Bible sermons

In Philippians now, the “Epistle of Joy”

SHOW AND TELL – John 6:22-35

5000 fed, Bible sermons, Gospel of John, Jesus Christ, Jesus walks on water, John 6:22-40

INTRODUCTION:

I can remember when I was in kindergarten and first grade; the teacher would tell us that we would be having “Show And Tell” time on the following day.  Each of us children was asked to bring an interesting and unusual object to class, and then we would each take turns showing our object to the rest of the children and telling them something about it.  Our parents were allowed to help us with our choice of what to bring to school the next day.  Does that bring back memories?  That expression, “Show And Tell”, originated in the 1940’s and is one of the learning exercises still being used in early-childhood education.  It is often used by adults also as a means of getting to know one another and as a form of instruction and entertainment. It can also engage more than one of our senses, such as sight, sound, touch, and smell.

You may be wondering how this teaching method or game relates to the passage of Scripture we are now studying:  John 6:22-35.  If we look back at the previous day in Jesus’ life, He showed them that He was the Son of God by breaking the five barley cakes and two dried fish and feeding 5000 men, together with their wives and children.  He also showed them how much was left over by having His disciples gather up the fragments.  There were twelve baskets filled with those leftovers.  Sadly, neither the crowd nor His disciples came to the understanding that Jesus was the Son of God as the result of that miracle He just showed them.

After the meal, Jesus showed two more signs to His disciples only.  The first sign or miracle was the sudden storm on the Sea of Galilee, and the second was Jesus Himself walking on the water toward them in the midst of the storm.  The Lord Jesus showed them a life-threatening situation and they did not call upon Him to save them. He then showed them Himself walking on top of the water and they refused to believe it, thinking they were seeing a ghost.  They thought their eyes were deceiving them and they were hallucinating.  They weren’t convinced by what He showed them, but they did become convinced when He spoke to them.  Why?  Because, in John 6:20, Jesus said to them, “I AM, do not be afraid”.  He used God’s covenant name which He gave to Moses to tell to the people of Israel.  Matthew 14:33 says, “and those who were in the boat worshipped Him saying, ‘You are certainly God’s Son.’ ”  They finally “put two and two together”, so to speak.  Jesus was claiming to be the God who parted the Red Sea, fed the people of Israel in the wilderness with manna for 40 years, and stopped the Jordan River from flowing.  It required both “show and tell” to convince the disciples that Jesus was the Son of God.  The story isn’t over yet.  There are many others who were “shown” but also have to be “told”.

I.  THE BACKGROUND (verses 22-25)

Verse 22 begins with a search for the missing Jesus.  The last time the crowd saw Jesus was the night before when Jesus told His disciples to get into a boat, and He sent them on their way across the Sea of Galilee.  Then He told the crowd to go home, and I’m sure many of them saw Jesus heading for the hills.  Many of those same people came back the next morning, and verse 22 describes the scene and what they were doing.  “The next day the multitude that stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other small boat there, except one, and that Jesus had not entered with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples had gone away alone.”

I wonder whether these people came early that morning in the hope that Jesus might treat them to a free breakfast!  There were probably still many among them who wanted to make Jesus their King.  They weren’t able to find Jesus, and when they looked across the lake they saw only one boat docked there, and that was the boat the disciples used the day before.  They already knew that Jesus didn’t go in the boat with them, and now they know that Jesus didn’t cross the lake in another boat.  Where could He be?  He wouldn’t have walked all the way around the lake in the middle of the night, would He?

Verse 23 says that “other boats came from Tiberias.”.  Those boats must have been blown across the lake by the storm the night before.  Having become convinced that Jesus was not on their side of the lake, verse 24 says that they “got into the boats and went to Capernaum.”  The city of Capernaum was the place where Jesus normally resided when He was in the district of Galilee. It’s beginning to sound like a variation of “Hide and Seek” but, instead of one person seeking all the rest of the people, all the rest of the people are seeking one person!

Verse 23 tells us that the crowd found whom they were looking for.  It reads, “And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, ‘Rabbi, when did You get here?’ ”  They must have been very surprised, amazed, and confused.  Their question seems strange to me.  I would have expected them to say “Rabbi, how did you get here”, not “when did you get here.”  It makes me wonder whether they concluded that Jesus must have walked around the Sea of Galilee, and were wondering how He could have done it so quickly during the night.   If you do the math, the circumference of the Sea of Galilee is 33 miles around the shoreline.  Let’s say that the distance from the place where Jesus fed the 5000 to Capernaum on the other side was 16-18 miles.  That’s a long way to walk along the sand of the sea shore wearing a long robe and sandals in the dark of night and heading into the wind!  Now I understand why they asked “when” instead of “how”.  Walking that far in such a short time under those conditions must have seemed like a miracle to them.  Little did they know just how amazing a miracle it actually was.  Jesus took the “short-cut” across the lake on foot!

II.  THEIR MOTIVES QUESTIONED AND CORRECTED (verses 26-27)

Rather than answering their question, the Lord Jesus responds by questioning and correcting their wrong motives.  In verse 26, He says to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”  Jesus is telling them that their interest in Him is merely selfish.  They considered Him to be some kind of a magician who could meet their physical needs.  Many of them wanted to make Jesus their king so that their need for food would be taken care of and they wouldn’t have to work any longer.  Their motive was:  “What’s in it for me”.  They missed the meaning of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and now Jesus has to explain it to them.  It’s “Show and Tell” all over again!

In verse 27 Jesus says, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you.”  Those words should have brought the words of the prophet Isaiah to their minds.  Isaiah 55:2 says, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy.”  God has given mankind a hunger for things that this world cannot satisfy.  Jesus is telling them about two kinds of food:  food for the body and food for the soul or spirit.  He’s telling them that He is the only One who can satisfy their deepest needs, the hunger of their souls.  He’s also implying that we need to work to provide for our physical needs.  In the context of that particular situation, Jesus may have been using the word “work” to describe how they wearied themselves by walking around the lake to find Him in order to get more free food.  But only God can provide lasting satisfaction.    Physical food “perishes” in two senses.  If it is not eaten, it becomes stale, rotten, or moldy.  But if it is eaten, it perishes in the sense that the body uses it up and in a few hours, we are hungry again.  We need more food to replenish what has been digested and its nutrients are now gone.  Have you ever considered how much of your time is spent eating?  If you are a typical person who lives an average lifetime, you will probably spend about 35,000 hours of your lifetime eating.  That’s eight years of eating non-stop for 12 hours each day.  That’s a lot of eating and that’s a lot of food!  If we have to spend that much time satisfying our physical hunger for food, how much more time should we be spending in the satisfaction of our spiritual hunger for God!

The wisest man in the Old Testament, King Solomon, who may also have been the wealthiest man in the Old Testament, wrote a book of the Bible entitled “Ecclesiastes”. In this book, Solomon describes his search for happiness and fulfillment.  He went down many dead-end streets, pursuing wisdom, pleasure, riches, and work, and found that they were all vanity, “striving after wind”.  These things did not fill the emptiness in his soul.  His conclusion:  “fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person”  (Ecclesiastes 12:13).  Only the worship of God, and the living of one’s life to please Him, bring lasting satisfaction.

Jesus is teaching the crowd a similar lesson here in verse 27.   He’s telling them that there is something more to life than working for physical food.  He encourages them to work “for the food that endures to eternal life.”  Then Jesus tells them the source of that eternal life, and by Whose authority He can make such a statement.  He says, “which the Son of Man will give you”. Notice that Jesus is talking about the future in this case.  The eternal life can’t be given to them until Jesus pays the price for their sins by dying on the cross and then rising victorious from the grave.  It is also conditioned upon their willingness to believe in Him and entrust their lives to Him as their Lord.  “For on Him the Father, even God, has set his seal.”  Jesus is stating His credentials.   The Father set His seal of approval on His Son at Jesus’ baptism and His seal of authority through the miracles that Jesus performed.  A seal was used in those days for many different reasons.  It witnessed the truth of a document or person. It could also be used, among other things,  to show ownership, authority, approval, or as a guarantee of quality,  Since Jesus’ discussion with the crowd is about food, I read that some bakers during that period of time would put a seal or impression on their bread as they baked it in order to let people know where the bread came from, and also as a guarantee of its quality.

So Jesus has told them that both their intentions and their motives are wrong as they follow Him around seeking free food to fill their stomachs.  They should be seeking the spiritual food which lasts for eternity, and which He alone can provide.  What follows is a time of questions on their part and answers on His part.

III.  QUESTION AND ANSWER TIME (verses 28-33)

In verse 28 the crowd asks their first question: “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”  What did they mean when they said those words?  I think they were saying, “Give us a list of the things God wants us to do so that we can perform them.”  In their minds, “works” meant obeying the Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets.   So they were asking, “Which particular ones did He have in mind; which ones merit eternal life after they are accomplished?”  They didn’t understand what Jesus just said to them.  Their minds focused on the word “work” and their attention became glued to that word.  Bible expositor Alfred Barnes makes this comment:  “The idea of doing something to merit salvation is one of the last that the sinner ever surrenders.”  Here’s an illustration that exemplifies that comment made by Barnes.

A young man in the military, who was concerned about his eternal destiny, had been encouraged to receive Christ and stop trying to save himself.  He felt, however, that he must show his “good intentions and sincerity” by first cleaning up his life.  His superior officer had often tried to make it clear to him that salvation comes to him who “does not work but believes”, but the young man couldn’t seem to grasp this truth.  One day, when he had been busy doing some work that left him covered with dirt and grease, he received a call to see his commanding officer.  He didn’t like to go in his grimy condition, but having been told to leave immediately, he went without delay.  When he arrived, the one who had sent for him said, “Sewell, I am very glad to see that you know how to obey orders.  Now that’s the way I’ve been telling you that you must respond to the Gospel call.  Come to the Lord Jesus Christ just as you are.”  Those words went right to his heart, and then and there he received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

In verse 29, Jesus responds to their question by saying, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”  Notice that Jesus uses the word “work”, not “works” (plural).  He’s the one who is going to do the work to provide eternal life, not them.  It’s going to be His gift to them through His atoning “work” on the cross, not as a result of their “works” to please God.

Obviously, the crowd was not satisfied with Jesus’ answer to their question, so they ask Him two more questions in verse 30.  They ask, “What then do you do for a sign, that we may see and believe you?  What work do you perform?  The miracle of the loaves and fish should have been proof enough that He was the Messiah.  But they wanted more proof; they’re always wanting more proof, more miracles.  The next verse reveals the real reason for those questions.  They continue by saying,  “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘HE GAVE THEM BREAD OUT OF HEAVEN TO EAT.’ “   They are referring to a comparable miracle in the life of Moses.  I think they are saying, “Moses feed the Hebrew people in the wilderness with manna for 40 years.  If you are greater than Moses, why don’t you prove it by feeding all of us for 40 years?  Then we’ll believe you.”

In verses 32 and 33, Jesus corrects their beliefs.  When they say “HE”, they mean Moses, but that’s not who that Scripture passage is referring to.  They are correctly quoting the words written in Psalm 78, verse 24, but they are incorrectly applying that statement to Moses.  The psalmist is referring to the works of God in that psalm.  Moses’ name isn’t even mentioned, nor is he referred to indirectly, in the seventy-two verses of Psalm 78.  It’s not obvious from their question that they are referring to Moses.  So how do I know they are?  I know so because Jesus knows it, and He communicates that fact to them in verse 32 when He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.”

The Jews of that day highly esteemed Moses, sometimes even more highly than God!  They attributed all the plagues on the Egyptians, as well as the parting of the Red Sea, the water from the rock, the manna, the quail, and every other supernatural event to Moses instead of God.  They also believed that the manna ceased when Moses died.  But Joshua 5:12 states that the manna continued after they entered the land of Canaan and didn’t cease until the day after they celebrated the feast of the Passover when they ate some of the produce of the land.  That was over two months after Moses’ death!  Their beliefs point to a tendency throughout history for people to glorify the person God uses rather than God, who empowers and uses that person.  Moses would have been enraged at their exaltation of him rather than God.

Jesus goes on to make a distinction between the manna (the bread which fell from the sky), and the “true” bread from heaven.  He says, “For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.”  The Greek word used here is “katabainon”, which means “to descend” rather than “to fall”.   He’s implying that the true bread from heaven descended to become a part of humanity.  He’s also saying that this bread is not only for the Jews, as was the manna, but this bread is for the whole world as well.

What’s the reaction of His audience?  They still have their minds on physical food, and “forever food” sounds even better than forty years of manna.  Their response? “Lord, evermore give us this bread.” (verse 33)  Does that response sound familiar?  When Jesus told the woman at the well about “living water” that would quench her thirst forever, she said, “Sir, give me this water”.

IV.  THE REVELATION (verse 35)

Jesus reveals Himself to them in verse 35 when He says, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”  Jesus is telling them that only He can satisfy the deepest needs of our hearts.  Without Him, we are spiritually starving. As you well know, you can make bread, smell it and touch it, but unless you eat it, the bread isn’t going to do your physical body any good.  This fact is also true spiritually.  Unless Jesus Christ is in your life and has become a vital part of your life, you are dying of starvation spiritually and eternally.  It’s time to repent of your sins and invite Him to be your personal Lord and Savior.  He is the One who will satisfy your spiritual hunger and thirst now and forever.

If you have already made that commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and are feasting on His Word, be sure to share the wealth with others.  We can’t make people eat, but by allowing Christ to rule in our lives, we can provide an environment where others around us become hungry for the spiritual satisfaction we have in Christ.  For several years I worked across the street from a large bakery.  When they were baking bread, the smell of it would fill the air.  At break time, many of us would go outside to enjoy the smell of it.  In our minds, we were imagining eating it because the smell made us hungry for it.  If the employees at the bakery would have invited us to come and have some to eat, we would have eaten as much as they would gave us.

Can we honestly say what the psalmist said in Psalm 73:25-26?  These are his words:  “There is none upon earth that I desire but Thee.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

It is told of Sadhu Sundar Singh that many years ago he was distributing Gospels in the central province of India and he came to some non-Christians on a railway train and offered a man a copy of John’s Gospel.  The man took it, tore it in pieces in anger, and threw the pieces out the window.  That seemed the end, but it so happened, in the Providence of God. there was a man anxiously seeking for truth walking along the line that very day, and he picked up, as he walked along, a little bit of paper and looked at it, and the words on it in his own language were “the Bread of Life.”  He did not know what it meant; but he inquired among his friends and one of them said, “I can tell you; it is out of the Christian book.  You must not read it or you will be defiled.”  The man thought for a moment and then said, “I want to read the book that contains that beautiful phrase”, and he bought a copy of the New Testament.  He was shown where the sentence occurred – our Lord’s words, “I am the Bread of Life”; and as he studied the gospel, the light flooded into his heart.  He came to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and he became a preacher of the gospel in the central province of India.  That little bit of paper, through God’s Spirit, was indeed the Bread of Life to him, satisfying his deepest need. (shared by John A. Patten)

The Bread of Life satisfies and nourishes those who are hungry for it.

CONSTRUCTION SITE:  COMPLETED

Welcome to this completed sermon on John 6:22-35.  If you would like to study along with me but don’t feel like you have the “tools for the trade”, check online.  Type “Gospel of John”, or “Bible study resources” and you will find hundreds of sites.  I probably use “Preceptaustin” the most because of the number of Greek helps and because I like the way it is organized, but I also use many other sites, too many to list here.  You’ve got all the tools you need online!  Hope to see you at the next construction site  There is much work to be done and you will find it to be an enjoyable experience.  It’s like digging for gold and precious stones!

NOTHING TO FEAR – John 6:16-21

Bible sermons, Evidence that Jesus Christ is God, Gospel of John, Jesus walks on water, John 6:16-21, John's Gospel

Have you ever been frightened by the forces unleased in nature?  Can you remember hearing lightning cracking overhead, and then “KA-BOOM!”, the thunder was deafening and the ground vibrated under your feet?  Did you shake for a moment also?  When Mount St. Helens exploded and those tons of ash were billowing up into the sky, did you feel a twinge of fear as you watched it from a distance or on your television sets?  I wasn’t in the Pacific Northwest when that event occurred, but I have experienced an earthquake in Southern California, a tornado while going to school in Iowa, and a typhoon while stationed at an Air Force base on Okinawa, and I trembled with fear on all three occasions!  I can imagine that you have some stories that you could tell about instances in your life when the forces of nature caused fear in you also.

In John 6:16-21, the apostles also experienced the forces of nature, but that wasn’t their only source of fear.  Let’s examine the experiences of the disciples that evening, and their responses, in the light of what preceded it.

I.  THE SETTING (verses 16-17)

Jesus had just finished feeding 5000 men, together with their wives and children, with five barley cakes (“tortillas”) and two fish (“dried sardines”), and His disciples gathered twelve baskets full of leftovers (one basket apiece).  They saw the power and the provision that only God could provide in such a miraculous way, and were reminded of God’s faithful provision of the manna to their ancestors in the wilderness for forty years.  Another lesson was taught them by Jesus, and now it was time for another examination to determine whether the lesson was learned and would be put into application.

You might call this a “stress test” or a “distress test”.  I like to think of it as a “practicum” – putting into practice the things they had learned.  Immediately after the disciples came back with the baskets of fragments from the meal, John writes, in verses 14 and 15, that the people were saying that Jesus must be the Messiah.  Jesus realized their intent to take Him by force and make Him king, so He “withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.”   Mark’s gospel fills in a few details that are missing.  Mark 6:45-46 says, “And immediately He made His disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side to Bethsaida, while He Himself was sending the multitude away.  And  after bidding them farewell, He departed to the mountain to pray.”  The Lord Jesus told His disciples to get in the boat and leave immediately because He didn’t want His disciples to get caught up in the frenzy of the crowd to make Him king.  It still wasn’t clear in their minds that Jesus was the Son of God.

Jesus’ purpose for going up on the mountain was to pray.  Jesus was truly a man of prayer.  As you read through the Gospels you will find that He often spent time communicating with the Father in prayer, sometimes spending the whole night in prayer.  His disciples recognized this and asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray”.

Going back to John’s gospel, verses 16 and 17 tell us, “Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, and after getting into a boat, they started to cross the sea to Capernaum.  And it had already become dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.”  During the time of the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, sunset was at about 7:00 p.m.  So the stage is set:  Jesus is on the mountain, they are in the boat on the Sea of Galilee, and it’s dark.

II.  THE STORM (verses 18-19a)

Verse 18 says, “And the sea began to be stirred up because a strong wind was blowing.”  The Sea of Galilee is situated below sea level in a bowl in the hills.  Winds can travel up the valley of the Jordan River at great speeds.  Not only that, but I’ve read that cold air can suddenly come rushing down from the mountains surrounding the Sea of Galilee and collide with the warm, moist air rising from the surface of the water.  The Sea of Galilee is also relatively shallow, so the waters can become stirred up very quickly.  Add up all those factors and you have “Trouble with a capital T!”  This storm must have taken the disciples by surprise.  Was Jesus surprised by the storm?  Not at all!  Sending them into the storm was their exam.  He was testing their faith to see if they learned the lessons He was teaching them, and had come to a true understanding of Who He was.

Several of Jesus’ disciples were expert sailors and they knew that they had better get the boat to the other side of the lake as soon as possible.  They had been in a similar situation recently, but on that occasion Jesus was with them in the boat, sleeping.  This time He’s on the mountain.  What were they going to do?

Rather than calling upon God and trusting in Him to provide for their need, they keep on rowing.  They’re going to get themselves out of this situation on their own!  This wind and these waves aren’t going to get the best of them!  They are failing the test but they’re not ready to give up yet!  Does Jesus know that there is a storm on the Sea of Galilee?  Yes, He certainly does.  Mark 6:48 begins with the words, “and seeing them straining at the oars, for the wind was against them”.  How can Jesus see them if it’s dark and stormy, and they are in the middle of the lake?  Good question!  It’s the Passover celebration.  The Passover is also called the new moon celebration.  When God sent Moses and the people of Israel out of Egypt, He provided a full moon to light the way for them.  From His vantage point on the top of the mountain, Jesus could see them by the light of a full moon.  Then, why doesn’t He do something about it?  He is:  He’s praying for them!  As a wise and caring Teacher, He’s also giving them extra time to complete and pass the test!

Let me give you a mental picture of the examination scene at this time.  The apostles are in the boat rowing with their backs to the wind and their faces pointed in the direction of the dock where they had embarked for their cruise across the lake.  Little do they know that Jesus is looking at their faces and watching them as He continues to pray for them.

Have you ever run on a treadmill or an elliptical machine?  If you have, I imagine that you’ve thought about the fact that you’re running hard and are becoming exhausted, but you aren’t going anywhere.  You’re still in the same place where you started!  There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve talked to people who have those machines but still like to run outdoors in good weather.   They do so not only because they like the change in scenery, but also because of a greater sense of accomplishment that comes from arriving at a destination rather than reaching a time limit or going the distance based on the odometer reading.  If you compare this illustration with the situation of the disciples, it’s as if they’re on a rowing machine, rowing hard and steadily, but going nowhere!  The boat they were in was probably one of the boats used for carrying passengers across the Sea of Galilee.  If so, it would normally be large enough to hold 12 passengers and had oars rather than a sail.  The Greek word refers to a “small boat”  These boats could easily become swamped in a storm because they were not as high above the water and as sturdy as many of the fishing boats.

From Matthew, Mark, and John’s gospels, we learn that they are in the middle of the lake and it’s now the fourth watch of the night.  The fourth watch begins at 3:00 in the morning.  They started crossing the lake at about 7:00 the previous evening, so they’ve been rowing for eight hours or more!  Mark 6:48 states that Jesus “saw them straining at the oars”.  They must have been completely exhausted but they hadn’t learned the lesson from the feeding of the 5000.  They failed another test because they failed to bring their need to God in prayer and trust Him to meet that need.  They failed to follow the teaching and the example of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This brings back to my mind a course I took in college as a Business major.  The course was Business Communications, and it was taught by a professor who had been a journalist.  As he gave us our first business letter to compose, he told us his grading system.  Then he said, “There is no excuse for misspelled words or wrong punctuation.  A misspelled word is an automatic F (a failing grade).  Each punctuation error would reduce the grade for the paper by one letter-grade.”  Most of the students, including myself, didn’t pay heed to his words, and over half the class failed the first assignment because of misspelled words and wrong punctuation.  Needless to say, we students got out our dictionaries and brushed up on our English grammar for the remaining assignments!  We learned the hard way to heed his warning, follow his advice, and not be overly confident in our own abilities!

III.  THE RESCUE (verses 19b-22)

The examination is now over.  When I was in high school, several of my teachers were in the habit of leaving their desks when the bell rang, walking down the aisles in the classroom, collecting the tests, and then taking them back to their desks.  In this case, Jesus was going to collect His disciples and bring them to the other side of the lake, but in a very unusual and miraculous way.

The second half of verse 19 says, “they beheld Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened.”  Mark’s gospel gives more details:  “He came to them, walking on the sea; and He intended to pass by them.  But when they saw Him walking on the sea, they supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out; for they all saw Him and were frightened.”  Jesus’ timing is perfect, as always.  He comes to them at the moment when they have finally given up hope.  They were in the middle of the lake and all their efforts were getting them nowhere.  They were physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and spiritually unreceptive.  They weren’t prepared for what was going to happen next.   Suddenly, they see something that their minds refuse to believe.  Jesus is walking toward them against the wind as if there were no wind at all, and walking on top of the water as if the water was dry ground!  The wind and the waves are having no effect on Him.  Their response was to cry out in terror, imagining that Jesus was a ghost.  The Greek word is “phantasma”.  We get our English word “phantom” from that word.

Why did they respond in such a way to Jesus?  For one, they weren’t expecting Him because they failed to pray to God and trust in the power and authority of His Son to meet their need and rescue them.  The second reason is given in Mark 6:52, which says, “their hearts were hardened”. They hadn’t learned the lesson from the loaves and fishes.  They tried to overcome the storm their way, and now they concluded that it was an impossible and hopeless situation.  It was impossible alright, humanly speaking, but it wasn’t hopeless!

Why did Jesus choose to walk to them on the water?  He could have saved Himself a lot of time and effort if He had just appeared in their boat, or called out to the wind and waves in a voice loud enough for them to hear, telling the wind and waves to quiet down.  That’s what He did in the previous storm (see Mark 5:39).  Jesus walked to them on top of the water in order to give them a visual demonstration that the things they now feared, (the wind and the waves), were completely under His control.  Jesus was showing them something that only God could do; and in response to their terror, He said, in John 6:20, “It is I, do not be afraid.”  Jesus spoke those words to them in Hebrew, and He was literally saying to them, “I AM, do not be afraid”.  The Lord Jesus was using God’s covenant name, pronounced “Yahweh” or “Jehovah”, and was applying it to Himself.

In Exodus 3:13, Moses asked God, “What is your name that the people may know that you are the true God, and that you have sent me to them?”  God answered Moses with these words:  “Say to the people of Israel, ‘I AM (Yahweh), the God of your fathers . . . has sent me to you.”   The name Yahweh suggests, first of all, that there is no cause for God’s existence outside Himself; but the name had a much more personal meaning than that.  Yahweh is the God who is near to His people, close to them, and available to them in time of need.  He controlled the forces of nature for them when He parted the Red Sea, provided manna for them to eat, and stopped the Jordan River so that they could enter the promised land.

During the previous storm, when Jesus was in the boat with them, He rebuked the wind and the waves, telling them to become calm, and they immediately obeyed His voice.  In response, His disciples asked the question, “What kind of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” (Matthew 8:27)  Now, after seeing Jesus walking on water and hearing those words from His mouth, the disciples answer their own question when they say, “You are certainly God’s Son!”, and they worshipped Him. (Matthew 14:33).  This is the first time Jesus is called the Son of God by His disciples.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk on water?  Other than Jesus, Peter is the only one who knows, and his experience didn’t last very long (Matthew 14:29-31)!  When the two of them got into the boat, it was apparently close to the shore – another amazing occurrence!  The rescue was now over.

LESSONS TO LEARN AND APPLY:

Before we consider the fear of the disciples, and our own fears as well, I think we should all thank God for giving us the emotion of fear.  He has given us, as well as many of the animals He created, a built-in alarm system to warn us of danger.  It was designed by Him for the purpose of protection and preservation.  It’s natural for us to be afraid in times of danger, and there are times when we, as human beings, should choose to follow our fears.  There are also times when we should choose to overcome our fears by the power of God.  A question we need to ask ourselves honestly is “What do I fear, and why do I fear it?”  Then write those fears and the reasons for them on a sheet of paper so that we can sort them out and think about them.  Only then can we ask the question, “How should I respond to those fears, in the light of God’s Word?”

The first lesson given in this passage of Scripture is one on prayer.  Jesus was up on the mountain praying.  I think His first request to the Father was that the apostles would realize their helplessness and turn to the Father in faith, asking Him to rescue them.  When they failed to do so and they were about to drown, I believe that Jesus’ second request to the Father was that the Father might use Him to rescue them and show them that He was truly the Son of God.  His request might have been something like this:  “Father, give me the power and authority to walk on the water to rescue them so that You and I might be glorified.”  Or maybe He just asked for their deliverance and the Father told Him what to do in answer to that prayer.  We don’t know for sure, but we do know that God answered His prayers.  Jesus’ prayers “held a lot of weight” in the eyes of His Father because of the close relationship and deep trust between them.

What’s the value of our prayers to God?  How much weight do our believing prayers have in God’s sight?    Many years ago Henry Bosch shared the following true story which he entitled “Weighing A Prayer”.

Soon after World War II, a tired-looking woman entered a store and asked the owner for enough food to make a Christmas dinner for her children.  When he inquired how much money she could afford, she answered, “My husband was killed in the war.  Truthfully, I have nothing to offer but a little prayer.”  The man was not very sentimental, for a grocery store cannot be run like a breadline.  So he said, “Write your prayer on a paper.”  To his surprise she plucked a little folded note out of her pocket and handed it to him, saying, “I already did that during the night while I was watching over my sick baby.”  As the manager took the paper, an idea struck him.  Without even reading the prayer, he put it on the weigh side of his old-fashioned scales, saying, “We shall see how much food this is worth.”  To his surprise, it would not go down when he put a loaf of bread on the other side.  To his even greater astonishment, it would not balance though he added many more items.  Finally, he blurted out, “Well, that’s all the scales will hold anyway.  Here’s a bag.  You’ll have to put them in yourself.  I’m busy.”  With a tearful “thank you,”  the lady went happily on her way.  The grocer later found out that the balance was out of order.  As the years passed, however, he wondered if that really was the solution.  Why did the woman have the prayer already written to satisfy his premeditated demands?  Why did she come in at exactly the time the mechanism was broken?  Frequently he looks at that slip of paper upon which the prayer was written, for amazingly enough, it reads, “Please, dear Lord, give us this day our daily bread!”

Has God ever answered your prayers in unusual or unexpected ways?  God delights in answering believing prayer for the supply of our needs.  The apostle Paul reminds us of this in Philippians 4:19, which says, “And my God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”  Our God is very rich and very generous!  Don’t let a need go by without asking Him to supply!

The second lesson comes in answer to the question, “Why didn’t the disciples pray to God when the storm began?”  “Pride” is the answer to that question.  Two popular sayings probably describe their attitude:  “I’ll do it my way”, and “I’d rather do it myself”.  I could understand if they kept rowing for 15 minutes in the hope that the storm might die down, but not for eight hours!  That’s ridiculous!  Are you filled with pride in yourself and would rather be independent of God?  Are you drowning in your own sins, but unwilling to lift a hand in prayer to the only One who can reach down and pull you out of the dark waters of separation from God for eternity?  I hope and pray that you will reconsider your attitude and your situation, and choose to put your life in His hands and under His control.

The third and last lesson applies to fear.  I’m sure that we would all agree that fears come in many different forms, and can affect us in many different ways.  Do you find yourself controlled, or hindered by various forms of fear, such as fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of change, or fear of what others may think?  Fears can be tied to the past, the present, or the future.  Worry is also a form of fear.  Worry has been defined as “a small trickle of fear that meanders through the mind until it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”  Worry is like a rocking chair.  It will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.  The apostle Peter tells us in I Peter 5:7 to “cast all our anxieties on Him (the Lord Jesus Christ), for He cares for you.”

Proverbs 29:25 tells us that “the fear of man will prove to be a snare.”  It can drain us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  This incident of the storm, in John 6, tells us that we can banish our fears by recognizing and relying upon the faithful presence, power, and providence of God.  Let me close by sharing a few other Scripture passages with you that tell us how to respond to fear in our lives.  Psalm 16:8 says, “I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”  In Psalm 23:4 king David says, “I fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”  Psalm 34:4 reads, “I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. You may also want to read and memorize Isaiah 41:10.

It may also encourage you to know that the Lord Jesus Christ is praying for you right now (Hebrews 7:25).  Some day, the Lord Jesus will come for us, take us to His heavenly haven of rest, and the storms of life will be over forever.  I hope that I’ll see you there!   

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A MEAL FOR A MULTITUDE – John 6:1-15

Bible sermons, Gospel of John, Jesus Christ, John 6:1-15

INTRODUCTION:

“In the city of Philadelphia many years ago, a little girl named Hattie May Wiatt came to a small Sunday School and asked if she might attend.  They regretfully explained to her that they were completely crowded out and that there was no room.  Sometime later Hattie became seriously ill and soon slipped away from this earth to be with Jesus.  Under her pillow was found an old, torn pocketbook.  Inside was a scrap of paper in which she had wrapped fifty-seven pennies.  On the paper, scrawled in a childish hand, were these words:  “To help build the church a little bigger so that more children can go there to Sunday school.”  Hattie May was only a little child, and so she didn’t have much that she could give to Jesus, but she had saved fifty-seven shining coppers to help enlarge a Sunday school that could not let her in.  The pastor, deeply touched, told his congregation what the little child had done.  The newspapers repeated the story, and soon from far and wide gifts began to come in to build a bigger auditorium.  That contribution of fifty-seven sacrificial pennies, given in love for Jesus, grew until the fund reached the sum of $250,000.  As a result, in Philadelphia there is now a great church, seating over 3000 people, with plenty of room for little children who want to attend Sunday school.” (Our Daily Bread devotional)

We will soon see how that touching story relates to the passage of Scripture we are now studying:  John 6:1-15.

I.  THE SETTING:  (verses 1-4)

Verse 1 begins with the words, “After these things”.  Actually, several months have passed since the end of chapter 5.  During that time Jesus preached His Sermon on the Mount, performed several miracles, and told several parables, He also gave His disciples the power to heal the sick and cast out demons, and then sent them out two-by-two to proclaim the kingdom of God.  When they returned to Him, Jesus listened to their accounts of what they had done (Matthew 9-14; Mark 4-6; Luke 5-9)

Now He’s going by boat across the Sea of Galilee, probably to spend some time with His disciples and get some much-needed rest.  What happens next is recorded in all four of the Gospels (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:32-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-15).  The time alone with His disciples didn’t last long.  Verse 2 tells us that “a great multitude was following Him”.  They were walking around the Sea of Galilee, probably bringing their sick and lame along with them for Jesus to heal.  Mark’s gospel tells us that the crowd of people was already there when He and His disciples arrived.

Verse 3 tells us, “And He went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.”  From that vantage point they could see quite a distance, and they “lifted up their eyes” and watched and waited until all who were coming had arrived.  The mountain they climbed was part of what is now called the Golan Heights.  There was a large, grassy plateau at the top.

Luke 14:21 says that the crowd consisted of 5000 men “aside from women and children”.  If you do the math, that means there were 15,000 to 20,000 people in that crowd.  Where did all these people come from?  I think the apostle John gives us part of the answer to that question when he inserted verse 4 into his narrative.  It says, “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand”.  This means that throngs of Jews from all over the Roman Empire were making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover meal.  What would you do if you were one of those pilgrims and saw a large crowd of Jews going in a different direction?  I’d want to ask them some questions, wouldn’t you?  “What’s going on?” “Where are you going”?  “Why”?  I believe that many of these pilgrims decided to make a detour and follow this crowd to see Jesus.

In spite of the fact that Jesus wanted to get away to a secluded place with His disciples to rest for a while, He wasn’t irritated by the fact that the crowds of people followed Him. Luke writes, “. . . and welcoming them, He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God, and curing those who had need of healing.”  The Lord Jesus was always a servant, concerned about the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of others.

II.  THE TEST (verses 5-9)

As the day wore on, the disciples encouraged Jesus to send the people away so that they could buy food for themselves (Mark 6:36).  In response, Jesus said to Philip (the “mathematician”), “Where are we going to buy bread that these may eat.”  He’s saying, “These people are our guests.  So, what are we going to do to provide them with a meal”  Jesus knew what He was going to do, but He puts Philip to the test; and Philip (“the mathematician”) considers this to be a “math test”, so he works out the problem in his head.  “Let’s see, 5000 men plus women and children, multiplied by the cost of one meal for each person, divided by the number of days worked to earn that amount of money.” . . .   Philip can’t count that high in his head, so he makes a minimum “guesstimate” in verse 7, saying, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be sufficient for them, for everyone to receive a little.”  Philip is saying, “This is mathematically impossible; two-hundred days wages wouldn’t be enough to give them each a mouthful of bread.”  Philip failed that test!

At that moment Andrew (the “bringer”), Simon Peter’s brother, approaches Jesus.  Andrew is always bringing someone to Jesus, and in this case, he brings along a little boy.  The child’s mother made him a snack lunch that morning to take with him for the day, and he wanted to give it all to Jesus.  Does that remind you of Hattie May Wiatt, the little girl in my introduction?  Like Hattie May, this little boy had no idea how great the cost would be to meet the need, but he wanted to give everything that he had in order to help meet that need.

Andrew said to Jesus, in verse 9:  “There’s a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish”.  If Andrew had stopped there, it would have been a demonstration of faith in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.  However, Andrew continues, “but what are these for so many people?”  Andrew failed the test also!  He failed because, like Philip, he removed his focus from His Messiah and started doing the math.  This was not a math test that Jesus was giving them.  He is not their math teacher, but their God!  I would consider this to be more of a history test than a math test, and I’ll explain why later on in this sermon.

So far, the only one who has passed the test is this little boy!  He knew that Jesus could meet the need – that’s why he made his investment!  For him, it wasn’t a mathematical problem, but an opportunity to express faith and trust in Jesus.  Whether it’s a lunch or 57 cents, this boy and Hattie May gave what they had and God does the rest.

Before we look into the miracle itself, let’s first look into the lunchbox.  I’m sure there was a broad smile on Jesus’ face as He squatted to talk to the child.  I can imagine that Jesus embraced him as He thanked the boy for his gift.  When Jesus opened the lunchbox, what does He see?  Before His eyes are five small barley cakes.  Barley is the food of the poor, so Jesus knows that this child is from a poor family.  He also knows that the boy is not with his family because they did not come along with him to meet Jesus.  They may have given him that lunch because they were both going to be in the fields that day, harvesting someone’s crop or gleaning the leftover grain in order to have enough to eat for themselves and their family.  When the boy saw crowds of people going around the lake and learned that they were on their way to see Jesus, he decided to join them.

What do those barley cakes look like?  They are small and flat and look like little tortillas.  The two dried fish were probably about the size of sardines.  Not much of a meal, is it?  It was barely enough to feed this child and would have provided only a few mouthfuls for a hungry man.  But the child’s lunch was the answer to Jesus’ question to Philip:  “Where are we going to buy bread that these may eat.”  Jesus didn’t say “how”, but “where”.  The answer to that question was now in His hands, and He and His disciples didn’t even have to pay for it!

III.  THE MEAL (verses 10-11)

Rather than chiding these two disciples for their lack of faith in Him, Jesus puts them and all the rest of His disciples to work.  This is going to be a disciple-participation miracle and not just a child-participation miracle.  He says to them in verse 10, “Have the people sit down.”  As His disciples fan out to pass those words on to the people, they are probably wondering in their minds:  “What is He going to do next?”

Have you ever wondered what happened to the boy?  Did he just walk away and fade into the crowd?  I don’t think so.  Based upon the character of Jesus and His love for people, especially little children, I think that Jesus invited the boy to stay close beside  Him so that the child could watch the miracle as it was taking place.  He was going to see firsthand how Jesus was going to use his small lunch to feed the multitude.  I’m sure this was an unexpected surprise for him.

How did this miracle take place?  Verse 11 tells us that it began with a prayer of thanksgiving to God the Father, said by Jesus.  “Jesus, therefore, took the loaves, and having given thanks”.  Luke’s Gospel adds the words, “looking up to heaven”.  Jesus gave thanks for the abundance of food that didn’t exist yet!  By looking up to heaven, Jesus made it obvious to His disciples and everyone near Him that He was giving thanks for the Father’s provision.  That is a prayer of trust in the Father’s enabling!  Let me ask you a question.  How would you like to invite 20.000 people over for a free meal, all-you-can-eat?  You would be asking for a miracle too!

You might say that the miracle that followed took place in the hands of Jesus.  John 6:11 continues with the words, “He distributed to those who were seated; likewise the fish as much as they wanted.”  The other Gospels add that Jesus broke the loaves (tore the tortillas) and broke the fish.  I personally believe that this was a two-part miracle, in the sense that it happened in two distinct places.  It happened in the hands of Jesus as He broke the loaves and fish and placed the pieces in the baskets, and the miracle also happened in the baskets themselves.  I believe those baskets became “never-ending fish and chips baskets”.  The apostles distributed some at first and then set the baskets down in each of their distribution areas and the people could come and get more until they were satisfied.  It would be similar to the widow’s never-ending jar of oil in II Kings 4, or The Olive Garden Restaurants’ “never-ending salad bowl and breadsticks”.  Otherwise, Jesus would have been breaking loaves and fishes for many hours, and the twelve apostles would have made several hundred trips back and forth distributing and refilling.  Jesus and His disciples would have been too exhausted to eat, and the sun would have been going down.  Does that opinion make sense to you?

That done, guess who had the privilege of having lunch with Jesus and His disciples?  The boy who gave his lunch is going to receive back much more than he gave!  Can you imagine what a joyful experience that must have been?  I imagine that each one of the disciples thanked him as well.  This child is going to have quite a story to tell his parents that evening!

IV.  THE CLEAN-UP (verses 12-13)

In verses 12 and 13 we learn that Jesus is no “litter-bug”, and He does not believe in wasting food.  He tells His disciples to “gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost.”  Each of His disciples returned with his basket full of pieces of bread and fish.  These baskets were probably of a wicker material and could hold about two gallons each.  Twenty-four gallons of leftovers from five little tortillas and two little fish!  It was another opportunity for His disciples to reflect upon, and be amazed at what had happened, along with all the people who were there.  It had become, not only a disciple-participation miracle but an audience-participation miracle as well!

Did you ever wonder what they did with all those leftovers?  I think the Lord Jesus gave them away to some of the poorest people in the crowd for their next meal, or as food for any animals they might have.  I wonder whether one or more of those baskets was given to that little boy to take home and show his parents.  We don’t know, but one thing we do know for sure is that the boy who donated his lunch will always be remembered because of his generosity.  Likewise, the people of Philadelphia will never forget Hattie May for her donation of 57 pennies to build a bigger church.  To have that kind of faith we need a big concept of God – a child’s concept of God!

V.  THE REACTION (verses 14-15)

After the meal is over and the clean-up is completed, we see the initial response of the crowd in verse 14.  “When therefore the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, ‘This is of a truth the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ ”  Which “prophet” are they referring to, and how did they come to that conclusion?  For all Jews at that time, a favorite messianic passage of Scripture in the Law of Moses was Deuteronomy 18:15.  Before his death, and before the people of Israel crossed the Jordan River into the promised land, Moses told the people, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”

This amazing meal reminded the people of the manna that Moses said God would provide for their ancestors to eat while they were in the wilderness.  That’s why I said earlier that Jesus’ question to Philip in verse 6 was more like a history test than a math test. He wanted to bring to Philip’s mind the miracle that God performed in the wilderness.  In Exodus 16:4, God said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you”.  God speaks to Moses again in verse 12 saying,  “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”   How many people were fed by the manna and the quail in the wilderness?  Numbers 12:37-38 tells us that there were 603,550 men over 20, apart from women and children.  Multiply that number by four, and we’re talking about 2.5 million people fed with manna every day for 40 years.  Try doing the math to see if you can figure out how much bread was eaten.  I’ll bet you can’t do it in your head!  In both cases, there was enough and more than enough to satisfy everyone’s needs.  I made some calculations based upon a few assumptions.  If an omer was equivalent to a bushel, and a bushel was equivalent to an American gallon, then 2,500,000 people times 365 days a year times 40 years would be a minimum of 36,500,000,000 (or 36 billion, 500 million) bushels or gallons of manna, and that’s only what was gathered and eaten!  That’s a lot of bread!  It would be enough to feed the entire population of our world for 5 days, with some leftovers!  Isn’t that awesome?  We have an awesome God!

Returning to the passage of Scripture we are studying, we learn that the multitude Jesus fed had come to the conclusion that Jesus must be the Prophet, the One who was to be their Messiah.  In verse 15, we are told what this crowd of people wanted to do.  It reads, “Jesus, therefore, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.” Mark’s and Luke’s gospels add that Jesus sent the disciples on ahead of Him by boat, and then dismissed the crowd before going up on the mountain.

CONCLUSION:

This particular miracle, the feeding of the 5000 by Jesus, was a continual source of inspiration and encouragement to a man by the name of George Mueller.  This man of God cared for as many as 2000 orphans at one time in Bristol, England during the middle of the 19th century.  No regular means of support was available and no appeals for money were ever made, yet thousands of dollars came from all over the world.  The orphanage personnel often faced desperate situations, but George Mueller always said, “The Lord is testing us.  I don’t know what He’ll do, but He knows, and that’s enough.”  As Jesus lifted up HIs eyes and thanked His Father for food that wasn’t provided yet, so George Mueller would sometimes sit down with the orphans and thank God for food that was not on their tables.  Often there would be a knock on the door before he even finished praying!

A principle we can draw from this passage of Scripture and from these illustrations from history is that there is no need, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, that God cannot supply.  We need to look beyond our overwhelming needs to see our all-sufficient God.  What are your “impossibilities”?

There is also a principle we can learn from the little boy who gave his lunch to Jesus.  The Lord never forgets to reward those who do what they can, no matter how small their contribution may appear in their own eyes or in the eyes of others.  Let’s give our all to Jesus Christ and watch Him use it to meet the needs of others and bring glory to Himself.

If you would like to watch a short film clip from the movie, “The Life of Jesus”, depicting this passage of scripture, please click the following link to the YouTube video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcNliyXdjL4

CONSTRUCTION SITE:  (COMPLETED)

Thank you for visiting this completed work-in-progress.  Another project, John 6:17-21, will begin very soon on the adjacent lot.  See you there!

THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR UNBELIEF – John 5:41-47

Bible sermons, faith, God, Gospel of John, hypocrisy, John 5, John 5:41-47, love for God, motives, New Testament sermon, Sermon on John's Gospel, sermons

INTRODUCTION:

The Queen Mary was the largest ship to cross the oceans when it was launched in 1936.  Through four decades and a World War, she served until she was retired and anchored as a floating hotel and museum in Long Beach, California.  During the conversion process, her three massive stacks were taken off to be scraped down and repainted.  But on the dock they crumbled.  Nothing was left of the 3/4 inch steel plate from which the stacks had been formed.  All that remained were more than thirty coats of paint that had been applied over the years.

After healing the invalid at the pool of Bethesda,  the Lord Jesus went into great detail to substantiate His claim to be the Messiah, the Son of God.  He described five witnesses that couldn’t be refuted; and there were hundreds, even thousands who could attest to the truth of what they saw and heard.  He had built a structure that was strong and lasting, incapable of being torn down and destroyed.  Now, in verses 41-47, the Lord Jesus directs His attention toward His accusers, who are standing around him in their elegant robes and with their pious countenances, and He starts chipping away at their paint!

I.  EMPTY OF LOVE (verse 41-42)

Jesus has been appealing to their minds by giving them proof of his deity.  Then He appealed to their wills, exposing their stubborn refusal to believe Him.  Now He’s going to get to the heart of the problem.  In verse 41, Jesus gives them a brief description of His own attitude as a basis for comparison to theirs.  He says, “I do not receive glory from men.”  He is not seeking the applause of men.  Rather, His motivation is that of doing the will of the Father out of love for the Father.  He is filled and controlled by His love for His Father.  (John 5:19-20, 30).

By contrast, he says to them, “but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves.”  Can you feel the sharpness of His rebuke? “But I know you”, He says.  They are not going to pull the wool over His eyes!  He sees underneath the paint!   Now He’s going to be chipping away at it, and revealing to them what He sees!

The first thing he reveals to them, in verse 42, is that they have no love for God.  In their hearts they don’t really love God.  It’s just “external paint” that they have applied to themselves so that others might see it and admire them.  I think Jesus is also saying, “You don’t really believe in God, and you are unwilling to believe in Me, because you don’t love God.  I can envision the anger on their faces and can almost hear the murmuring and threats they are making.  I think Jesus had to raise His voice in order to be heard above their murmuring and complaining.

II.  FILLED WITH PRIDE (verses 43-44)

In order to affirm what He has just told them, and give them the underlying reason for His statement in verse 42, Jesus reiterates what He told them earlier.  In verse 43, Jesus begins by saying, “I have come in My Father’s name, and you did not receive Me”.  What He means by those words is, “I’ve already proven to you that I’ve been sent by God and have His authority, yet you refuse to accept Me for Who I am and obey Me.  You refuse to show me the honor and worship that I deserve.”

I believe that the words that follow are used by Jesus to point out the irony in what they have been doing.  He says, “if another should come in his own name, you will receive him.”  Jesus is making a true statement about what the leaders of the Jews have done many times in the past.  During the time of Jesus there were two schools of thought based upon the teachings of two rabbis:  Shammai and Hillel.  The scribes and Pharisees spent much time debating with each other regarding which one of them was right on various issues and doctrines, rather than studying the Scriptures themselves.  Later on, Jesus tells them, in Mark 13 and Matthew 24, that many other false Messiahs will come on their own authority and draw many astray.

Jesus didn’t fit their own description of the Messiah.  Jesus was too humble, poor, and plain.  They were looking for a Messiah whom they considered to be worthy of being followed – a Messiah who would come in royal robes; a stately figure with awesome physical and political power who would crush the power of the Roman Empire. They wanted a Messiah who would recognize their devotion to God and their leadership abilities, and Who would put them in positions of authority in His kingdom on earth.  Jesus was the total opposite of what they had in mind.

In verse 44, Jesus rebukes them again by asking them a pointed question: “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another. and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?”  He faced them with the true cause of their unbelief – their own personal pride and conceit.  The word “glory” is a translation of the Greek word “Doxan”, which comes from the verb “dokeo”, which means “to think”.  The scribes and Pharisees had a very high “opinion” of themselves; so high that they even argued among themselves as to who was the most famous.  You might say that there was even a battle going on to form a “pecking order” among the proud, and nobody wanted to give in to the others.  They were so busy glorifying themselves that they had no interest in seeking the glory of God that could be found reflected in Jesus Christ.

On the French Riviera, it is such an important status symbol to have a balcony on an apartment, that it is quite common to see balconies painted on the walls of apartment houses.  People even painted wet laundry hanging on the clothesline, just to give it a touch of reality!  In the same vein, there was no limit to what these Jewish leaders would do in order to give their own lives an imitation “touch of reality” that might cause others to “look up to them” and be impressed by what they saw.

III.  THE CONSEQUENCES (verses 45-47)

The Lord Jesus has been chipping away at their exterior paint.  Now He is going to hammer away at their foundation so that it crumbles like the stacks of the Queen Mary.  He says, in verse 45, “Do you think that I will accuse you before the Father”?  He’s saying, “Do you think that I am going to follow your example?”  They have been accusing Him of doing miracles on the Sabbath in violation of the Law of Moses (John 5:10,16).  The Lord wasn’t the One who would be gathering the information and pressing charges against them.  He continues by saying, the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.”  The men standing around Jesus claimed to be disciples of Moses.  That statement of Jesus must have raised some eyebrows and evoked some angry responses.  They’ve put their hope in the wrong person because Moses is not going be on their side!

In verse 46, Jesus gives the reason for His statement:  “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me.”  Where did Moses write about Jesus?  Moses does not use the name “Jesus”, but he refers to the Messiah in several places using a variety of names to describe Him.  In Genesis 3:15, Moses wrote down the words that God said to the serpent in the hearing of Adam and Eve after their disobedience:  “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between her seed and your seed; He shall bruise (crush) you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heal.”  The “seed of the woman” is the Messiah.  He will be a descendant of her.

In Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses refers to the Messiah as a prophet when he says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”

In Genesis 49, Jacob summoned all his sons to gather around him before his death and prophesied concerning each of his sons.  In his prophecy concerning his son, Judah, Jacob says:  “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” (Genesis 49:10).  This is the only place in the Bible where Shiloh refers to a person rather than a place.  Shiloh is the Messiah, and He has already come to earth in the Person of Jesus Christ.  So why does it say that the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes?  History gives the answer.  In 70 A.D. the nation of Israel was conquered and its people scattered throughout the earth.  The scepter was removed from Judah, but it is still retained.  Jesus was the last Person from the line of David, on both His mother’s and his father’s side, who had the legal and spiritual right to assume the throne.  He still retains that right and will be returning to bring that prophecy to fulfillment.

Jesus closes His rebuke with the words “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words.”  Jesus was saying to them, and He says to us today also, that belief is not just a matter of the mind, but also of the will.  They knew those Messianic texts, but they were unwilling to ascribe them to Him.  They refused to obey Moses, and they refused to obey Christ.  There was no valid excuse for their behavior.  They loved themselves to the exclusion of a true love of God, and in their pride they chose to be their own gods, doing their own will instead of God’s.

The same is true today.  There is no acceptable excuse for not believing and obeying God and His Son, Jesus Christ.  There is no excuse for not searching after God and asking Him to reveal Himself to us.  There is no excuse for not responding to the truth that we have, the truth God has given to each of us.  The only thing that holds us back is our own foolish pride in ourselves, the original sin of Adam and Eve, the temptation that Satan wants us to give in to.  Don’t let pride separate you eternally from the One who loves you sacrificially and wants you to experience the joy of submitting yourselves to Him as your Lord and King; a joy that will change your life forever, giving you a new purpose for living as you enjoy doing His will and experiencing His power and presence.  Let’s “remove the paint” and “be real” in Christ Jesus our Lord!  

Fellow Christians, let’s review each day and ask ourselves who is getting the glory in our lives.  Even when we are serving the Lord and living in obedience to His Word, it’s always tempting to take the glory to ourselves rather than put the focus on the One who loves us, inspires us, empowers us, and has gifted us to serve Him and be witnesses for Him.

“I will bless the Lord at all times;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul shall make its boast in the Lord;
The humble shall hear it and rejoice.
O magnify the Lord with me,
And let us exalt His name together.”
Psalm 34:1-3

  CONSTRUCTION SITE:  COMPLETED

May the Lord Jesus be the One who holds your life together, and gives you joy, peace, purpose, and meaning each day.  May He also receive the glory that He alone deserves.

 

 

 

 

THE FINAL THREE PROOFS OF DEITY – John 5:36-40

Bible sermons, Evidence that Jesus Christ is God, John 5:36-40

INTRODUCTION:

Hans Christian Andersen wrote a fairy tale about a young woman who was tested to determine whether or not she was truly a princess.  You may be familiar with the story:  “The Princess and the Pea”.  Actually, the literal translation of the title of his story, from Danish to English, is “The Princess on the Pea”, and that title describes the story more clearly.  If you are unfamiliar with the story or would like to refresh your memory, click the following link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waw0U9tKpW0.  You will watch a very short and concise summary of the story with sketches.  The “pressure test” proved positive and the prince married the princess.  Don’t you love happy endings?

As you can well imagine, it’s going to take much more than a “pea” to prove that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the King of heaven and earth.  During this conversation with the leaders of the Jews, Jesus has already given them three “signs”, or witnesses of His deity, and He has three more to go.  “Like 3 peas in a pod”, these next three witnesses are very closely related to one other  Let’s see what else He has to say about Himself in this passage of Scripture:  John 5:36-40.

I.  THE MIRACLES (verse 36)

The Lord Jesus has already shared with them His own witness concerning Himself, and also John the Baptist’s testimony about Him.  But the courtroom imagery isn’t over yet.  Jesus is still surrounded by His accusers for healing a person on the Sabbath, and they are still not convinced that He has the authority to do such things on the Lord’s day.

Jesus now presents His own works as proof that He is the promised Messiah, the Son of God.  In verse 36 we read, “But the witness which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.”  When we think of Jesus’ works, we naturally think of His miracles because they were examples of His divine power.  As Nicodemus said to Jesus in John 3:2, “No one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”   We are told in John 10:41 that John the Baptist worked no miracles.  However, the Bible does record specific miracles performed by ordinary men, such as Moses, Elijah, and the apostles Peter and Paul.  Do those miracles also prove that they are also sent from God?  Yes, they do, but none of these men ever claimed to be the Son of God.  No true servant of God would ever make that claim; but Jesus did, and His mighty works are evidence that His claim is true.  One who is able to raise the dead by the words from His mouth must have all power, and the One who sent Him must be God.  His works are a “greater witness than that of John” – being stronger, and more decisive evidence. 

The word that is translated “works” in my Bible, is the Greek word “erga”.  This word encompasses more than just the miracles of Christ.  It includes His whole purpose for being sent by the Father – including His birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection.  It refers to His whole ministry on this earth.  We see that perspective in the words that Jesus says in His prayer to the Father in John 17:4, “I have glorified Thee on earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do.”  The Lord Jesus was a Man on a mission.  What about you?  What is your mission in life?  Have you given it much thought? Have you ever put your mission in writing so that you can compare it to the way you live each day:  the way you use your time, spend your money, choose your friends?  You might find that to be a challenging and rewarding assignment.  The Lord Jesus is giving us an Example to follow.  His mission must have been very clearly delineated in order for Him to be able to confidently say that He had accomplished it.

II.  THE WITNESS OF THE FATHER (verses 37-38)

The next witness that Jesus brings to their attention (again) is God the Father.  He has called God His Father many times already, and their response has been anger and threats.  They don’t want to believe His words;  they don’t even want to hear them!  I’m amazed at Jesus’ patience and persistence, because He tells them again for the umpteenth time!  Here are His words in verse 37:  “And the Father who sent Me, He has borne witness of Me.  You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen Him.”  

Jesus is still surrounded by the leaders of the Jews.  That’s an intimidating situation for Him, but He will not back down from His claims, and He will not deny Himself nor withhold His witnesses!  He keeps telling them the truth whether they like it or not!  Let’s look at the first phrase in verse 37:  “And the Father who sent me”.  I believe that Jesus is saying, “I’ve already established the fact that the Father sent Me.  Let’s move on!  It’s no longer a theorem but a fact!”  You may be familiar with the abbreviation QED.  It comes from the Latin words, “Quod erat demonstrondum”, which mean, “what has been demonstrated”.  When my high-school math teacher wrote QED in large letters on the blackboard after solving a math problem, he was saying, “It’s been proven!  It’s obvious!  Let’s move on to the next problem!”

Moving on, I can sense, from Jesus’ words and the way He phrases them, that He is getting angry at the hardness of their hearts.  We’ll see that anger increase until it reaches a crescendo in verse 40.  This is no “gentle reproof” that He’s about to express to them.  It’s a scathing rebuke!  I think I even see some sarcasm and irony in His words also.  As we look at HIs words more closely, I think you’ll agree with me that “they had it comin’ to ’em!”

I can feel a biting sarcasm in the words “You have neither heard HIs voice at any time, nor seen Him.”  There was a voice from the Father at Jesus’ baptism: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).  Near the end of Jesus’ life, in John 12:28, Jesus asks the Father, “Glorify Thy name”, and a voice comes from heaven again saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”  In this case, most of the multitude that heard it said that “it had thundered”.  I wonder if they used that same excuse at His baptism.  It’s as if Jesus is implying, “Are you saying that My Father doesn’t speak loudly enough and doesn’t enunciate His words clearly enough for you to understand what He is saying, and that He is the One who said it?”  I doubt that anyone present at those two occasions could forget the words that the Father had said.  I also believe that those listeners told everyone they knew the words they had heard.  It’s not every day that God speaks from heaven in a loud voice for everyone to hear!

Jesus adds, “nor seen His form”.  Later, when Philip says, “Show us the Father”, Jesus responds by saying, “He who sees Me, sees the Father”.  Could Jesus be saying here to his accusers, “You’re looking Me in the face, but you don’t see the Father; you don’t recognize the Father in Me?”  There are other interpretations of this verse of Scripture, and I don’t claim to be an authority.  I’ve come to this personal understanding based on Jesus’ rising anger and the increasing sharpness of His words to them.

In verse 38, Jesus is saying, “that’s not all” – “And you do not have His words abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.”  God’s words were on their lips but not in their hearts.  When you think about the life and the words of Christ, who were the ones who received the most scathing rebukes from Him?  Was it not the hypocrites?  And who were the greatest hypocrites of His time?  Were they not the Scribes and the Pharisees?

In any great forest, you will find many huge trees.  They tower above other trees and appear to be the very picture of strength and maturity.  However, loggers will sometimes not even bother to cut down these huge trees.  At first one wonders, “Why leave them?  After all, a tree that big must contain twice or thrice the amount of lumber as a smaller tree.”

The reason is simple.  Huge trees are often rotten on the inside.  They are the hollow trees that children’s picture books show raccoons living in.  And they are the trees that are often blown over in a strong windstorm because, while they appear to be the picture of strength, in fact, their hollowness makes them weak.  This is the essence of hypocrisy – appearing strong on the outside, but being hollow and rotten on the inside.  Even so, the Scribes and Pharisees standing around Him didn’t have God’s Word abiding in them.  As I said earlier, it was on their lips but not in their hearts.  It wasn’t genuine.  They appeared righteous and scholarly on the outside, and people looked up to them because of this, but they were hollow, empty, and rotten on the inside.

III.  THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES (verses 39-40)

Jesus’ anger is still rising as He says these words to His accusers, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life”.  A few versions of the Bible translate verse 39 as a command:  “Search the Scriptures”, but this does not fit the context.  He’s rebuking them and ridiculing them for the way they study the Scriptures, and for the conclusions they make.  The Lord Jesus uses the plural word, “Scriptures” to refer to the whole Old Testament, composed of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.  The Rabbis of that day studied the Old Testament Scriptures very meticulously, examining how many words were on a line and on a page; how many of each letter and of each word were on a line, a page, or the whole book.  They followed many of the techniques that the scribes used when copying the Scriptures.  Their purpose was to demonstrate to others how well they knew all the minute details of the Scriptures.  For many of the Rabbis, it was a way of exalting themselves and causing others to be amazed at their knowledge of the Scriptures, coming to the conclusion that they must be very close to God.

I read a story about an 18-year-old boy who was deeply interested in scientific subjects, especially astronomy.  So his father bought him a very expensive telescope.  Since the boy had also studied optics, he found the instrument to be very intriguing.  He took it apart, examined the lenses, and made detailed calculations on the distance of its point of focus.  He became so absorbed in gaining a technical knowledge of the telescope itself that he never got around to looking at the stars.  He knew a lot about that fine instrument, but he missed seeing the wonders of the heavens.  He overlooked the purpose for which that telescope was made.

In a similar way, these Jewish leaders missed the purpose for which the Old Testament Scriptures had been given and written down.  The word translated “searched” is the Greek word “ereunao”.  It was sometimes used to refer to a lion or a dog tracking its prey by scent (smell).  Jesus was telling them that they had “lost the scent” but had chosen to continue on anyway, and they were going down the wrong trail!  They needed to retrace their steps, pick up the scent again, and follow that trail to where it really leads – to Him.  “It is they (the Scriptures) that bear witness to Me.” Jesus is saying that the Scriptures are not an end in themselves; they are a means to an end.  They are like a signpost pointing directly to Christ and telling us about Him.  Wouldn’t it be a shame to be so taken up with measuring, studying, and admiring the signpost, that we don’t notice or pay heed to the message that’s written on the signpost, nor do what it says?

A little girl bought a Bible to give to her father for his birthday.  When she opened it to write him a note, she wasn’t sure what to say.  “From Mary” seemed to lack feeling.  “From your little daughter” would not be right because he had told her she was getting to be a big girl.  Then she thought, “From one who loves you.”  But others loved him too.  She went to her father’s library and pulled one of his favorite books from the shelf.  On the flyleaf, she read, “From the Author.”  That was it!

When the young girl’s father opened the gift and saw, in Mary’s handwriting, “From the Author,” he thought to himself, “I’m not acquainted with the Author of the Bible.”  That thought prompted him to begin studying God’s Word, which led to his conversion.  He came to know the Author.

As it was in Jesus’s time on earth, so it is today.  There are many people today who study the Bible for educational purposes only, rather than for relational purposes.  They know the Book but aren’t personally acquainted with its Author.

Now comes another rebuke to the Scribes and Pharisees in verse 40:  “Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”  I sense some irony in Jesus’ words.  He’s giving them an invitation.  In spite of all the things they have said and done, Jesus is giving them another opportunity to come to Him to receive life from the true Source of eternal life.  John Calvin said these words, “In order to come from spiritual death to spiritual life, it is necessary to come to Jesus.”  The Scriptures don’t give life; they point to the Giver of life.  Jesus is telling them that He is the only way to eternal life.

What is their response to His invitation?  They stubbornly, obstinately, and intentionally refused to do so.  They would rather be “dead wrong” than change.  They preferred to stay in their own darkness and turn their backs to the light.  No wonder Jesus is so angry at them.  He offers them eternal life and receives a “slap in the face” in return.

I’m placing a clickable link to the movie, The Gospel of John, again because I think it captures the emotion of the moment and gives a good visual depiction of this confrontation.  If you click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYrvOsc-rCU  and then move the timeline at the bottom of the picture to the right until you get to 40:20 (40 minutes, 20 seconds), there you will see this passage of Scripture being enacted.  It has left a lasting impression on my mind.  I hope it will do so on your minds also.

CONCLUSION:

The Lord Jesus has given us five witnesses of His deity.  If you are not a Christian, it should be obvious to you that the solution has been given.  You have a choice to make.  You can accept and respond to Jesus Christ as the Son of God by repenting of your sins and turning your life over to His control.  The result will be a life-changing experience.  You will experience joy and peace such as you have never experienced before, and your desire will be to know Him more fully through the study of His Word, and enjoy Him and serve Him for the rest of your life.  Whatever you give up will be considered of no significance compared to what you gain.  The only other choice is to refuse Him and face the consequences.  Putting it off is, in a sense, refusal because there is no good reason to do so, and it won’t be a good excuse if you should die in the next moment.  Please respond to what is obviously true, and don’t let personal pride, or the fear of what others may think, get in the way of the most important decision of your life.  The Lord Jesus wants you to come to Him.  Please don’t refuse His request.

Fellow Christians, we are the sixth witness of the deity of Christ.  Our changed lives, our devotion to God, and our joy in the midst of the trials of life are a “miracle” to those around us.  Jesus tells us that “we are the light of the world”.  In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16).  LET IT SHINE, LET IT SHINE, LET IT SHINE!

CONSTRUCTION SITE:  COMPLETED

Thank you for visiting this completed site:  John 5:36-40.  You are welcome to take a walk around the block and visit the other finished projects.  It’s a nice day for physical and spiritual exercise.  Hope to see you in this neighborhood again soon!

JESUS CHRIST: RESURRECTED, RESURRECTOR, AND JUDGE – John 5:26-29

Bible sermons, John 5:26-29, resurrection of Christ, sermons

INTRODUCTION:

There is much we can learn from little children.  They are so eager to learn, and so straight-forward in their conversations with adults.  Here is a case in point.  It was Sunday morning and the church service was over.  A little girl had been taught about the second coming of Christ and was quizzing her mother.  “Mommy, do you believe Jesus will come back?”  “Yes”.  “Today?”  “Yes.”  “In a few minutes?”  “Yes, dear.”  “Mommy, would you comb my hair?”

That little girl thought her mother was paying close attention to what she was saying and was answering her clearly, so she wanted to look her best when she meets Jesus!  How about you?  Do you want to look your best when you meet Jesus?  That topic of conversation is appropriate to the passage of Scripture we are now studying:  John 5:26-29.  Jesus mentions five resurrections in verses 24-29 and we examined the first two, which the Lord Jesus described in verses 24-25.  The spiritual regeneration and resurrection of believers was described by Jesus in verse 24, and the physical resurrections from the dead by the words of Jesus are predicted in verse 25 and will be happening soon.  There are three more resurrections described by the Lord Jesus in the order of their occurrence.  Jesus is sharing that information as further proof to the Jews that He is the Son of God.  Let’s take a look at those resurrections, one-at-a-time.

I.  THE THIRD RESURRECTION:  HIS OWN (verse 26)

In verse 26 we find these words spoken by Jesus:  “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.”  You may wonder, “What does that verse have to do with the resurrection of Christ?”  “The word ‘resurrection’ isn’t even mentioned in that verse!”  That’s a good question!  Let’s see if we can find a satisfactory answer.  The Lord Jesus uses a similar expression in John 10:17-18.  “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.  No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative.  I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.  This commandment I have received from My Father.” 

Putting these two passages of Scripture together, Jesus is saying that He always existed with the Father.  No one gave Him life because He has always had it, from all eternity.  Only God could say that truthfully.  Therefore only Jesus could lay down His life and take it back up again.  Warren Wiersbe puts it this way:  “Our life was derived, but His life is original.”  As John 1:4 says, “In Him was life”.  That’s why Jesus could say, in John 2:19, when the Jews asked for a sign after Jesus cleansed the temple, “Destroy this temple (His body), and in three days I will raise it up.”  

We have looked at Scripture passages which seem to point to the fact that Jesus raised Himself from the dead by His own power.  But the question, “Who raised Jesus Christ from the dead”, hasn’t been completely answered yet.  There are other passages of Scripture that seem to disagree with that conclusion.  Let’s take a look at some of those other Scriptures and see if we can resolve the issue once we get a good look at it.

Acts 10:40 says, “God raised Him on the third day”.  In Romans 6:4, the apostle Paul says, “Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father”.  In Romans 8:11, Paul says, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dwells in you . . . “.  So who raised Jesus from the dead?  Was it God, the Father, the Holy Spirit, or Christ Himself?

You may disagree with the next statement, but keep reading.  God is not a Person.  God is a title that is given to the divine nature or essence.  So when the term “God” is used, it represents all three Persons in the divine essence:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  That helps us understand Acts 10:40, which says that “God raised Him”, but what about the Scriptures that speak specifically of the Father and the Spirit raising Jesus from the dead?  I’m convinced that it was a cooperative effort, and the apostle John wanted to make that clear.

This is not the first time that all three Persons in the Trinity are mentioned.  I’ve found that each of the three members of the Trinity is mentioned in every “major event” in history (from God’s perspective).  Creation was the first “major event”, and all three are mentioned as participating (Genesis 1:2; 1:26; John 1:3).  The words spoken by God, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness“, tell us that God wants us to know, right from the beginning of the Scriptures, that He is a plurality.  The Jews knew that;  one of the Hebrew words for God in the Old Testament Scriptures is the word “Elohim” which is plural.  The second “main event” was the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary.  Luke 1:35 says, “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and the power of the Most-High will overshadow you.”  Jesus was the “Seed of the Woman” Who was implanted in Mary’s womb (Genesis 3:17).  I think that God wanted those particular words to be spoken to Mary so that she would know that this was the true and living God who was going to accomplish this miracle in her.  The third “main event” was the baptism of Jesus, which marked the beginning of His public ministry.  It’s recorded in all four gospels.  Together with Jesus was the “voice of the Father, and the Holy Spirit descending as a Dove and resting upon Him.”  Can you imagine what that scene must have looked like?  The heavens opened up, causing everyone to look up into the sky.  What they see is a dove descending out of heaven and they hear a booming voice say, “Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased” (Luke 3:21-22).  The fourth “main event” is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, as we have already seen.  His resurrection was so irrefutably true that the elders and the chief priests of the Jews gave a large sum of money to the guards and said, “you are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep’ ” (Matthew 28:11-15).  In each of those major events in the Scriptures, God wanted it to be known that the God of heaven and earth is a Trinity composed of three distinct Persons:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

II.  THE FOURTH RESURRECTION:  TO ETERNAL LIFE (verses 27-29a)

In verse 27, Jesus says of God the Father, “and He gave Him (Jesus) authority to exercise judgment, because He is the Son of Man.”  He’s telling the Jews that He has been given the authority to judge all men, and it’s based on the claim that He is the “Son of Man”.  Evangelist Billy Sunday said in one of his sermons, “There are two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ.”  I’ll take his word for it!  The Jews knew very well what Jesus was saying about Himself when He used the name “Son of Man”.  The prophet Daniel used those words in Daniel 7:13-14 as he was describing visions He had.

“I kept looking at the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like the Son of Man was coming
And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.
And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations, and men of every language
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.”

The Jews listening to Jesus’ words knew that He was again claiming to be the Messiah.  If His claim was true, then He had the right and the authority to judge the world.

Having made that claim again, the Lord Jesus continues, in verses 28-29, to describe the events and judgments that are going to take place in the future by the voice of His mouth.  In verse 28 He says, “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice”.  Notice that Jesus begins with a caution or a warning:  “Do not marvel at this” as if it’s too amazing and far-fetched to be true.  Think of all the amazing things God has done in the past.  Jesus is speaking in the third-person, using the words “He” and “Him” instead of “I” and “Me”.  He wants their focus to be on the word “Messiah” and what the prophets have declared about Him and His reign as King and Judge of all the earth.

Then Jesus does say something amazing:  “all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice.”  The dead can’t hear!  They can when Jesus calls them!  He’s going to be proving that claim very soon, only on a much smaller scale:  one-at-a-time.  But right now He’s talking about millions at one time.  There are many today, and there have been many throughout the ages, who have chosen to believe that death is the end of one’s existence.  You’ve probably heard the saying, “ALL DRESSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO”.  That saying is sometimes found on tombstones.  But the Lord Jesus tells us that death is not a dead-end street.  Rather, it is a fork in the road.  Jesus is going to tell us about the two roads that split-off and continue in opposite directions forever after the road of this mortal-life ends.  So we do have “someplace to go” – every one of us!

I’m going to call the first road “The Narrow Road” because, sadly, there are so few who follow it.  This road or path often has much more than a “one-percent grade”, but if you ask any hiker, it can be a joyful and exhilarating experience if you bring along the right equipment, wear the proper clothing, have some fellow-hikers with you, and follow the rules.  You’ll even build up some “spiritual muscles” along the way!  And don’t forget to enjoy the scenery along the way, and give praise and glory to the One who created it!

The first half of verse 29 gives us a brief description of where this trail leads for the devoted followers of Jesus Christ:  “those who did the good deeds to the resurrection of life.”  That phrase standing alone may seem to say that “good deeds” are what get us into heaven.  From the context, Jesus is saying that genuine repentance and faith in Him is going to result in a changed life, and the “good deeds” are the observable evidence of that changed life.  If a person is a genuine believer, it should be obvious to the world around him.  This “resurrection of life” is the resurrection of Christians and saints of the Old Testament to eternal life with no more death (Revelation 21:4).  I Thessalonians 4:16-17 describes the scene.  “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”  That is a description of the next event on the prophetic calendar.  It’s referred to as the Rapture and it could happen at any moment.  All believers will stand before the Judgment seat of Christ, where each of our lives will be completely reviewed (2 Corinthians 5:10), and rewards will be given for faithful service.  My understanding of the “judgment seat of Christ” is that it is going to be “play-back time” for each of us believers.  We are each going to be watching a re-run of our lives, and you know how you hate to watch re-runs on TV!  Every thought, word, action, and attitude, whether good or bad, will pass before our eyes or in our minds before any rewards are given.  We’ll consider that in more detail at the conclusion of this message.

III.  THE FIFTH RESURRECTION:  TO ETERNAL CONDEMNATION

The fifth and final resurrection will be the resurrection to condemnation.  A father and his son were reading epitaphs on some of the gravestones in a cemetery.  Every description seemed to indicate that the deceased person was in a state of bliss.  After a while, the boy asked, “Daddy, where are all the wicked people buried?”

The child had a point.  There are many who have lived their lives in a way that is evil in the sight of God and have refused to acknowledge their sins, and commit their lives to Jesus Christ by faith.  Many enjoy their immorality and even boast of it, defying God.  They live as if they don’t realize that there is an occupation many perform here on earth that is also practiced in heaven – accounting!  At the end of verse 29, the Lord Jesus tells His listeners, “those who committed the evil deeds to the resurrection of judgment.” 

You may be wondering:  “Where are all the unbelieving dead residing until the resurrection of judgment”?  Their souls are not in hell.  II Peter 2:4 says, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment”.  The word “hell” is the Greek word tartarus, and this is the only place it is found in the New Testament.  II Peter 2:9 says, “ The Lord knows how to . . . keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.”   In Luke 16:23, Jesus refers to this place as “hades”, and it is a place of torment.  That’s where they are residing before the resurrection to judgment.  

Billions of unrepentant, unregenerate sinners from all of mankind throughout human history will be standing before the Judge, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be condemned to the lake of fire.  You can find the description of the great white throne judgment in Revelation 20:11-15.  Verse 15 says,  “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”  You have never watched a horror movie that’s worse than the description given in those verses.  Matthew 25:45 and II Thessalonians 1:8-9 tell us that it is an everlasting punishment.  The prophet Amos gave the people of his day a warning when he said, “Prepare to meet your God” (Amos 4:12).

Are you prepared to meet God?  Please don’t put aside or put off choosing to make the Lord Jesus Christ the Lord of your life.  Consider the risks you are taking.  You could die at any moment and the Lord could come at any moment.  In either case, it will be too late to change your mind.  There are no second chances and no loopholes.

Warren Wiersbe tells about a frontier town where a horse bolted and ran away with a wagon carrying a little boy.  Seeing the child in danger, a young man risked his life to catch the horse and stop the wagon.  The child who was saved grew up to be a lawless man, and one day he stood before a judge to be sentenced for a serious crime.  The prisoner recognized the judge as the man who had saved his life, so he pled for mercy on the basis of that experience.  But the words from the bench silenced his plea:  “Young man, then I was your savior; today I am your judge, and I must sentence you to be hanged.”

Today, Jesus Christ wants to be your Lord and Savior if you will repent of your sins and turn your life over to His control.  He gave His life in order to make that possible.  Don’t put it off until you stand before Him as Judge and hear the words, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!”

If you would like to read a presentation of the Gospel message given in the Scriptures, please click the following link provided by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assoc.:  https://peacewithgod.net/steps-to-peace-with-god.

Fellow Christians, in view of the coming judgment seat of Christ that awaits us, and the great white throne judgment that’s ahead for unbelievers, what should be our attitude and our focus?

I personally believe that the judgment seat of Christ should be a source of rejoicing and encouragement among believers.  The Syriac expression, “maranatha” (“our Lord comes”) was used as a greeting in the early church. When believers gathered or parted, they didn’t say “hello” or “goodbye”, but “maranatha”.  It was the Christian “aloha”.  If we Christians had that same upward look and perspective today, it would add to our joy and anticipation in the midst of the struggles we face each day.  Let’s use the coming rapture as a means of encouraging one another.   The “day is drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25). The judgment seat of Christ is also a reminder that, as God’s children, we are stewards of our lives, and of all that God has entrusted to us. (I Thessalonians 4:1; I Peter 4:10-11; I John 2:28; 3:3).

Brethren in Christ, don’t forget to think about and reflect upon the great white throne judgment in Revelation 20.  There is a sense in which it applies to us.  God is a holy God.  Therefore He hates sin and pours out His wrath on guilty sinners.  Look through the Old Testament.  You’ll see it everywhere because His people kept turning away from Him.  God hasn’t changed.  He is still a holy God.  To satisfy His holiness, He poured out His wrath for sin on His Son.  When we repented and turned to Christ as our Lord and Savior, the judgment of God was taken away and we were declared innocent.  That “turning” on our part was probably in answer to the prayers and the witness of many people.

Do you have a clear, biblical understanding of the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the great white throne judgment, and eternal condemnation in the lake of fire?  If you do, it should cause you to tremble and shutter when you think of those close to you and around you who are facing eternal condemnation.  They need your sincere prayers and witness.  In Romans 10:1 the apostle Paul said, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved.”  In II Corinthians 5:20 he says, “We beg you (implore you, plead with you) on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God”.  May God increase our burden to pray for the lost, and may He empower our witness as we plead with them to be reconciled to God and escape His wrath through the shed blood of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  May we be ready and eager to see the Lord Jesus when He comes, and our work on this earth is over.  Until then, there is much work to be done for the Kingdom of God.

CONSTRUCTION SITE:  COMPLETED 

Welcome to this completed construction site:  John 5:26-29.  Thanks for visiting.  Maranatha!

 

 

 

EQUAL IN GIVING SPIRITUAL LIFE – John 5:24-25

Bible sermons, John 5:24, saving faith, saving faith - what is it?

INTRODUCTION:

When we talk about the quality of physical life, we often use phrases like “in the prime of life”, “the good life”, “barely alive”, “in the peak of health”.  When we answer the question, “How are you?”, we may have responded with words such as “fine”, “OK”, “still kicking”, “so-so”, “could be better”, “could be worse”, “hanging in there”, “not very well”, “fantastic”, “doing well”, and a host of other descriptions.  There are many possible and reasonable answers to that question.

When we speak of physical death we sometimes use phrases like “deader than a door nail”, “deader than a doorknob”, “deader than a doormat”, “as dead as can be”.  But think about that logically.  When you’re dead, you’re dead, right?  You can’t get any deader than that!  If you’ve ever watched the movie, “The Wizard of Oz”, you may remember that Dorothy’s house fell on the wicked Witch of the East.  After the Munchkin coroner examined her body, he gave his professional conclusion very clearly and succinctly.

“As coroner I must aver,
I thoroughly examined her;
And she’s not only merely dead,
She’s really most sincerely dead.”

I think he got the point across very clearly, don’t you?  There aren’t degrees of physical death because it’s not a comparative term;  it’s a once-and-for-all term, with a few rare exceptions given in the Scriptures.  A mortician/embalmer may do such a masterful job of preparing the person’s body for viewing that everyone at the funeral service believes that the dead loved-one is only sleeping.  But even a “total makeover” is not going to bring that person back to life.

This passage of Scripture we are studying deals with spiritual life and spiritual death.  There is a basis for comparison here.  A spiritually lost sinner is as spiritually lifeless and helpless as a dead person is physically.  He cannot save himself and he cannot give himself spiritual life.  In this passage of Scripture, the Lord Jesus is telling His listeners that He not only has the power to give physical life, but He also has the greater power to give spiritual life with all its benefits, and to remove spiritual death with all its consequences.

I.  SPIRITUAL REGENERATING (verse 24)

Verse 24 begins with the words, “Truly, truly, I say to you.”  Jesus is once again telling them that He is speaking from personal knowledge and experience, therefore what He has to say is true.  To put it into our manner of speaking, Jesus is saying something like “Pay close attention to what I am about to tell you.”  “It is very important information.”  He continues by saying, “he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”  This verse of Scripture has a lot to say to us.

The phrase “He who hears My word” is often misunderstood.  In this case, as well as in many other New Testament scripture passages, the word “hear” conveys the idea of listening, being receptive, and responding in obedience.  There were many who heard Jesus speak, in the sense that they were in “earshot” of Him and heard the words He said.   There have been many over the centuries since that time who have “heard” the gospel message with their ears, but with no concern or response.  It was “in one ear and out the other” so to speak.  When correcting a child, a parent might sometimes use the words, “Do you hear me?”.  Does the parent mean, “Did you hear the words I pronounced to you”?  No!  When I’ve heard those words spoken, the parent meant, “Are you going to do what I just told you or are you going to face the consequences!

There are some Old Testament scriptures that may give us a better perspective on this phrase, “He who hears my words”.  You will find that I often go to the Old Testament to seek a basis for the words of the Lord Jesus Christ:  how He said them, where He said them, to whom He said them, and why He said them.  There is a reason why I spend a great deal of time seeking answers to those questions in the Old Testament scriptures.  I am personally convinced that the Lord Jesus is often tying His words to the words God spoke to His people through the prophets.  He is thus reminding them that this isn’t the first time that similar words have been spoken to them,  He’s also implying that He is the “Prophet who is to come” – the Messiah.  I think we miss much of what Jesus is saying to His people if we fail to make that connection.

In this case, when the Lord Jesus says, “He who hears My words”, scripture passages galore should have come to the minds of His listeners.  Jesus is in Jerusalem, speaking to the leaders of His people, the Jews.  Do the words, “Hear the Word of the Lord” sound familiar to you?  If they do, imagine how familiar and convicting they would have sounded to the Jewish leaders standing before Him.  Moses, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Micah, used those words when prophesying to the people of Israel and Judah, and usually those words were an indication of an impending judgment by God upon His people.

Here in verse 24, however, we have participles instead of verbs in the Greek text.  The beginning of the verse is literally saying, “The one hearing My word and believing the One having sent Me”, and the result is positive rather than negative.  It’s as if the Lord Jesus is showing them a contrast between those words of impending judgment, spoken by the prophets to their ancestors, and the words of pardon and eternal life that He is about to offer them.

Jesus refers to His Father as “the One who sent Me“.  He used that phrase several times while He was on this earth.  Does that sound impersonal to you – to refer to His Father in that way?  It did to me at first, but after doing some research, I think I understand why Jesus uses those words at times when referring to His Father.  Whom did God “send” in the Old Testament scriptures?  He sent Moses to lead the people of Israel and be His spokesman.  He sent the prophets to declare His words to His people and speak of things to come.  He also sent “the Angel of the Lord” to protect and defend His people.  Earlier in his Gospel, the apostle John said, in chapter 3, verse 17, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  The apostle Paul says in Galatians 4:4, “In the fullness of time God sent His Son . . .”.  By using the words “Him who sent Me”, Jesus is telling His listeners:  “You can’t believe the Sender and not believe the One who was sent.”  To put it another way, “You can’t believe in the One who sent His Son without believing in the Son Whom He sent.”

The Lord Jesus is telling His listeners, and each of us, the relationship between hearing and believing.  Both knowledge and faith are involved in salvation.   The apostle John’s thinking about faith is unique to the New Testament.  Faith is based on the testimony of historical witnesses.  At that particular point in time, Jesus was giving a testimony about Himself, and that testimony was authenticated by the Father.  Eternal life was the result of listening to that testimony and choosing, by God’s enabling, to believe Him by putting their trust in Him as their Messiah, the Son of God, sent by the Father.  At that moment eternal life began.  The focus of Jesus Christ in verse 24 is on the object of one’s faith.  The Lord Jesus has just been telling them that He is equal to the Father in working (verse 19), in knowing (verse 20), in resurrecting (verse 21), in judging (verse 22), in honor (verse 23), and now in regenerating (verse 24).  They have received Jesus’ testimony concerning Himself.  Now He is inviting a response from them.  Only faith in Him as the Son of God and the Father’s Representative results in “eternal life, no judgment, and passing from death to life”.  No One else and nothing else can bring those gifts as a result.  Only Jesus Christ is equal to the Father in regenerating – giving spiritual life.  As Jesus said in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand”.  “Following” is the outward evidence of genuine belief.

You and I have saving faith when we understand what the Bible says about Jesus Christ, and when we act upon that truth by putting our trust in Him as our Lord and Savior.  When that happens, events occur in heaven and in your lives.  It will be a life-changing event, as the Lord Jesus begins to conform us to His image and as we take delight in spending time with Him in His Word and prayer.  So the words “eternal life”  also refer to a change in the quality of our lives while we are on this earth.

Dr. H.A, Ironside, the famous Bible expositor and pastor of Moody Bible Church in Chicago a generation ago, said that a friend of his preached on a similar passage of Scripture, John 3:36.  At the close of the meeting, his friend went down to the church door to greet people as they were leaving.  A lady who was troubled about her soul came by the door and the preacher looked at her and said, “Well, how is it with you tonight?  How is your soul; have you been born-again?  Are you saved?”

She said, “I don’t know, sir.  I hope so.”

He said, “Well let me go over that text with you again.  It says, he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.  Do you believe in the Son?”

She said, “Oh yes, I do sir.  I believe in Jesus Christ.”

He said, “Well, do you have everlasting life?”

She said, “I hope so.”

He said, “Well, let’s look at the verse again: he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.  Do you believe in the Son?”

She said, “Yes I do.”

“Do you have everlasting life?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Well, read it again”

And so they went through the same thing again, and finally he said to her, “You know, when you were a little girl they spelled very differently from what they did when I was a boy.”

She looked at him and said, “What do you mean; I’m not so much older than you.”

He said, “Well, evidently when you were a girl, H-A-T-H spelled hope.  When I was a little boy, H-A-T-H spelled hath.”

She said, “Oh!  I see it!  He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life!”

It makes you wonder how many truly born-again Christians are still hoping for something that they already have!  I say that because, on the night I believed in Jesus Christ, after having the Gospel message presented to me, and all my questions answered, I memorized several verses on assurance of salvation, including John 5:24, before going to bed that night.  The concept and the promise were so amazing to me that I needed to go over and over that realization in my mind so that I could remove all doubts and enjoy what was now mine.

The promise of the Lord Jesus in verse 24 not only includes the free gift of eternal life which we do not deserve; it also removes the judgment that our sins really deserve.  The believer “does not come into judgment”.  A poll conducted for the Times Mirror Company in 1993, revealed that more than four out of every five Americans agree that “we all will be called before God, at judgment day, to answer for our sins.”  I was surprised to find that figure to be so high, only because I wasn’t expecting people to be so honest and willing to admit their own accountability to God.

Dr. H.A. Ironside said that one of the first illustrations that ever made a real impression upon his young heart was a simple story which he heard a preacher tell when Harry was less than nine years old.  It was of pioneers who were making their way across one of the central states to a distant place that had been opened up for homesteading. They traveled in covered wagons drawn by oxen, and progress was necessarily slow.  One day they were terrified to note a long line of smoke in the west, stretching for miles across the prairie, and soon it was evident that the dry grass was burning fiercely and coming toward them rapidly.  They had crossed a river one day before but it would be impossible to go back to that before the flames would be upon them.  One man only seemed to have understanding as to what could be done.  He gave the command to set fire to the grass behind them.  Then when the space was burned over, the whole company moved back upon it.  As the flames roared on toward them from the west, a little girl cried out in terror.  “Are you sure we shall not all be burned up?”  The leader replied, “My child, the flames cannot reach us here, for we are standing where the fire has already been!”

What a picture of the believer, who is safe in Christ!

“On Him Almighty vengeance fell,
Which would have sunk a world to hell.
He bore it for a chosen race,
And thus becomes our Hiding Place.”

The fires of God’s judgment burned themselves out on Him, and all who are in Christ are safe forever, for we are standing where the fire has been.(H.A. Ironside, Illustrations of Bible Truth).

Verse 24 ends with the words, “but has passed out of death into life”.  The Lord Jesus is saying that those who believe in Him immediately pass from spiritual death and judgment into spiritual life, never to be condemned.  The only way this could be possible would be for Jesus to be judged in our place and pay the penalty Himself, which He would accomplish on the cross of Calvary (Philippians 2:5-8).  For those of us who have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, our judgment is now in the past, paid-in-full, and God the Father has signed off the debt.  It’s written in blood – the blood of His Son.  A change of reservations was made.  Your reservation for hell was immediately canceled and your reservation for heaven was immediately written down in the book compliments of the Owner (your Heavenly Father).  You have first-class accommodations awaiting you, and you will be treated like family forever because you’re a child of God!

Looking at verses 24-29, I personally observe five resurrections mentioned by Jesus.  In each case, the resurrection came to pass as a result of the words of Jesus.  In verse 24, we have already looked at the first resurrection – the spiritual regeneration and resurrection of all who hear Jesus’ words and believe.  At the moment of genuine belief in Him as Lord and Savior, one has eternal life, release from the condemnation for one’s sin, has passed from spiritual death to spiritual life, and has a changed life.  The second resurrection is given in verse 25.  I believe that Jesus is referring to the physical resurrections from the dead that He is going to perform while on this earth.  At that point in time the Lord Jesus hadn’t performed any resurrection miracles yet, but they were soon to come.  There were three of them recorded in God’s Word, and in each case, the resurrections occurred at the voice of Jesus.  The third resurrection is given in verse 26, and I believe that Jesus is referring to His own physical resurrection from the dead in fulfillment of His words.  The fourth resurrection, in verses 27-29a is the resurrection of life – the call of believers to the judgment seat of Christ.  The fifth resurrection, mentioned at the end of verse 29, is the resurrection of unbelievers to judgment and condemnation.  In this sermon, we are studying the first two resurrections and will save the other three for the next construction project.  There is much yet to learn from verse 25.

II.  RESURRECTIONS TO PHYSICAL LIFE (verse 25)

In verse 25, the Lord Jesus makes the same oath again, saying “Truly, truly, I say to you”.  I take those words to mean that Jesus is about to say something different; that He is attesting to something else that He is going to do.  He says, “An hour is coming and now is.”  There are things that are going to be happening, and they are just about to happen.  What is it that’s about to occur?  The Lord Jesus continues, “when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear shall live.”  My conclusion is that Jesus is talking about those people whom He is going to physically raise from the dead while He is here on this earth.  He has not performed any physical resurrection-miracles yet, but it’s going to start happening very soon.

Before we look at the resurrection-miracles of Jesus, let’s first look at the physical resurrection-miracles in the Old Testament so that we can use them as a basis of comparison.  In I Kings 17, the son of the widow at Zarephath dies, and we see Elijah’s response and God’s answer:  “Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord my God, I pray Thee, let this child’s life return to him’.  And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.” (I Kings 17:21-22).  The restoration to physical life came as an answer to prayer.  God was the One Who resurrected the child, not Elijah.

The second resurrection-miracle is found in II Kings 4:32-35.  The Shunammite’s son dies and Elisha’s response is similar to that of Elijah.  “So he entered and shut the door behind them both, and prayed to the Lord.  And he went up and lay on the child . . . and the flesh of the child became warm . . . and the lad sneezed seven times and the lad opened his eyes.”  Once again God restored life in answer to prayer.

By contrast, when Jesus raised the dead, He didn’t pray or apply “life-saving techniques”.  He spoke or gave the command and the person was instantly restored to life.  “Talitha Kum!” (which translated means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” (Mark 5:41).   “Young man, I say to you, arise!” (Luke 7:14).  “Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:43).  They came back to life as a result of hearing His voice.  God alone can do that – give life and restore life by just saying the word!  In the account of creation in Genesis, we find God saying, “Let there be” , . . “and there was”.  Psalm 33:6 says, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.”   The patriarch Job said, “The breath of the Almighty gives me life.”   Jesus’ resurrection-miracles, and the way in which they were performed, were irrefutable proof that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.  The people who watched those miracles occur could come to no other rational, logical, or Scriptural conclusion!  They already believed that God is the Creator, and the only Creator and Controller of the universe.  Therefore Jesus Christ must be God.

The Jewish leaders, as well as all of the Jews, revered Elijah because of his amazing miracles, especially the raising of the widow of Zarephath’s son.  But as you can see, the Lord Jesus is infinitely greater than Elijah, and Elijah would wholeheartedly agree.

CONCLUSION AND APPLICATION:

Jesus claimed the power to raise people from the dead.  Did you notice that the dead always responded to the voice of the Lord?  What about the living?  How did they respond?  That’s a different story, isn’t it?  Very few of those who heard the words of Jesus and saw His signs, even His resurrection of people from the dead, responded in faith, and followed Him.  But did that stop Jesus from continuing to declare Who He was, or from explaining God’s plan of salvation?  Not at all!

I may have shared a principle with you before, but it bears repeating because I have observed that Jesus followed this principle during His ministry on earth.  Here is the principle:  “Expose people to as much truth over as long a period of time as they will allow you.”  It’s important that we understand the first word in that quote.  The rest of the words are evident.  The word “expose” means to communicate, not only by our words but also by our lives.  People are looking for truth, and most of them not only want to see it in writing and hear it spoken but also to observe it being lived out in a person’s life.  People want truth that will set them free from their hopelessness and emptiness, and bring purpose, meaning, joy, and direction into their lives.  If we are truly Christians, indwelt and empowered by the Spirit of God, our lives will be evidenced by a love for God and His Word, a love for people, a hope for the future, and joy in spite of circumstances.  Is that a description of you?  If so, don’t become discouraged in your witness.  Keep growing in your walk with the Lord and faithfully being a witness for Him by word and by life.  The Spirit of God is working in the lives of people.  Many of those who may be silently watching you and questioning the things you are saying, may later want what you have and be ready to know the Giver of life eternal.  Nothing we do in obedience to the Lord is without reward in this life and the next.

If you are not a Christian, are you willing to give more thought and consideration to the One who raised the dead by just saying the words?  If Jesus Christ can have such power over physical life and can give eternal life, imagine what He can do in your life if you put your trust in Him.

CONSTRUCTION SITE:  COMPLETED

There are also over 100 completed sermons on this website and it’s always “Open House” here.  Please take a look around the block!  There are sermons from  Philippians, James, Jonah, the Gospel of John, and other seasonal and assorted messages.   Thanks for taking a look, and may the Lord bless your time in His Word.

 

YES, YOUR HONOR! – John 5:21-23

Bible sermons, Elijah, Elisha, John 5:21-23, John the Baptist

In most states in the United States of America, the words “Your Honor” are used when addressing the judge in a courtroom.  This has been the practice for many centuries.  Several other countries use those same words as well; other countries use titles such as:  “My Lord”, “My Lady”, “Your Lordship”, “Your Ladyship”, “Judge”, and many other titles of respect and authority.   In Israel, a judge is a shofet, and is addressed with the words “Sir” or “Madam”.  As a general rule, these judges from around the world also wear distinctive robes.  Many of these robes are black, but there are also some very colorful ones.  In some countries the judges also wear wigs.  These robes and wigs are used in order to distinguish them from others in the courtroom and serve as marks of authority and honor.  Because of their knowledge and experience in the practice of law, they are worthy of respect and recognition.

In the previous message on John 5:19-20, the Lord Jesus gave two evidences of His deity.  He said that He was equal to the Father in “working” and in “knowing”.  He also shared the relationship of love that He had with the Father; a relationship that only a Son could have.  But the comparisons with the Father and evidences of His deity aren’t over yet.  In verses 21-23, Jesus claims equality with the Father in resurrecting, in judging, and in honor.  Let’s take a look at each of those claims.

I.  EQUAL IN RESURRECTING (verse 21)

The Lord Jesus has already told them that He is doing the works of the Father, or I should say, that the Father is doing the works through Him.  Now, here in verse 21, to coin a popular phrase, it’s as if Jesus is saying to His accusers, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”  The following are Jesus’ words to them in verse 21.  “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom He wishes.”  That statement must have stirred up some angry words from His listeners.  According to the Gospel record, Jesus had not yet raised anyone from the dead.  The Lord Jesus was able to say those words truthfully because He was involved with the Father during the two resurrections in the Old Testament:  the son of the widow of Zarephath through the prophet Elijah in I Kings 17:22, and the Shunamite’s son through the prophet Elisha in II Kings 4:32-35.

Commentator Warren Wiersbe offers this helpful information concerning the Jewish beliefs at that time.

For Jesus to claim to have power to raise the dead was a blasphemous thing in the eyes of the Jewish Leaders; they gave that power to God alone.  They said that Jehovah held the three great keys:  the key to open the heavens and give rain (Deuteronomy 28:12); the key to open the womb and give conception (Genesis 30:22); and the key to open the grave and raise the dead (Ezekiel 37:13).

In the minds of these Jews, what Jesus had just said was blasphemy, claiming to be God.  Later in His life and ministry, Jesus would prove His words to be true by raising the widow’s son in the city of Nain (Luke 7:14-15), Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:38-42), and Lazarus (John 11:43-44) from the dead.  And most significantly, Jesus would raise Himself from the dead (Matthew 28:6; Mark 16:6-7; Luke 24:7-8; John 20:3-8).  “Even so” – just like the Father raised people from the dead, Jesus did so in like manner, and there were too many eye-witnesses, together with the person who was restored to life, to disprove those events and the resurrecting power of Jesus.   Therefore He must be equal with the Father because only God can give life and restore life.

II.  EQUAL IN JUDGING (John 5:22)

As further proof of His deity, the Lord Jesus says is verse 22, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to His Son”  We find the justice of God declared many times in the Old Testament.  For example, in Genesis 18:25, Abraham makes the following statement about God’s justice in his plea to spare the people of Sodom  “Far be it from Thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike.  Far be it from Thee!  Shall not the judge of all the earth do justly?” That’s a good argument!

As Moses sings his song, recounting the things that God has done for the people of Israel, he includes these words about God and His justice in Deuteronomy 32:4, “The Rock!  His work is perfect, for all his ways are just;a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.”

I imagine that most of us have come to realize that the justice systems on this earth are not perfect.  Let me give you a personal example.  I was traveling home from a meeting many years ago and drove my car through several small towns along the way.  Two days later I received a letter from one of those towns.  When I opened the letter I saw a photo of myself driving my car.  Below it was a sizable ticket and the address where this excessive-speed violation occurred. This was my first and only (so far) photo-radar ticket  I didn’t remember any excessive speeding so I went back to that address the next day and saw no speed limit sign.  Upon closer observation, I noticed a white signpost but the top of it was completely covered by low-hanging branches of a nearby tree.  As I looked under its branches at the reduced speed on the sign and stood back to take another look, a store-owner came out of his store and asked if he could be of assistance.  When I shared my story, he pointed to the top of a pole across the street to show me the camera that took the photo, then he stood back with me and told me that there was no way a person coming down the street could see that sign.  He suggested that I might want to take my case to court, which I did.  After explaining the situation to the judge, there was a short pause and then the judge said “Reduce the amount to (a small reduction)”, hit the desk with the gavel, and said “Next case!”  I paid the remainder.  This was not the justice I was hoping to receive.  Two weeks later, I was driving through that town again and was pleased to see that those low-hanging branches had been removed from the tree, and the sign was now completely visible. It may have been done at my expense, but at least it was done!

Going back to Jesus’ words stating that the Father had given all judgment into His hands, let’s see if there are any Old Testament Scriptures that attribute the role of judging mankind to the coming Messiah.  If the Jews at that time were spending time reading and studying specific passages of Scripture, it’s very possible that they were reading or studying the prophecies concerning their Messiah.  They were looking forward to His coming and wanted to be ready to recognize Him and worship Him when He arrived on Earth.

The prophet Isaiah speaks about the Messiah’s coming reign.  “And He will judge between the nations, and will render decisions for many peoples.  And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nations will not lift up sword against nation. and never again will they learn war.”   (Isaiah 2:4)  The Jewish people are looking forward to a perfect Judge who will make perfect judgments, and there won’t be the Roman occupation and government anymore.

Isaiah 11 is another Messianic prophecy.  “And He will delight in the fear of the Lord, and He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make a decision by what His ears hear; but with righteousness, He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth . . . ”  (Isaiah 11:3-4).  The Lord Jesus is the perfect Judge because, as God, He is holy, righteous, all-knowing, and just; and as man He is understanding and sympathetic, having experienced poverty and the unfairness and affliction of others while on this earth.  No wonder the Father “has given all judgment to the Son.”

The prophet Micah also affirms Isaiah’s prophecy in Micah 4:3.  The Jewish leaders have those prophecies in their minds yet they fail to recognize and acknowledge the Judge of the whole earth who is standing before them and making that claim.  Even John the Baptist acknowledged that Jesus was going to bring judgment when he used the following analogy:  And His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean the threshing floor; and he will gather His wheat into His barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (John 3:12).

III.  EQUAL IN HONOR (John 5:23)

There doesn’t appear to have been any positive response to those claims, so the Lord Jesus makes another claim:  that of being equal in honor with the Father.  That’s a claim that the Lord Jesus should not have needed to make, since it should have been the logical conclusion they should have drawn, and the response they should have given to His previous claims of deity.  He says, “in order that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.  He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”  The Lord Jesus begins by drawing the application.  He’s telling them that, based on the claims of deity He has already made, they should have responded by showing Him the same “honor” (praise, worship, devotion, obedience) that is due to the Father.  That’s the only valid and proper response that can be given to His claims and the evidence that supports them.

His explanation is followed by a very powerful and convicting statement and conclusion.  “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”  The Lord Jesus is saying that it is false and useless to claim to love and worship God if you do not have the same love and worship for Him because they are two Persons in the same Triune God.  Whoever does not honor and worship the Son does not honor and worship God at all.

CONCLUSION:

I hope that you are taking the claims of Jesus Christ and the evidence supporting those claims seriously.  Your quality of life on this earth and your eternal destiny depend upon it.  The Lord Jesus Christ is worthy of the highest honor:  the honor, praise, worship, and obedience that are deserved by God alone. If you are still seeking, and questioning, and pondering, the next passage of Scripture that we will be studying will go much deeper into the role of Jesus as the Judge of heaven and earth.  I hope to see you there.  May you find Jesus to be the Honorable One who fulfills His words, keeps His promises, and changes lives.

CONSTRUCTION SITE COMPLETED.

 

 

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON – John 5:19-20

Bible homily, Bible sermons

I’ve heard that saying used many times.  Have you?  “Like father, like son.”  Most of the time the person saying it was pointing out a character trait or fault that a son demonstrated, indicating that he must have inherited it from his father.  A similar saying is, “You’re just like your father!” In my own case, it was my mother who was usually the one saying it to me.  I almost always took it as a compliment because I wanted to be like my dad.  He was a character at times, playing pranks on my mother!  And, of course, I was always ready to be of service to him if he could use my help!

I’ve also heard the phrase “Like mother, like daughter”, and it was usually said as a compliment.  Those sayings, or something equivalent to them, go back many centuries in history.  My favorite one is “A chip off the old block”.  I guess it’s all part of the “family resemblance” that sets us apart from other families.  Like it or not, know it or not, family members have a tendency to “rub off” on one another, and people who have been around us for a while notice those resemblances, and they are often much more than just “skin-deep”,

In John 5:17, the Lord Jesus made the statement:  “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”  The Jews correctly assumed that Jesus was claiming to be God.  Throughout the rest of the chapter (verses 19-47), the Lord Jesus goes into much greater detail to explain and add further proof of His deity.  Jesus claims equality with God in seven areas and we are going to look at two of them in this study.

I.  EQUAL IN WORKING (verse 19)

In the midst of their angry words and threats, the Lord Jesus begins His explanation of His relationship to God the Father by swearing an oath to them.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, those things the Son also does in like manner.”  By using the Greek and Hebrew words “amein, amein” (or amen, amen), Jesus is saying that what He is about to tell them is first-hand information.  He is claiming that He knows these things directly, by personal experience, and therefore they are true.

The Bible is full of examples of God’s power and might.  Those examples are often called miracles.   Dynamis is the Greek word for power, might, or strength.  The word is found 118 times in the New Testament, usually in conjunction with the performance of miracles by Jesus.  How many times do you think the word “dynamis” is found in the Gospel of John?  If you guessed “zero”, you would be correct.  In the whole Gospel of John, all 21 chapters,  there is not even one mention of that word.  Instead, we find the repeated use of the Greek word “dynatai” which means “powerless”.  That is a new insight for me personally.  I did not know that previously.

Do you ever feel powerless to please God, powerless to serve God?  If not, you should, because you are!  As human beings, we are all powerless to do God’s will and God’s work by our own enabling.  To disagree with that statement would be to consider oneself as being better and greater than the Lord Jesus Christ.  He was a perfect, sinless Man, but He was still a man.  In His case, He had both a human and a divine nature.  In the literal Greek text, Jesus is saying, “Cannot the Son do for Himself anything except what He sees the Father doing.”   The word “cannot” is the Greek word “dynatai” (powerless).  In other words, Jesus is watching as the Father does the miracle through Him.  By saying those words to his accusers, He is telling them that they are actually blaming the Father for doing those miracles on the Sabbath day.  Jesus is just doing the will of the Father by the power of the Father.  This information is going beyond the capability of our human understanding to comprehend completely.  The following true illustration will give us another person’s perspective.

Daniel Webster, the 19th-century statesman, once dined in Boston with some influential people.  Soon the conversation turned to Christianity.  Webster, a convinced Christian, confessed his belief in Jesus Christ and His atoning work.  A Unitarian minister asked, “Mr. Webster, can you comprehend how Jesus Christ could be both God and man?”

“No sir, I cannot understand it:, replied Webster, “and I would be ashamed to acknowledge Christ as my Savior if I could understand it.  He could be no greater than myself.”

In my Bible, verse 19 ends with the words “in like manner”.  In verse 17, when Jesus said “My Father is working until now, and I am working”, the Jews thought that Jesus was saying that He was working independently of the Father, when actually the reverse was true.  Jesus was equal to the Father in nature as God, but dependent upon the Father in His human nature as a man.  Jesus’ equality with God was also demonstrated by His working together with the Father in perfect harmony.  This is one of the great mysteries of the Bible – how Jesus Christ can be fully God and fully man, and be able to function in both capacities without compromising either of them.  Are you still with me?  That was a difficult sentence to formulate!  I hope it helps you realize the need for Jesus’ total dependence upon the Father in order to do the works of God.

In Psalm 40:7-8, King David says, “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me; I delight to do Thy will, O my God; Thy Law is within my heart.”  I believe that David is speaking prophetically in those verses because the author of Hebrews twice quotes those words almost exactly when referring to Jesus.  Hebrews 10:7 says, “Behold, I have come (In the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do Thy will, O God.”  Then again, in verse 9, “Behold, I have come to do Thy will.”  And Jesus did just that.  In His prayer to the Father in John 17, Jesus said in verse 4, “I glorified Thee on earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do.”
May that be our goal in life:  to accomplish the work that God has given each of us to do.

II.  EQUAL IN KNOWING (verse 20)

Verse 20 reads:  “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing, and even greater works than these will He show Him, that you may marvel.”  Jesus points out that His knowledge of the Father is by-far superior to theirs.  It is a knowledge that only the Son of God could have.  God had concealed many things from Jesus’ accusers.  There are mysteries in the Bible that we don’t understand – things beyond our human comprehension.  We are also given a limited knowledge of God’s working throughout history and the details of our future.  But Jesus is saying that God the Father has withheld nothing from Him.  Then Jesus continues by saying “greater works than these will He show Him, that you may marvel.”  We’ll see what He means in the next verse of Scripture.  A person’s knowledge gives him authority and earns him respect if that knowledge is used properly.  I think that Jesus is communicating to them that, because He has the knowledge that belongs only to God, He should be acknowledged as God and worshiped as God as a result.

As we look at the Father’s motive for giving this knowledge to Jesus, you might agree with me that the first part of verse 20 might be even stronger evidence that Jesus Christ is God.  The verse begins with the words “For the Father loves the Son”.  The Greek word for “loves” is “phileo”.  It speaks of family-love or love for an intimate friend.  It is this special, Fatherly love that motivated God the Father to reveal all things to His Son.  The more scholarly Jews, versed in the writings of the Law and the Prophets, should have realized the similarity of Jesus’ words to the prophecy written down by Isaiah in Isaiah 42:1.  It reads: “Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights.  I have put my spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations.”  It’s a prophecy concerning the Messiah.

What does the Father say about His Son in the New Testament?  At Jesus’ baptism, the Father spoke aloud from the heavens introducing the world to His Son by saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” (Mt. 3:17; Mk. 1:11; Lk. 3:22).  The Father speaks one more time from the cloud on the mount of transfiguration, saying to Peter, James, and John, This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!” (Mt. 17:5; Mk. 9:7; Lk. 9:35 ).  The Lord Jesus was the Father’s delight and source of Fatherly admiration and pleasure.  This has been true from all eternity.  What a testimony to the deity of Christ, coming from His own Father!

Tying all those verses and their meanings together, I like the beautiful summary-statement that John Piper makes.  “He is well-pleased with His Son.  His soul delights in the Son.  When He looks at His Son, He enjoys and admires and cherishes and prizes and relishes what He sees.”

Let’s see if we can gain a perspective on the Son’s helplessness as a Man to do the works of God, having to rely totally on the Father’s enabling for everything that He did; and the Loving heavenly Father working together with His Son to accomplish their work together.  Have you ever wondered what that must have been like for Jesus to have been totally dependent upon His Father during His entire life on this earth?  I’ve been looking for some basis of comparison here in the United States of America, and I think I may have found it.   We live in the first generation that has electronic media at their fingertips 24/7.   According to the Pew Research Center, 90% of Americans own a phone.  67% of cell-phone owners find themselves checking their phone for messages, alerts, or calls – even when they don’t notice their phones ringing or vibrating.   Studies have talked about all the things we choose to use our cell phones and smartphones to do for us:  such as scheduling meetings, finding places to eat, things to do, checking scores of sporting events, surfing the web, talking, texting, gaming, social media, and the list goes on.  Adding up all the ways these phones are being used, based on surveys, one internet trends report said that the average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Add to this the personal use of desktop computers, laptops, notebooks, blue-tooths, etc.

My purpose is not to be judgmental but to cause us to see how dependent many of us are upon our phones and computers.  We’ve made choices in our use of them, and now many of us are so dependent on them that we don’t see how we can live without them.

When we look at what Jesus says about His total dependence on the Father, we realize that His words have been verified by the choices He has made throughout His own life.  How did the Lord Jesus spent His time on this earth?  We find in the Scriptures that Jesus spent much time in prayer and the study of the Scriptures.  He also spent a lot of time teaching the apostles, witnessing to the lost, and serving the needs of people.  He did all those things because that’s what the Father wanted Him to do and empowered him to do; and that’s what brought Him joy and personal satisfaction.

I hope that you believe that Jesus Christ is God.  If so, I hope that you’ve responded by committing yourself to Him as your God, your Lord and Ruler, letting Him take charge of your life from moment-to-moment until you see Him face-to-face.

As Christians, we are dependents, and we will never outgrow that dependency during our lifetimes on this earth.  We are part of His family and He has claimed us as his children.  By His enabling, let’s do the will of Him who adopted us, lovingly depending upon Him to do what He wants to accomplish in our lives because of His great love for us.

May our lives and the use of our time reflect the priorities of Christ, and may our motives reflect the love of Christ.

CONSTRUCTION SITE COMPLETED

I’ll see you at the next construction site.  The Lord Jesus has much more to tell us about His deity.

EQUAL WITH GOD – John 5:15-18

Bible sermons

“Tattletale! . . . Tattletale!”

Can you remember hearing those words as a child?  Were those words directed at you because of something you did?  Have you ever spoken those words to others because of what they did to you?  In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a tattletale is a child who goes to an adult (parent, teacher, etc.) and tells the adult that you are doing something that you are not supposed to be doing.  It’s called “tattling” and the person who does it is a “tattletale”.  (Other similar words include a “blabber”, “rat”, “fink”, “stoolie”, “snitch”, and the list goes on).

In the previous passage of Scripture, John 5:1-13, Jesus healed a man at the pool of Bethesda,  This man had been sick and weak for 38 years.   He didn’t know who Jesus was, and couldn’t give an answer to the Jewish leaders when they asked.  Jesus later, in verse 14,  found him in the temple and admonished him not to sin anymore or something worse might happen to him.  Now this man knows that the One who healed him is Jesus.

I.  THE HEALER IS REVEALED (verse 15)

The narrative continues in verse 15.  “The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.”  The first words that came to my mind after I read that verse were, “Tattletale, tattletale”!  After all that Jesus did for him by healing him, and now he’s going to “rat on Him”, getting Him into trouble with the Jews.   What’s the matter with this guy?  Is that any way to treat your Healer?

Actually, that was not the man’s intent at all.  The leaders of his people had asked him a question that he couldn’t answer:  the identity of his Healer.  Once he found out, he told the leaders the answer to their question out of respect for them, thinking that they would want to rejoice and give praise to Jesus also.   Jesus had not warned this man not to say anything to them because it was the time for the Lord Jesus to reveal Himself more fully to the Jews.  The tension is going to be growing.

II.  THEIR ANGER IS REDIRECTED (verse 16)

In response to the healed man’s words, verse 16 says, “And for this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.”  Now they have the real culprit to deal with.  I find it significant that the healed man tried to direct their focus away from their Sabbath laws and onto his miraculous healing and the one who healed him.  However, they direct their attention away from the amazing miracle Jesus performed and back to the violation of their Sabbath laws.  It’s as the saying goes, “Don’t confuse us with facts; our minds are made up!”.  The healed man’s “reality check” was unsuccessful.  We don’t find them objecting to the healing itself – just the day on which it was done.  The Jewish leaders were living in a world of their own:  a world darkened by their own laws.  It says that they were “persecuting” Jesus.  This persecution involved making false accusations and spreading vicious rumors in order to attack His character and ruin His popularity.  I guess you could call that a form of tattling also:  they were spreading gossip about Him.  That’s just the beginning of their attacks.  In their minds, no one was going to get in the way of their laws and their control over the social and spiritual traditions of their people.  At this point, the leaders of the Jews don’t appear to have a clear knowledge of Jesus’ claims, but after Jesus responds to them, their understanding becomes clearer and their hatred of Him increases.

III.  JESUS’ REPLY (verse 17)

The Lord Jesus replies to them, in verse 17, with a simple statement that is packed with meaning.  But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”   God only rested once, and that was from His work of creation only.  You might say that He stepped back for a short time to enjoy it, while at the same time keeping everything else going, so to speak.  God gave us the Sabbath as a day of rest for us, not for Him.  God is always working.  The Scriptures give us many examples of the work that God does on a continuing basis.  In Deuteronomy 11:12, speaking about the promised land, Moses says, “a land for which the Lord your God cares;  the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning even to the end of the year.”  Lamentations 3:22-23 says, “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning. . . “.  Add to those verses Zephaniah 3:5, Romans 8:34 and many others.  God is always there.  He always sees, always hears, always knows, and always cares.  It’s a 24/7 responsibility.  God never sleeps (Ps. 121:4)

The Jews would have to agree with the first half of Jesus’ statement:  “God is always working”.  Can you imagine what it would be like if God took a day off every week?  Everyone and everything would fall apart or disappear.  He would have to create all over again!

To give you an inkling of how terrifying this would be, imagine that all medical personnel and all medical facilities and pharmacies took the Sabbath day off every week.  No ambulances, no emergency rooms, no urgent care, nothing.  Wouldn’t that be frightening?  I wouldn’t want to leave my house on that day!  Now imagine if everyone everywhere took the Sabbath day off and did no work.  There would be no stores open, no public transportation, no gas, no electricity, no food, nothing.  Thank God their laws weren’t carried out to the fullest extent then or now!

I don’t think the Jewish leaders could put up an argument about the fact that God is always working.  but when the Lord Jesus says, “And I Myself am working”, they became enraged. The Tehillim should have come to their minds when Jesus said those words.  The Tehillim is the Book of Praises (The Psalms).  When Jesus said those words, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working”, I think there was a pause in the middle.  “My Father is working until now . . . and I Myself am working.” If His accusers would have given thought to the first half of Jesus’ reply, the Book of Journeys should have come to their minds (Psalm 121).  It speaks of the journey of the nation of Israel to the Promised Land, and the journey of each individual through life.  It is a psalm of David and is called “A Song of Ascents”.  Here are the first four verses to that Psalm        

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From whence shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Psalm goes on to say that God is their Keeper, their Shade, their Protector, and their Guard.  God the Father was always there with them, 24/7, working constantly for their good; and Jesus was there right along with Him!  In their pride and legalism, the Jews completely overlooked the love and concern that prompted Jesus’ answer to them.  They’ve been reciting and singing that psalm for a thousand years, yet sadly, they refused to honor the One who fits the description.  The author of that Psalm, King David, would probably have fallen with his face to the ground after hearing those words from the mouth of the Lord Jesus.

IV.  FROM PERSECUTION TO EXECUTION (verse 18)

In verse 18 we see that the Jews are turning up the heat on the Lord Jesus.  “For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He was not only breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”  Now the intent of the Jews is not just a “smear campaign”; it has also become a “death warrant”.  Not only has the Lord Jesus broken their Sabbath laws, but He has dared to claim that He is their Messiah!  In their minds, that is a death sentence.

Let’s look at this situation from a logical point of view.  At the pool of Bethesda, Jesus had performed a miracle that only God could accomplish.  A man who was helpless and without strength for 38 years had his condition reversed instantly by the command of Jesus.  When the leaders of the Jews met this man at the temple, they didn’t even question the miracle because they couldn’t refute it.  Doesn’t it seem logical to you that they should have given Jesus the benefit of the doubt concerning HIs claim until they could find proof that would undeniably refute it?  Just a few minutes earlier they were looking at proof that undeniably affirmed it!

In the late 1800s, a man by the name of Lew Wallace wrote a book that became a best-seller, and many years later it was made into a movie which is considered to be one of the best movies of all time.  The book’s name is “Ben Hur”.  Maybe you’ve read the book or seen the movie.  It weaves the true story of Jesus Christ with that of a fictional young Jewish nobleman named Judah Ben-Hur.   As Wallace did his research, studying the Bible and the history and customs of the Jewish people at that time, he came to believe in Jesus Christ.  Wallace said, “I have seen the Nazarene , . . I saw him perform works which no mere man could perform.”  (Our Daily Bread, 4/9/17)

What is your estimate of Jesus Christ?  Have you studied His life and His claims, and have you reviewed the evidence that supports those claims?  Please don’t let personal pride or indifference get in the way of the only relationship that lasts forever, and the only joy that is beyond comparison.

CONCLUSION;

This passage of Scripture demonstrates what legalism can do to people.  Three important principles we can all learn from this incident in the life of Jesus have to do with a proper understanding of legalism and what is needed on our parts in order to avoid legalism in our own lives.  First, my standards, if they go beyond the teachings of the Scriptures, should not go any further than myself.  Secondly, legalism consists, not of having standards which exceed the bounds of Scripture, but of considering those personal standards as being equal to Scripture, and trying to impose them on others.  Thirdly, we’ll avoid legalism if we stay in God’s Word and make it our only guide for living.  You and others around you will be glad you did!

 CONSTRUCTION SITE COMPLETED

The apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 3:10-11, “According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation and another is building upon it.  But let each man be careful how he builds upon it.  For no one can lay a foundation other than the which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”  May your work and your life continue to stand firm on His foundation