the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John.  And I feel as one would who entered into the Holy of Holies of Jehovah God Himself.  John, after a hundred years of prayerful meditation and communion and fellowship with the Son of God, deity, the incarnate Jehovah, wrote for us this Gospel, and it carries with it a holiness and a heavenliness and a profundity of revelation beyond any piece of literature written by man.  The beginning message will concern John himself.  Then next Sunday, we begin with the first verse of the first chapter entitled, The Preexistent Christ, and so through the heavenly revelation of this greatest of all pieces of literature.

When we think of John, we think of the ancient Greek city of Ephesus.  He lived the latter part of his life in that Greek metropolis.  From it he was exiled by the emperor Domitian to the island of Patmos [Revelation 1:9], which is just in the sea before it.  A part of the modern city of Ephesus is called Ayasaluk, which is a Turkish corruption of hagios theologos, the holy theologian.

John lived to such a great age that he wrote the addendum, the twenty-first chapter to his Gospel, to interdict the thought that he would never die, that he would be alive when Jesus came back to the earth.  He had such a prolonged day that the brethren believed that he would be here until the end of time.

In the sixth verse of the first chapter of the Gospel, it is written, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John” [John 1:6].  And that word, John, identifying a man of God, has been characteristic of so many in those centuries since.  John the Baptist; John Chrysostom—John the Golden Mouth, the most incomparable preacher who ever lived, pastor in Antioch, and later in Constantinople; John Hus, John Calvin, John Knox, John Wycliffe, John Milton, John Bunyan.  When the Baptist World Alliance was organized they chose as first president a wonderful London preacher named John Clifford.  There are more babies, children, named for John than for any other man in the history of the human race.

His father was named Zebedee [Mark 3:17].  He headed a fishing enterprise on the Lake of Galilee [Mark 1:19-20].  His mother’s name was Salome.  She was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  His brother’s name was James [Mark 1:19].  And they had such a flourishing business that they had hired servants [Mark 1:20].  God gave to John one of the most brilliant minds that the goodness of the Lord ever bestowed upon any of the sons of men.  John was a Christian Platonist.  He had that same profundity of thought and mystic intuitive interpretation of the meaning of life that characterized Plato.

The difference lies in their teachers.  The teacher of Plato was Socrates.  And in those three great books that Plato wrote for all posterity, the Symposium, and the Apology, and the Phaedo, in those three books you see the teaching of Socrates.  John also left three great writings: the Fourth Gospel, and his epistles, and the Apocalypse.  But the difference between Plato and John will lie in the difference between Socrates and Jesus the Son of God.  There is a great philosophical, profound, intuitive understanding of the ultimate issues of human life in both of them.  But it is infinitely raised; it is celestially heaven in John, whereas it is human outreach in Plato.

You have a contemporary of John by the name of Philo.  Philo was the famous Jewish philosopher in Alexandria.  Philo also wrote on the logos, translated in the King James Version the “Word”, the logos.  Philo wrote a book on the logos.  But in Philo the logos is a notion.  It is a cold, studied, impersonal expression of God.  In the great prologue of the Gospel of John, the logos is anything but cold and indifferent and impersonal.  In the logos of John, God is incarnate [John 1:1].  It is human.  It is the presence of the Lord Jehovah with us [John 1:14].  And in all of the glory of expression does John write it.  There is nothing in human literature, there is nothing spoken by angels or by men that begins to compare with the glory of the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of John.  There is in it love, and light, and warmth, and hope, and revelation, the very presence of God [John 1:1-14].

We look now for a moment at the real John, the John of the church, the John in art and in literature.  The John of a stained glass window is always presented with features as delicate and as refined and as sensitive as that of a woman.  He is self-effacing.  He is modest.  He is mystical.  He is quiet and reserved.  He is always presented youthfully, never with a beard.  When we look at the actual John, he is diametrically the opposite of that.  Jesus called him “The Son of Thunder, Boanerges” [Mark 3:17].  He is a child of the storm.  He had a volatile spirit, and he reacted to the providences of life with vigor.  And he was personally ambitious.

All you have to do is look at this John in the four Gospels.  This is typical of him.  There was a Samaritan village that refused to receive the Lord Jesus, and having found a precedent in Elijah the prophet, John said to Jesus, “Let us burn them up!  Let’s call down fire from heaven on them, and turn them to cinders and ashes” [Luke 9:54].  That’s John.  Take again, John found some who were casting out demons in the name of the Lord Jesus, but they didn’t follow the Lord Jesus.  And John went over there and interdicted them and forbade them.  And when he went to the Lord Jesus to find approval for what he had done, the Lord said, “No, not at all.  It is not the label on the bottle; it is the contents that matter.  And these that are not against us, are for us.  Let the man be” [Mark 9:38-40].

It’s like these people who preach under some other denominational name.  Well, I’m a Baptist, but I thank God for them.  Any man, anywhere, who will stand up and name the name of Jesus, I am glad for him.  And that’s the Lord Jesus.  But it sure wasn’t John.  Because he wasn’t a Baptist, brother, we are going to interdict him.

He was personally ambitious.  One time he took his brother James and came to Jesus and said, “Lord, when You come into Your temporal kingdom, let me sit on Your right hand and be prime minister.  And let James, my brother, be seated on Your left hand and be chancellor of the exchequer” [Mark 10:35-37].  I don’t find anything modest or retiring about this John in the Gospels; just the opposite.  Alas, for all those stained-glass windows and all those beautiful pictures of a mystical, retiring, self-effacing John!

But God can use a man like that.  When a steamship is plowing through the ocean, it may be off course, but you can guide it back, you can use it.  But what would you do with a drifting hulk of a ship in the trough of the sea?  Nothing.  If you have steel that is tempered, you can hone it down to a razor edge and use it as an instrument in surgery.  But what are you going to do with a mess of mush?

So it is with a man’s spirit and a man’s life.  In the third chapter of the Book of the Revelation, Jesus says to the Laodiceans, “You are not cold, you are not hot, you are not fowl, fish, or flesh.  You make Me sick and I could spew thee out of My mouth” [Revelation 3:15, 16].  The colossal indifference of the response of people to the kingdom of God is an affront to our Lord Jesus.

This week I read about an English lord.  You come from England?  Yeah.  I read about an English lord, and he said, “Any kind of religion will do for me, just so it is cool and comfortable.”  Take it easy.  That wasn’t John.  His spirit was volatile, and when he reacted, he did so with all of the fiber of his being.  And when the Lord called him, He turned that tremendous energy into the most glorious devotion that you could find among the saints of God.

Now we speak of his Gospel, the Fourth Gospel.  I repeat, when I come into the presence of John, and open this sacred, sacred book, I feel exactly as though I am coming into the presence of the great Lord God in a Holy of Holies.  For all of the years and the years and the years, for seventy years at least, John meditated upon the things of Christ, communed with the Lord, prayed to the Lord, lived in the presence of the Lord.  The most marvelous organ of the human body is the eye.  And the most marvelous faculty of the soul is the eye of the soul.  And John looked into the holy place of God Jehovah, and described for us the incarnation, the deity of God in human flesh.

There is nothing like it in the earth, the description of what John saw and felt in the incarnation, God made human flesh [John 1:1-4, 14].  And the marvel of the writing is this.  When you read John’s Gospel in Greek, it is the simplest that you could ever think for.  Almost, you will find it in the English translation.  It is simple words, simple sentences, but the profundity of thought that lies back of it is unfathomable and celestial.

The Gospel of John has been loved and read by more people than any other piece of literature in the earth.  I would say there are more tears that have fallen on the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John than upon anything ever written by a human hand on a printed page.  And the Gospel of John is a presentation of deity.  If you seek God and God’s face, you find God in the Fourth Gospel, in the Gospel of John.  God the Father; I took the concordance that is there on my desk, always there, and I counted the references in that concordance in the Fourth Gospel to God the Father, and I counted one hundred twenty-three.

The ancient church had an emblem of John, an eagle soaring up to the heavens.  An eagle is the only bird that can look straight into the sun itself.  And that’s what John has done with God the Father.  He has looked upon Him, and found Him in the heights, the God of light and love and life.  And if I would know God; what is God like, I can find Him more in the Gospel of John than anywhere else in the literature of the Bible.

John also knew God the Holy Spirit.  If you would be introduced to the meaning of the Holy Spirit in your heart and life, read, look at the Gospel of John.  Just as an instance, he’s the only one that uses the word paraklētos—Paraclete when you spell it out in English.  Para is alongside, para.  Kaleō is to call, and that word paraklētos, Paraclete, translated in the King James Version, “Comforter” [John 14:16], you could translate it “Helper.”  You could translate it “Intercessor.”  You could translate it “Friend.”  There is no full English translation for that word Paraclete.  It is the presence of God in our lives.

And that’s the conception, that’s the interpretation, of John.  The Lord Jesus lives in my heart.  How could He live in my heart?  The Lord Jesus has flesh and bones, and He is in a place called heaven, preparing a mansion there, for each one of us [John 14:2-3].  Yet, He lives in our hearts, how?  He lives in our hearts in the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Paraclete, the Intercessor, the Helper, the Encourager, our unfailing and constant Friend [John 14:16-17].  That’s John.  That’s the interpretation, and the understanding, and the teaching of John.

But above all, and holiest of all, is John’s revelation to us of the meaning of the Lord Christ, God the Son.  He climaxed his Fourth Gospel with the story of Thomas, doubting Thomas.  “You say He is alive.  Dead men do not rise.  He is not alive.  And when you say that you have seen Him, I will not believe it until I put my finger into the nail prints in His hands and thrust my hand into the scar in His side” [John 20:25].  And while he was speaking, while he was doubting, Jesus appeared before him and turning to him, said, “Thomas, reach hither your finger and thrust it into the nail print in My hand, and take your hand and thrust it into the open wound of My side: and be not faithless, but believing” [John 20:27].  And Thomas cried, “My Lord and my God” [John 20:28].  That ends the Gospel of John.  “My Lord and my God.”

John is the great exponent of the deity of Christ.  To John—and he elaborates on this in his epistles—to John, the quintessence, the essence, of the Antichrist and unbelief is a denial of the deity of Jesus.  To John, the great divide, doctrinally, is the incarnation.  To John, God is revealed in redemptive love in Jesus Christ, God in the flesh [John 1:14].  And the way John exalts the Lord and writes of Him, and worships Him, and describes Him, and lifts Him up, is like looking into the face of the Lord Himself.

It is exactly as the preface of the Textus Receptus.  Dr. Merrill, who was the man?  Erasmus.  Erasmus wrote in the preface of the Textus Receptus,  Erasmus wrote: “On these Greek pages, you are going to see the face of Jesus Christ more clearly than if He stood here before you.”  I feel that way about the Gospel of John.  Looking on those pages and reading those words, I see the face of Jesus more clearly than if I stood in His presence and saw Him in the flesh.  The interpretation of what Jesus did, and what He was, and what He meant is incomparably dear and precious as we read through the Gospel of John.

And the words that he writes come out of the experiences that he had with the Lord Himself.  For example, when John the Baptist raised his hand and his voice, and said, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” [John 1:29], John was there, and John followed the Lord and was with Him from that hour [John 1:35-41].  That’s John.  When Jesus began His marvelous, miracle-studded ministry, John was there.  The whole Judean ministry of Jesus is recorded only by John.  The story of the resurrection of Lazarus is told only by John [John 11:38-44].  He was there.  He saw the Lord in those wonderful works of the revelation of God, and he wrote them down.  He was there.  In the marvelous, wonderful things of the intimacy of the Lord, John was there.  [Five] times in the gospel does he refer to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” [John 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 21:20].  John was there.

When the Lord instituted the Lord’s Supper, John was there.  He leaned on the breast of the Lord; according to the Jewish way, leaning on the left arm, eating with the right hand [John13:23], he leaned.  He was on the right side.  He leaned next to the breast of our Lord.  John was there.  When the Lord was tried before Caiaphas, the high priest, John was there [John 18:24].  He was known to the high priest and had opportunity and privilege to enter into the judgment hall [John 18:15-16].  John was there.

When the Lord was crucified and raised between heaven and earth on a cross, John was there.  He was the only disciple who was there [Matthew 26:56].  It was into his care and love and keeping that the Lord Jesus, from the cross, committed His mother [John 19:26-27].  John was there.  And when the Lord was raised from the dead, John was there.  He was the first one to believe that He was raised from the grave [John 20:4-8].  When he saw the grave clothes, undisturbed, but empty, John believed that Jesus was raised from the dead [John 20:8].  John was there.

And John writes these wonderful things, these glorious things, and concludes, “These things are written that you”—he reaches down to us today—“these things are written, that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through His name” [John 20:31].  That song:

Were you there when they nailed Him to the cross?

Were you there?

Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?

Were you there?

O sometimes, it makes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

Were you there?

O sometimes, I feel like shouting, “Glory, glory, glory!”

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

[“Were You There?” traditional]

And I pray that I’ll be in that number, I’ll be there, when Jesus descends from the sky.  And I will be among that throng that welcomes Him from glory.  If I die before, I will get to see Him first, “for the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we who are alive and remain shall join with them to meet our Lord in the air” [1 Thessalonians 4:16-17].  I want to be in that great number to welcome Jesus, the Lord God Jesus, down from the sky; the King of the whole earth, as this wonderful choir sings, and the Lord and Savior of our souls [2 Peter 3:18].  God grant it, for each one of us.  What Jesus means in the hope, and in the prospect, and in the life, and in the open door of heaven!  Now may we pray?

Wonderful, wonderful Savior, may every day be a precious day because You are in it and You are with us.  And may every providence of life that brings us closer to Thee be received as a gift from heaven.  And may the toils of the journey but make us long to see Thee the more sweetly, and earnestly, and devoutly, and hopefully.  And our Lord, add to the appeal of the Gospel of John these things are said and “written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God; and that believing you might have life in His name” [John 20:31].  O blessed Lord, may that faith of salvation and the presence of our Lord be in our hearts every day.

And in this moment that our people pray, a somebody you, this day openly, publicly to give your heart to the blessed Savior, would you come and stand by us? [Romans 10:8-13].  A family you, to put your life in the circle of our wonderful church, would you come? [Hebrews 10:24-25].  A couple you, “Pastor, this is my wife and both of us are coming today.”  A child, a youth, “God has spoken to my heart, and I am answering with my life, and here I stand.”  To come for prayer, we have some of the godliest saints in this earth in this fellowship; we will pray together.  “Pastor, I have a tremendous decision,” or “I have got a burden on my heart, and I want somebody to share it with me in prayer.”  As God shall press the appeal to your heart, answer now.  And in this moment that we stand to sing, you come and stand with us.  “I am accepting Jesus as my Savior today” [Romans 10:8-13].  Or, “I want to be baptized according to His own precious example” [Matthew 3:13-17].  Or, “I want to put my life in the fellowship of the church” [Hebrews 10:24-25].  Or, “I am coming in an answer to God’s call to my heart.”  And our Lord, bless these who are on the way, and together loving Thee, serving Thee, may the favor of heaven rest upon us; in Thy precious and saving and keeping name, amen.  While we stand and sing, welcome, a thousand times welcome.