I have said repeatedly from this pulpit, that every miracle presented in the gospel is a parable meant to teach us spiritual principles.  I will say it again to make sure you get that; every miracle presented in the gospel is a parable meant to teach spiritual principles.  Now this is the seventh and final sign or miracle that Jesus did that is recorded in the book of John.  So we may presume that this miracle in particular is of great significance.  We might deduce that simply due to the length of this passage which details it, as well as the fact that it is the last one recorded by John, of which  he said such signs were given that you might know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.  

In fact, this passage is so long, and it’s message is so multi-faceted, that we will not attempt to look at all of it today.  I think it will take us 2 Sundays to get all that the Lord would have us learn from this text.  That being said, however, we need to work within the narrative of the story.   But my purpose is not so much retelling the story as much as it is to bring out the principles and their applications as taught in this seventh miracle of Jesus recorded in John.  To that end, I believe that there are seven principles that are illustrated by this seventh sign. That is the title of my message this morning; Seven Principles of the Seventh Sign. Seven principles are taught in this text; the first is the love of God, 2, the timing of God, 3, the Light of God, 4, the comfort of God, 5, the life of God, 6, the power of God, and 7, the death of God. I tell you all of that in advance for your benefit and to encourage you to come back for part two next week, but we will only deal with the first four of those principles today.

The first principle then that we can learn from this miracle is the love of God, vs3 says that the one whom Jesus loved was sick. It’s interesting to note that it does not say, the one who loved Christ was sick, but it says the one whom Christ loved was sick.  The emphasis is on Christ’s love for us. When we come to beseech the Lord, our grounds for a hearing are found in His love for us, not in the faithfulness of our love for Him.  Christ’s love is a faithful love, it is a keeping love.  It is a continuous love. It is a sacrificial love.  1John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

We know that God loved the world, according to John 3:16, but this love of Lazarus is obviously different.  It is indicated as being a special love that Jesus had for Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. It is obviously a love predicated by the fact that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were believers.  God loves the world, but God has a special love for His children that is so much more devoted. In vs.4, when the sisters sent word to Jesus, they use the word phileo as their word for love.  Phileo is the Greek word indicating love of family.  There is a love that a father or mother may have for their friends, but they have a special love for their children.  And we know that Jesus spent a lot of time with these people, so that they had a special relationship with Christ.  They lived in a village called Bethany, which was about 2 miles outside of Jerusalem.  Jesus at that point was about a 2 day journey away from Bethany, in another town that was called Bethany beyond the Jordan.  The significance of that I’m not sure of, except to show the similitude that they  had to Christ, even though they were separated from Him geographically.  

But vs 1 tells us that Lazarus was sick, and to extrapolate from the principle that I think is illustrated by this opening part of the story, it is that for those whom Christ loves, they are not immune from sickness or hardship.  There are many in the evangelical community today that teach otherwise.  Especially those television fake healers that prey on people of weak faith.  They teach that God’s will is that you can always be well.  They teach that sickness is caused by your lack of faith.  But that is simply not taught in the Bible.  Paul in particular said he was given a thorn in his flesh which he called a messenger of Satan, to buffet him, to afflict him, to keep him from being prideful. He asked three times for the Lord to take it from him, but God said My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. So he was given his infirmity to make certain that God received the glory for what he did in his ministry.  Many theologians believe that he had sores on his eyes that impaired his vision, probably as a result and reminder of his conversion from blindness on the road to Damascus.  

So what this passage teaches us is that God sometimes ordains sickness, even  the death of His loved ones, so that Christ may be glorified. Jesus said the same thing in John 9 in response to the question of HIs disciples; His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

And so in this case, when they tell Jesus that Lazarus was sick, His response shows that principle at work.  Vs.4, “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.”  Jesus let’s them know the purpose of the sickness.  It is to glorify God.  That is how believers, those who are intimately loved by God, must view their sickness.  We need to remember first of all that we are loved by God. Satan loves to cast doubt on God’s love for us when God doesn’t act as quickly as we would like, or in the manner that we expect Him to act.  But the fact is that God loves us, and nothing can change that, nothing can separate us from His love. Rom. 8:38-39 says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And then secondly, the purpose of this sickness was to glorify God. That is our purpose  as believers,  to glorify God whether by life or death, or in sickness or in health.  That is the first point of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” And God choses to accomplish that in manifold and mysterious ways, sometimes even through sickness and death.

The second principle that we see exhibited here in this story, is the timing of God, illustrated in vs.6, “So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was.”  The principle is simply this; that God’s timing is not always according to our timing.   Though the petition was sent to Christ, one whom you love is sick, yet Christ delayed coming.  This has been a frequent principle taught by John in his gospel, that being the timing of God.  Twice in the last chapter, attempts were made to kill Jesus, but He escaped from their midst, because His time was not yet come.  Our prayers must be subject to the timing of God.  

We need to come to accept the timing of God.  God often delays His answers to our prayers.  But though He delays, we need to have faith that His ways are good.  His timing is good.  That is the second way the devil attacks us in difficult situations.  First, as I said while ago, he tries to get us to doubt God’s love for us when we go through fiery trials.  And secondly, he tries to get us to doubt the goodness of God.  That was  implicit in the seduction of Eve, wasn’t it?  Satan implied that God was withholding something good from her.  But we need to remind ourselves, regardless of whatever the circumstances, however dire they may seem at the moment, of Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

The third principle that we see here is the Light of God. After 2 days had passed since they got the news about Lazarus, Jesus said, “Let us go to Judea again.” Now it’s been about 4 months that have passed since He was previously in Jerusalem when they tried to kill Him twice.  So the disciples say, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone You, and are You going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”  

There are several possible interpretations of this verse offered by various commentators.  But I would like to point out the similarity between this statement, and the one Jesus made in chapter 9 directly after saying, “neither this man sinned nor his parents, but so that the works of God might be displayed in him,” referring to the man born blind.  In 9:4 directly after that, Jesus said, “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.”

Now in that statement, Jesus is saying that He was the Light of the world, and while He was in the world, they needed to do the works of God. They needed to fulfill the purpose of God. But He also indicates that night is coming.  And that night He spoke of was the night of His trial and His crucifixion, during which Jesus said in Luke 22:53  “While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on Me; but this hour and the power of darkness are yours.” So the night referred to the time of His death.

But in this very similar statement in John 11, we notice a different emphasis.  The difference is that the emphasis is on HIs followers having the light in them.  And He changes the metaphor from working to walking.  They are to walk during the day,  metaphorically during the 12 hours of daylight, that means to walk in the light of Christ, reflecting the light of Christ.  But those who are in darkness, who do not have the light of Christ in them, will stumble.  That is, they will perish. 

The principle being taught here is that for those who believe in Christ, those that follow Him, there will be no darkness.  If darkness is the power of death as Jesus indicated in Luke 22, then His disciples need not fear it, because they have the light of Christ abiding continually in their hearts.  Jesus said in chapter 8, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”  This light of life cannot be extinguished.  It is the light of life that continues even though we may physically enter into the darkness of death.  Psalm 23 speaks of that light that remains in us; “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for  Thou art with Me.”  Jesus is foretelling in this statement that as believers we need not fear the darkness that comes through death because we have the eternal light of life dwelling in us.

As Hebrews 2 tells us, Jesus has freed us from the fear of death. Heb. 2:14-15 “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.”

The fourth and final principle we will look at this morning is the comfort of God. It is found in vs.11-15 And after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.”  The disciples then said to Him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He was speaking of literal sleep. So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.”

I want to point out the phrase that Jesus routinely uses to indicate physical death.  That phrase is fallen asleep.  Now this phrase caused some confusion for the disciples.  They said, “Lord if he is fallen asleep, then he will recover.”  They thought he was talking of literal sleep.  But Jesus tells them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.”  Now the question is, why does Jesus refer to death as having fallen asleep?

I would like to spend a little time on this, because I think that this principle is vastly misunderstood in the 21st century church, to it’s own detriment.  I think poor scholarship on the doctrine of eschatology has led to all sorts of errant teachings in the church.  And I recognize that some of you will not agree with me on my interpretation.  But I would suggest you hear me out, and keep an open mind.  On this doctrine we don’t have to agree 100%.  But I feel that it’s important that you hear what I believe the Bible teaches concerning the death of the saints.  Because this doctrine is our hope, our comfort.  And I’m afraid most people have a very fuzzy idea of even where to begin to discern the truth about eschatology, and  they have learned what they think they know from some pretty spurious sources.  What I would like to do is point out what Jesus and the scriptures have to say about it, and then you can begin to do your own research and study in the scriptures to determine what it says, and not base your eternal hope on some movie you saw or fictional book you might have read.

I would point out first of all, that when the Bible uses this phrase “fallen asleep”  to indicate death, it is speaking of the death of a believer.  The death of a Christian, or as the scriptures say, the death of saints. “Fallen asleep” is not the normal choice of words when speaking of the death of an unbeliever. When an unbeliever dies, he is consigned to eternal death.  But for the believer, who has eternal life, he is spoken of as having fallen asleep.  For example; in Matt. 27:52 it says, “The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.” Another example is Stephens martyrdom in Acts 7:60 Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep.” And Peter preaching in Acts 13:36 says, “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay.” In 1Cor. 15:6, Paul says, “After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep…  and in vs.20 “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.” And one more, 1Thess. 4:14 “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.”  So it is clearly an expression of those who are dead in Christ, that is who are believers. 

But the question remains, what is meant by this expression?  What is Jesus saying, that the person is asleep in the tomb?  I’m sure some of you are saying “I thought Christians went to heaven when they died.”  Well, I Cor.15:20 which we just quoted says that “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.”  Where then did Christ go when He died?  Did He just remain in the tomb for 3 days? No, the answer is given by Jesus Himself on the cross.  He said to the believing thief; “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” So Jesus and the thief went to the same place, immediately upon death.  Their bodies were put in a grave, but their spirits went somewhere else.  Jesus tells him this is Paradise. Peter speaks of this in 1Peter 3:18-19 “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;  in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison.”  So Peter is saying though Jesus body was in the grave, yet His Spirit went to the place of departed spirits where He proclaimed victory over death.  Jesus calls this place Paradise when He is on the cross.

Now Paradise was a Jewish term for the abode of the righteous in Hades.  Hades being the general name for the abode of the dead.  In the Old Testament, Hades was called Sheol.  That’s the Hebrew word.  But the understanding was that the soul of man went to Hades upon death, which was divided into an upper and lower chamber.  Hades is indicated in scripture as being in the center of the earth. And Jesus confirmed this understanding in Luke chapter 16. Now coincidently, or not, Jesus told the story of another man named Lazarus in Luke 16 saying he was a poor man who laid by a rich man’s gate, covered in sores, and eating the crumbs from his table.  This is a different Lazarus than what we have in this story in John 11.  But I find it interesting that both men’s name was Lazarus.  I wonder if in the design of God these names are the same that we might be drawn to look at both stories conjointly to help us to fill in some of the blanks concerning the afterlife.

First though, I want to say that this story in Luke 16 is not a parable, but an actual event.  No parable that Jesus gave ever used the actual names of real people.  Abraham was a real person.  So I believe that Lazarus was a real person as well.  And I don’t believe Jesus made up some fictional place in order to illustrate something.  Jesus never told a lie to illustrate a truth.  

So notice that when Lazarus dies He is taken by the angels to Abraham’s bosom.  Abraham’s bosom is another Jewish euphemism speaking of Paradise, the abode of the saints where they await the resurrection.  Jesus tells of it this way in Luke 16:22, “Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.” 

Jesus went on to describe it through the voice of Abraham as a place of comfort. “But Abraham said,[to the rich man] ‘Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.  And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.’” So that is the description of where the soul of the believer dwells upon falling asleep.  The body is metaphorically spoken of as fallen asleep, but they are alive in their spirit.  But they are not asleep in Paradise.  They are having conversations, they are being comforted, they are aware of their surroundings, they recognize friends and family.  And furthermore, they are in the presence of the Lord and HIs angels.  Paul said in 2 Cor.5:8, “we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”

The Christian who has fallen asleep then is comforted in Paradise, awaiting the resurrection when they will be given a new and glorified body and be with the Lord, being made like Him, ruling with Him, for eternity.  1Thess. 4:14-15 says “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 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 will rise first. (Notice that phrase; the dead in Christ will rise first.  That is those who have fallen asleep in Christ) Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” 

So that is the comfort which we have in God.  That we who are His will never taste death.  This body will die, but our spirit is alive in Christ, because He is the Light of life and He dwells in us.  We have the Light of Christ in us which can never be extinguished, and so we have eternal life that begins at the moment of conversion.  This fact segues into  the next principle that we will look at next week, #5, the Life of God. But let me close today’s message by just reading the statement that Jesus says regarding this principle in vs.25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

I want to conclude todays message by asking you this question?  Do you believe this?  Have you come to believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?  Have you trusted Him to forgive you of your sins, to make you righteous in God’s sight, to give you new life, abundant life, even eternal life?  If you have, then you have the life of Christ in you that can never perish.  You will live even if you die, and spiritually speaking, you will never die, your spirit will be resurrected and given a new glorified body to live forever with the Lord  in a new heaven and a new earth.  

Listen, that is the hope of Christianity.  In this life we receive the deposit of that abundant, eternal life through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Through belief in Christ, through faith in Him, we are made righteous, and because we are righteous and holy through Jesus’ substitionary atonement on the cross we are given the Holy Spirit to live in us, so that our spirit is reborn.  That means we need not fear death because we have eternal life given to us through Christ.  I trust that you have come to believe even as Martha did. She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”  Today the light of God has shown forth in your hearts.  Believe on Him and be saved from death and receive the life of God.  Don’t leave this world without knowing Jesus Christ as your  personal Savior and Lord.

Today’s text is one that is somewhat difficult to deal with, for at least a couple of reasons.  One is we are jumping into what is really the tail end of an ongoing dialogue that Jesus was having with the religious leaders of  Jerusalem concerning His deity.  And we are picking it up near the end of that discussion. So that provides some difficulty in bringing you up to speed without repeating all of last Sunday’s message.  But the main difficulty is that Jesus makes reference to a somewhat obscure portion of scripture as validation of His argument, which potentially opens  up a lot of questions.  But I hope to answer those questions for you today, as well as affirming the deity of Christ, and in the process, offer some principles from this passage that I believe are essential to living out our faith effectively.  So I hope you will bear with me as we go through this somewhat difficult passage, with the firm conviction that all scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, if we will give proper place to it.

As you might recall if you were here last week,  Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon’s portico during the Feast of Dedication, which we know as Hanukkah.  So it is winter time, about three months before Jesus will eventually be crucified.  And the Pharisees and priests have sort of cornered Him there, and they ask Him, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”  They claim to want to know if He is the Messiah.  But the fact is, they don’t really want to accept Him as the Messiah.  They have already decided to kill Jesus, but they need a good excuse.  And so the excuse they are trying to give themselves is to get Jesus to commit what they consider to be blasphemy; to say that He is the Son of God.

Of course, Jesus knows their trickery, and so He answers them by saying, “I have already told you, and yet you did not believe Me.  And then to paraphrase He basically says, “not only did I tell you, but I also did works of God which gave testimony to my authority, but you didn’t accept them either.”  So they did not believe His words, and they didn’t accept His works, both of which confirmed that He was the Messiah.  

But then Jesus makes the most startling, dramatic statement possible, which obviously answered their question, but to an extent that perhaps they were not expecting.  Jesus says in vs.30; “I and the Father are one.”  This is probably the most direct statement that Jesus ever publicly made in His ministry regarding His deity.  He is claiming equality with God.  Oneness with God.  It is to say that He was one essence with God.  There is one other statement that Jesus made to Philip and the disciples, which is just as clear, but it had a limited audience.  Jesus said on that occasion, “if you have seen Me you have seen the Father.”  But this statement is made to the Jewish leaders, and is the most forthright declaration of His deity that He made.

To claim to be absolutely one with God is to claim to be equal with God. And so we read then, “The Jews took up stones again to stone him.” They feel justified in stoning Him, because they know that He is claiming to be no less than God.  John says the reason that they wanted to stone Him  in vs.33, was because they said, “You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.”

Jesus could have answered the question of being the Messiah and not taken it that far.  The Biblical definition of Messiah was in fact deity, but their conception of the Messiah was limited to that of a political figure, a descendant of King David who would restore the throne to Israel and overthrow their enemies.  And so Jesus could have played along with their expectations and not given them much reason to condemn Him, but He deliberately declares the Biblical definition by stating not only His Messiahship, but stating that He is One with God.  

So they took up stones to kill Him. And Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?” The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.”

Jesus then answers that charge with a most interesting argument and one that I think has great theological implications.  Jesus quotes a relatively obscure scripture from Psalms 82.  Jesus said, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I SAID, YOU ARE GODS’? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

Now this quotation Jesus gives is found in Psalm 82 and verse 6 and there we find the words, “I have said, you are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” This is a Psalm in which reference is made to rulers, or unjust judges by calling them gods. And the Lord goes on to say, “But you shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.” So he is talking about rulers, or unjust judges, but nevertheless the Psalmist speaks of them as if they were gods, with a little “g”.  The word in the Hebrew is Elohim, which can mean gods, or God, or rulers, or judges.  So the Lord Jesus refers to this rather obscure text in the Old Testament, certainly not one of the more well known texts of the Bible, yet he refers to it as a basis for this most important doctrine of His deity.

Now there are several points that we can make from this statement.  First, we should point out that judges in Israel did have a limited relationship of  union with God because they were  divinely delegated representatives. In Israel a judge was one who was supposed to judge under God, and was supposed to judge with the judgment of God. The Psalmist says they had been given the word of God, and therefore should have judged with the judgment of God.

So there is a sense in which Jesus was arguing from the lessor to the greater.  If the Psalmist under inspiration of God called the unrighteous judges gods, then how much more appropriate can He be called God if He was the righteous judge, if He spoke the words of God, and did the works of God? 

And also in the NT, Paul refers to pagan rulers in Romans 13 as ministers of God, and servants of God, and says that they get their authority from God, are established by God, and we are to be in subjection to them as representatives of God.

But I think there is justification in expanding our text to include an even greater audience.  And though this may be shocking for you to consider, I think that this statement can be applied to us as well.  That to a limited extent, we are gods.  Or at least, we were designed to be as gods.  Now I hope you will hear me out before you charge me with blasphemy as well and stone me here this morning.

As justification for my claim, note that the Psalmist makes a correlation between “you are gods” and “all of you are sons of the Most High.”  Now we would all agree that we that are saved are sons and daughters of the Most High.  But at the same time, we recognize that there is a difference between Jesus being the Only Begotten Son of God and we being sons of God.  Jesus used the designation of God as His Father, and we pray to God our Father, yet we realize that there is a difference.  

But notice that the Psalmist equates “god’s” with “sons of the Most High.”  It’s a parallel statement.  If one is true, then the other is true.  And so I feel justified in saying that this is true for us.  That we are to a limited extent, gods, even as we are sons of the Most High.

Now why do I feel it’s important to make this claim?  I make this claim because I think that this speaks to the relationship of man to God as He was deigned to have in creation.  It refers to the kind of relationship man had with God before the fall.  And so part of the purpose of redemption, the purpose of atonement, is to restore man to that fellowship with God that we had before the fall.  

Look at Genesis 1:26 for a minute.  Hopefully a very familiar passage.  It says, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”    And notice that in Psalm 82, in vs.1, the  word translated as rulers there is the same word translated as gods in vs.6.  So here in Genesis 1, man was called to rule over every living thing in the earth.  

Now that statement alone is justification for calling men gods.  As they were in the beginning, as God designed them to be, they were to rule over every living thing that moves on the earth. Not only that, but we were made in the image of God, in the likeness of God. And in the Garden of Eden, prior to the fall, there was a special relationship that man had with God where he was in full fellowship, full communion.  That was the design of God.

So man was designed to be as gods in this world.  We were designed to be much greater than the ungodly, human judges of Israel who the Psalmist calls gods.  We were to rule over creation. Every living creature on earth we are to subdue and to rule over, according to God’s command. 

You know, I was thinking about this the other day when I was messing around with my dog.  I have a crazy dog named Jackson.  He is a very high strung Husky.  But little by little I am trying to teach him some things.  And as I was working with him the other day, mainly not to try to yank the leash out of my hands and walk beside me, I realized that to Jackson, I must seem like a god.  I do all these things that are completely beyond his comprehension.  He cannot comprehend how I can drive him somewhere in the car.  He can sniff at the car, bark at it, ride in it.  But He doesn’t know how to drive it. He doesn’t understand how it works.  He knows that I give him food and water. But he can’t understand how I do that, how to go to the supermarket and buy him food. To a great extent, he realizes that I am the source of everything that he needs. And consequently, he loves me.  He has no greater joy it would seem, than to lay at my feet and look up at me with those beautiful blue eyes.  I believe that He loves me.  I’m still trying to get him to obey me, but he is learning that as well. 

I wish I could say the same for most Christians and their relationship with God.  I wish I could say that they trusted Him to provide for them even when they cannot comprehend what God is doing.  I wish I could say that we love God, that we love to follow Him, that we have no greater joy than to obey Him, and do what He tells us to do even though we don’t always understand it all.   

So to say that we are gods illustrates perhaps in a small way our relationship to God, that we are little gods over His creation, even as He is the Supreme God over man and the earth.  But I think there is even more to that analogy.  I think it relates to our relationship to God as the bride of Christ.  Remember in Gen.2:18 when God said that it was not good that man should be alone?  It’s interesting to see what God did next.  He didn’t immediately make  woman.  Instead, God brought every living creature to parade before Adam.  And Adam gave them all names. That illustrated the dominion that God authorized Adam to have over the creation. But it also illustrated Adam’s lack of a suitable companion.  When he was finished naming them all, it says, “but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.”  

Now I believe that serves as both a historical fact and an analogy of God’s relationship with His creation. I think that before the creation of the earth, God searched through all of His creation and all the creatures that He had made, through all the vastness and dimensions of the Universe, and there was not found a mate suitable for Him. And so God decided to create a companion like Himself, made in His likeness, with whom He would be able to have a relationship such as Adam had with Eve.  That is why the church is called the bride of Christ.  That is why in Ephesians 5 when Paul starts talking about the way the husband should love his wife, and the wife should love and respect her husband, Paul says in Eph 5:28-32  So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself;  for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,  because we are members of His body.  FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

And we see that love relationship borne out in the act of creation.  With everything else in creation, God simply spoke it into existence.  But with man, God got down on His knees in the dust of the earth and formed man with His hands, and then it says that He breathed into man’s mouth the breath of life, and he became a living soul.  God kissed man, breathing His very life into our lips.  That speaks of a relationship like no other.  It speaks of the love of God for mankind, and His purpose for making us, to be His bride.

Here is the point I want to make this morning.  In the second creation, we are born again by the Spirit of God,  we are made righteous and holy by the atonement of Jesus Christ, and as this new creation we are designed to be the bride of Christ.  We are designed to be like God, to be conformed to His image, to share the throne with Christ as His bride, to rule over not only animals and every living creature on this earth, but Paul says we are even going to judge angels, to have dominion over infinite dominions yet to be revealed.  We are made to live forever with Christ and to share His glory.

Listen to Jesus’ promise to the church in Rev 2:26-29 “He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, TO HIM I WILL GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS;  AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON, AS THE VESSELS OF THE POTTER ARE BROKEN TO PIECES, as I also have received authority from My Father; and I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’ And then in Rev 3:21-22 “He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

I spend so much time on this principle this morning, because I want you to get a glimpse of what God has in store for those that love Him.  To understand the scope of our salvation.  There is so much more that I don’t have time to get into this morning.  But this is the love of God.  It is the love of God that pursues us, like Hosea pursued his adulterous wife.  It is the love of God that sent Jesus, His Son, to humble Himself to become a man, to lay down His life for us as the ultimate act of love that He might effect our atonement on the cross, by taking our sins upon Himself, in exchange for Christ’s righteousness.  It is so that we might complete the plan of God before the world ever began, that we might fulfill the desire of God to be His bride, as the object of His desire, and that He would be the object of our desire.  That we might come to Him in love, because of love, and not of compulsion. We were not designed to operate simply on instinctual desires like animals, but to choose to love even as God has loved us.  This is the plan of God.  We do not see it having come to fulfillment yet, but we have a deposit made in our souls that one day will be realized in full when we shall see Him as He is, and then we shall be like Him, and be with Him, forever.

Now let me just make a couple of more points of application.  I think you understand Jesus’ argument.  I hope you understand that He was God, and that He had to be God in order to accomplish our redemption.  No mere man could atone for even his own life, no matter how righteous he may have been.  But for Christ to atone for the sins of the world, then He had to be deity, in order to have an infinite quality of atonement that could cover the sins of the world.   

But there is another point that Jesus makes, and that is the statement found in brackets in most translations; “(and the Scripture cannot be broken).”  The brackets indicate it as an afterthought, or perhaps a clarification but I can assure you that Jesus doesn’t consider it an afterthought.  Jesus had a very high view of scripture.  Jesus is taking a very obtuse word in the Psalms, just one little word, and upon one word He hinges such an essential doctrine as His deity.  And as He does this, He says the scripture cannot be broken.  In other words, every word of scripture is inspired by God.  Jesus is saying that every word in the scriptures is important.  He is making a case for the inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture for all of life and doctrine.  

And I want to give you a couple of more examples of Jesus’ high view of scripture.  First is found in Matthew 22:23.  The Sadducees are questioning Jesus concerning the resurrection.  And Jesus answers them by saying in vs.31-32  “But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God: I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”   

Now in that case, He isn’t talking about a word in the Old Testament as being important.  He is referring to a verb tense.  If Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were dead then He should have said, I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, past tense.  But Jesus shows the OT use of the present tense as an argument that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were living, and not dead.  Thus He says the proof of the resurrection of the dead was found in the present tense of the verb.  

And then one other example of Jesus’ high view of scripture.  In Matt. 5:17-18 during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,  “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”  There Jesus is speaking of one of the little dots on a Hebrew letter used to distinguish it from a similar letter.  Jesus is saying not even one little stroke of a letter shall pass until all is accomplished.  So then  in these three examples, we have a word which cannot be broken, we have a verb tense which cannot be broken, and we have a stroke of a letter which cannot be broken.  I would say that Jesus had a pretty high view of scripture.  And I would hope that we might have the same.  

The battle against the authority of scripture is undiminished, in fact it has increased 10 fold today compared to what it was a century or two ago.  Yet if our Lord had such a high view of scripture that He depended upon it to defend His deity, He depended upon it to defeat all of Satan’s temptations, and as He was the author of scripture, then how much more should we be in the word of God.  How much more should we depend upon it for every decision that we make.  Notice back in Psalm 82, the judges were called gods because the word of God came to them.  We have the word of God made more sure, because it is written and confirmed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.  Let us treat it no less seriously than did Christ.

One more point, and that is found in the verses 37-38, Jesus said “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me;  but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.”  So Jesus invokes one more attempt to show these unbelieving Jewish leaders that He is who He said He was.  They had not believed His words, HIs preaching.  So Jesus asks them to consider His works.  He says, “believe My works.”  My works show that I am from the Father, and that the Father is in Me and I in Him. 

Nicodemus, who was one of them, had spoken earlier to Christ in secret in John 3:2 saying “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”  So Jesus is appealing to just that kind of reasoning.  He says, believe Me because of My works.  That was the reason Jesus did signs and wonders.  It was to confirm by signs that God was with Him.  It’s the same reason that the apostles did signs and wonders.  It was to confirm that they spoke the words of Christ.  Miracles were not given to simply heal people because they were sick.  That was a benefit of the sign, but that was not the reason for the sign.  The reason was to confirm the word that they were preaching was of God.  And that is what Jesus appeals to.  Believe My works, that they might believe My words.  

But there is an application of that for us, I believe as well.  And that is this; that when we give testimony to the grace of God, to our salvation, to our Christianity, a lot of times we are met with rejection, with disbelief. Sometimes, we are even met by animosity, as in the case with Christ here in our text.  But there is more that we can share beyond our words.  And that is our works.  We should be able to have the same argument as Jesus Christ.  We should be able to say as He did, “If you won’t believe my words, then believe my works.  I am doing the works of Christ. You should be able to show your friends and coworkers and family, that Christ is in you, and your works are the evidence of His life in you.

Not everyone is going to accept you, or believe in what you are saying.  But as we see in this passage, Jesus left Jerusalem and went to Bethany where John the Baptist had preached during his ministry, and those people saw the signs that Jesus was doing, and it says that many believed in Him there.  

I’m afraid that there is a disconnect today between what the church professes and what it practices.  I’m afraid that when the world looks at the lives of professing Christians today they don’t see the truth of the scriptures lived out.  And as a result, they have an excuse.  I’ve said it before, your life is either an example or an excuse.  Your life is an example of a Christ filled person, and as such points men to Christ, or your life is an excuse as to why they don’t need to believe, and as such your life turns men away from Christianity.  I hope that it may be an example.  

I hope that you will take away from this message today the realization that you were meant to live for so much more than what this life offers.  You were meant to be gods with a little g, to be rulers, judges over the world.  We were meant to be the bride of Christ and to rule and reign with Him.  That is why Christ came to earth and died for us.  That we might become righteous through faith in HIs sacrifice.  And then I hope that you will walk in this life with a dependency upon the inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture.  That we might be totally reliant upon the word of God as our guide for every action and every deed.  And thirdly, that we might be a testimony not just by our words, but by our works.  As we do the works of God we will show the truth of God in our hearts as a testimony to the world.  

Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to live as God designed us to be. To be all that He has desired us to be.  And all that is possible by faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.  Let us pray.

Today’s message is the continuation of a story that we began looking at last week.  I realize some of you weren’t here, but you should be able to catch up quickly – it’s the story of a man born blind, that Jesus healed.  We looked at the first seven verses last week.  Today we are going to try to finish this chapter which is basically a narrative of the people who are affected by this miracle.

And so I have titled today’s message, “Salvation in slow motion.” The idea behind that title is that this passage illustrates salvation in an expanded way.   What I mean to show in this message is the progression of faith as illustrated by this blind man.  I believe that is why we have this very long narrative in the scriptures.  I believe, as I said last week, that every miracle in the gospels is presented to teach spiritual principles by a physical parable.  So to just focus on the historical narrative here and miss the spiritual implications that are being taught would be a mistake.  I think the spiritual principle being taught here is the progressive nature of saving faith.  

Jesus said in the last chapter, chapter 8 vs.31, that “if you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of mine, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  So Jesus is saying that there is a necessity to continue in the truth, to continue to follow His word, and  when you do that, the truth will make you free.  

That principle finds support in Psalm 119:105  which says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  So to continue in the word indicates a desire to follow the truth as God reveals it, step by step, day by day.  When you do that, God will make you free.  Notice it doesn’t say, set you free.  It says make you free.  It’s talking about not just being set free from the penalty of sin, but making you free from the power of sin.  That’s an important distinction.

In the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln declared all slaves to be free.  But the war was still going on between the North and the South.  And it did so for quite some time after that declaration.  Even after the end of the war, there were many slaves that continued to live as slaves.  They had been set free.  But though they might have believed that fact,  they had not yet been made free.  Because they were still attached to the plantations, they had familiarity with that place.  For many of them, the plantation was all they knew.  They were made free when they acted on the declaration that set them free.  When they walked away from their home, walked away from their bondage, and started living as free men, then they were actually free.  

That’s the problem we still have today in the church.  Many people come to church and hear the good news that Jesus came to save them.  And so they believe in Jesus.  They believe that is true.  But effectively they are not made free.  They continue to live in enslavement to their sins.  They are comfortable in this world.  They are attached to this world.  And as such, they are not made free.  The way that they will be made free will be the day that the power of sin is broken in their life and they can begin a new life being free from the power of sin.

So this blind man illustrates that continuance in the truth, and the freedom that comes through salvation.  And as we will see, there is a progression to his faith.  At the beginning, he doesn’t know very much.  But at each step of his journey, his faith grows, culminating in worshipping Jesus as Lord in vs.38.  So this man’s salvation was given to us as an example.  And John reveals it in sort of like slow motion, an expanded process for this guy.  We don’t know how long it took, but it likely took all day, maybe longer to come to the full realization of what happened in his life.

Well, let’s jump in.  There is a lot to cover in not a lot of time, so we won’t  exegete every sentence.  But I do want to highlight each step of his growing faith.  First by way of review, we see the beginning of his faith as the result of divine action by Christ who came to him and selected him, chose him to be the recipient of His grace.  This man wasn’t really seeking Christ.  He doesn’t even seem to be too familiar with who He was at first.  But one thing this man does know; he knows he was blind.  Nobody had to tell him he was blind.  And one thing we can be sure of as well; he didn’t want to be blind.  

Now that is the necessary precursor to salvation.  Blindness is analogous to being in darkness, spiritual darkness.  That is, you are dead in your trespasses and sins.  That is necessary to understand if you are going to receive salvation.  Salvation is not because you’re a nice person, you are a good person, and if you believe in Jesus He is going to make your life really great.  That is no where taught in the Bible.  

Rather, in the sermon on the mount, Jesus taught that you had to come to God as a beggar, even as this blind man had been a beggar. Matt. 5:3 says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Poor in spirit is to admit that you are a beggar spiritually.  You have no means to buy your way into the kingdom of God.  And then Jesus added in vs 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  That means that you must come to a place of mourning over your sin.  That’s repentance, and when you come to God in repentance you will be comforted.  And then Jesus said in vs 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  That’s the recognition that you need righteousness, and you desire to be made right with God.  You cannot supply that righteousness on your own.  That need is satisfied by Christ’s righteousness when He takes your sin upon Himself, and transfers His righteousness to you.  

So Jesus made clay out of spittle and dirt and rubbed it in this man’s eyes, then told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam.  And in this we see symbolized the man’s faith and obedience, we see the application of the Savior, and we see the forgiveness of his sins illustrated in washing in the pool of Siloam. 

But that was just the beginning of this man’s progress of faith.  His eyes were opened to the truth, his sins were forgiven.  But he still needs to continue in the word of Christ in order come to complete freedom.  Now in this process this man interacts with four groups of people.  We have the narrative before us, so I don’t need to belabor each part of the dialogue.  But each interaction brings this man further in his progression of faith.  

The first group he interacts with after having his eyes opened was his neighbors. Vs.8, “Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, ‘Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?’”  Listen, when you get saved, people are going to notice.  Your neighbors, your coworkers are going to notice that something about you has changed.  I remember when I got right with God 40 some years ago, while living in California.  The next day I went by the restaurant where I worked to pick up my paycheck or something, and my coworkers thought I had been drinking.  I was sober.  But something about my demeanor was like a great burden that I had been under was taken away.  And so they noticed something different.  They didn’t know what it was, but it gave me the opportunity to tell them that I had gotten right with the Lord.

Well, that’s what we see happening here.  He has the opportunity right at the beginning to share what has happened to him.  And I will tell you an important principle here.  That is, the testimony of a changed life is the most effective testimony.  It’s not what you are like in church, it’s what you are like out of church that matters.  The testimony of a changed life is the most powerful sermon you will ever preach.

Now this is also the means of a step of faith for this man.  Jesus said, If you confess Me before men, I’ll confess you before My Father.  And when this man meets the skepticism, the questions of his neighbors, he confesses Jesus without wavering.  They could not help but notice that there was a tremendous change in him.  He had been blind, and now he could see.  So they ask him how were your eyes opened?  And his answer is “A man called Jesus anointed my eyes with clay and told me to go wash in the pool of Siloam, and I went and washed and received my sight.”  

Now that’s a good testimony.  Some of you say you don’t know how to witness for the Lord.  I would suggest starting by using this man’s testimony as a template.  You don’t have to know all scripture.  You can simply tell what Jesus did in your life.

Notice that at this point, this man only knows Jesus by name.  He’s not an expert in systematic theology.  He does know more than a lot of people though as we will see from some of his other comments.  But at this point, his faith is elementary.  He knows Jesus gave him his sight.  Jesus was a popular name in that day.  And the meaning of that name was also well known.  Jesus means Jehovah is salvation.  So when this formerly blind man said Jesus was responsible for his healing, he is professing faith in the name of Jesus as the source of  salvation from Jehovah God. 

Well, his neighbors are not really sure what to make of his testimony, so they take him to their religious leaders, the Pharisees.  And of course, the Pharisees are very familiar with Jesus.  They have been plotting to kill Him for some time and in fact just that day they had picked up stones to stone Him to death but Jesus had disappeared from their midst. This is the second group he interacts with, the Pharisees.  And they are defiantly a hostile audience.  They see this as an opportunity to build a case against Jesus.

You know, if you were to try to condense all the error of Judaism into one practice or one tradition, then that error would be best illustrated by the Jew’s practice of keeping the Sabbath.  The Sabbath requirements were the best example of all that was wrong in Judaism.  And the greatest proponents of Judaism were the Pharisees.  The hypocrisy of the Pharisees was best illustrated in their observance of the Sabbath.  

So I think that is why Jesus deliberately healed on the Sabbath. There are seven miracles of healing that Jesus did on the Sabbath recorded in the gospels.  So I would say He did it deliberately.   This idea of a mild mannered, weak wristed Jesus is not Biblical.  I think Jesus was deliberately confrontational to those who taught a false doctrine.  And conversely, Jesus was deliberately sympathetic to those who were caught up in that false doctrine and as such were still trapped in their sin.  But He is deliberately offensive to those who heaped heavy loads on others, but figured out ways for themselves to wriggle out of any burden whatsoever.  That’s what false religions do.  That’s why the scriptures are so damning towards false teachers.  Because it keeps people in darkness, and it keeps people from being made free.  That’s why sometimes I name names of certain false teachers, or call out certain false teachings.  I’m not trying to be mean spirited, but I hate to see people duped by self serving religious teachers. 

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the greatest opposition to true discipleship is often popular religion.  Because rather than continuing in the truth so that you become free, they teach traditions of men, which have no redemptive power, and those traditions end up enslaving people to repetitious ceremony that isn’t even founded on truth.

And that’s what the Pharisees did with the Sabbath.  Jesus said man wasn’t made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man.  It was to symbolize rest from your works, rest in what God has done for us through Christ.  But instead, they added ordinance upon ordinance until the Sabbath law had become this yoke that kept them in servitude to their religion.  

According to rabbinical law, there was a specific ordinance that prohibited using saliva to minister to a sick person on the Sabbath.  They had so defined every possible thing that could be construed as work that it was just insane.  For instance, they prohibited healing on the Sabbath unless it was a life or death situation.  So if you weren’t about to die, they could make you comfortable but not try to make you well.  This law of the Sabbath had evolved into something far removed from the original fourth commandment.  So I think Jesus healed on the Sabbath in order to confront their hypocrisy, and to expose their false teaching.  

So the Pharisees confront the man about his healing, but the miraculous part of it and the compassionate part of it goes right over their heads.  They aren’t concerned about a man suffering blindness from birth being healed.  They are interested in finding some way to convict Christ of wrongdoing. So their deduction is that ““This man [Jesus] is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” vs.16. Their reasoning is that their Sabbath law was true, but God’s Word was not true. 

Listen, that is the hallmark of false doctrine.  The hallmark of false religion is that they subject the word of God to the traditions of men.  You see that all the time with cults.  They will claim to believe the Bible, but then they say that their prophet had a dream and received new revelation.  And angels or someone told them to write it down.  And eventually, you find that their revelation ends up being the means by which they interpret the Bible.  And then finally, they ignore what the Bible says if their prophet or priest says something that is not supported or is even refuted by the Bible.  In effect they say their prophet or priest is right and the Bible is wrong. Many times they end up changing the Bible to fit their revelation. Now that’s the progression of false religion.  And that’s exactly what these Pharisees were doing.  They had added to the law, until their law superseded the law of God.

But notice the progression of faith of the man who was formerly blind.  Vs.17 the Pharisees ask him, “What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?” And he said, “He is a prophet.”  Now I don’t know if he was being obtuse or that simply was the limit of his knowledge.  But I will say  that even in the language of the ordinary people, the word “prophet” did not mean simply a predictor of events in the future, but one who spoke the words of God. He was not just  a “fore-teller,” but a “forth-teller,” declaring God’s truth, revealing His will and character, bearing the witness of divine works.  

Now that was a major claim of Christ Himself, that He spoke the words of God.  That His word was the truth of God.  At the beginning of the feast He said in John 7:16-18 “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

And as I said a few weeks ago, that is the way you can tell a true prophet of God, or a true preacher of the gospel, or a false teacher.  A true prophet speaks God’s word.  It’s just that simple.  That is why I preach verse by verse here.  It’s not that I couldn’t buy my sermons online like a lot of guys do, complete with sentimental illustrations and funny jokes.  That’s easy.  Anyone can do that.  But to preach the word of God is not always easy. It’s certainly not always popular.  But it’s what we are commissioned to do.  Not to tickle people’s ears.  But to teach the truth.  That’s the primary purpose for our church service.  It’s to meditate on the word, to be taught the word.  Everything else is just icing on the cake.  The music is icing on the cake.  Too many churches today only offer whipped cream icing, and there’s nothing substantial underneath.  So you get a sugar rush on Sunday morning, and then crash on Monday.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if this man didn’t know a fair bit of theology.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t thinking of Moses when he said Jesus was a prophet.  Moses said in Deut. 18:15 “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”  Moses was talking about the Messiah.  So I wouldn’t be surprised if this former blind man realized at this point that Jesus was the Christ, that is the Messiah.

Now there is another group that we see in the text.  And that is his parents.  The Pharisees go after this man’s parents.  They probably were disgusted with the former blind man’s answers, so they go to his parents to try to discredit him somehow.  And this is where I get additional support for my idea that the blind man was thinking of the Messiah when he said prophet.  Because it says in vs.22, that his parents were aware that the Pharisees had stipulated that if anyone said Jesus was the Christ, they would be put out of the synagogue.  And so they avoid that question.  They answer in the affirmative the Pharisees first two questions concerning whether or not he was their son, and if he was indeed born blind.  But the third question, “How does he now see?”  They didn’t want to answer that question.  And the reason is there was a good possibility that the son had said that Jesus was the Christ.  They want to avoid having to confess that for fear of being kicked out of the synagogue.  So they say, “he is of age, ask him.”  So we can assume that this man’s faith is steadily progressing throughout the day.  He has grown from confessing the man Jesus, to be a prophet, to be the Christ, which is the Greek word for Messiah.  And all along he is steadfastly refusing to budge in his faith in Jesus regardless of the criticism and the mounting hostility. 

So having got nothing from his parents, the Pharisees call the man back in for questioning.  They are like a bull terrier, they won’t let go until they find something.  This time, they ratchet up the indictments from saying Jesus couldn’t be of God because He broke the Sabbath, to saying that He was a sinner.  

So the former blind man at this point turns the tables and starts to teach the teachers.  And he gives a really great rebuttal to these Pharisees.  His greatest point is made in vs 25, as he replies, “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”  This is the evidence that they were too blind to see.  This is the evidence that Jesus was who He said He was.  And this is the evidence that we need to show the world that does not know Christ.  Like the line from the hymn Amazing Grace, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”  

That is the testimony we need to tell the world.  The world can’t refute the testimony of a changed life.  When you were living in sin, when you were a drunkard, when you were a partier, an adulterer, a fornicator, a liar, a thief, whatever you were, by the grace of God you are not any more.  You are brand new.  You are remade.  You are different.  You were once blind, but now you can see.  That kind of testimony cannot be argued against.  We can have a debate until the cows come home about evolution versus creation.  We can argue about the existence of God, and the existence of evil.  And there may never be any agreement, and there will probably never be anyone saved as a result of your apologetics.  But the transformation of your life is indisputable.  That is the trophy of grace that God holds up to the world.  That is why sanctification is an essential part of your progression of faith.  That is why renunciation of sin is essential in the life of a believer.  That is why it’s essential that though you come to Christ as you are, you do not stay as you are.  If you are in Christ, you have become a new creature, you’ve been made free.  Act as free men and women.  Free from not only the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin.  Then you will be free indeed and others will see that you are free.  

So in vs. 33, this man makes yet another step in the progression of his faith, he says, “If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.”  He’s teaching the teachers here.  And in the process, his own faith is growing exponentially.  That’s what happens when you start putting your faith in practice, by the way.  When you start teaching, or preaching, you start growing spiritually.  I don’t necessarily mean preaching professionally.  But when you start professing your faith to others, it serves to build your faith personally.  

Well, they kick this man out of the synagogue.  They excommunicate him. Listen, in that day that was a pretty serious deal.  That meant he might not be able to even find work in his community.  He was a social outcast.  His own family would not be able to communicate with him.  That was a very traumatic thing.  And I will just add that is something I see happen quite often.  Someone comes to Christ, and before the glow can start to fade off their face they end up getting sideswiped by someone.  They end up having to choose between a boyfriend or girlfriend or Christ.  They have to chose between family and Christ.  They have to choose between a career or following Christ.  And you know, we could blame that on the devil trying to trip them up.  But I think God wants us to make a decision to put Him first, above everything else.  I think God may sometimes put a choice in front of you.  Are you going to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and will all your might?  Or are you going to love the world and the things of the world.  If you chose the world, the love of the Father is not in you.  Choose carefully ladies and gentlemen.  What does it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Listen, sometimes getting kicked out of your community is the best thing that can happen to you.  Like the slaves on the plantations, they weren’t really free until they left the place of their bondage.  Sometimes going back to what is familiar is just going back into bondage.  Jesus came to make you free.  And that was the case with this man.  He was excommunicated, and that was a good thing.  Because Jesus came and found him in his solitude.  And Jesus revealed Himself to him in a way that completed this man’s faith like very few had found.  Jesus said in vs.35, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.”And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him.”

This blind man saw, and kept on seeing, until he saw the reality of the Son of God.  He saw Jesus for who He really was.  Lot’s of people in that day saw Jesus with their natural eyes.  But God gave this man spiritual vision.  He gave him the privilege of seeing who Jesus really was.  The Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord.  

That aspect of Christ’s divinity is one that is sorely lacking today.  Some think that Lord is a proper name of Jesus.  But actually it’s a title.  It means ruler, master, owner of all.  I believe in the necessity of the lordship of Jesus Christ. Where we bow our will to HIs will.  Where we stop serving ourselves and start serving Him.  This is an essential part of the progression of your faith.  You cannot stop with just believing.  You can’t stop with just forgiveness.  But if you continue in His word, then you are truly disciples.  And you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.  You cannot be truly a disciple, you cannot be truly free, until you bow to Jesus as Lord of your life.  All your life submitted and in subjection to the Lord of the Universe.  The Lord of Creation.  This man understood that.  And so he worshipped Jesus.  I believe that indicates that he bowed on his knees before Christ, maybe even prostrated himself on the ground in front of Christ.  And notice that Christ did not reject that worship.  Because He is God, and worthy of our worship.  

Listen, worship is not just singing or listening to music.  Worship is bowing before the Lord and doing His will, renouncing your will, renouncing everything and everyone for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus as Lord.  

Finally, notice Jesus last statement.  John 9:39-41  “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

What judgment did Jesus render? I’ll let His words speak for themselves.  Jesus said in John 3:17-21  “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

Today enough light has been revealed through Jesus Christ to expose your sin.  To show you your need for spiritual healing, to show you your need to be made free.  If you will but confess your sins, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.  He is able to make you free.  And if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.   But many of us are not really free. Many of us are still in bondage to our sin, still living under the power of sin. Today the invitation is given to be made free indeed.  Confess Jesus as Lord today  and He will make you free.  

Today is the Lord’s Day.  It is the day when Christians worship the Lord.  It is the day set aside each week to honor Jesus Christ, who laid down His life for us so that we might be truly free. Jesus Himself said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends.” The remarkable thing about Christ’s sacrifice is that He did not just lay down His life for His friends, but He laid down His life for His enemies.  Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”Jesus said He did not come to save the righteous, but sinners.  Sinners are by definition the enemy of God who is holy and righteous.

The essential fact of the gospel that is so often missed however, is that all men are sinners.  Romans 3:10 says, ”THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;  THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;  ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”  That’s the bad news.

The good news however, is found just a couple of chapters later in Romans 5:8 which I read to you a moment ago;  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

But a lot of people are so offended at hearing Romans 3:10 that they never get to know the benefits of Romans 5:8.  They are so offended that the Bible says that all men are condemned because of their sinfulness, that they never come to know the salvation that is offered through Christ’s death as our substitute.  But the fact is, that if you do not acknowledge your need for forgiveness from your sins, and trust in Christ’s atonement on the cross as the propitiation for your sins, then you cannot know the freedom from condemnation that comes through salvation.

Now that is really the crux of the passage we have before us today. This exchange between the Jewish leaders and Jesus which is recorded here for us is due to the fact that the Jewish leadership trusted in their own righteousness and rejected salvation through Christ. As a matter of review,  Jesus had been preaching in the temple for a week at this point, during the weeklong celebration known as the Feast of Tabernacles.  And He has presented through many different messages the truth of the gospel.  That truth simply stated was that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, the eternal God come to Earth in human form, so that men might have the spiritual life that God offers to them that believe in Him.

And Jesus has used a couple of metaphors to illustrate that truth,  which we have looked at in detail in previous weeks. In the first metaphor He says He is the source of living water which if anyone drinks of, out of their innermost being will spring up living water. Then His other incredible claim is that He was the light of the world, and that the world was in darkness, but for those that follow Him, they will have the light of life.  In both of those metaphors, Jesus is teaching that He is the source of life, abundant life through the Spirit of God, and He gives it to those who believe in Him.

But at every point that Jesus makes in His messages during the Feast, the Jewish religious leaders want to find fault with Him and argue over some technicality.  And at the heart of their response is their fervent belief that they did not need a spiritual Savior.  They believed that they were inherently good people.  They were obviously very religious people.  They thought that they knew what the scriptures taught.  They thought that they had been given entry into the kingdom of God through their heritage and that they insured it by their adherence to certain laws such as circumcision and keeping the Sabbath. 

In many respects, they were not unlike many Americans today.  According to a recent Pew Research survey, 70% of Americans claim to be Christians.  They believe in God.  They go to church on somewhat of a regular basis.  They believe in the golden rule.  They have a few Bibles in their possession.  They are what we would call “good people.”  And the real danger for these people is that they have never come face to face with their sinfulness and as such have rejected the idea that they need a Savior.

This was the predicament of the Jews who listened to Jesus that day.  He had told them repeatedly that He had come from the Father in heaven and as such had been doing the works of the Father and speaking the words of the Father, shining the light of the truth unto the world so that men might have life.  But they had repeatedly rejected His claims. Therefore Jesus says in vs. 21, “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.”

Their response is that of disdain, again missing the significance of what He is preaching, and focusing instead on trying to discredit Him.  So they respond with dripping sarcasm, “Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”  I think there is even a hint in their response of their intention to kill Him, but they phrase it as if He will commit suicide.  Suicide by the way in Jewish culture of that period, was considered the most egregious sin, and they believed that the bottom level of Hades was reserved for those who committed suicide.  

The question must be asked – why do they have such hatred towards Christ?  I’ll tell you the answer. It’s the same answer that Jesus gave for their hatred in John 7:7, He says, “[the world] hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.” It’s the same hatred we see vented towards those who proclaim the truth today; it’s because of the conviction of sin.  If you dare call anyone a sinner today, or suggest that the Bible condemns certain activities as sinful, then you are going to be the object of intense hatred.  And by the way, this doesn’t just come from atheists, it also comes from those claiming Christianity.  The late Bishop Desmond Tutu said that he would rather spend eternity in hell than a minute in a homophobic heaven. Well, he just might have gotten his wish. Because that statement reveals his hatred towards God. Jesus said that God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  That means that God gets to make the rules, not us.  We must worship who He is, and not who we want Him to be.  The world does not get to define God.  God has defined Himself in His word.  And we must love God more than we love the world. 1John 2:15-16 says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

The essential principle that Bishop Tutu fails to understand is that God’s law is a reflection of God’s nature. It is how He reveals His holiness.  I read another quote by Bishop Tutu in which he said, “We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”  I have news for him,  God’s standards are anything but low.  God’s standard is absolute perfection.  And there is only one person that has been able to meet God’s standard, and that is Jesus Christ.  All the rest of mankind is dead in their trespasses and sin. That is why Jesus says three times in this passage, “you will die in your sins.” Unless you repent and call in faith upon Jesus Christ – that is the only way for your sin to be forgiven.  

And listen, your sin is not forgiven because God just decided one day to get with it – just go along with the culture and forget about all that sin stuff,  just live and let live.  No, God still counts sin.  God did not do away with the requirements of the law.  Jesus kept every law perfectly so that He might be the blameless, spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  No, God didn’t stop counting sin, He just counted it against Christ.  He transferred our sin upon Jesus and beat Him for it with a whip within an inch of death.  He transferred our sin upon His Holy Righteous Only Begotten Son, and pounded nails into His hands and feet and let Him hang on a rough cross for hours bleeding to death.  He transferred our sin upon Jesus and let Him die and descend into Hades to pay the penalty for sin.  He transferred our sin upon Jesus so He could pay the price of our sin, and only when His justice was satisfied could He transfer Christ’s righteousness upon us.  God’s standards are anything but low.  No one comes to heaven, to the Father, except through Jesus Christ and by His righteousness alone.

So in spite of their unbelief and sarcasm,  once again Jesus shows compassion by restating His warning to the religious leaders. In vs.23 He says, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”  

Now what Christ has done is give a litmus test of sorts for belonging to the kingdom of heaven.  That was the primary message of Christ.  He was preaching about the kingdom of heaven.  And the Jewish leaders recognized that the requirement of citizenship was righteousness.  So Jesus is in effect giving a litmus test for righteousness.  He says they are of the world, and as such they are still in their sins, and they will suffer the consequences of that sin, which is death.  How do you know whether someone is of the world or of heaven?  How do you recognize those belonging to the kingdom of darkness, and those belonging to the kingdom of heaven?  I mean, anyone can claim to be of the kingdom of heaven, can’t they?  People all over the world claim to be of the kingdom of heaven.  We already said that 70% of Americans claim to be Christians, that is, belonging to the kingdom of heaven.  So how do you know? What is the evidence? 

Well, to find out the truth, I’m not going to quote Desmond Tutu, but instead quote the Apostle John once again.  As we read earlier, 1John 2:15-16 says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

And Paul says virtually the same thing, that those who are of the world set their mind on worldly things.  In Phil. 3:18-19 he says,  “For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ,  whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.”

That’s the litmus test.  If you love the world, if your focus is on worldly things, if your passions are in the world, if your pride is in the things of the world, then you are of the world.  You cannot serve God and mammon.  That’s why James says, show me your faith by your works.  Show me.  Don’t tell me.  You say you have faith, but show me your faith.  Faith is not an intellectual exercise, by which we gain heaven.  Faith is an exercise by which the will of heaven is worked out in my life.  Where God’s will supersedes our will.  Faith is praying, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

That’s the litmus test.  That is why Jesus was able to point to His works as the litmus test that proved He was sent from God.  Three times in this little passage He says that He does the works of God, as evidence that He is not of this world, but of God.  Look at vs.26, “the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world.”  Then again in vs.28, “I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.” And third, vs.29, “I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”

It’s noteworthy that Jesus categorizes things in threes. Three times He says “You will die in your sins.”  And three times Jesus says He does the works of God. The principle is clear; if you are of the world, then you will die in your sins.  If you do the works of God, then it’s evident that you are of the kingdom of heaven.

 Now I hope no one here today tries to weasel out of this principle of your works being evidence of where your heart is by saying that Jesus did the works of God, but grace makes us free to do whatever we want. Grace is the means by which our guilt and punishment are expunged. And grace is the means by which we are given the Holy Spirit to lead us in paths of righteousness. But all through the New Testament we are told to imitate Christ.   Peter said in 1Peter 1:15-16  “but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;  because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”  And again in 1Peter 2:21 he says, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.” We are to follow the pattern that Jesus laid down for us. That is what it means to be a disciple by the way.  We follow the pattern of Christ. As He did, so do we.  That’s what Jesus is saying in vs.31, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine.”  To continue in His word is to continue in obedience to His word.

And Paul also makes it clear in Ephesians that we are saved to do the works of Christ. Eph. 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” So the principle that Jesus is teaching is clear, how you live illustrates where your citizenship is.  Is your citizenship in heaven?  Then you will be about your Father’s business.  A ceremonial tip of the hat once every couple of weeks is not indicative of where your citizenship is.  Jesus said in Luke 12:34  “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

You know what disturbs me though is when Christians, who have been set free from the enslavement to the world by the death of Christ, try to keep one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God.  They claim to be a citizen of heaven, but their priorities are all about the world. Everything seems to take priority over the things of God. I worry about such people. 

That reminds me of the prophet Elijah, who seeing the double mindedness of the Israelites, who worshipped the idols of the world while claiming to be the people of God.  And so he cries out to them in 1 Kings 18, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions?  If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.”  If you say you are the Lord’s people, then serve the Lord with your whole heart.  But if you are people of the world, then continue to serve the world.  But don’t think you can live in two places at once.

Well, back in our text, the Jews respond to Jesus’ words with more sarcasm, more condescension, saying “Who are You?”  In a more modern way of speaking they may have said, “Who do you think You are? We have to believe in You or we die in our sins?  Just who do You think You are?”  That question was obviously intended to be sarcasm as well, but nevertheless, Jesus responds to them by saying, “What have I been saying to you from the beginning?” 

What had He been saying from the beginning?  Well, let’s remember what Jesus has said so far;  that He was the Messiah, He was the Son of God, He was the resurrection and the life, He was the Temple of God, that God has given Him the power to execute all judgment, that He is the source of eternal life,  that He was the one of whom Moses wrote, that He was the bread of life which came down out of heaven, that He has seen the Father, that He had the words of eternal life, that He was the supply of the water of life, and that He was the light of the world.  I think it’s pretty clear who He was.

But since they asked, Jesus gives them another clue.  In vs 28 He says, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.”  Now what is Jesus referring to in this statement?  I believe that He is speaking of going to the cross, being lifted up as the serpent was lifted up on the pole in the wilderness.  Jesus is saying, when you see Me lifted up on the cross, then you will know that I am He.  

What a tremendous statement.  Not only was His life indicative of His deity, and not only was His words indicative of His deity, but His sacrifice for sinners was the ultimate indication of His deity.  The crucifixion was the expression of God’s love for the world.  And the magnanimity of that act revealed a love that could only be that of God. I’m reminded of the centurion who seeing Jesus give up His Spirit on the cross said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

But sadly, many of those who were debating with Him would still not recognize Him even when He was lifted up.  They should have seen the parallel with the serpent in the wilderness which Moses lifted up for the healing of sting of vipers upon the Israelites.  And they should have understood that the serpent on a pole symbolized that there would come One who would be lifted up on a pole for the healing of the sins of the world. And perhaps some did make that connection  during the crucifixion such as the centurion.  But as I have pointed out before, I believe that by the time of the crucifixion, the scribes and Pharisees and the priesthood not only knew that He was the Son of God, but they deliberately, purposefully put Him to death because they hated Him so much by that point that their hatred had blinded them.

And that is born out by the fact that He says, when I am lifted up, then you will know that I am He.  Now in the Greek there is not the pronoun He. It is simply “that I Am.”  And many theologians suggest that He is making a direct reference to the same “I AM that I AM” which spoke to Moses out of the burning bush.  This is the name that God gave Moses to tell the Israelites and Pharaoh who it was that gave him his authority.  It was the name of God that refused conventional definitions.  So in answer to the Jews question of “Who are You?”  Jesus  answered, “When you see Me lifted up, then you will know that I am the I AM.” He is telling them who He is in terms that they were very familiar with.  

See, for the Jews, Moses was their guy.  He was the greatest prophet.  In fact, the Sadducees only recognized the writings of Moses, nothing else.  So it’s interesting that in every evidence that Jesus gives to His deity He uses something that happened during the life of Moses.  He was the source of water from the rock.  He was the manna from heaven.  He was the pillar of fire over the tabernacle.  He was the serpent lifted up on the tree.  And He was the I AM from the burning bush.  Yet these champions of the law of Moses would not accept what He was saying, because they believed that  they were justified by the law of Moses.  

But Paul tells us that the law was not given to be a stepladder to heaven.  But the  law was given to be a tutor to lead us to Christ.  The law was given so that our sin became even more sinful.  Even more apparent.  But when Jesus showed them that, in the Sermon on the Mount for instance, then they became indignant, and rejected the idea that they were sinners.  And that disdain of the need for forgiveness would condemn them to die in their sins.

From our perspective though it should be clear, that Jesus was not only sent from God to be all the things that we stated earlier like the light of the world, and the source of eternal life, etc, but the characteristic that really completes the picture is that He is the Savior of the world.  This is the basis for John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”  

Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is the exact representation of God. So as Jesus declares that He is Savior, it completes the picture. It completes the picture of God.  God is holy, righteous and just.  God is the judge of the earth.  God is the source of life.  And God is also the Savior of the world because God loved the world.  He loved His creation.  But for God’s love to be enacted, His justice had to be satisfied.  God’s law had to be upheld.  And so God sent Jesus to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God through Christ.  

Well, for a few people in Jesus’ hearing that day, the light suddenly came on.  They saw the light of the truth.  So it says in vs.30 that as He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him.  I can only pray that someone here today has suddenly had the light of truth dawn in their hearts.  You recognize that you are a sinner in need of a Savior.  And perhaps you have come to believe that Jesus Christ is the sinless Son of God who gave Himself in your place on the cross so that you might be saved.  If that is you, then simply call on Jesus to save you, believing in all that He says He is, and God promises that He  will transfer you  from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of heaven.  You will become a citizen of heaven, but even more than that, you will be made a son of God by adoption.  And as the result of that adoption, you are guaranteed an inheritance in glory and eternal life.  I pray that today will be the day of your salvation.   

In this section of scripture, John records for us the highlights of what transpired on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, and in that context, a few various remarks from those in attendance.  And though it’s possible to give a running commentary on those various statements and try to tie them together into a sermon of sorts, I wanted instead to focus on primarily one statement of Jesus found in vs.37-39, which I believe is the main point of Christ’s message.

In this declaration, Jesus stood up in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Booths and shouted out this statement in a loud voice.  Now this was a shocking thing that Jesus did at a very strategic moment.  But in order that you might get the full import of what happened, let me tell you a little about the Feast of Tabernacles which will help us to understand the context.

There were three great feasts which were mandatory for every male in the vicinity of Jerusalem to participate in; the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.  The Feast of Tabernacles is described in Leviticus 23.  That feast occurred in the 7th month, and began on the 15th day, and lasted 8 days, from Sabbath to Sabbath.  In this feast, the Jews were required to make huts or booths or tabernacles from green leaved branches, and to dwell in them during the week, so that they might commemorate the deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt, when they wandered in the wilderness.  It was to be a joyous feast, a time of rejoicing.  

One of the special ceremonies involved in the feast was on the last day, the priest would go to the Pool of Siloam, and dip a golden pitcher in the water and bring it back through the Water Gate to the altar.  As all the people gathered together, the trumpets would sound, and He then would pour the water into a basin which would run down through pipes to the altar.  This was to signify the water which flowed from the rock when the Israelites suffered from thirst in the wilderness.  

It was at just this point, when all the people are gathered together, and the trumpets had just sounded, and the priest lifted the pitcher of water and the water gushed down upon the altar, that Jesus stood up and shouted in a very loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”

Now that certainly was guaranteed to get everyone’s attention, wasn’t it?  I can imagine that everyone stopped and turned and stared incredulously at Jesus shouting out in the middle of this ceremony. So I want to examine this incredible declaration this morning and see what we can learn from it and how we can apply it to our lives.  Because, though the context of Christ’s statement was made during the Feast of Tabernacles, the truth of His words are just as pertinent for us today.  

The first phrase that I would make note of this morning is “if anyone is thirsty…”  The correlation between the murmuring of the Israelites in the wilderness when they became thirsty for water and Christ’s invitation at the Feast should be apparent.  God led the Israelites into the wilderness, and fed them with manna from heaven in the morning, and quail in the evening.  He provided a cloud to guide them by day and a pillar of fire by night.  He gave them victory over their enemies, and delivered them from slavery.  And yet He allowed them to become thirsty so that they began to cry out. 

Now why did God allow the Israelites to become thirsty?  I would suggest that it was to make them to look to God and to recognize their need for  God.  I would remind you that Israel is a picture of the church.  And sometimes God allows us to suffer thirst as well. I would go so far as to suggest that if there were not difficulties or crises in our life, then there would be little if any times of spiritual growth.  In fact, many people would never come to Christ at all if a crises did not first bring them to their knees. Though the grace of God provides all things for us to enjoy, and gives us life, and breath and health and many such things which we all too often take for granted, yet God causes us to become thirsty for that which satisfies the soul.  

Men and women are continually seeking that which can never satisfy, which can never quench the burning thirst that all men feel in their soul.  We may try to satisfy our soul’s thirst with physical things, material things, but nothing on earth can satisfy the longing of our heart. Pascal, the French philosopher said there is a God sized hole in our hearts that only He can fill.  And Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3:11 identifies that emptiness by saying that God has set eternity in their hearts.

It’s interesting that when Jesus said “out of his innermost being,” or literally, “out of his belly” He used a word in the Greek which is “koilia”, from the root word “koîlos” which means hollow, or cavity.  St. Augustine spoke of this very thing, when he said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  

And yet still man does not seek for that which satisfies, but attempts to slake his thirst by things which can never satisfy.  In Isaiah 55, God says, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?”  The world today is desperately searching for something that will fill the void in their life, something that will satisfy the thirsting of their soul, and yet as the old country song says, they are “looking for love in all the wrong places.”  

I would suggest that is because man does not naturally seek the Lord. Romans 3:10-11 says, “as it is written,’THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;  THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD.’”  Unless God stirs the heart, unless God brings conviction, unless God brings a person to a place of hungering and thirsting for righteousness, then man will continually seek to fill that void with things that can never satisfy his soul, and if he should die without the water of life in him, then he will be forever spiritually dead.

In Israel’s case, they had known the goodness of the Lord, and as a type of the church, we might say that they were a picture of the saved.  But yet they turned back to the worthless and elemental things, they lusted after those things which they had been delivered from in Egypt, and as such God was not pleased with them.  

I cannot leave this first question, without asking you this morning – what are you thirsting for?  Does your soul thirst for God?  Can you say like the author of Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;

When shall I come and appear before God?”  The answer to the question, “are you a believer” or “are you a Christian,” is much over claimed I am afraid.  I think the answer is better evidenced than spoken.  And if you are not thirsting for God, for the living God, the living water, if you are not coming to fellowship with God at every opportunity, whether corporately or privately, then I would suggest that the evidence shows your desire is set on things of earth and not things of heaven.  

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  If you find yourself in that state of the prodigal son, having grown tired of the husks and pods of the world which cannot fill the need of your soul, then Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”  That is the next phrase I would like to think about for a moment.  Let him come to Jesus.  

Listen, all the thirsting of your soul cannot be slaked by anything, nor in anyone but Christ.  He is the Living Water, which as He said to the woman of the well in chapter 4; “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

Coming to Jesus is the same as believing in Jesus.  If the sovereign call and conviction of God causes the spirit of man to thirst for righteousness, then coming to Jesus is the response of man.  No man can come to God unless the Lord draws him, but yet man must come. He must believe.  This is the doctrine of both the election of God and the responsibility of man.  Both are necessary.

So if you are thirsty, you must come to Christ. The reason that nothing else can satisfy the longing of the soul except for Jesus is because He is the source of life; John 1:3 says, “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”  He is the sustainer of life; according to Hebrews 1:3, “And He is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” And thirdly, He is the Spirit of Life; Romans 8:2, 9-11  “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. … 9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.  If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

This is what Jesus had been trying to make clear to the people gathered in the temple that day.  He began by saying that He was teaching the word of God in vs.16, that He was sent from God in vs.28, that He knows God because He is from God, in vs.29, and in a little while He is going back to the Father in vs.33.  So to come to Christ is to believe in Him, that as John says in chapter 1, He was in the beginning with God, and He was God, and all things were made by Him, and He came into the world, and the world did not receive Him, and after He rose from the dead He ascended back into heaven to sit down at the right hand of God.  So in effect, Jesus is restating the same message He gave in Galilee in chapter 6, vs. 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”  And that believing in Him is equated to coming to Him. Vs. 37 “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.”

This idea of coming to the Messiah as the source of life is found in the Old Testament in Isaiah 55:1 “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”  This is the invitation of Christ to all men everywhere and at every time as stated in Matthew 11:28-30  “Come unto Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  

Let me ask you a question this morning – are you weary yet?  Are you weary of the rat race, are you weary of searching for peace, are you weary of searching for what might satisfy your soul?  Come to Jesus.  Unload your burdens at His feet.  Let Him have your sins and your sorrows.  Let Him bear your burdens.  And He will give you rest.  He will give you rest when you finally reach the place where you are ready to fully surrender  to Him.  Don’t hold anything back.  But lay it all down, all your sins, all your striving, all your works,  your pride,  lay it down at the cross and find that Jesus has paid it all, and provided all that you will ever need. And in Him you will find rest for your soul. 

There is one more important element though in Jesus’ invitation.  And that is drink.  Come to Him and drink.  And I suggest that to drink of Christ means to trust Christ.  That means to follow Him, to live for Him, to leave all that you have in order to be His disciple. You could realize this morning that you are very thirsty. And  I could offer you a glass of water.  You could believe that I have a glass of water in my hand.  But until you drink of it, you will not be satisfied.  Drinking of Christ is the same idea as we saw in the last chapter with eating His flesh.  It is appropriating the truth about Christ for yourself and acting upon it.  Listen, saving faith is active faith.  Abraham believed God so he left Ur of the Chaldees, not knowing where he was going, and he went out to the place God told him to go.  Abraham believed in the promise of God that He would produce an offspring from Isaac through whom the world would be blessed, and so he offered his son upon the altar. There is no separation between active trust and faith.  

In theological terms, there are three aspects of saving faith; notitia which means knowledge; assensus, which means assent or agreement; and fiducia, which means trust.  And we see all three in this invitation; knowledge that you are thirsty and cannot find satisfaction, assent is coming to Jesus, believing that He is the source of life, and trust, drinking from the fountain of life which is Christ, being willing to submit to His will and renounce your own.  That is saving faith.  Faith is not just intellectual.  Not just knowledge of a few Bible facts.  Not just believing that He lived 2000 years ago.  But believing that in Him is life, that His words are life.  And then entrusting your life to Him, even if that means forsaking all that you hold dear, all that you hold onto for security.  Trusting Him and obeying Him.

Then what is the promise for those that know that they are thirsty, who come to Jesus and drink of His fountain?  The answer is found in vs.38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this is an interesting statement.  Jesus has just likened Himself to a stream of living water which gives eternal life to all who drink of Him.  And now He is saying, that to those who believe in Him, they also shall have living water springing up out of their soul.  Now how should we interpret that?  

Well, to start with look at the next verse.  John gives us some commentary in vs.39 so that we might know what He is speaking of. “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”  So we know that the rivers of living water that flow from the believer will be of the Holy Spirit, which at that time was not known because Jesus had not ascended into heaven and sent to the saints His Spirit. 

In John 15:26 Jesus tells the disciples prior to His crucifixion, that  “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.”  And Jesus elaborates on that statement further in the next chapter, John 16:13-14  “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

So what Jesus is promising is that for those that believe in Him unto salvation, He will give them the Spirit to live in their soul, so that we might know the words of  Christ, that we might do the works of Christ, and so that we might be like Christ.  That is the goal of our salvation, is it not?  That we might be united with Christ, so that we might do the works of Christ, and that we might be conformed to the image of Christ.

Folks, do not be deceived by those that misrepresent the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  He came to give us life, and without His indwelling presence, we do not have life. Romans 8:9, “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” We cannot be saved unless we are born again by the Spirit.  We cannot have life unless the Spirit of Life gives us life.  And we cannot do the works of God unless we have the Spirit of Christ that flows from our innermost being. 

Listen to the prophecy of Ezekiel 36:24-27  “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” 

The Spirit of God not only is the agent of regeneration, but He is the agent of activation, whereby we desire to do the works of God. He is the power that enables us to walk in His statues, and keep His ordinances.  He is the power filling us and flowing from within us which empowers us to do the will of God. And so we become the channel by which the living water is offered to the world.  

The maturity of a believer is marked by becoming a channel by which the gifts of the Spirit are used for the edification of the body of Christ.  For the building up of the body.  For the water of life that flows from you to those who are thirsty, even to those who are lost.  

Listen, the goal of Christianity isn’t so that you are set up for success, and have all your material needs met, and fulfill all your physical goals, so that you are fulfilled and satisfied.  No, the goal of maturity in Christ is coming to a place where the fruits of the Spirit are utilized to bring life to the world around you. That you become like Christ, doing the work of Christ.  Reaching  the lost with the water of life, refreshing the body with the water of Christ which flows through you and out of you.  Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that you might dam up the water and keep it all to yourself, but so that it might flow from Him to you, through you, to another and so spread to all the world.  You are to be a conduit for the works of the Spirit, not a culdesac. 

I’m not going to prolong the sermon this morning expounding the remainder of the text.  I believe that it is fairly straightforward and as such should be easily understood.  But I do want to leave you today with an admonition – to examine what you are thirsty for.  What is your soul thirsting for? Is it thirsting for material gain, or for physical fulfillment, are you searching this world over for things that will never truly satisfy?  I hope not.  I hope that someone here today recognizes perhaps for the first time that they are thirsty for righteousness.  They long to be forgiven, to know freedom from the captivity of sin that they are held by.  And for that person I say, Come to Jesus.  Drink from the living water.  He will give you rest. He will satisfy your longing and give life to your soul.

And also a word to the saints, to those who already have claimed to come to know Jesus, and have believed on Him.  I would remind you of the Israelites who murmured and complained in the wilderness because they were thirsty.  God supplied all their needs, and delivered them from so much, and yet they found themselves thirsty because they turned back in their hearts to the flesh pots of Egypt, and so God brought them to a place of thirst.  

My question for you believers this morning; are you thirsting once again for things of the world?  Have you lost your first love, and turned back to those elemental things from which you were once delivered?  They could never satisfy you then, you think they will satisfy you now?  Are you not supposed to be growing in the grace of God so that the living water flows out of you and brings life to others who are thirsting?  Has your appetite for the world overshadowed your usefulness as a channel for God?  I hope that you will reconsider your appetites.  David prayed for the Lord to renew a right spirit within Him.  A broken and contrite heart He will not despise.  Present your bodies to God as a living and holy sacrifice, and He will once again cause your innermost being to flow forth with rivers of living water, that you might be the source of blessing to others, even as Christ is the source of all blessing for you.

I think that quite often, the greatest difficulty in living the Christian life is being able to distinguish between the physical and the spiritual realities of our faith.  By that I mean, how does God operate in the physical realm, and how does God operate in the spiritual realm, and by extension, how are we to operate in both?  I have said from this pulpit repeatedly, that every physical healing or miracle presented in the gospels, is given to illustrate a spiritual principle.  For instance, what I mean by that is  when Jesus healed the paralyzed man, spiritually speaking He was giving life to that which was dead, so that it illustrated spiritual new life in Christ.  I hope we can all agree with that.

But let’s take that principle and work it out more thoroughly and I think you will realize it’s difficulty.  Does that mean then that God is not concerned as much about the physical as He is the spiritual?  Does the fact that we do not see paralyzed people restored to full use of their limbs today emblematic of the fact that the blessings of the kingdom of God are primarily spiritual?  Is it wrong  then to expect to expect faith to produce physical healing? Are miracles something that we should expect in this new life in Christ?  Or does being a Christian mean we find spiritual life which transcends physical difficulties?  And even if that is true, does that mean that all physical difficulties must simply be endured in suffering until we one day die and then in the resurrection given a new body?  Is our hope only in the resurrection? 

I don’t know if I can fully answer all those questions in our study today.  But I will truthfully say that I ask myself many of those questions on an ongoing basis.  I am quite familiar with all the arguments and doctrines on both sides of all those questions.  But in practice, in day to day living, I still find myself asking where is the line of demarcation between the physical world we live in, and the spiritual kingdom we belong to.  And I must confess that for me it is a daily struggle to walk that line and live within it’s limitations.  

But I believe that this question of the spiritual and the physical characteristics of the kingdom of God is exactly what Jesus is teaching in this passage.  And yet it is still difficult at times to understand precisely the limits of what our salvation qualifies us to expect.  And to be quite frank, even Jesus Himself seems at times to deliberately leave us with some questions unanswered even as He is teaching us the principles.  

The question though which is quite clearly presented in this passage is – what constitutes the kingdom of God? How do we understand it, grab hold of it, appropriate it from the spiritual realm into the physical realm and what does that look like?  And I think we find a key to answering this question in vs.15, as the people wished to make Christ king in response to His miracles, and yet Jesus obviously does not want that to happen, and so He withdraws from the crowd and disappears to the mountain alone, only to remerge walking across the storm tossed lake in the middle of the night and then arriving at the opposite shore, leaving the multitudes to try to figure out where He went.  

Now that would be almost comical if it were not such a serious issue.  Imagine a preacher today becoming so popular that the people want to make him president of the United States.  Most of us would think that would be a great opportunity.  Christians seem to think that is the answer to our problems, to get a Christian into the White House.  And then imagine that this immensely popular preacher disappears from public view and goes into hiding right before the national convention.  It would go against all reason for a successful, popular Christian preacher to act like that, and throw away such a great opportunity to exercise his influence in the nation.  And yet that is exactly what Jesus did. He disappeared. 

Now though it is not stated here explicitly, we know why Jesus refused to be king of Israel.  We know that He came to establish a spiritual kingdom and not a physical one.  He said to Pilate in John 18:36 “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”   But we might imagine that even after His resurrection He could have chosen to set up His rule on the throne of Israel and began to physically rule over the world.  But instead He chose to leave this world and send us His Holy Spirit to rule over our hearts.  So we know without a doubt from the vantage point of history that Christ did not come to establish a physical kingdom but a spiritual one.  We also know through prophecy that He will one day come again and at that time He will physically rule the world when the world will be spiritually and physically remade.

So there is this disconnect as Christians in determining how we live in God’s spiritual kingdom and yet live in the physical realm.  On the one hand, Jesus as God’s ambassador to Earth, reveals certain spiritual principles in physical manifestations of power, and yet on the other hand, He does not want to establish a physical kingdom by exerting His rule physically.  And as I indicated, not only was it difficult for the Jews to understand, but it is difficult for us to understand in this age.  On the one hand we read in Phil. 4:19 “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”  And on the other hand we read in Phil.1:29 “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”  It’s tough to make the right distinction sometimes as to what we are to expect in the spiritual life. 

And then to add even more confusion there are a lot of people out there which are teaching that as a Christian you never need to have to suffer at all.  But that we are to claim success or prosperity and God’s blessing on our lives so that we are able to live above the fray and have victory in all things.  They teach that the things which beleaguer the world such as sickness or hardship does not have to be the lot of people of faith.  If you have enough faith, you can create your own nirvana.  That is widely taught, and immensely popular, especially by certain preachers on television, but also in many churches throughout our country.  

So as I said, I don’t anticipate being able to fully answer all those questions and concerns here today, but I do believe that this discourse that Jesus engages in here is the beginning point for us to understand the distinctions between the spiritual and the physical.  So I want to look at five of those distinctions, in a sort of comparative manner, and I hope we will get some insight into understanding the difference between the spiritual and physical perspectives.  And so we are going to look at two types of appetites, two types of work, two types of signs, two types of bread, and two types of disciples.  

First two types of appetites.  Remember the context; Jesus had fed the multitude bread and fish on the mountain the day before.  Probably close to 15000 people had eaten dinner and been filled up from one little boy’s lunch of 5 loaves and two fish.  That was a dramatic miracle of great magnitude which 15000 people experienced.  The result was they wanted to make Christ king of Israel, but He disappears because that is not what He came to do at that time.  

So the next day the multitudes are looking for Jesus.  They can’t find Him, they know that He didn’t get in the boat with the disciples, and so eventually they get into boats themselves and go to the other side, thinking that somehow He will eventually go to His home to Capernaum and they will be there when He arrives.  Turns out, He is already there.  He walked across the lake in the middle of the night in the midst of a storm.  They don’t know that, so they say, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” 

This would have been a good opportunity for Jesus to put another feather in His cap, and tell them about how He walked upon the water and all of that story.  But Jesus doesn’t do that.  He instead discerns their motives for seeking Him, and so He cuts to the chase.  He says is in vs. 26, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”

So here is the problem.  These people are seeking Jesus.  Most preachers would think that is a good problem to have.  People want to come to your church.  They are seeking you out.  But not so much for Jesus.  He wants seekers who are interested in the truth, not just looking for a free meal.  See, the difference is that they had an appetite, but for the wrong things.  They wanted to eat.  They wanted to fill their stomachs again.  They were hungry again.  And their appetite for physical fulfillment was what was driving them to Jesus.  

So there is an appetite which is geared towards the physical.  It’s an appetite fixated on finding physical fulfillment.  On being physically satisfied.  And for those people, they will find that nothing physical really ever satisfies.  We are programed to eat three meals a day everyday, because everyday we get hungry again. And that is a picture of the food which perishes.  

Jesus is offering another type of food.  Spiritual food.  He says the Son of Man will give you spiritual food, which gives eternal life.  But they could not understand that. They could only see the physical bread. That is why He rebukes them by saying “you seek me not because you saw the signs but because you ate of the food.” In other words, the miracle of feeding the 5000 was not an end in itself, to quench physical hunger, but it was to be a sign.  And a sign points to something.  A sign advertises something.  And what that sign should have revealed to them was the truth about Christ; that He was the source of eternal life.  

In Matthew 5:6, Jesus speaks of satisfying our spiritual hunger, saying, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  So that is the comparison that I think Jesus is speaking of.  They were seeking satisfaction for their physical appetite, and consequently would not find satisfaction.  If they would have had a spiritual appetite, then they would have found Jesus, who can satisfy our spiritual appetite for eternity.

Then the second comparison He makes is two types of work. Vs.28, “Therefore they said to Him, ‘What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?’”  Now obviously, two types of work refers to physical works or spiritual works.  The work that they are asking about is physical work, because they say, “what shall we do?”   This is really the quest of religion, isn’t it?  All religion is a system of works whereby man seeks to gain acceptance with God.  And that is what Judaism had devolved into.  A system of works, keeping the law, keeping the Sabbath, circumcision, sacrifices, etc.  This was the religion of  Judaism.  Remember what the rich young ruler said to Jesus in Mark 10:17, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The Jews were conditioned to think in terms of works as a means of salvation.  

So when Jesus says that there is a work of God which results in eternal life in vs.27, they want to know what work that is.  Like the Jews that asked Jesus which is the greatest commandment.  And today in religion the question is the same; what must I do?  What work can I do to ensure my acceptance before God?  

Well, the answer to that question is that it’s not according to our works. Titus 3:5 says it’s “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”  So on the one hand Jesus said in Matt.5:6 that we are to hunger and thirst for righteousness, but in Titus it says that it is not by our works of righteousness.  So then how are we saved?  Well,it must be by another’s work.  That is the answer.  By faith we appropriate Christ’s righteousness for ourselves.  

That is what Jesus is referring to in vs. 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”  Believe in Him.  What does that mean?  They could see Him, so it could not refer to simply believing that He existed. To simply believe in God does not save you.  Then what?  To believe that Jesus was sent by God, that He was God.  And if He was God, then He was righteous and holy.  That there is none righteous but God. Romans 10:10 says, “for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”

Note the contrast in what Jesus says though in vs.29; He says that faith is a work of God.They had asked what work they could do, and Jesus responds by saying what work God has done.  Faith is not a work of the flesh, but a work of the Spirit.  Ephesians 2:1 in the KJV says, “And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”  The idea behind that verse is that God must give us spiritual life; eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to understand so that we might believe.  Faith then is a gift of God.  It says that very thing just a few verses further along in Eph.2:8, “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”  Neither grace nor faith is of yourselves.  But in the mystery of God He predestined us, and called us, and justified us, so that He might glorify us.  Salvation is a work of God from start to finish.  But the Jews thought that salvation was through their own work.  But like Jesus told Nicodemus in chapter 3, if you want to be spiritual, and receive spiritual things, then you must be born again spiritually.  So we are to trust in the spiritual work of God through Christ. That is faith, that is what it means to believe in Him.

Then they asked Him another question, and this one illustrates yet another comparison; the comparison of physical miracles or spiritual signs.  In vs. 30 they said to Him, “What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform?  “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘HE GAVE THEM BREAD OUT OF HEAVEN TO EAT.’”  

This is the cry of the world, the cry of the unbeliever, the cry of the doubters.  Give us a miracle so that we might believe.   Jesus said to the crowds in Luke 11:29 “This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah.”  I have to interpret that as it is wicked to ask for a sign.  You can even go so far as to say that it is a sin to ask for a miracle, if you are asking as a precondition for faith.  Romans 14:23 says, “whatever is not of faith is sin.”  And remember what Heb. 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

I will admit to a similar failure of faith, and that is to doubt or fail to trust the Lord because He does not act in a supernatural method when I ask Him too.  I will say this with some degree of admitted confusion.  Sometimes it’s difficult to know what we are at liberty to ask for, and what things we need to trust God in spite of. I will admit to often wanting God to act in a supernatural fashion and when He doesn’t do it as I wish, I find myself doubting the goodness of God, or the reliability of God, or perhaps my understanding of God.  And in such cases I would just say that we must be careful not to treat God like a genie, which if we say abbra caddabra, in just the right formula, He is obligated to perform our wishes according to our command.  God is not a genie, nor is He our servant, but He is Lord, and we are His servants.  So we must come to Him not with an air of entitlement, but of entreatment for His favor, if it is according to His will.

So what they were looking for was a daily supply of food, like Moses seemed to provide.  The Jews followed Moses because everyday there was manna from heaven.  That was the daily evidence that they needed to follow Moses, even though they did not accept all that Moses said, yet they followed him because of the miracles.  But Jesus corrects their thinking.  Vs.32, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is 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. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.”  

Now there is a lot in those verses which we don’t have time to expand on right now, but suffice it to say that it’s like what I said earlier; a sign points to something or someone.  And in the case of the manna from heaven, Jesus said Moses didn’t give them the bread, God did.  And the sign of manna from heaven was designed to point to the bread of heaven which God gave to the world, that is Jesus Christ.  They not only misattributed the miracle to Moses, but they completely missed the message of the sign.

That is I think the problem with the church today that is so taken with signs and wonders.  They point back to the signs of the apostles and say that since they had that power, then we should have the same power.  But they make the same mistake that these Jews made; they misattribute the power as residing in the apostles.  It was God who was working through them.  It wasn’t in the apostle’s power to perform miracles.  God had to do it, and He did it for a purpose.  And that purpose was to point to Jesus Christ.  The signs and wonders of the apostles was to attest to the fact that they spoke the life giving words of Christ.  And once that was established, and the Bible was written, then the signs and wonders ceased, even as the manna from heaven ceased. 

Jesus did not need to give manna from heaven everyday in order to prove He was the Son of God.  The life that He came to give was not physical, which is sustained by bread.  But the life He came to give was spiritual, and in that sense He gave Himself once and it was sufficient for all the world, for all eternity.

So that leads us to the fourth point, where we see that there are two types of bread. Vs. 34 Then they said to Him, “Lord, always give us this bread.”  Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”  I think that the Jews were still expecting physical bread.  I guess they could not really see what Jesus was talking about beyond what they could see, touch or taste.  They were sensual, physical, but spiritually dead. They desired an experience that they could feel or taste.  And so notice that they sound like they are asking for the bread of life, but the fact that they add “always” indicates that they still don’t understand the spiritual nature of what Jesus is talking about.  They are still hung up on the manna which fell from heaven every day for the life of the Jews.  That indicates they are still thinking about the physical.  That reminds me of those poor people that go to confession week after week, saying prayer after prayer, doing penance after penance, trying to find assurance of salvation.  Trying to earn their way into heaven by being good.  Instead of realizing that by one sacrifice their sins were put away forever they sacrifice Christ daily in an effort to effect their salvation.  But Heb.9:26 says, “but now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”

So there is a bread of self effort that results in only sustaining the physical.  But there is another spiritual bread which gives everlasting life, abundant life, spiritual life. And Jesus says if you eat of this bread, you will never be hungry again.  He obviously is speaking of something better than manna, better than daily bread, but bread which is eternal, which satisfies forever. 

I’m reminded of how back in the hippy movement, it was popular to use “bread” as the slang word for money.  I guess they were right to some degree.  Money is like physical bread.  It makes the world go around.  It really takes me back to the original statement of Jesus in vs.27, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.”  I think of so many people today who are working for the physical bread which perishes.  They are working for what they call the “blessings” of God according to the American Dream.  That means a nice house, cars, vacations, entertainment, the latest technology.  I particularly see our Christian young people seduced into thinking that they have to acquire those things first, at whatever expense spiritually it may take, and then at some point in the future they think that once they have achieved the American Dream then they will be able to focus more on God’s desires.  But the truth is, they have believed the lie of the devil that there is satisfaction to be found in the physical bread of this world.  It will not satisfy, and so in their old age they will still be looking for more, more of what will never satisfy.  

I can only hope that such people become truly followers of Christ.  Because the truth is that there were two kinds of disciples there that day in Capernaum listening to Jesus. All of the people there that day were following Christ.  And John even goes so far as to call them all disciples.  But he was using the word disciples as a very general term.  It means followers, learners, students.  But some were following Jesus for the wrong reasons.  They wanted the daily benefits to their life that He seemed to be able to give. They were looking for a healer. They were looking for a political leader to deliver them from physical oppression.  There were probably as many reasons for following Him as there were people there.  But when Jesus really laid down the requirements for what constituted true discipleship, then it says in vs. 66 “As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.”

Why did they fall away?  Because they did not believe His word.  Jesus said in vs. 35,  “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.”  They believed in what they could see, taste and touch, what seemed good to them.  They did not believe in what they could not physically see, and so failed to appropriate spiritual insight.

Listen, we are going to continue this sermon of Jesus next week and we will look at all of this in more detail.  But I hope our study today has led you to examine yourself in light of the comparison between the spiritual and the physical.  What is your motivation for following the Lord?  Is it only in hope that He will fulfill your appetite?  Is your appetite for things of this world, for the physical, for the material?  Or do you hunger and thirst after righteousness?  How about your work?  Are you trying to work your way into heaven?  Are you hoping that in the long run your good deeds will outweigh your bad and so God will let you in?  Or is your work faith in what Christ has accomplished for you?  And how about your attitude towards the supernatural?  Have you found yourself trusting or not trusting God based on your efforts to manipulate God to do your will?  And then the ultimate question; have you eaten of the bread of life which satisfies, which saves forever?  If so, then you are truly a disciple of Christ.  But if you are seeking the bread of material gain, and trying to use Christ to fulfill that desire, then I’m afraid that you haven’t yet believed in all that Christ is, and came to be.  He came to be our substitute to pay the penalty for our sins, to be our Savior by His sacrifice, and our Lord and King when we surrender our will to do His will.  I hope that you are not one of those who turns away from the truth of Christ, but believes on Him unto salvation.