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The living water; John 4:1-42

I cannot read the story of the Samaritan woman at the well without thinking of a similar story my dad used to tell. He grew up in a very isolated rural area of North Carolina during the depression years. His family were what were known as sharecroppers, which is the poorest sort of farming. Others own the land, and basically you get to live on it and farm it, but the owners gets the lion’s share of the profits.

So as a young man, dad would often hire himself out to other farmers in the area to work the fields for extra money. And he tells the story that one day he was working in a farmer’s field, and it was hot and he became very thirsty. He had seen a ramshackle house a little bit down the road that looked pretty sketchy, but eventually he was so thirsty he decided to walk over there to see if he could get a drink of water. Now in those days there wasn’t any town water or even electricity in rural areas of North Carolina. So he went up to the front porch and knocked and an old woman came to the door. Dad said that this woman was a sight. She epitomized all that you might imagine a country bumpkin would look like. She was filthy. She smelled. She had no teeth. And to make it worse, she was chewing snuff which had run down the corners of her mouth and stained all over the front of her blouse.

Dad tried not to act too put off by her looks though, and took his hat off and politely asked her if he could please get a drink of water. She said “yes, of course, follow me!” and led him around the back of the house where there was a well. Dad let down the bucket into the well, and then cranked the handle to draw it back up, and then the woman handed him this old stained up gourd that had been made into a dipper for him to dip into the bucket to drink out of. Now normally, in the fields the men would all share the same dipper and not think too much about it. But Dad said this woman was so rough looking, and the snuff staining her mouth and chin was so disgusting, he couldn’t imagine drinking out of that dipper thinking that he was going to be putting his mouth where her mouth had been. But there was nothing else to use. Then he had a bright idea. The gourd had a long curved handle that was hollow and at the very end there was a hole which was made when the dried out the gourd. So Dad figured that he would fill up the gourd with water, but rather than drinking out of the cut out part on the fat end, he would drink from the end of the handle, the end with the little hole. That way he wouldn’t have to put his mouth on the part that the woman would have used. So he scoops up some water, and then held it up and drank backwards out of the gourd by putting his mouth over the little hole at the end of the handle and sucking on it like a straw.

And when he did that, the old woman began to practically convulse in a fit of laughter. Dad thought it must have been because he looked silly drinking that way, but he didn’t really care how he looked, he just didn’t want his mouth to touch where hers had been. But he said she was laughing so hard, and then she clapped him on the shoulder and said, “My lord boy! I ain’t ever seen anybody else drink water out of gourd the same way I do!”

There is a word in the Greek text in vs.9 that basically is saying the same thing. It’s a word that conveys the idea that the Jews so despised the Samaritans that they would not even touch the same utensils, or drink from the same cup. This attitude illustrated the hatred of Jews for Samaritans. But as we look at this story today, we see Jesus deliberately, purposefully, arranging not only to meet this woman that would have been hated by the Jews, but also to drink water from her cup.

In Jesus’ day, there was obviously no running water. Things we might consider a hardship were typical things you had to deal with during the course of the day. Typically, the women of the village or town were the ones who were responsible for drawing water. You remember Rebecca drawing water for the camels when Abraham’s servant went to the well. But they would usually do so in the evening when it was cooler, or perhaps first thing in the morning.

This woman in Samaria is going to the well in the middle of the day. Around the sixth hour would be the Jewish way of saying around noon. So this wasn’t a typical time for her to be drawing water. And Jesus has arrived at this well, which is identified as Jacob’s well, and is sitting there by the well. There were probably step that led down to the well.

The text says Jesus was sitting there because He was weary from his journey. Jesus and His disciples had been walking all morning having left Judea probably very early while it was still cool. Most commentators believe that He had walked at least 20 miles that morning. That’s quite a walk. And it’s not a flat plain he walked either, but hilly terrain and rocky paths. That’s the equivalent of walking from my house in Millville to the Cape May/Lewes Ferry. I don’t think I could even ride a bike that far, much less hike that distance in five or six hours.

So Jesus was tired, he was worn out. So much so that he sent the disciples ahead of Him into the village to buy food while he waited at the well. Now I want to suggest that this is not happenstance. I think that this is a case of divine appointment. The normal way to go from Jerusalem to Galilee for most Jews would have been to go the coast route or across the Jordan and then go around Samaria. Orthodox Jews would have avoided going through Samaria. They hated the Samaritans so much that they would go miles out of there way to avoid even walking through Samaria.

And part of the reason they hated them seems almost justified from a certain perspective. The Samaritans were considered half breeds – half Jew, half pagans – that had come about when the 10 northern tribes were taken into captivity by the Assyrians about 700 years before. The educated, wealthy people were taken into captivity, but the Assyrians left some of the poorest Jews in the land to care for the land so that it did not revert to wilderness and to care for the cattle and so forth. But over time, these poor Jews left there intermarried with the pagan people that moved in to that area, and they adopted many pagan customs along with worshipping pagan gods while maintaining a certain worship of the God of the Jews.

When the Jews came back into the land during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, these people tried to hinder the returning Jews from rebuilding the temple. The Jews ended up shunning them, and so the Samaritans went off in a huff and built their own temple in opposition. So though the Samaritans claimed to be Jews, they had desecrated their heritage by intermarrying with pagans. They claimed to worship the One True God, but yet they also worshipped foreign gods. They claimed the Jewish scriptures, but they only recognized the first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch. So it would seem that the Jews were almost justified in their hatred of the Samaritans.

Yet Jesus has traveled by foot 20 miles across hot dry wilderness to get to this village in Samaria in time to meet this woman, who is coming out to draw water from a well outside of town, at a time when it was unlikely that she would meet anyone, which was obviously her intention. The obvious question, is why? Why would Jesus leave an area where all were coming out to Him, where He was having bigger crowds than John the Baptist, so much so that the Pharisees were taking note of Him as a new threat… why leave that success and head off to a place where no one even knew who He was?

Well, I think the answer is hinted at in the previous chapter when Jesus tells Nicodemus that God so loved the world, that He sent His Son into the world, so that the world might be saved through Him. Jesus Himself would say later, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”(Luke 19:10) This woman was from the lost tribes of Israel. She was truly lost. Her people were worshipping God in ignorance. And they needed to know the truth so that they might escape the judgment which is upon the whole world.

Furthermore, I think Jesus comes to visit this woman as a counterpoint to the coming of Nicodemus at night which we studied in chapter 3. Nicodemus was a religious leader, he was the religious teacher of the Jews. He was moral, an upright citizen. He represented everything the Samaritan woman was not. If as I said before, Nicodemus was the representative man, the best that man had to offer, then this woman was the representative sinner, even the worst of sinners. A woman who was considered extremely immoral. She had been married 5 times, and was now living with a man who wasn’t her husband. She was lost. And the good thing was, she knew she was lost. Nicodemus thought he was a good man, and consequently Jesus had to show him that he wasn’t ever going to be good enough to be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven. But this woman knew she was a sinner, and though she tried to hide it, what she needed was for Christ to tell her about the grace of God. Jesus came to save sinners. He traveled 6 hours through the wilderness by foot to take the gospel to one woman who knew she was a sinner and was looking for redemption.

See, what we think of as good moral people, pillars in the community will usually come to church, they will seek for religion. Unfortunately, they tend to come to church though in order to bolster their sense of self righteousness and entitlement, as we saw with Nicodemus. But people who are trapped in sin and are suffering the consequences of their sin rarely think of the church as a refuge. Maybe they feel too guilty to come to church. And yet these are the very people that we are called to go seek out to tell the good news. People that are sick, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the world weary. They are ideal candidates for the gospel. As Jesus said in Mark 2:17, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

So Jesus travels 20 miles by foot to meet this woman. And He is tired. That shows us His humanity. He was fully man. But it also shows His omniscience. He knows the woman is going to be there at noon. He sends the disciples away so that He can talk to her privately so as not to unnecessarily embarrass her. He knows her past, which she tries to hide. His omniscience shows His divinity. He is fully God, and yet fully man. This is the mystery of Christ, born of a virgin, and yet fathered by the Holy Spirit. Fully God and fully man. He is the Messiah, or the Christ.

And let me stress something on this point; He was fully human, fully God, that He might be our substitute, that He might be our Savior, but also, so that He might be our example. That we might do as He did. This text is one of the greatest passages in the Bible that illustrates how we are to go about being evangelists of the gospel. How we are to witness to the lost. There are many important principles to be learned from this passage, but not the least of them is how we are to evangelize the lost.

Notice then that Christ’s mission was calculated. He was purposeful, He was strategic. He planned it, executed it, timed it perfectly so that He might set up this divine appointment with this woman. And note secondly that He was confrontational without being condemning. When I say confrontational, it sounds menacing, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t have to be. It can simply be engaging. In Jesus’ case, it was confrontational because it was unexpected. It wasn’t considered appropriate for a Jew to speak to a Samaritan. It was even more inappropriate for a man, a rabbi, to speak to a woman. Yet Jesus says, “Give me a drink.”

If Jesus is omniscient, which I believe this text and many others clearly demonstrates that He was, then He certainly knew that she was an immoral woman. She came to the well in this location, at this time, presumably to escape scrutiny and scorn from the other women of the village who would usually all come at the same time to draw water and talk of the business of the day. But Christ comes to a sinner, and yet as chapter 3 vs. 17 says, He did not come to judge her, but to offer her salvation. He shows her compassion.

Now notice though that Christ does not condone her sin. The gospel message has two pillars on which it depends; repentance and faith. Jesus confronts her about her sin, and then tells her that He is the Messiah. To receive the gift of salvation requires that both principles are enacted on our part. We have to acknowledge our sin, confess our sin, and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. At the same time, we have to believe that Jesus is the Savior from sin which He accomplished by being the righteous substitute who paid the penalty for our sins.

Now to accomplish all of that, notice how Jesus skillfully weaves the conversation around, starting from a normal everyday occurrence such as a drink of water, and using it to teach a spiritual principle. He asks for a drink, and she responds with a sarcastic response; “why are you asking me for a drink, knowing I am a Samaritan?”

But Jesus knows better than let Himself get sucked into a debate with this woman over race, over the cultural divide between Jews and Samaritans. Instead, He turns the tables on her. And says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who says to you, “Give Me a drink” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

Rather than focusing on her insufficiencies of heritage or race or culture or even morality, Jesus changes the conversation from one where she is automatically defensive, and instead He is the benefactor, rather than the beneficiary. He doesn’t need her water, but He has something that she needs.

Notice the difference between His approach with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. With Nicodemus who thought he was righteous, who was rich, who seemed to have everything including morality, Jesus told him what he lacked. He had nothing. He had to be born all over again. Nothing he had was good enough. But with this woman, who had no standing in the community, who was culturally an outsider, and was a known immoral person, Jesus offers her the gift of God. Grace that covers all her sin. Eternal life which will spring up in her like living water.

Though some principles in the gospel can not be deviated from, such as faith and repentance, we need to seek the discernment from God to know how to approach different people in different circumstances and from different environments. God will give you the wisdom if you ask for it. But notice that there isn’t a one size fits all approach to Christ’s evangelism. He has divine discernment which we don’t have. But we do have the wisdom that God gives to those that ask for it, so that we might do His will. Recognizing those that are ready to receive the truth and those that are arrogant and think they know all the answers is possible through the discernment of the Holy Spirit as we witness in obedience to Him.

So first Jesus sidesteps her natural tendency for defensiveness, her attempt at being argumentative by turning the tables from her giving Him something, to Him giving her something. But she still wants to argue. Some people are like that. No matter what you say, they want to argue. The Bible says we are to be wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove. The devil is a serpent, isn’t he? So we are to be wise to his schemes, and yet harmless as a dove. As much as it depends on you, Paul said, be at peace with all men. You aren’t going to win disciples to Christ by being argumentative, or by debating someone. And neither are we going to win souls by insinuating that they need to become moral to be saved. We become moral by being saved. First there must be a change of heart, and then out of the heart comes a new morality.

I’ve found when I deal with people who are hostile to me, who are defensive about their actions, that instead of focusing on the negatives or the repercussions of their decisions, if I focus on how much God has done for them and what God wants to do for them, how much God loves them, then many times that will have a softening effect on their heart and we can break through their defenses. For instance, if you are dealing with a person who is caught up in drug use, rather than focusing on the consequences of using drugs, focus on their spiritual vacuum that is making them desire drugs. Focus on what Christ has done to give us a new life, a more fulfilling life.

That’s what Jesus is doing with this woman. He knows her life is unfulfilling. How many times she must have had her heart broken. How hopeless she must have been to have seen five marriages crumble and now even given up on marriage and living in open adultery. So Christ offers her new life; the gift of living water if she will just ask for it. But instead she is still defensive. She is not ready to trust Him yet. She hasn’t gotten over this whole race thing, this whole us versus them mentality between the Jews and Samaritans. So she says, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”

Basically, she appeals to her sense of national self righteousness. The Samaritans claimed Abraham as their father just as the Jews. So she says Jacob, who was also called Israel, is her father as well and he gave them the well. Again there is little jab on her part as she says “You aren’t greater than Jacob, are you?” Well, of course He was. He was the seed of Jacob from whom the whole world would be blessed. He was the promised seed of Adam who would crush the serpent’s head. He was no less than the promised Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God.

And yet Jesus doesn’t argue with her. He doesn’t defend His honor. He simply goes back to the metaphor of the water and the gift that God has of eternal life. And in a very understated way He says that the water that Jacob gave has only the power to slake thirst temporarily, but the water that He gives will be a well springing up to eternal life. Vs.13, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but 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.”

He is saying I am greater than Jacob, and yet He doesn’t say it outright. He is not saying I am greater as an arrogant, boastful claim, but He says as His water is greater water, and so by extension He is greater than Jacob. He is making the point that the tangible blessings of being a child of Abraham might be evidenced by their land, by this well of Jacob, but the blessings of being a child of God far exceed temporal blessings. They are spiritual blessings that spring up in him supplying an endless supply of blessings throughout eternity.

Well, finally she starts to show a crack in her armor at this point. She is obviously tired and weary and ready to have this blessing that Jesus is talking about. But like a lot of people, they are interested only in the physical and not the spiritual. She says, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.”

Now what do you do with that? On the one hand, she is saying I want this water that you are offering. You offered it, then give it to me. But on the other hand, she reveals her motivation; she wants physical relief. She wants the spiritual water but only for a physical benefit.

Well, it’s interesting to see Jesus’ response. At first glance, it would almost seem like there must be something missing between vs.15 and 16. Jesus says in response, “Go, call your husband and come here.” What’s that about? Does she need her husband to get the water? What relation has the husband to do with her desire for the gift of water?

What I believe Jesus is doing is He is accepting her request for water, even though it is founded on physical desires, but He is going to treat it spiritually. So even though she asks with imperfect intentions, Jesus is going to treat it spiritually and apply spiritual principles in order to bring her to salvation. And to do that, He says, “ok, if you want the living water, go bring here your husband.” Jesus already knows that she doesn’t have a husband. So He is saying this in order to get her to confront her sin.

Her response is still defensive. She’s not argumentative now, but she is still defensive. Jesus is touching a nerve but she doesn’t want to address it yet. So she says, “I have no husband.” And then Jesus reveals His divinity. Vs. 17, Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” Now that’s pretty specific revelation. That’s not general information and He had no way of knowing that kind of personal information. And so it must have floored her which is evident from her response. She said “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet.” Now she knows someone greater than Jacob is here.

But before I get into her response, notice that Jesus says to her “you are speaking the truth.” He actually says that twice. You have said correctly, and you have said truly. Twice Jesus emphasizes that she has spoken the truth, even though she doesn’t speak the whole truth. The whole point of what Jesus is doing here is to get her to recognize and accept the truth. And before she can do that, she must first start telling the truth to God. That’s what repentance is. That’s where it starts; with telling God the truth. You can lie to men, you can lie to yourself, and you can lie to God. Even though God knows the truth, yet men still lie to Him. Repentance starts with telling the truth about yourself. And then accepting the truth about God.

It’s amazing how people can lie to God, and yet we do it all the time. We somehow don’t think that God sees. David said in Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” He says again in Psalm 51:6 “Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.” The gospel is the truth, and we need to tell people the truth, and help them to tell God the truth, so that the truth would set them free. When someone finally comes to the point of recognizing the truth and confessing to God the truth that they are a sinner in need of salvation, then as Jesus said in John 8:32, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Well, we are not going to finish this study today. We are going to have to continue it next week. But what I want to impress on you today is that Jesus is our model for personal evangelism, that we might walk in His footsteps. By His example we should be better equipped to fulfill the great commission in our neighborhoods, with our relatives, even with strangers who may be defensive or argumentative, as was this Samaritan woman.

But I hope to leave you with a committment to be like Christ in your personal evangelism. We obviously are not going to possess divine discernment as Christ had, we are not omniscient like Christ is. We are not great teachers as Christ was. But we do have the Spirit of Christ living in us. And we do have the power of the Spirit to help us and give us wisdom if we will ask for it.

However, I don’t think you nor I need to be omniscient to think of someone today that we know needs to hear the gospel. They are not saved. You could probably write down on a note card at least 5 people in this community that you are certain do not know the Lord as their Savior. I pray that you will write down those names, and then make a plan to go see those people, to talk to them specifically about their need for salvation, about the gift of God which He has for those that will ask for it. I challenge you to start to do this with at least one person on that list this week. Come up with a plan, be purposeful about it, strategic. Get rid of all possible distractions. Then confront them with the gospel. Expect them to get defensive. Expect them to be argumentative. But be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove; in other words, don’t argue with them. Stay focused on the gift of living water which satisfies every thirsty soul, which God has prepared for those that will receive Jesus as their Savior.

I would ask you to deliberately decide this week to be compassionate. There is no greater show of compassion than to present the gospel to someone. There is no greater love than to lay down your life, lay aside what you are so busy doing, what you would rather be doing, lay that down, lay down your pride, and go take the gospel to those that are perishing. This is not just the job of a pastor. This is your job. This is what you were saved for. This is what God has tasked you with while you are on this earth.

The gospel is pretty simple. As I said, there are only two steps you need to remember; repentance and faith. Pray for discernment and wisdom and then pray for the opportunity. And then go in faith and present the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe that God has someone for you to talk to this week. I hope that you will do it. Let’s pray.

The Light of Truth, John 3:17-36

The other night as I was driving to pick up my daughter from a swim practice, I was able to witness a particularly beautiful sunset. There were these clouds that had reflections of all these colors in them and the sun’s rays shining through. It was really amazing. It’s almost sad though because it changes right before your eyes and soon it’s gone. I can’t help but think that sunsets are kind of like life. They are so beautiful, and yet so fleeting. By the time you think it’s really going great it’s basically starting to dim.

But as tragic as that thought is, imagine what life would be like if you were only able to see in black and white. Sunrises and sunsets in particular would be a great loss. You would miss so much of the beauty of nature. I would like to suggest that life without Christ is kind of like looking at the world in black and white and not realizing that there is so much more to it. To live life without Christ is tragic because you are blind to the full life that God has designed for us. 2Cor. 4:4 says, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Jesus said in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” I was talking to someone the other day who was coming out of addiction and had returned to the Lord, and they were saying how their emotions were now almost overwhelming, because they were able to see so much that they had been missing in life. It’s like God says in Ezekiel 36:26, “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.”

The fact is, Christianity is not just a religion. It’s life as God meant it to be lived. Prior to coming to Christ we are dead to all that God has designed us to be. We think we are really living, but we don’t recognize that we are living in black and white, instead of living color.

Last time we looked almost exclusively at the most famous verse in the Bible, John3:16, showing the universal predicament that all men are without hope, the universal love of God in reaching down to all sinners, the universal invitation that whosoever will may come, and the individual application of whosoever believes may have everlasting life. It is somewhat dangerous to focus on just one verse of scripture though and not consider the context in which it is found. Today I would like us to consider the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to like to say. But in doing so, I propose that we will not find new truth, but we will find expanded truth. In other words, verses 17-21 are just expansions on the thoughts found in the verses prior, especially vs.16.

But before I get started, let me say something as to why this doctrine is so important. On the one hand we need to know the doctrine of salvation so that we might have assurance of our salvation. Secondly, we need to know more completely the doctrine of salvation so that we might know God more intimately. And third, we need to know the doctrine of salvation so that we might be able to share it with others.

I am afraid that though most of us know the doctrines of salvation well enough, we do not put it to practice nearly enough in personal evangelism. For instance, I think there is a tendency to kind of push away the idea that our unsaved loved ones might die without Christ and suffer the consequences of eternal judgment. I think that we have a tendency to push such thoughts to the back recesses of our minds. We just try not to think of them in that way. We are glad we are saved, but somehow perhaps we either don’t really believe that God will judge the unrighteous, or we just don’t let ourselves think about it. Otherwise, I don’t think that compassionate, loving people like most of you are could really sleep at night knowing that your loved ones stand on the precipice of eternity without Christ. That at any moment they might pass away from some tragic circumstance and consequently would spend eternity in torment, separated from you and from God forever. I can’t help but think that most of us don’t really believe that. Somehow we have deluded ourselves into thinking that some way or another, they will escape judgment.

I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there are no exceptions offered in scripture. There is no consolation offered in scripture for those that reject the offer of salvation. Today this text is going to underline that truth. And I would hope that it would compel you to witness more to those that are lost. That it would move this reality of judgment from the back burner to the forefront of your focus.

Let’s go back to the illustration that Jesus gave in vs. 14 for a minute. Everyone in the camp of Israel had been bitten by the poisonous vipers. They were dying. Unless they looked upon the serpent on the standard they would die.   There was no other remedy for their predicament. There was no other prescription for their sickness. And that is the illustration Jesus uses to set the stage for Him being offered up on the cross. All men are bitten by the serpent’s sting of sin, and as such are doomed to die. The wages of sin is death. And all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no not one. There is no other consolation, no other comfort, than to know Jesus as your personal Savior. Otherwise you remain in your sins, and as such will stand before God a sinner, condemned to judgment.

So for those of us that know the Lord as our Savior, I hope that you will not push the thought of unsaved loved ones to the back of your mind. But I hope this message inspires you to speak again to your loved ones about the urgency of their salvation. Satan always tells us that there will be plenty of time. But the devil is a liar and the father of lies. Time is not your friend, but your enemy.

Now let’s look at the remainder of the passage, starting in vs.17. Verse 17 is basically an explanation of the love of God. It is expanding on the concept of God’s love. And to do that, he says God did not send the Son, or give the Son to the world to judge the world but to save it. Here is the picture; the world was already judged. God made His judgment concerning sin way back in the beginning of Genesis when He said whoever eats of the tree will surely die. The sentence of death was already given before Adam and Eve ate of the tree. But they rejected the truth and chose to believe the devil’s lie and as such they entered into judgment. And that same judgment passed on to all men, all descendents of Adam are under the penalty of death, because all have inherited the same sin nature resulting in their sinful acts. But more on the judgment in a moment.   John is saying that God loved the world so He sent Jesus to save us from our sins. He didn’t come to bring us what we deserved, which was death. He came to bring us what we didn’t deserve, that is grace, because He loved us. He came to provide salvation from death.

We were already dead. We had the penalty of death upon ourselves. It’s like the man on death row. Though he may be alive today, yet he is under the sentence of death. God sent His Son not to be our executioner, but to save us from death by offering Himself as our substitute. So verse 17 basically extrapolates on the love of God. The motive of God sending Jesus to the world is love, not judgment.

Then verse 18 expands on the second half of verse 16, where it says, “that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” So verse 18 expanding on that says, ““He who believes in Him is not judged.” Believing in Him delivers us from the judgment of death which we had already received. Therefore, if you don’t believe in Him, you remain in the same condition which you were in previously. You remain under judgment of death. 18b, “he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Going back to Jesus’ illustration, whoever looks upon the serpent on the standard would live, be delivered from death, but whoever does not look remains in the throes of death. They did not believe or want to accept the fact that looking at the standard would save them. It’s hard to believe that people would choose to remain under the curse of sin, but they do. And they do because they don’t want to accept who Jesus is and what He came to do. They would rather die first than believe in Jesus.

Why would anyone in their right mind reject salvation? Well, to explain that, John changes his analogy. He moves from the analogy of the serpent on a standard to a light in the darkness. Remember back in chapter 1, Jesus was called the Light. Vs. 4-5 “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

So in vs.19 of chapter 3 John goes back to that analogy of Christ is the Light in order to explain more completely the judgment due to those who reject salvation, and says, “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.” Jesus is the Light, the Father sent Him into the world to save sinners, and yet when men saw the Light, they rejected it because they loved evil.

I’ve said it before, men don’t reject God because there isn’t enough evidence of God, or even because they can’t understand Him. Men reject God because they want to do what they want to do. They don’t want God to rule over them. Given the choice between good and evil we choose evil. That is the nature of man. That’s why Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.”

This is the judgment; that all men like sheep have gone astray. They have turned away from God’s rule and turned to self rule. Every man is like those in the days of the judges when there was no king in Israel, when everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Men are like those who lived in the days of Noah, when every intent of the thought of their heart was only evil continually. This is our nature. This is the nature of man to love the darkness, because their deeds are evil.

You could make the argument that man is duped into thinking that such deeds do not produce death. You could argue that men think that what they are doing is enhancing life, embracing life, but that is even more reason for the compassion of God to offer them the truth that leads to real life.

The key to life is seeing the truth, accepting the truth, and then practicing the truth. The truth is the light that shows us how to live, that distinguishes good from evil. That is why it’s so important that the church proclaims the truth. And truth is only found in one place – that is God’s word. Only God’s word is the standard for truth. And only the truth can set you free from death. Jesus said in John 8:32, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Jesus goes on to say in chapter 8 that the devil is the father of lies and there is no truth in him. Remember back in the beginning when Eve was tempted by the devil, he said to her, “you shall not surely die?” He appealed to her fleshly desires, her appetite and her pride, and offered an alternative suggestion which changed the truth of God into a lie. In spite of what God had told them, Eve chose to believe a lie, and then acted on her desires. And what resulted was the penalty of death. Adam then chose Eve over God, acting on his desire. And what happened after that? They tried to hide from the presence of God. Why? Because their deeds were evil, and their conscience was awakened.

Coming back to our text we see that same scenario expressed in vs.20,21. “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.”

Here is what he means. Those that reject Christ love their evil deeds and so they rightly bring judgment upon themselves. They hate Christ because He is the Light that enlightens every man. In other words, His Light exposes the truth about themselves. For the unsaved, their evil deeds are exposed when the light of God’s truth is shone upon them. And so to protect their evil deeds and to keep on doing them, they reject Christ. They hate the Light. They love the darkness.

But those that practice the truth love the Light, come into the Light, which proves that their good deeds are the works of God wrought through them. See, the Spirit of God in them has changed their hearts to desire the things of God, to desire good, to desire the truth. I like how it says, he who practices the truth. It’s not our nature to do good. By nature we aren’t righteous. As we already declared, our nature is to go our own way, do our own thing, and love the works of darkness. But knowing the truth, we now practice the truth, following in the example of Jesus Christ we walk in His footsteps. And as we do this, it illustrates to the watching world that we know Jesus, that He has indeed made us into His children, and so we do the works of our Father in heaven.

Now the rest of the passage is really just using the discourse of John the Baptist and his disciples to illustrate the principle we just looked at. That God sent Jesus to be the light of truth, which is given to every man that they may know the truth of God and be saved. There are a number of sub points in there which could be stand alone truths in and of themselves, but the main thrust of the text is to show that Jesus is the source of truth, and therefore is the source of life.

Verse 25 provides a key to understanding how this text relates. Notice they have a question about purification. Now many commentators go off on tangents at this point trying to show that baptism is somehow the point of all of this. But purification taken at it’s simplest meaning speaks of how a man might be made righteous before God. How can man overturn the natural fallen state of sinfulness and become pure in God’s sight.

Baptism never was given as a means to achieve that. It only symbolizes death to the old man and new birth of the new man. That’s what baptism symbolizes, admitting you are dead in your sins, and that they only way to be made right with God is by being born again in the spirit. Now that is exactly what Jesus was teaching Nicodemus.

So John the author picks up on that idea by going back to John the Baptist who introduced the baptism of repentance as a precursor to the gospel. John the Baptist preached a gospel of repentance which was symbolized by being baptized. But now his disciples hear that Jesus and his disciples are baptizing, and they are unsure what this signifies.

John the Baptist’s answer is to defer his ministry to Christ. There is no spirit of jealousy there. He knows first of all that Christ’s ministry is from heaven. That is what is under discussion here. His disciples were comparing their ministry with Christ’s ministry. So first of all John the Baptist says that Christ’s ministry is from heaven. Only God can ordain a minister or a ministry. There are a lot of ministers running around, and a lot of ministries on every other street corner, but not all are of God, and we know that because they do not practice the truth. That is the plumb line; they teach and practice the truth of God’s word. Jesus manifested the truth of God. John 14:10 “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.” So He speaks the words of the Father and does the works of the Father. So then John says he knows He is from heaven.

Then John says, you are my witnesses that I told you I am not the Christ but merely His forerunner. (vs.28) I’m just the friend of the bridegroom. I’m not the bridegroom, Christ is the bridegroom. And so because I am His friend, I rejoice to see Him come for His bride, that is the church of course. So according to what has been ordained from heaven, Christ must increase, but I must decrease. My ministry was to announce His coming. Once the bridegroom comes, there is no longer a need for an announcer.

Now that’s my paraphrase of what John said. But notice that he alludes to the very well known metaphor of a middle eastern wedding in which the bridegroom makes every thing ready, and when he comes to take his bride, his best man runs before him announcing to the whole town that the bride is coming. That was their custom and everyone would have recognized that. So John is saying that the bridegroom has now come, his bride is coming out to him, everyone has been told the news, and so his job is coming to an end.

But in vs.31 John changes gears a bit, and returns to our primary subject, and that is the origin of the truth which Christ manifested. He says He, that is Christ, is above all. That is Christ is one with God and from God and is God. That’s what was declared in the opening words of chapter one. Now John the Baptist is validating it again. His testimony and other men’s former testimony is earthly because they come from the earth, but Christ is heavenly, because He came from heaven.

Vs. 32, Since Christ is from heaven, He speaks the truth of heaven. He testifies the things of God, and yet no one receives His testimony. Generally speaking, though the Jews came to Jesus to see the signs that He was doing, they did not accept Him as the Son of God. His testimony was that He was the Son of God. He called God His Father. John 8:18-19, 28 “I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.” So they were saying to Him, “Where is Your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” … 28 So Jesus said, “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 notice vs.33 in our text: “He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true.” So John says that whoever receives Christ’s testimony is agreeing that God is truth, therefore Jesus is the manifestation of the truth. In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

This is the distinguishing principle of Christianity. You can make all kinds of arguments concerning the similarity of religions. You can make the claim that all roads lead to God. Calling God “Allah” or Krishna or the Great Spirit, or any other name used for God may seem from a human standpoint to be so similar as to become indistinguishable. But the truth of Christianity that sets it apart is that we confess and believe that Jesus is God in the flesh, and that no one can come to know God except through Him. That is the claim of Christ Himself. So Christianity is incompatible with any other religion in the world. God manifested Himself in One person, that is Jesus Christ, and only by faith in Him and His redeeming work on the cross are we able to be saved and receive eternal life.

Vs.34, “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.” What John is saying is that Christ is from God, He speaks the words of God, and God has given Him the full measure of His Spirit. In times past, prophets were given a measure of the Holy Spirit. Elisha, if you will remember, asked for a double portion of the Spirit that was given to his mentor Elijah. But in Christ’s case, He is filled with the Spirit of God to the fullest, so that as Hebrews 1:3 says, “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.”

Vs. 35, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” That the Father God loves the Son of God being both God and yet separate and equal is a mystery that we must accept even if we cannot fathom. But what we can know is that all rule and authority on earth and in heaven is given to Christ. He is the author and finisher of our faith. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the Sovereign King of Glory, He is the Bridegroom coming for His bride. He is the creator of all life, and the source of eternal life. All things are from Him and to Him and by Him all things exist and have their being.

So then, knowing these things, knowing who Christ is and His authority, John says in the closing verse of this chapter; “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” How can you resist Him? To resist the source of life is to stay in the throes of death and under the penalty of death. To accept Him and receive Him is to be united with the source of life, even to receive eternal life.

Now that’s the summation of a lot of theology and doctrine. And hopefully, it has produced salvation resulting in abundant life in all of you here today. But now what? What is the purpose of knowing all of this if we don’t share it with whoever we meet? You know, I have an old high school friend who went on to be a state senator for Georgia. And though he recently retired he is still actively involved in politics. He recently posted on facebook that he is committing to personally knocking on 15000 doors in his area to get the word out about his favorite presidential candidate. He adamantly believes that the next presidential election is critical for the future of this country.

And when I read that, I could not help but think of this passage. If we truly believe that the truth of Christ is essential to being saved from the wrath of God and receiving everlasting life, wouldn’t we be as adamant in proclaiming it as my friend is in campaigning for his candidate? I can assure you that the question of what will you do with Christ is of much greater importance than which candidate you are going to vote for. Christ is the only hope for blind and lost people living in a colorless, dying world. Our hope is not in a political system, but only in the One who is over all things, all powers, all dominions, the glory of God and the light of the world. I pray that we might start campaigning in earnest for the kingdom of God.

A universal solution to a universal predicament, John 3:16

In this chapter, the author John the apostle has presented a universal predicament. A universal problem. And that is, that no man can ascend to God. That no man can be right with God through his own merits. The very best of mankind, the most religious, the most zealous person is still light years away from God. There is nothing we can do to leap across this great chasm that exists between God and man.

Last week John introduced to us Nicodemus, the teacher of the Jews, a leader of the ruling religious body of the Jews. He was a Pharisee, a person who prided himself on keeping the law to the nth degree, who knew the scriptures backwards and forwards, who worshipped in the temple every day and kept all the religious holidays. He was an exceptional man. He was the quintessential man. If anyone could have appealed to God on the basis of their goodness, Nicodemus was the guy.

And yet Jesus basically said that Nicodemus wasn’t even of the right species to get into heaven. The Jews thought that of all the people on the earth they were the chosen people of God, they had the temple, the scriptures, the holy of holies, the prophets and the law.   They believed God dwelled in the temple in Jerusalem. And this guy was the supreme teacher of the Jews and he was the leader of the temple priests. If anybody should have been a shoe in for the kingdom of God it should have been Nicodemus. But Jesus said, no, you would actually have to be born all over again to enter the kingdom of God. Nothing he had done would count. He had to be born as an entirely new person.

Now that was bad news for Nicodemus. Earth shattering news. But it’s bad news for us as well. Because Nicodemus was representative of the best of men. Jesus said later in Matt. 5:20, “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” So that is a universal predicament. No one is going to be able to ascend into heaven.

Jesus went on to say that unless you are born again of the Spirit you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. God is a Spirit, and His kingdom is spiritual. 1Cor. 15:50 says “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” That’s what Jesus meant when He said that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Man must be born again of the Spirit if he is to be spiritual. And if not, if he is but flesh, then he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Pretty simple, but a catastrophic situation for mankind. A hopeless condition, because man cannot make himself born of the Spirit of God, that has to be an act of God. So that is the universal predicament. All men are lost. All men are condemned to death. All men are descendents of Adam, and as such all have inherited the sin nature of Adam. Rom. 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

God is holy. We fail to fathom the breadth of the holiness of God. For God to be holy He must be just. He must enact justice. And God’s judgment of sin is His justice carried out upon all men, for all have sinned. But God if God is holy, then He is not only just, but good. And the goodness of God is expressed in His mercy. James 2:13 says mercy triumphs over judgment. So though the just God required punishment for sin, the goodness of God provided mercy.

So the penalty of death is a universal predicament, but the Lord is God of the universe. And so He had a universal solution. A universal solution starts with a universal love. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world….” Let’s stop there. We could spend an entire message on just that phrase. For God so loved the world. The word world is from the Greek kosmos. That should sound familiar, it’s the word we get cosmos from. But though cosmos speaks to us of the universe, kosmos in the Greek speaks of the universal human race.   So poor old Nicodemus is probably blinking his eyes right about now. God loves everybody? Not just Jews, not just Pharisees, not just Americans, not just Republicans? Nicodemus was undoubtedly stunned that a Jew would say that God loved anyone but Jews. But here is Jesus saying God loved the world. The entire spectrum of the human race.

And Jesus is going to make that even more specific later on. Luke 5:32 “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” And Paul would later make that even more clear in Romans 5:8 saying, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” So let’s put this in a modern translation; “For God so loved sinners….” That is what is meant by the world. Not all the good people in the world, that’s not who God loved. But all the bad people in the world, all the sinners, even His enemies, even those who rebelled against Him, even those who spit upon Him, even those who nailed Him to the cross.   God loves sinners. He loves humans of every race, every creed, every nation, every gender, every size and every color. God so loved the world.

Much has been made of that little word “so.” So loved. Why is there a “so” there? Well, this little word indicates the size of God’s love. It makes us ask how much? And the size of God’s love is universal. This time let’s use universal to indicate size, as in the size of the universe. It’s infinite. It has no beginning and no end. It keeps on going from galaxy to galaxy. That’s the so in God’s love. He so loved the world that He gave a universal sized gift. It’s really a universal sized remedy. He gave His only begotten Son.

Remember chapter one, the Word was with God and the Word was God? That Word is the Son of God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God gave the infinite, eternal, second person of the triune God, the One who chapter one said “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” And “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him.” So the expression of God’s universal love is through giving the creator of the universe Himself.

Spurgeon said it like this: : “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son. It was his only-begotten Son—his beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased. None of us had ever such a son to give. Ours are the sons of men; his was the Son of God. The Father gave his other self, one with himself. When the great God gave his Son he gave God himself, for Jesus is not in his eternal nature less than God. When God gave God for us he gave himself. What more could he give? God gave his all: he gave himself. Who can measure this love?”

That is what defines the love of God. It is a sacrificial love. The Greek word for love used there is agape love, the highest, most noble expression of love that can be made. Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” So then by extension, God gave the greatest gift of love that ever could be given, in that He laid down His life for His enemies. The Creator laid down His life for His creatures. Christ died in the place of sinners. What kind of love is this?

And then let’s look at the universal invitation of God’s love. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him…” Let’s stop there. The universal invitation is to whosoever. Whosoever includes everyone. No matter how sinful you are. No matter how religious you might be. No matter what horrible crimes against God or humanity you might have committed, whosoever includes you.

If you are familiar with the doctrines of Calvinism then you might know that irresistible grace and limited atonement are two Calvinistic doctrines that are often given in regards to salvation. That the call of God only comes to some people, and that Christ only died for those people, so that they who are called will be saved, but salvation is only available to those who are called. I would like to say that while I believe that the Bible teaches predestination, such a doctrine is beyond our pay grade to comprehend. It is the purview of God to know how He knows what He knows. But let me tell you what I do know. And what I do know is what Jesus has to say about who may come to salvation. He says “whosoever”. In fact, just in case you missed it the first time, He says it twice. Whosoever in vs. 15 and whosoever in vs.16. Who does whosoever refer to? Who so ever believes in Him. There is no other way to define it.

But just in case you are the type to explain away the obvious, Jesus gives us an illustration of whosoever might be saved. And that is found in vs.14 and 15. The Israelites have sinned against God in the wilderness. They have rebelled against the plan of God and are pining away for the delicacies they enjoyed in Egypt when they were in slavery. They are complaining and murmuring against God and Moses. And so God sends poisonous vipers into the camp. You can read about it in Numbers 21. And when they bit the people they began to be sick and die. And the people came to Moses and repented of their sin against God. So God told Moses what to do to provide an antidote for the viper’s sting. God said, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

Now that is the illustration that Jesus gives as an example of salvation. And listen how Jesus presents it in vs.14: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whosoever believes will in Him have eternal life.” The analogy is clear. We have all been bitten by the sting of death brought about by the great serpent who deceived Adam and Eve, that is the devil. God said whoever shall eat of the tree shall surely die. And in Adam, all have died spiritually because we have all inherited the same sinful nature as Adam. Rom 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

So all of the world lies under the penalty of death. We have all been stung by the viper of sin. But when Moses lifted up the serpent on the standard, all who turned and looked upon it were saved from death and lived. So it is with Christ, all who turn and look to Him as remedy for death shall not die but live. It is available for all. It is not limited to just some people, or to just good people, but it is limited only to those who are dying. And we already have established that all of the world is dying. The scriptures say that it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.

So just as death is universal in it’s predicament, so is salvation universal in it’s invitation. Because all have sinned, salvation is offered to all without reservation. This is the scope of God’s grace. The grace of God is not limited. 2Peter 3:9 says the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

So then, God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Let’s look finally then at the individual application of God’s love. It’s a universal predicament, a universal solution, a universal invitation, but an individual application. Whosoever believes brings it down to that individual who believes the gospel and applies it to themselves. It is not a universal salvation, that everyone is automatically saved. But it’s an individual application as one believes and receives Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Now then what does this great gift of God’s love produce? Individual salvation. Salvation from the penalty of death. And in explaining it Jesus says it both negatively and positively. It has a negative application and a positive application. But the gospel is such good news that even the negative is positive. So first the negative. Whosoever believes on Him, that is Jesus, the Son of God, the propitiation for the sins of the world, whoever believes on Him shall not perish. That’s the negative. Which is actually a positive. You will not die.

Jesus said to Martha in John 11:25, ““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?”

How is that possible? How can Jesus say that by believing in Him we will never die, and yet all of his disciples died, all of our forefathers in the faith have died and passed from this life. Well the answer is of course is that which is flesh is of sin, and Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death. Romans 5:12 said that death is passed upon all men. So that which is of the flesh shall pass away, but that which is spiritual shall live. So though we are dead in the flesh, we are made alive in the spirit, and as such we shall not die but live.

Jesus gave additional assurance in John 5:24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” And again in John 10:28 “I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.”

Then the positive side of that equation is as Jesus said, “eternal life”, or “everlasting life.” It’s the same thing. But it’s not just the length of life that Jesus is referring to. Eternal life certainly incorporates the infinite, no doubt about that. But there is also more to eternal life than simply an infinite life span. It also refers to the quality of life. It is the life of God. Christ as the source of light and life as it said in chapter one. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Jesus said it like this in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”   Abundant life starts now. Eternal life starts at the new birth, being born again. Abundant life is found in knowing the source of life and light. It’s found in fellowship and communion with the God of the universe, the Creator of all life. Abundant life is found in doing the deeds of God. It’s found in having the righteousness of Christ, it’s found in having the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us to lead us and guide us and comfort us and help us. It’s found in intimacy and relationship and peace with God. Yes, eternal life is everlasting, infinite life. But it’s also full life, the zest of true life, a fulfilled life, a life lived for it’s true purpose.

I’m going to give you one other verse, which is really like a teaser for the next message. But it’s hard to look at these verses without considering the context around them. Because verse 17 reminds us really of the grand design of John 3:16 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

The world was already lying under the judgment of sin and death. Humanity was hopeless, helpless to bridge the chasm between mankind and God. So since man could not ascend to God, God descended to man, sending the exact representation of God in human flesh to dwell among us, to be rejected by man, to be sacrificed in our place on the cross as an offering for the sins of the world, so that the world might be saved through Him and receive eternal life.

You know, it would be easy to think of the holy God as viewing humanity in the condition of it’s sin, rebellion, disobedience, and hating God and exacting vengeance on the world. It would be easy to imagine if Scripture said, “God looked at the world and He said, ‘I’ll destroy them, I’ll punish them. I’ll put the pressure on them of divine judgment until they come to Me.’” But it wasn’t God’s anger that sent Christ. Christ didn’t come into the world to judge the world. He came into the world to save the world because what motivated the Father was not His anger, but His love. So we notice in verse 17, “God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” Saved through Jesus. God loved the world so God sent Jesus to save the world. Jesus came to save sinners. That is sinners from all over the world. He sent His Son because of His infinite love of sinners. He sent His Son to display His grace and mercy, to save them from judgment.

Some time ago I read a story about a young man who had rebelled against his father which resulted in an argument, and consequently he ended up running away from home. He continued to keep in touch with his mother over the coming months, and by Christmas time he wanted very much to come home, but he was afraid his father would not allow him. His mother wrote to him and urged him to come home, but he did not feel he could until he knew his father had forgiven him. Finally, there was no time for any more letters. His mother wrote and said she would talk with the father, and if he had forgiven him, she would tie a white rag on the tree which grew right alongside the railroad tracks near their home, which he could see before the train reached the station. If there was no rag, it would be better if he went on.

So the young man caught a train and started the journey home. As the train drew near his home he was so nervous he said to his friend who was traveling with him, “I can’t bear to look. Sit in my place and look out the window. I’ll tell you what the tree looks like and you tell me whether there is a rag on it or not.” So his friend changed places with him and looked out the window. After a bit the friend said, “Oh yes, I see the tree.” The son asked, “Is there a white rag tied to it?” For a moment the friend did not say anything. Then he turned, and in a kind of awed voice said, “There is a white rag tied to every limb of that tree!” That, in a sense, is what God is saving in John 3:16 and 17. God has removed the condemnation and made it possible to be forgiven and come home to him.

This is the greatest love, that God gave Jesus to save sinners, even His enemies by offering Himself as a substitute for our death, so that we might be with God. I hope that if you are here today and have not trusted in Christ as your personal Savior, that today will be the appointed day of your salvation. Whosoever believes on Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

 

You must be born again, John 3:1-15

The phrase “born again” is one that is not unfamiliar to most people today. However, I’m afraid it is not understood by the majority of people. Unfortunately, in a lot of circles it has taken on a denigrating characterization which is attached to someone that is considered to be sort of a religious right wing fanatic. However, in this passage, we find it’s origin in the words of Jesus Christ Himself, which He uses to describe those that will enter the kingdom of God. In fact, He said it is a requirement of the kingdom of God that you must be born again. So it behooves us to investigate this phrase thoroughly this morning, that we might be confident that we have eternal life.

John said in chapter 20:31 that he wrote this gospel so that “you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” Now up to this point, John has clearly declared who Jesus is; that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, God made flesh, and he has presented multiple witnesses to those facts.

Last week, you will remember, John presented Jesus cleansing the temple. That taught the essential theological principle that Jesus is Lord. And if we are the temple of God, then Jesus is the Lord of our temple, and thus has all rights to it’s use, and the right to cleanse it for His use. Today we will see another essential principle of who Jesus is, and that is Savior. Not only Lord but Savior. In fact, as I said last week, the two characteristics are inseparable. One cannot exist without the other. You cannot be saved, and yet not allow Jesus to reign in your life as Lord. I think there is even something to be learned from the order found here in John, who presents Jesus as first Lord, then Savior.

So in this passage, John is going to use the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself to explain the way of salvation and the author of salvation. And of all the teaching of Jesus, this passage sets out the distinctions of our salvation in the most vivid, clear terms. Most times when Jesus taught, He illustrated a certain perspective of faith, or a certain characteristic of the Christian life, but rarely do we find a teaching more comprehensive on the subject of salvation than this one. In fact, it’s so packed with important doctrines that we do not want to rush through this passage, so we will likely continue it next week.

But let’s start as John does, with the man Nicodemus. In some ways, he is the representative man. He is the best of men. He is extremely religious, zealous for the law and a religious leader of the Jews. This cannot be over emphasized. Church teaching has demonized the Pharisees to the point that we have failed to realize the truth about them. This man was a leader of the Sanhedrin, the body of 70 elders which came about as a result of Moses finding 70 men of good repute to act as judges for the people. So he was an esteemed civic leader as well as religious leader in a public office. And as a leading member of the party of the Pharisees he would have been extremely well versed in the scriptures, much of which he had subjected to memory, as well as an expert in the Mishna and the Talmud which were commentaries written about the law. Furthermore, he would have been someone that was considered to be above reproach and who kept the law down to the smallest details. This guy exceeded the most rigorous demands put upon priests or bishops or pastors today in every way possible; in education, in conduct, and in piety. And to top it all off, according to historians, he was very rich. Extremely wealthy. In all respects, if we were to choose a man to represent mankind before God this would be the guy that we would elect for the job.

Verse two tells us that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. John doesn’t tell us why. It could have been that he had to work days and nights were the only time he had free. But I rather doubt that. The implication agreed upon by most commentators is that due to his position in the Sanhedrin and the party of the Pharisees, he came at night to have a private meeting with Jesus without fear of being noticed by the public or even perhaps by his peers. It would have been considered unseemly for such an exalted person, himself an esteeemed teacher, to come before a humble Galilean who had no formal training or official recognition. And I would also point out that when Nicodemus comes, he seems to indicate that he is coming on behalf of others, not simply for his own personal benefit. Note the use of the pronoun “we” when he addresses Jesus. It’s quite possible in my opinion that he was sent privately by the Pharisees to try to figure out who Jesus was. They had already asked him when he cleansed the temple a few days previously by what authority did He do these things. So they were watching Jesus, hearing about His miracles, and wanted to delve further into who He was, but without attracting attention.

And then notice that Nicodemus not only comes under the cover of night, but under the pretence of solidarity. He starts out by affecting a kinship with Jesus, a solidarity that they are somehow of the same ilk, or after the same things. Basically, he is using a form of flattery to gain an advantage in the conversation. And this is a common ploy of people who come to church today. They rarely come on their knees in humility, seeking repentance and forgiveness. But they come under false pretences, professing knowledge of the things of God and claiming pure motives in their worship of God. At the base of that attitude is a sense of self righteousness, of entitlement. After all, they aren’t the really bad people. Really sinful people don’t often come to church; they are too ashamed. But religion attracts the self righteous, the ones who feel that they are basically good, moral people. And that attitude is illustrated by Nicodemus.

He says to Jesus, “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.” Notice the flattery, the fawning use of the title “Rabbi”, or Teacher, and the acknowledgment that God is with Jesus. It’s interesting that some of my harshest critics have started out with the same approach, by first flattering me and saying how much they appreciate my sermons, or saying how it’s obvious that I am being used by God to preach the truth. When they say such things now I instinctively find myself getting ready to duck. I have learned the hard way that such flattery usually precedes an attack.

So Nicodemus says that they knew Jesus was of God because He did signs or miracles. By the way, we know that signs do not necessarily mean that someone is of God. One only needs to remember the magicians of Pharaoh who were able to duplicate the signs of Moses to know that all signs are not necessarily from God. That is one of the great dangers of false prophets who will arise in the last days. They will be given power by the devil to do signs which will lead people astray. Jesus warned about that in Matt. 24:24, “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.” And please don’t be deceived by the fact that signs and wonders done in a church building or performed on television supposedly in the name of Jesus automatically sanctifies such things. No, the devil is in church as well. Again Jesus warned in Matt. 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’” So Nicodemus was wrong on that account. Signs and wonders do not necessarily confirm that a person is of God neither does it necessarily produce saving faith in God. At the end of chapter 2 it says many people were believing on Jesus because of the signs that He was doing, but it concludes that Jesus did not commit Himself to them because He knew their hearts.

And that is the indictment against the Pharisees, and particularly against Nicodemus. They practiced what was for the most part correct doctrine, but their religion was external. But God looks at the heart. And salvation is a change of heart as we will soon see.

But back to our text, I love Jesus’ response. He isn’t fooled by Nicodemus’ flattery for one minute. He knows the heart of man, the motives of man. So instead of falling into the trap of flattery, of feeling special that such a great man seeks to have a private interview with Him, Jesus interrupts him and cuts to the chase. He exposes first of all that there is no solidarity between them. He says you are not even in the kingdom of God, how can you judge the kingdom of God then? You come in the dark because you are in the dark. So Jesus rebukes him and at the same time offers an answer to the question that the man should have been asking. What Nicodemus should have asked Jesus is what must I do to be saved? But instead, he offers up some form of flattery in hopes of getting an advantage, and tries to establish solidarity with God, equanimity with God because, after all, he is a great leader of the Jewish religion. And as such he is a representative of all men who presumptuously come to God based on their own merits and their own understanding of who God is, and who offer to God a so called worship which is little more than unadulterated flattery for the sake of gaining a “blessing.” They attempt to manipulate God for their advantage through lip service but their hearts are far from it.

So Jesus’ response is found in vs. 3, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Basically, Jesus just cuts him off at the knees. He says you can’t even see the kingdom of God. You are so far away from the kingdom of God you can’t even see it. All of your heritage is worthless. All of your law keeping is worthless. All of your worship is worthless. Your nationality is worthless. Anything you might try to do in your own strength is worthless before God. In fact, you actually have to be born all over again in order to see the kingdom of God. Now that’s kind of rough, wouldn’t you say? Someone has a desire to become a better person, to turn over a new leaf, to start going to church, to do right, and instead of welcoming them to come as they are and God will just love you the way you are, we tell them no, nothing about you is acceptable, you have to be born all over again. Nothing you do is going to work. You’re hopeless, helpless, and lost. You’re a sinner, condemned, unclean. Wow, that’s a tough thing to say to people. It could even be thought of as offensive. That’s not exactly seeker friendly, is it?

But that’s what Jesus does. He doesn’t mince words. He doesn’t play church. He doesn’t play the game called religion with anyone. And ultimately, that’s what is in their best interest. Because only the truth will set you free. Now the key to truly understanding what Jesus means is found in the word “unless” or it may say “except” in some versions. In other words, man in his natural state is spiritually dead. He has a sinful nature, and in fact, he is exceedingly sinful. And God is holy and can not tolerate, or even look upon sin. The first key to salvation is understanding your need of salvation. That you are sinful and lost and separated from God to such an extent that you can never bridge the gap to the righteousness that God requires for fellowship. Except you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God because in your present condition you are dead spiritually. That is the result of the fall – God said if you eat of the tree you will surely die. And we are all Adam’s children, and as such we have inherited Adam’s fallen nature, the same nature that got Adam kicked out of the Garden, separated from fellowship with God. So you must be born once again. Born anew. To be born again does not mean reformation, that is education, nor does it mean renovation, as in making new year’s resolutions or turn over a new leaf, but it means regeneration. It means something that was gone, dead, torn off, grows back again. It requires a supernatural event, a divine intercession from God to make what is dead come to life again. To bring the spirit of man back to life through the gift of righteousness so that he can have fellowship with God once more.

Now Nicodemus doesn’t understand what Jesus is talking about. I guess this is the first time he has ever heard the phrase born again. That’s a phrase that has fallen out of fashion today in religious circles. I have found that Roman Catholics in particular are put off by that word. People in general make fun of it. It’s used as a put down, as in “you must be one of those born again religious fanatics.” Nicodemus probably was sincere though when he asked how it was possible to be born again. Vs. 4, Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” He was obviously thinking only in the physical realm.

Jesus’ answer is to distinguish physical birth from spiritual birth. He says in vs.6 “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” So there are two births then. One is of the flesh, that is the result of coming from the seed of your father and the womb of your mother. The second birth is that which is of the Spirit. And we know that God is Spirit. So the Spirit of God gives new birth to our spirit, so that we might be the children of God. That is what John declared in his opening treatise, remember? John 1:12-13 “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

So Jesus says that both births are necessary. Vs. 5-6 “Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

There are a lot of differences in the way commentators interpret that statement in vs. 5. What does born of water signify? Well, I would suggest that it means two things at the minimum, and these two things are what most Bible scholars would camp out on one or the other. I happen to think that both interpretations are true. The most obvious interpretation is that water is speaking of natural birth, when the water breaks a woman gives birth. And that thought is paralleled in vs.6 because Jesus uses a parallel statement; “that which is born of flesh is flesh.” Vs. 6 is obviously expanding on vs. 5, so that you would have to say that 6 is just an explanation of 5. But some people think that water speaks of baptism. And while I do not find that as likely, yet it is possible in that baptism is a symbol of repentance. That was the baptism that John the Baptist had just finished doing all over Judea, baptizing with a baptism of repentance in preparation for the kingdom of God to be manifested in Jesus Christ. So if you take that view, then you might say that one cannot be born of the Spirit without first repentance and then faith in Jesus Christ. And that would be true doctrinally. But I believe that the most obvious explanation is that it refers to physical birth, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. Baptism as we know cannot save you, but repentance is necessary as a precursor to saving faith because of the reason I previously made, that is man’s inherent sinful condition estranges him from God. But baptism does refer to a cleansing by repentance which precedes the infilling of the Holy Spirit as evidenced by Ezekiel 36:25-28 which says “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. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.”

Now the point being is that you must be born again, you must be born of the Spirit. And so Jesus reiterates that by saying, “Do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again.” By the way, that word again in the Greek can also be translated as “from above.” So there was implicit in that phrase born again the need to be born from above, that is born of the Spirit of God. That is what it means to be born again. And so Jesus says, don’t be amazed by that. We don’t understand how it happens, but we believe it does happen upon repentance and faith in Christ. Upon recognizing your sinfulness and need of a Savior, confessing and repenting of your sins, and believing and receiving Jesus as Lord and Savior, you are born again by the Spirit of God to new life in Christ.

Now to explain that further He says, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And what I think Jesus is referring to here is the sovereign call of the Holy Spirit upon the soul of man which brings about the spirit of repentance and the gift of faith resulting in salvation. We don’t understand how that works, but we should not be dismayed by it. But the fact is that the effectual call of God is active is undeniable in salvation, just as the effect of wind is undeniable, even though we may not see it or know how it comes about. And we know this by many verses in the Bible, but perhaps my favorite is Rom. 8:28-30 “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. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”

The fact that God is the author of our salvation is irrefutable. How He does that I cannot understand. But I believe it. However, I also believe in the responsibility of man. Not just the sovereignty of God, but the responsibility of man. And I approach those two seemingly opposing arguments this way: when I pray, I pray according to the sovereign will of God to interpose His will in the events of life through supernatural means. But when I preach, I urge men to respond according to their responsibility to act in accordance to the truth. I do not know how to reconcile both opposing arguments in my mind, but I know that the Bible teaches both, that God predestines and calls men to Him, but at the same time He tells man to receive Jesus Christ, to believe on Him, and repent and turn from his sins. So both are not only possible but necessary and are not exclusive of one another but somehow interdependent upon one another. It is a mystery, as is the mystery of the wind blowing where it wills and coming from places unknown, yet working effects that can be seen and felt here on earth.

Are you confused by this? Well, so was Nicodemus. He said, “How can these things be?” I think it’s a cry of desperation, not necessarily frustration. I think it’s a desire to know the unknowable. And that’s why I think Jesus gives him a further illustration. To help him understand by a more simple example. But first Jesus gives him another rebuke. I don’t think Jesus was being vindictive here by the way. Nor was Jesus being mean by rubbing his nose in his ignorance. But what I think Jesus is impressing on Nicodemus is his need of being reborn. He wanted him to realize that his ignorance concerning spiritual truths was part of his fallen nature, and that he wasn’t righteous, he wasn’t sufficient because of his position or title or pedigree or even by his works, but he was a man in need of a Savior, just as everyman is in need of a Savior. So Jesus gives him a mild rebuke: “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” In other words, if you can’t understand fleshly things, how can you understand spiritual things?

So Jesus gives him another illustration in order to help him understand. And to do that He draws from the Old Testament story of the exodus, when the Israelites had sinned against God yet again in the wilderness, and God sent poisonous snakes into the midst of the camp to bite the Israelites which caused them to get sick and die. And God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and hang it on a pole that whoever might turn and look upon it would be saved from death. So Jesus uses that illustration to explain the process by which man is saved from death and given new life.

And so Jesus says in vs. 13 “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.” Now remember He is explaining the process of salvation, the process of new birth which is as unknowable to us as the wind. And so Jesus starts by affirming that mortal man cannot achieve heaven. He cannot ascend to God, and so God had to descend to man. Even the Son of Man who came down from God to man, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness upon a pole, so must the Son of Man take on sin, symbolized as the serpent, and die upon a cross, so that whoever believes on Him, whoever looks to Him might be saved.   Now this illustration is taken from Numbers 21. And in that account, when the people were bitten and started to die, they came to Moses and repented of their sins. They said we have sinned against God. Num. 21:7-8 “So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” So in that illustration we see that repentance and faith are the twin pillars of salvation. By repentance and faith our sins are forgiven, and we are made children of God. We are made children of God because we are born again of the Spirit of God. As I said last week we are the temple of God because the Spirit of God dwells in us. 1Cor. 6:19 says that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you. So having been made righteous through faith in Jesus’ righteousness and propitiation for us, the Holy Spirit then lives in us, producing new birth and eternal life, so that we are a new creation.

So what Nicodemus needed to understand was that Jesus was the remedy for his sinful, deadly condition. He needed to look up at Jesus taking his sin upon Himself on the cross, dying in His place to satisfy the justice of God, and in so doing Jesus would be his Savior. That is the only way Nicodemus could enter the kingdom of God. That is the means by which all men can enter into eternal life. Not just everlasting life, but the life of an eternal quality, spiritual quality that enables us to live as God designed us to live. To have life and have it more abundantly. That we might have fellowship with God again. To be restored again to communion with God. That is what it means to be born again. And it is only possible through faith in what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross.

Today I will close with just asking you the simple question, have you been born again? Have you turned and received what Jesus did for you on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins? If you will just receive Him. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

 

 

Lord of the temple, John 2:12-17

John’s purpose for writing his gospel is found in chapter 20, “these things have been written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah, and that believing you might have life in His name.” So to establish that purpose in his opening prologue, John puts forth his theological treatise concerning Jesus, that He was God, He was with God from the beginning, and that He is the source of life.

Then you will remember that John presented witnesses, or expert testimony to those facts. That testimony was given by no less than John the Baptist, the greatest of all prophets, and by three men who would become the Lord’s disciples. Now lest you think that is prejudiced testimony because they were His friends, I would counter that it would take more evidence to convince your friends that you were God than it might to convince your enemies. After all, His friends lived with Him 24/7 for three years, and yet their resounding testimony was that He was God in the flesh, even to the point of becoming martyred for saying so.

Now in chapter 2 John begins to show certain signs that Jesus did which illustrate or prove that He was who He claimed to be; the Messiah, the Son of God. The first sign that Jesus performed was at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, which was primarily only known to his immediate family and disciples who were there and the servants of the house. Today, we are going to examine the second sign that Jesus does, and this one is not miraculous necessarily, at least not in the way we would think of a miracle, but it nevertheless illustrates the divinity of Jesus in a very dramatic, powerful way. Jesus establishes through His actions that He is the Son of God, and Lord of the temple and as such has authority to cleanse the temple.

We pick up the story in vs. 12 which says that after the wedding in Galilee, Jesus, His brothers, His mother and His disciples went to Capernaum and stayed a few days, and then they travel on from there to Jerusalem. By the way, I think that offers further evidence of my suggestion that one of Jesus’ brothers had been married in Cana. Here we see that His brothers had obviously been with Him and His mother in Cana as would be expected if His brother was married, and which would explain Mary’s involvement in the preparations for the feast, as well as her expectation that Jesus would take care of the need for more wine, as He would have been the eldest son and His father Joseph probably being deceased, would have taken responsibility for the family.

But be that as it may, we see the whole entourage head to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. This annual pilgrimage was obviously a tradition for the family of Jesus. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the movie “Home Alone.” My kids like to watch that every Christmas. Well that was a remake. In the original “Home Alone” Jesus was the 12 year old star. You will remember that in Luke 2:41 it is recorded that His parents used to go to Jerusalem every year to the Passover. And when He was 12 years old, He somehow was left behind, and His parents realized Jesus wasn’t with the caravan, and so they came back to Jerusalem and frantically looked everywhere for Him. After three days they found Him in the temple, sitting down and talking to the teachers who were amazed by His knowledge. And when His parents asked Him what He was doing, He said, “Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” And they did not understand what He meant by that statement. But we will understand it more fully today after we study this passage.

Now just a word about the Passover Feast before we go into the story. Last week we celebrated communion, or the Lord’s Supper after service. And as I explained then that ceremony is the new covenant celebration of the Passover Feast.   Under Jewish law, the Passover was to be celebrated once a year in Jerusalem, and every family was to slay a lamb to commemorate the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. As you recall, the Lord had said that the angel of death would pass over every house in Egypt, and those that did not have the blood of the lamb on their doorposts would suffer the death of their first born son. So all of Israel ate the Passover meal, which was unleavened bread, bitter herbs and lamb, along with wine, and put the blood on the doorposts of their house in order to be saved from the judgment of death.

So when Jesus celebrated the Passover on the night before His crucifixion, He ordained that we should celebrate that feast from that point on in remembrance of Him. The symbolism being that He is the Passover Lamb who provided the means to escape death for all that believed in Him. He said, “As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of Me.” By the way, they celebrated the Passover once a year. Now there is no injunction that prohibits you from celebrating it every week, in fact we should celebrate our salvation every day. But as a church, there is not a commandment to do it more or less, but as often as you would observe the Passover. Since the Passover would have been celebrated once a year, so we should do it at least once, and even more often if possible. But you are no more noble if your church does it each week than if you do it at lesser intervals. The standard was the Passover, and it is only celebrated once a year. The Corinthian church did it every week, and it had degenerated into a drunken, gluttonous gathering that Paul had to rebuke them for. So as Paul warned, we would do well to remember that it celebrates the Lord’s death, and as such come to it reverently, even fearfully.

But I find it significant that the first public sign that Jesus does is at the temple during the Passover Feast. John the Baptist had just previously announced Him as the Son of God, and then as the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world. And so here comes the Lamb of God, to the feast which foretold His purpose, and yet He does not come at this time to be the sacrificial lamb, but as the Son of God, coming into His house, His Father’s house, and He comes in judgment and condemnation and wrath. Not meek and riding on a donkey, but in fury and wrath.

As a church I want to make sure that when we worship the Lord we worship Him as the scripture says we must, in spirit and in truth. And knowing the truth about God is fundamental to be able to worship Him in truth. We must see God as He presents Himself in all His glory. And whether or not the church today wants to recognize it, God is revealed first of all in judgment, in holiness and righteousness. God cannot be put into a little box labeled love and everything we don’t think is love must be discarded. But God is the great I AM. He is all He has declared Himself to be. And we must worship Him as He is and as He has the right to demand as Lord of all.

Now the most common way to look at this passage is to somehow construe this as a condemnation against church leadership, false teachers or apostate religious leaders. And there is certainly that in modern Christianity today. There are plenty of fake healers, and televangelists and apostate churches that are fleecing the people and taking advantage of gullible naïve parishioners. And I may even have preached this text from that perspective myself at some time in the past. But as I studied this text afresh, I believe that the proper emphasis to be made is to the church body, or the individual members of the church.

The Bible makes very clear that we are individually members of Christ’s body, and as such we are the temple of God, and that He dwells in us. In the Jewish temple, it was believed that the Spirit of God dwelled in the Holy of Holies behind the veil of the temple. But upon Christ’s crucifixion, God tore the temple veil from the top to the bottom, signifying that a new way had been opened up to God through Jesus Christ. So then in the new covenant, upon faith in Jesus Christ we are made holy and righteous by the transference of our sins to Christ and His righteousness to us, that being made holy we might become the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the temple of God on the earth.

Eph 2:19-22 makes that relationship clear; “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”

And also Peter says that we are now God’s temple in 1Peter 2:5 “you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

And then one more; 1Cor. 6:19 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” So without question, we that are Christians are the temple of God. In fact, I would suggest that this is the purpose of our salvation. Not just to be forgiven of our sins and escape hell, but to be made holy so that God may dwell in us, that Jesus might live in us and through us. So then the temple is not just a picture of corporate worship, but how to live as individual members of His body.

So Jesus comes into the temple during the Passover, and He looks around at what is going on. And by the way, this is the first time that Jesus cleanses the temple with a whip, the second time will be during the Passover before His crucifixion. So He does this once at the beginning of His ministry and once at the end.

And as He comes into the temple, into what would have been called the court of the Gentiles, He sees the money changers and sellers of sheep and oxen and doves. Now there was nothing wrong with that in and of itself as not everyone would have an appropriate animal for sacrifice and would need to purchase one. But what was happening was that as people came to present their offering of a lamb or whatever was prescribed by the law, there would be an inspection to make sure that it was a lamb without blemish as the law required. But the temple priests had a racket going on with the vendors of the bazaar in the courtyard. They would tell the people that their lamb had a defect and so it could not be offered, but right over there you can buy a preapproved lamb. And of course there was a stiff markup on the price of the animal. Additionally they would be told that the temple could not accept the pagan currency, so there were money changers sitting at tables who would exchange their money for the acceptable Jewish currency but with a heavy percentage added to it.

Jesus of course, knows what is going on. He sees the corruption in the temple and the way they are taking advantage of naïve people in order to make a profit. They are turning the temple of God into a house of merchandise and a den of thieves. And so as Jesus watches what is going on He calmly begins to braid a bunch of cords together into a whip. I kind of liken that to the typical movie scene where the good guy is in a room with a bunch of bad guys who are threatening him, and he turns and heads for the door, presumably to leave quietly if possible, but instead he locks the door and turns around and beats up all the bad guys. So I guess Jesus braiding the leather cords into a whip is the equivalent of locking the door. And what it reveals is that this is not a flare up of temper, but the premeditated wrath of God designed to bring about compliance with His will.

So verse 15 says, “And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business. His disciples remembered that it was written, “ZEAL FOR YOUR HOUSE WILL CONSUME ME.”

Now as I said, we are going to focus primarily on the principles in this story as they relate to us as individuals, rather than the church as an institution. Because we are the temple of God. I think even Jesus in vs.19 when He says, “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” indicates that this text should be interpreted as referring to individual temples rather than institutional Christianity.

So how then are we to understand this as it applies to us? Well, first of all, note that it applies to Christians, not to the unsaved. We are the temple of Christ if we have the Spirit of Christ in us. But what we see in this story is that the purpose of the temple was being prostituted. The people of Israel who were God’s chosen people, had become selfish and self serving. They had taken the things which were essentially good things in and of themselves and turned it into a opportunity to serve themselves, to make a profit, and even to take advantage of others for their own gain. Rather than worshipping and serving God they were worshipping themselves and serving themselves. And in Jesus’ eyes, the temple was in ruins. It was over run, like an old castle which has become overgrown with briars and brambles, whose ramparts were falling down and in ruins, so He saw the temple as being in need of divine restoration so that it might once again serve and bring glory to the King.

It brings to mind when the Jews were in exile and the temple in Jerusalem had been abandoned and the walls had been torn down and was in ruins. And God raised up a prophet, a man of God to stir up the people to go back and restore the temple of God. I don’t have time to tell the whole story of how they did that this morning. But suffice it to say that there was opposition to the restoration of the temple, from all quarters and in a multitude of ways. So much so that as they worked some also stood guard and every worker carried his sword. And so the book of Nehemiah records how they were called back to rebuild the walls and consecrate the temple and restore the ancient practices according to the law and call the people back to holy living and away from foreign gods and from idolatry and immorality with pagan tribes which had all caused it’s downfall originally.

And those of you that were at Wednesday night Bible study will remember that I had you turn to the last chapter of Nehemiah, chapter 13 vs. 25, where it says that Nehemiah was angry with the Jews because they did not take seriously the sanctity and sacredness of God’s law and were corrupting the temple with their flagrant sins, and so it says in vs. 25, that Nehemiah “contended with them and cursed them, and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God” to stop their immorality and idolatry. The wrath of Nehemiah was a foretaste of what the Messiah would do when He came into the temple, but rather than pulling hair and striking them He made a whip of cords and kicked over tables and chased them out.

I think it would be fair to say about Nehemiah that the zeal for the house of God had consumed him. Listen, I would to God that the zeal for the house of God would consume Christians today. You are made temples of the holy righteous God and yet we continually serve the things of the devil, we desire strange gods and lust after immoral things. I think that perhaps more prophets of God need to get riled up and make a scourge of cords or start yanking people’s hair and get them to swear allegiance to God or drive them out of the church.

We need to examine ourselves in the light of this text. We cannot point to the iniquity of the unsaved, but we need to recognize that we are the temple of God and as such all things in our temple are to be consecrated to His service. We have abused the good things that God has given us and used them to serve our lusts, to make a profit, to take advantage of others, to be selfish and keep from serving God with our whole hearts. We need to examine our pocketbooks and see if we are robbing God. We need to examine our motives and see if we are serving ourselves. We need to examine our doctrine and see if we are worshipping the true God or a god of our own design. To serve God is to worship God. To obey is better than sacrifice.

Listen, are we making merchandise of the grace of God? Do we say to ourselves that we can sin and God will forgive us because Jesus has bled and died on our behalf? Do we crucify afresh Jesus Christ so we can continue to serve our selfish ends? Do we make a profit on the grace of God? Do we misuse the things that God has given us so that we can serve ourselves? Is the church of God and it’s ministry suffering because you have not given God every thing that is due to Him? God demands first place in your life, not an hour a week of lip service so that you can live like the devil the rest of the week.

It’s appropriate that this story is set in the context of the Passover, what we call the Lord’s Supper. When Paul wrote to the carnal Corinthian church about the Lord’s Supper he said “Let every man examine himself” before eating of the supper. 1Cor. 11:27-32 says, “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.”

We need to examine ourselves. Christ blood was not shed so that we might use it for our profit or to our advantage so that we might continue to serve ourselves while the world around us dies in their sins. Christ’s blood was shed that we might be reconciled to God, that we might be made holy and righteous and be filled with the indwelling Spirit of God so that we might do the works of God. God said, “You shall be holy as I am holy.”

Now there are some principles that this story teaches which should help us to do that. That should cause us to examine ourselves and judge ourselves rightly that we may not be judged.

The first principle is that of Christ’s Lordship. Jesus comes into the temple as the Lord of the temple. He takes charge as One with authority to drive out the merchandisers. He says this is My Father’s house. He had the right to do whatever He pleased and so He had the right to cleanse the temple of profiteers and thieves.

Listen, is Jesus the Lord of your temple? Does He not have the right to do whatever He pleases, to make whatever demands He chooses upon your time and your resources? I would suggest to you that if you lay claim to Jesus as Savior, you must also accept Him as Jesus the Lord. You cannot separate the two. You cannot believe on Jesus and be saved and not submit to Him as Lord. He comes to make us holy temples of God. We are no longer our own or to live for ourselves. 1Cor. 6:19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”   As Paul was fond of saying, we become bondslaves of Christ the Lord. We are slaves, either of sin or the Son of God. We cannot serve God and mammon. We are His now, all of us, all of our resources are His.

The 2nd principle we see illustrated in this story; He knows everything. Jesus looked around the temple and understood what was happening in secret. He knew the plans that they had to defraud people. He knew the back room agreements between the vendors and the priests and the temple officials. Nothing was hidden from Him.

We cannot hide our sins from God either. God knows our hearts. He sees everything we do in secret. A good illustration of this principle is David, who hid his sin with Bathsheba and thought he could get away with it. That no one knew what he had done. But you remember that God sent his prophet Nathan to reveal David’s sin, and rebuke him for his sin. And in Psalm 51, when David confessed his sin and repented of it, he writes that God requires truth in the inward parts. James says when you pray and do not receive what you ask for it’s because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend it on your sinful pleasures. Listen, there is nothing hidden from Gods’ sight. And if you are willfully withholding what is the Lord’s then He knows it and He will demand it.

Just imagine for a moment if I had complete insight into your private, most secret world, and came to you in your seat right now, and overturned your chair, and called your motives into question, and exposed your corruptness. Imagine if I publicly exposed all the private things that you think no one knows about, all the ways in which you have held back from God the things which are rightfully His, all the ways in which you have committed immorality with the world, using the grace of God as a covering for sin. All of the time, money, resources that God has given you and you have used it for only your own profit, laid open for all to see. That would be painful, wouldn’t it? Yet one day the Lord of this temple promises to lay bare all that we do in secret and proclaim it from the rooftop. We need to examine ourselves so that we might not be judged.

Our secrets will be judged according to His word. Heb. 4:12-13 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” God is looking around the temple of your soul and nothing is hidden. God knows your secrets, your deceptions. And He wants a holy temple consecrated to serving Him and Him alone.

God desires truth in the inward parts. He doesn’t care for our ceremonies and rituals, fake worship, and yet we hide iniquity in our hearts. Isaiah 1:11-18 “What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD.”I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies–I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, Says the LORD, Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.”

3rd principle; God will not tolerate corruptness in His temple. Even as Jesus cleansed the temple with scourging, so He will cleanse His people so that they will not profane His temple. Jesus said you cannot serve God and mammon. No man can serve two masters. He demands our full commitment in our relationship with Him.

2Cor.6:14 is commonly interpreted as speaking of marriage, but remember that His church is to be the spotless, virgin bride of Christ. So it’s actually referencing our relationship with our bridegroom. 2Cor. 6:14-18 “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM;AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. “Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord.” AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you. “And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” Says the Lord Almighty.

Now in closing let’s note His actions and our response. Jesus said “Take these things away and stop making my Father’s house a house of merchandise.” If Jesus is Lord of your life He is going to take what is His and make rightful use of it. If you are the temple of God then the Lord of the temple will make His temple holy and useful to Him. And sometimes He does that by scourging. He makes us clean by means of a whip.

Heb. 12:5-14 “MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD,NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES,AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.” So the activity of God is to scourge us and expose in us that which is harmful.

And our activity is to cleanse ourselves from all defilement of soul and spirit and body. You know, even though God brought the children of Israel into the Promised Land, they still had to finish driving out the idolaters that were left in there. God gave them the responsibility to drive them out and not to leave any remnant of the evil nations that dwelled there. God planted them, gave them the resources and then commanded them to drive out the ungodly nations lest they fall into sin with them and ruin their nation. And God tells us to do the same thing in 2Cor. 7:1, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”

Let me close by asking you a question, as you are the body of Christ and Christ is the head of the body, then it should stand to reason that we have the same desire as our head who is Christ. Can we say with Jesus that zeal for the house of God has consumed you? Has the refining fire of God burned away all the impurities so that you might be a vessel sanctified and set apart for good works? Have you like Paul said that you consider all the things that were formerly gain to you, to be as loss for the sake of knowing Christ as Lord? Is Christ Lord of your life? Have you given Him all?

I encourage all of us to examine ourselves in light of this word that we might be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ in all that we do. That nothing would be for our own gain, but for the glory of Christ. And for some here today I would ask, is the Spirit of God living in you? Or is the flesh striving against the Spirit? Are you committing adultery with the world yet claiming to be the bride of Christ. I would to God that you will confess with David in Psalm 51, “create in me a clean heart O Lord and renew a right spirit within me.” If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

(Rom.12:1,2)

 

 

 

The first sign, John 2:1-11

In our study of the first chapter of John, we saw the author under the inspiration of God give a masterful treatise stating the theology of Jesus Christ; that He is God in the flesh, He was with God from the beginning, He is Light and the light of the world, and that He is the Life of men, that is the Creator, the giver and sustainer of life. That was John’s opening argument in his gospel, which is given as an apologetic as well as an evangelistic message, the purpose of which is stated in John 20:31, “but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”

Then we saw in the remainder of chapter one that John brought forth witnesses to corroborate his claim. The first witness was John the Baptist who declared Jesus is the Son of God and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And then John brought another group of men forward as witnesses, that being the Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip and Nathanael. Andrew called Him the Messiah, Philip said of Him that He was the One of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote, and Nathanael called Him the Son of God, the King of Israel.

Now beginning in chapter 2, John provides illustrations from the works of Christ which attest to His divinity and His purpose; that He is the Son of God, and the Messiah, that is the Savior of the world. And to do this, John begins with what he calls a sign, or what we would call a miracle. John says in vs.11, that this was the beginning of signs that Jesus did, and they manifested His glory, and because of this sign, His disciples believed in Him.

Now I would point out that His disciples already believed in Him as attested to in chapter one. But this sign increased and strengthened their faith. And that fulfills a spiritual principle found in Luke 19:26, “I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.” In other words, God will build your faith as you follow Him in faith.

Now before we get into the event in detail, I just want to be sure you understand the purpose of signs or miracles in the gospels. Many people mistakenly look at the miracles recorded in scripture and think they are a blueprint for what we can expect to accomplish in our lives. But as we look at the gospels, we see that the miracles are not simply exhibitions of our Lord’s power but they are designed to teach us certain spiritual truth. I have stated before on numerous occasions that all miracles in the gospels are given as a parable to teach a spiritual principle. And we would do well to remember that as we study the scriptures. No where is it taught that Jesus healed everyone, or performed miracles in order to make His life easier or just to remove some difficulty. But miracles serve to illustrate a spiritual principle by means of an earthly parable.

And I like the word John uses rather than using the word miracle. He uses the word sign. We all know what signs are, don’t we? You are driving down the road at night and you see a yellow diamond shaped sign with an image of a leaping deer, you know what that means don’t you? I know what some of you think. “Target practice.” But seriously, we all know it warns us that deer might be on the road ahead. And in the same way a sign as used in this passage points to a person, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. It points ahead to a time when Christ will be manifested to the world, but for now we see a sign signifying that He is Lord.

So we know then that the following miracle is not merely presented as just a happy circumstance that happened 2000 years ago, but that it points to something that will be revealed fully later, it points to a truth about Christ. So as we unpack this account, let’s focus on the principles that God is teaching us through this sign. And there are a number of them here. But first let’s fill in a little background information in order to be able to understand it fully.

The third day establishes the chronology of John as he gives this historical account, after the day mentioned at the end of chapter one when he saw Philip and Philip called Nathanael. There have been two days intervening, when Jesus and the disciples traveled to Cana of Galilee, which was the hometown of Nathanael. So not only Nathanael would have known the groom who was being married in this tiny village, but obviously Jesus did as well, as it says in vs.2 that He and His disciples were invited to the wedding. And it’s likely that since Cana is only about 6 miles from Nazareth, and Jesus’ mother was in attendance and she seems to have direction over the wine and servants, that there is a good possibility that this is the marriage of one of Jesus’ brothers. That is speculation of course, but it accounts for the fact that His mother is in a supervisory role in the marriage over the wine and the servants.

But I would point out that John has deliberately left out such details. They are not really germane to the story or the principle of the story. Many people have read way too much in between the lines of this account and as a result have come up with all sorts of false doctrines, such as the worship of Mary and the intercession of Mary, so that they teach the need to pray to Mary to intercede on their behalf. And nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the event proves that Mary is in need of a Savior just as everyone else is. She is not in a preferred status as evidenced in Jesus addressing her as “woman” rather than mother.

Now just a word about weddings in general in those times. Weddings were the social events of the year in that culture. When people came to a marriage celebration, they came because there had been a betrothal, an engagement period. About a year earlier, the couple had been engaged. That was a legal, binding, contract that could only be broken by divorce. But the marriage wasn’t consummated at this point. It was consummated at the end of the celebration which sometimes lasted for up to a week.

Ancient Jewish weddings were very different from our modern affairs. In western weddings the bride is the prominent figure. When the bride enters, clothed in all her glory, the whole congregation stands and the organ plays, “Here comes the bride! ” and every eye is focused on her. But in ancient Jewish weddings it was the groom that was prominent. He was the one whose coming was anticipated.

So for a year the husband has been preparing a place for his bride. He would have purchased or built a house for his bride and prepared it for them to live in. And during this time he would have been working to pay for the cost of the wedding feast. The bridegroom had full responsibility for all the cost of the wedding which lasted for up to a week and involved the whole village. His job was to get everything ready, and then when everything was ready and the house was built and the house was furnished and all preparations were made and he had demonstrated that he had what it took to care for his bride and to provide for her, he would come take his bride to his house and the celebrations began.

Now I cannot help but see a correlation here in this account of the marriage in Cana to the marriage of Christ and the church as His bride. In Ephesians 5 Paul talks about the church being the bride of Christ and compares His relationship to the human institution of marriage between a man and a woman. Listen to this; Eph. 5:23-32, “For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 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.” Notice that a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Is that not an echo of what we read at the beginning of chapter one, that the Word was with God, but the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He became one of us, that He might be joined to us, so that we might become one with God.

So in the marriage of Christ and the church Jesus is the bridegroom and we are the bride of Christ. Jesus calls Himself the bridegroom in Matt. 9:15 “And Jesus said to them, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

So as we understand the symbolism of marriage, Christ became flesh to seek a bride which is His church. He betrothed Himself to her. He has made promises to come again and take us to His home which He said He is preparing for us. And when He comes again, we will join in the celebration of the marriage supper of the Lamb and then we will be like Him and join Him on the throne in His glory to rule and reign and live with Him forever.

Now as we understand that, it helps us to know what Jesus is saying when He responds to His mother’s complaint that they had run out of wine. This was a major faux paus on the part of the bridegroom. He somehow either did not have the means to buy enough wine, or they had more people show up than they had planned for or the party ran a few days longer. And the fact is they couldn’t just run down to the store and pick up a few more bottles. So if one of Jesus’ brothers were getting married, and Mary was the matron of honor so to speak, then the family of Jesus was responsible for getting more wine. Jesus as the eldest son would have had the headship of the family. It is generally agreed upon by most scholars that Joseph was dead by this time and so Jesus would have taken on the responsibility as head of the family.

So Mary says to Jesus, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour is not yet come.” Now there is a lot of commentary on that phrase, “what do I have to do with you,” as well as the fact that He called His mother Woman. First of all, Woman was not a term of disrespect, but a word which signaled a change in relationship between Jesus and Mary. As Jesus began His earthly ministry, He would no longer be bound by familial restraints as head of the household, and as a consequence she would have no more hold over Him in the usual way a mother might have over her son. But even more to the point, as I said earlier, it indicates that she does not have any special privilege as His mother. She would have to come to Christ the same way every other person must come; as a sinner, saved by grace. Even on the cross, as He is obviously full of concern for His mother, He calls her Woman, even as He passes on responsibility for her well being to the Apostle John. So it’s not a disparaging title, but a term designating a change of position, from Son to Savior.

And then to the question of what He said. A better reading might be; “What is that to you and to Me?” In other words, the fact that they don’t have wine, what is that to us? My hour is not yet come.”

Now keep in mind the picture presented here is Christ coming for His church, His bride. He is saying I am not ready to provide the wine at this point of my ministry, because my hour is not yet come. So what is does the wine symbolize? Well, in a few minutes we will be celebrating another supper, the Lord’s Supper. And as you know there are two elements in communion, the wine and the bread. And Jesus quoted by Paul in 1Cor. 11:25 says, “In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” Now when Jesus said that, obviously it could not be His own blood as the Catholics would have us believe, because He had not yet shed His blood. So what was it? It was wine. Wine symbolizes then the blood of Christ which washes away our sins, in which we have forgiveness of our sins. This is the token of the new covenant which Hebrews 9:15 speaks of, which is better than the old covenant which featured the blood of bulls and goats which could never take away sins. But the new covenant in His blood takes away sins and purchases the right to an eternal inheritance.

So Jesus is saying, My hour to die on the cross and shed My blood for the remission of sins is not yet come. He will say the same thing in John 7:30 “So they were seeking to seize Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” He speaks of His hour in another half a dozen places in John’s gospel. And finally in His priestly prayer before His crucifixion in chapter 17 He prays, “Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son.” Amazing isn’t it? That He equates crucifixion with glory. And why would He say that? Because at that time He purchases the redemption and sanctification of His bride. In that act God destroys the power of sin and death and crushes the head of the serpent, Satan. His death achieves the glory of God. It manifests the glory of Christ and it makes possible the glory of the church, His bride. So then His hour He speaks of is the time when He offers up His life as a sacrifice on the cross for sin, purchasing with His blood the remission of sins for all who believe on Him.

So Jesus says, “I am not ready to be glorified at this point. I am not ready to shed my blood which will be the wine of the new covenant at this hour. That hour is coming, but it is not now.

But somehow Mary understands that He isn’t speaking a rebuke to her, He is speaking metaphorically of His glorification which had been promised her by the angels before His birth. And so she turns to the servants and says “Whatever He says to you, do it.” Mary doesn’t speak much on record in the scriptures, and so we should find what she says very instructive. Our emphasis is not on the words of Mary, or the actions of Mary as an intercessor, but on the Word made flesh. Our obedience and obeisance should be to the words of Christ. The preference is not given to Mary but to Jesus and her instructions indicate that.

So Jesus knowing the need, supplies the abundance. He said He came to give life and that more abundantly. And that is a principle we see here in this sign as well in other places, particularly at the feeding of the multitudes. Jesus does not just supply barely enough, or not quite enough, but supplies grace upon grace. John 1:16 “for of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” This is speaking of His grace of righteousness to cover our sins. We cannot spend all the grace of Christ. Not that we should desire to presume upon the grace of God through licentiousness in continuing to sin, but that regardless of the greatness of our sin, the greatness of our separation from God, He has provided more grace than enough to reconcile us to God.

So Jesus orders the servants to take the six empty water pots and fill them with water. And the servants fill them to the brim. The Bible scholars tell us that this would have been about 120 to 150 gallons of water. That would have provided well over 3000 servings of wine. The significance of that is a measure of His grace; of His fullness, of the abundant supply of righteousness. And then when the servant drew out the water and presented it to the head waiter he was astonished that the bridegroom had saved the best wine for last.

I used to train wine stewards when I was in the hotel restaurant business. And I can assure you that if the wine steward knew it was wine, it was indeed wine. Now it is well known that they watered wine down in those days three parts water to one part wine, so that it was very difficult to get drunk from normal table wine. But it was wine, and furthermore, it was very good wine.

Now a note about the water pots. John says that they were used for ceremonial washings; for the Jewish custom of purification. The Levitical law required certain ceremonial washings in regard to sacrifices and various modes of daily life. But over time the Jews had added customs to the law that far exceeded the intent of the law to imply that the physical cleanliness was a means of spiritual cleanness. As you will remember, the Pharisees condemned the disciples at one point to Jesus because they had not ceremoniously washed their hands before eating. And later on Jesus condemns that sort of external ceremony that does not cleanse the heart of sin. Matt. 23:25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.” So Jesus condemns the ceremonial washings which could never take away spiritual uncleanness.

So as we already alluded to, the old covenant could not take away sins by the blood of bulls and goats, nor could the customs and traditions imposed by the religious leaders take away sins. And let me be even more clear, the ceremony of baptism cannot wash away sins. All of those things are just signs as well, pointing to the blood of Christ which is the only thing that can take away sin.

So what are the principles that we learn from this parable illustrated by a sign? One is that when Christ bestows a blessing it is usually preceded by a command. Secondly, Christ’s commands are not to be questioned, but obeyed. Thirdly, that Christ is the bridegroom that has purchased the redemption of His bride with His blood, for the forgiveness of their sins and to give them an inheritance prepared in heaven. Fourth, that as the wine was more than enough to meet the needs of the party, His grace is more than sufficient for all our sins, that we have received His fullness and grace upon grace. Fifth, that only His blood is sufficient to cleanse us from sin, but that no ceremony has the power to do more than point to Christ. Sixth, that the new covenant is a better covenant, enacted on better promises. And seventh, that He has saved the best for last.

As Heb. 11:39-40 says concerning the patriarchs and heroes of the faith of old, “And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.” We are living in the last days. And God has saved the best for last. We have the complete, perfect revelation of Christ. We have His death, burial, resurrection of Christ and He now stands at the Father’s right hand to make intercession for us. We have all the promises of God made more sure by the written scripture. We have the immeasurable benefit of the Holy Spirit living in us, even as wine in stone water pots. Even as 2Cor. 4:7 says, that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” So that by the power of the Spirit within us we might live to the glory of Christ. Our redeemed, transformed lives are able to bring about glory to Christ through His death which is symbolized in the wine of His blood which was shed for us.

Our Lord is able to take the person who recognizes that they fall short of the righteousness required and with his touch make them full of abundant life; to turn their mourning into joy. He will do this with any who will call upon Him, follow Him, and believe in Him. That is why John highlights for us in vs.11, that seeing this sign, “the disciples believed in Him.” I pray that your faith in Christ has been strengthened as well as we understand the significance of this sign; what Christ has done for us and what His purpose is for us as we follow Him.

 

 

 

The testimony of the disciples, John 1:35-51

As we continue in our study of the book of John, I would remind you that John has given a theological treatise, or opening argument in the first 18 verses that is unparalleled in scripture establishing the divinity of Jesus Christ. And then starting in vs. 19 he brought forth his first witness to testify to his premise which is stated in chapter 20vs.11, “but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” That is the purpose of his epistle. To show that Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah, and that He is the Son of God, and as a result to illuminate men to the saving knowledge of that truth, so that we might have life, eternal life, in His name.

So as John proceeds to lay out his gospel he first brings John the Baptist to give testimony as to the eternal nature of Jesus, to give testimony that God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit, to testify that Jesus the Christ, that is the Messiah, to testify that Jesus was the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, and to testify that Jesus was the Son of God. That was the testimony of John the Baptist.

Now according to Jewish law, every fact was to be corroborated by two or three witnesses. So starting in vs. 35, John introduces three more testimonials from ordinary common men who would become disciples of Christ. And we are going to look at these men’s testimony. But in the process of hearing their testimony, we will also see revealed the ultimate goal of John which is to show the way of salvation, so that one might have life in Christ. And in the process of showing the way of salvation, we will also see the method of evangelism. So you might break down this passage by saying there are three points that are interwoven in the narrative; the testimony of the disciples presented, the way of salvation presented, and the method of evangelism presented.

Let’s begin with the testimony of the disciples presented and we will see the other two elements interwoven in the process as we go along. The apostle has already introduced John the Baptist and his testimony. But as a means of introducing the next witnesses he says that John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples when he sees Jesus walking by, and he said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and his disciples left him and followed Jesus. Now this is a restatement of John the Baptist, having already declared this the previous day as we see in vs.29. But the day before day Jesus was walking towards him, and on this day Jesus is walking away from him. And John’s declaration at this time is to point to Jesus as the one that they should follow. John came to prepare the way for Him who was to come, and when He comes, to point men to follow Him.

Now we know from the other gospels that John came preaching a gospel of repentance. So his disciples had learned his message of sin and repentance and the need to get their hearts right before the coming of the Messiah. So when John the Baptist sees Jesus coming in vs.29, he declares that this is the Messiah, the Lamb of God who will take away their sin. It is one thing to know that you need to repent of your sins, it is another to recognize that Jesus is the Lamb of God appointed by God to be the Savior of the world, the substitute who will bear the penalty of sin that we deserve.

And that is the way of salvation presented. Repent and believe. The two lynch pins of salvation, faith and repentance. Repentance will not save you unless you recognize the One who has the power to forgive your sins, to take away your sins, to bear your sins. And John pointed them to Jesus Christ as the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

And I just want to point out one Old Testament reference which foretells that Jesus would be the Lamb of God who would be our substitute. There are many illustrations in the OT, particularly the Lamb which took the place of Isaac when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, as well as the Passover Lamb, and the sacrificial lambs used in the temple sacrificial system, but I want to reference a few verses in Isaiah 53:4-7 which attribute this title directly to Christ. “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth…,vs.11, By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.”   There it is; the Lamb of God led to the slaughter, who will take our punishment upon Himself, and who will bear our sins on the cross. What a tremendous picture of our Savior, as the Lamb of God.

Now these two men had been John’s disciples, but now John the Baptist is directing them to become Jesus’ disciples. Only one of the disciples is named here, that being Andrew, but practically all Bible scholars agree that the apostle John is actually the other disciple. His humility keeps him from ever naming himself in his writings, but there are a number of hints that this is John the author himself.

So they left John the Baptist and followed Jesus. And Jesus seeing them following Him turned to them and asked, “What do you seek?” and they answered, “Rabbi, which is translated Teacher, where are You staying?” And this further illustrates the way of salvation. Salvation is marked by following in the footsteps of Christ. 1Peter 2:21-22, 24 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, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH; … and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”

Listen, the way of salvation is not merely to acknowledge certain facts about God, or even to claim certain benefits because of what Christ has done, but to become a disciple of Christ, to follow in His footsteps, to be joined to the body, the head of whom is Christ, and so then doing the works of Christ.

And that is seen in the text; they first follow Jesus, calling Him Rabbi, meaning He is their teacher and they will do what He tells them to do, and then they enter into communion/fellowship with Him. They respond to His question of what do you seek, with “Rabbi, where are you staying?” I love that they didn’t see the way of salvation as a once a week visit with Christ, but 24/7 living with Christ. They moved in with Him. To live with Him and He with them. That is the communion we have as believers. Christ in us and we in Christ.

So Jesus says, “Come and you will see.” Now it was the 10th hour, that is 4pm, and so they stayed with Him that day. They were being taught by Christ now, and it’s a constant, 24/7 experience that will go on for 3 years, and then when He leaves and the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, He continues with them forever.   And this is the reality of our salvation. We become one with God because He lives in us. And He is with us constantly, forever, leading us, guiding us, and helping us. Making His word live in us and giving us eternal life. That’s what is involved in becoming saved, it’s becoming disciples. That is the great commission by the way. Not to make converts, but to make disciples. I think there are a lot of people that consider themselves Christians today as opposed to being Muslim, or Atheists. But that is not salvation, nor is it discipleship. We are told to go make disciples. And before we can make a disciple we must first be a disciple, a follower of Christ’s example.

Now finally we come to the first testimony of the disciples, and in the wonderful economy of the scriptures we also see evangelism presented. And this example is especially instructive, for we see that after his experience with Jesus, Andrew goes and finds his brother Peter. And he says, ““We have found the Messiah” and he brought Peter to Jesus. We hear a similar expression often in the church, “leading someone to the Lord.” If we are not careful, we sometimes think of it in terms of us takings someone through steps to salvation. That is not something we can do, nor should we try to do. What we should do is lead someone to Christ. We tell them about Christ. He does the saving. We just make the introduction. We should testify of Him, even as Andrew does to his brother, that he has found the Messiah. And I would just add that our families should be the first people we share the gospel with. Our families are the first frontier of evangelism. That should be natural; if you truly love people you will share the gospel with them. What’s the point of going on a foreign mission trip if we haven’t first evangelized our loved ones here at home?

So Peter comes to Christ. I believe that is a literal and figural statement. To come to Christ is to come in repentance and faith that He is our Savior, our Lord and King. He is the Son of God. And we know that Peter also becomes at that moment a disciple and follows Jesus.

So in response Jesus gives Peter a new name. That is another aspect of salvation. Jesus sees not only who we are, but who we are going to become in Him. And so Jesus gives Peter a name which indicates what he will be. Peter will be a stone, a foundation stone as part of the foundation of the other apostles upon which the church will be built as stated in Eph. 2:20. When you come to Christ He will change your life, He will change your purpose, He will change your desires. He gives you a new name. Rev. 2:17 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.”

Now the next day, Jesus found another man named Philip from Andrew and Peter’s hometown of Bethsaida, and he says to Philip, “follow Me.” This is a familiar expression of Christ, 20 times in the gospels He will say that to someone, “follow Me.” You want to know what salvation looked like in Jesus’ day? He didn’t give an invitation and play 7 stanzas of Just As I Am, have them raise their hand and repeat the sinner’s prayer. He just says “Follow Me.” And they step out in faith, believing in Him, learning of Him, learning who He is and what He says, and being obedient to what He says. That is discipleship and discipleship is equivalent to salvation.

Somewhere between vs.43 and 45 Philip discovers enough to become convinced that Jesus was the Messiah and so he goes to tell Nathaniel. He is referred to most often as Bartholomew. Only John calls him Nathanael. He lived in another little village in that region called Cana at the north end of the Sea of Galilee. And something very special is going to happen in Cana that we will look at in chapter 2. That’s where there’s a wedding and Jesus does His first miracle.

And this is the pattern of evangelism most often laid out in the scripture. I would even suggest that this the normal pattern of evangelism – one on one. One person introducing another to Jesus as Savior, Lord and Messiah. One person leading another to Christ. There are a couple of examples of a few large scale conversions such as the day of Pentecost, but I think they are the exception rather than the rule. We are not going to reach the beach community by outreaches and crusades necessarily, but by individual evangelism, one by one. One person at a time.

Now we see another man’s testimony concerning Jesus; Philip tells Nathanael, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” This testimony again is no less than that Jesus is the Messiah, we have found the Messiah as described in scripture. And he adds that Jesus is from Nazareth, which is a short distance from Cana, and that He was in human terms at least, the son of Joseph.

But I want to point out just one of the many OT references to the Messiah, so that we might get the full intent of what Philip is saying about Jesus being the One, that is the Anointed One, or the Messiah. And especially at this time of year I think this passage is apropos; Isaiah 9:6-7 fleshes out the full magnitude of the title Messiah. And this scripture is the basis for the famous Handel’s Messiah. “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.” Jews who knew this very familiar prophecy would know that the Messiah who was prophesied not only would be King, but He was also Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. That is the full import of the title Messiah or Christ.

Now Nathanael seems to reflect a common prejudice towards Nazareth. I’m not sure why. There was a national prejudice about Galileans in general, and Nazareth in particular. But I’m not sure that it was prejudice that prompted his remark, because Jesus does not rebuke him, but rather commends him for being without guile or deceit. Not a light compliment. But rather it’s a possibility that Nathanael is amazed that someone like the Messiah could come from such a humble place, even a place with such a bad reputation. And we are reminded that this was God’s strategic purpose in demonstrating the extreme humility of Christ, as it says in Phil. 2:7-8 “But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Let us not forget that He is our example. And we should walk in His footsteps, humbleness being a foremost characteristic of a disciple of Christ.

Vs.47, Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Now this is an amazing statement. In it Jesus is saying that Nathanael is a true believer from an Old Testament perspective. He is a true Jew which according to Romans 2 is circumcised in his heart. A penitent believer in the true God in whom there is no deceit–no guile, no hypocrisy, no duplicity, no phoniness. Now this is a rare thing in a nation which for the most part had become apostate, that was awash in hypocrisy. But this is how Jesus describes Nathanael.

And Nathanael is surprised that Jesus knew him. It’s probable that Jesus knew his name, but even more surprising is that Jesus knew him. Knew who he was. What kind of man he was. And so Nathanael says, ““How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”

Now Bible scholars tell us that the phrase under a fig tree was a Jewish way of referring to a place where one retired to meditate on the scriptures and pray. And so Jesus is saying that He saw him under a fig tree, and He heard his prayers. What a great picture to remind us that God hears every prayer, even silent prayers, even prayers when we think no one sees, no one hears, yet God hears and takes notice. And He responds to our prayers. Nathanael, who Jesus said is a true Israelite would have been looking and praying for the coming of the Messiah, now finds himself standing before Jesus the Messiah in answer to his prayers.

And when Nathanael hears Jesus’ answer, his heart awakens to the truth of God that Jesus must be no less than the King of Israel, that is the Messiah, and the Son of God. Vs.49, Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.” He echoes what John the Baptist also said, that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. That title Son of God means nothing less than that Jesus is God. To be the son of something or someone is to have the same nature as them. My son has my nature, my characteristics, but most significantly he is human because I am human. And Christ is God because He is God’s Son. Christ is not an angel, as Hebrews 1:3-6 so eloquently states: “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they. For to which of the angels did He ever say, “YOU ARE MY SON,TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”? And again, “I WILL BE A FATHER TO HIMAND HE SHALL BE A SON TO ME”? And when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says, “AND LET ALL THE ANGELS OF GOD WORSHIP HIM.”

So if He is God’s Son, then He is God in human form. Thus the angels worship Him. And He is the exact representation of God’s nature in human flesh.

Then Jesus responds to Nathanael’s faith, and says, “Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And He said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Now some people think that what Jesus was saying referred to the dream of Jacob in Genesis 28:12, where Jacob saw a ladder from earth to heaven, and the angels ascending and descending upon it. They see in that symbolism that Jesus is the ladder, the link, between heaven and earth. That Jesus is the way to God. And that when Nathanael comes to understand that Jesus is the mediator between God and man, it will be an even greater sign than the sign of Jesus seeing him under the fig tree. And I am willing to concede that is a possible explanation. But I think a more obvious explanation is that Jesus is referring to His ascension into heaven after His resurrection. When Jesus ascends into heaven in plain view of 400 witnesses, and the angels of God are there to testify that He is coming again just as He was taken up into heaven, that is the greatest sign that Jesus is God’s Son, and He is sitting at the right hand of the Father on His throne, and all rule and authority have been given unto Him.

And perhaps Jesus Himself alludes to that ascension by referring to Himself by yet another title; the Son of Man. Don’t be misled into thinking that this title is any less divine than others. It refers specifically to Dan 7:13-14, which says “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and men of every language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.” This title of Son of Man then is one that Christ uses of Himself to show affinity with mankind. God became man and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. God so loved man that He Himself became Man that He might be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, so that whosoever believes in Him might have life and have it more abundantly. I pray that you have believed the testimony of the disciples and know Him as your personal Savior, and decided to follow Him and have fellowship with Him. That is the only way to life. And Jesus has provided the way for you to receive eternal life in Him and He in you. I hope that you will receive Him today, if you have not already made that decision.

And if you do know the Lord as your Savior, then I hope that you will be about the Lord’s business, testifying to loved ones and friends that you have found the Savior. Introduce them to the Light of the world. There is no better time to do that than at Christmas. I hope you will fulfill your calling as a disciple and show people Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

The testimony of John the Baptist, John 1:19-34

The world is a very different place in the 21st century than it was in the days of our parents. But I am not talking about the obvious advancements in technology and science and so forth that enables our culture to think that we are so much more advanced than previous generations. The difference in our day from our father’s day is that at least in western civilization, man has become more egocentric rather than theocentric.

A good illustration of that is that in our father’s day, young men cheerfully signed up to fight the Nazis, risking and even losing their lives for the sake of God and country. Not everyone was a Christian in those days of course, but there was instilled in people the sense that there were higher ideals worth living for than simply self gratification. Consequently, we look back in history with a sense of awe at what that generation suffered through, and realize that their sacrifices provided the security and prosperity that our nation now enjoys and takes for granted.

On the other hand, the when the pendulum started swinging in the opposite direction post WW2, during a time of unparalleled prosperity that was for the most part the result of winning the war, we see that society lost that sense of chivalry and became increasingly narcissistic and egocentric. That attitude has fostered a philosophy of secular humanism which is the pervasive view today in society.

As a result, politicians pander to such self aggrandizing attitudes, producing a society that increasingly depends upon government entitlements and consequently is contributing to what I think marks the beginning of the end of this great nation. John F. Kennedy’s quote made 50 years ago that we should “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” no longer gets traction in today’s “Me First” culture that asks and keeps demanding special rights for every possible special interest group at the expense of the greater good.

But what is more disconcerting than the trend in the political arena is that the church is pandering to the egocentric trends of the culture as well. The whole focus of the relevant church movement is to find out what appeals to the congregation, and then format the church to meet the expectations of the people. So we end up with messages geared to such topics as fixing your marriage, or straightening out your finances. There is even a popular sermon series out there based on dieting. It’s called the Daniel Plan. Not that there is anything wrong with dieting. Some of us could probably benefit from it, but it is not the ministry of the church to provide a health club or social club or self help classes.

The Apostle John said in vs. 6 that “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.” So what was the testimony of John the Baptist? Did he come and give messages on love, sex, and marriage? Did he come and give messages on how to resolve family issues? Did he come and give messages about psychotherapy? I’m sure all of that would have been as popular in his day as they are in ours. And there may be a place for these things sometimes. But John saw that the need of his people was much more fundamental than that. Israel had left her first love. Israel had become apostate. Israel was a nation who needed reconciliation and forgiveness from God. So John the Baptist preached theology. He didn’t think that theology was impractical, old fashioned, or irrelevant. He didn’t tickle their ears and give them what they wanted to hear, but he gave them sound theology.

The great thing about the ministry of John the Baptist was that he didn’t pander to the culture. He didn’t worry about being seeker friendly. He spoke about what God told him to speak about. His message was simply repentance, to prepare the people to receive the Messiah, the Son of God.

Sound doctrine is the knowledge that leads to salvation. And once saved sound doctrine produces stability, maturity and spiritual fruit. Paul told Timothy in 2Tim.3:15 that the scriptures gave him the wisdom which leads to salvation through faith.

Now I would remind you that Jesus would say about John the Baptist that among men born of women, there was none greater than John the Baptist. So if we are going to pattern our ministry after someone, then I suggest patterning our ministry after John the Baptist. Personally, I have always identified with John the Baptist. I don’t say that to imply that I am anywhere near his level, of course. But I do identify with a voice crying out in the wilderness. I do believe that the primary message of the gospel is repentance and pointing people to Jesus Christ. I guess I also identify with the idea of a no frills, open air ministry. Not really having a permanent location, especially when we meet out on the beach.

So I want to look at the testimony of John the Baptist that is presented here, and take some points from his ministry which we should apply to our own. And we are going to divide this passage by looking at three points; first what John says he is not, and second, what John says he is, and third, who he says Jesus is. What he is not, what he is, and who Jesus is.

Now to introduce this section let me remind you that the Apostle John has presented a masterful theological treatise, much like the opening statement in a court of law, presenting the facts concerning Christ. Now John brings forth his first witness to corroborate those facts, and illustrate that theology. And his first witness the apostle brings forth is John the Baptist.

So vs.19 says that “This is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’”   Now for most of us, there is no more favorite subject matter for which we prefer to talk about than ourselves. Isn’t that so? If the average pastor was asked that question today, he would probably launch into a biographical essay in which he ends up giving a glowing testimony of himself. But not John the Baptist. This was a humble man. Let me tell you something; humility is the hallmark of a true servant of God. Not where you went to seminary, or how big your church might be. But even as Jesus humbled himself, taking the form of a servant. And if we are truly servants, then we should remember that the servant is not greater than his master. We need to be humble, to practice humility if we are going to minister as Christ’s representatives.

And we see that humility illustrated in the answers that John gives to the questions of the religious leaders. As my outline illustrates, he starts out by saying what he is not. What he is not. That is the mark of humility. Peter admonished the men of the church in 1Peter 5:5-6 “You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time.” All of you, that is all the men of the church, pastors and all of the church, clothe yourselves with humility.

You know there was another famous prophet who was singled out as being one of the greatest, and that was none other than Moses. And notice what it says about Moses in Numbers 12:3, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.” Humility is the hallmark of a man or woman of God. Not how charismatic or talented they may be, but how humble they are. That is what God looks at. And that is the person that God will use. He will not share His glory with man.

So what John was not. He answers there question of “Who are you?” with “I am not the Christ.” I believe it was Luke that tells us in his gospel that the religious leaders had been asking, along with many of the multitudes that were coming out to hear him, if John the Baptist could be the Messiah. And so he answers that question; “I am not the Christ.”

Then they ask him, ““What then? Are you Elijah?” And he *said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” Notice John goes from a five word answer to a three world answer to a one word answer. I think that indicates that he doesn’t want to talk about himself. He wasn’t in ministry to promote himself, but to promote Jesus Christ. And John knows that very well.

You know I think God hates self promotion. So by extension, I would have to say that God hates facebook. Lord knows that is the most visible form of self promotion in this modern world gone narcissistic and egocentric. And ranked right under that I would have to put this obsession with selfies. Even the very word conjures up self serving. Take 500 digital photos of yourself and pick the most flattering one and put it on facebook. And then do it everyday until you get enough likes to satisfy your ego. I don’t think you would find John the Baptist on facebook if he were alive today. Nor would you find Moses, or Jesus for that matter. Some people might pretend that it is a ministry tool, but I think the fact is most are probably just tools. I’m sorry if that offends somebody. But we can’t do ministry when the primary person we are interested in is ourselves. We need to drop our façade of self righteousness and start speaking the truth to the world, and start caring about others more than ourselves. That’s pretty basic ministry fundamentals.

So John says he is not the Messiah, he is not Elijah, he is not the Prophet, and back in verse 8 we see that he was not the Light. Furthermore, in vs.27, John says “He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” He is saying that he doesn’t even consider himself worthy of the lowest household servant in the kingdom of God, so that he is not worthy of even untying the sandals of Christ. So not only is he not the Christ, he is not even worthy to untie Christ’s shoes. Now that is humility. And yet Jesus says about him that he is the greatest among men. “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God and He will exalt you at the proper time.”

Jesus said in Matt. 20:26-28 “It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

Now then let’s look at what John testifies about himself. Who John says he is and what he is doing. Vs.22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

First of all, note the contrast John the Baptist makes between himself and Christ. He is not the Word, but he is a voice. The Word exists before him. The word exists in the mind before the voice articulates it. The Word remains once the voice is silent. He just speaks the words of God as God gives him utterance. John would later say “He must increase, but I must decrease.” He understood that it was not his words that had any power to save. But John knew that the Word of God who was God was the only power unto salvation.

I wish we could get hold of that principle today in our churches. We exist merely to give voice to the Word of God. To bear witness of Him. All of the programs and skits and dancing and singing if not giving voice to the word of God are useless and self serving. Those things may attract a crowd, but the only power to save is found in giving voice to the Word.

Then notice that the next question they are concerned about is his practice, his baptism. People are concerned about the externals, aren’t they? What rituals we practice. What ceremonies. What kind of programs you have. Well, John did indeed practice baptism. But the emphasis of the gospel of John is not John the Baptist’s baptism, but on the fact that he was a witness. And that is the emphasis of John the Baptist as well. To point to Christ. Baptism simply prepares people’s hearts to receive Christ through repentance. John’s emphasis is not on the mode or method of baptism as a means of grace, but as a means of repentance. Not focused on the outward sign, but on the heart of man.

So they ask him, “Why then are you baptizing, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” See the problem wasn’t that he was baptizing. Baptism was already practiced among first century Jews as a means of purification. But it was self administered. And the other thing was that it was for Gentiles, not Jews. It was part of the method by which non Jews could become proselytes. They could become accepted into the Jewish faith by becoming washed in water and then going through certain ceremonies and offerings. So for John to be administering baptisms to Jews for repentance was a new teaching that would have attracted criticism.

But again, John deflects attention to his ministry and points to Jesus. Vs. 26 John answered them saying, “I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know. It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” What John was saying was that his baptism was a sign. He did not have power to cleanse or forgive sins. All he could do was use human means to point to a heavenly purpose that would be fulfilled in Christ. It was a sign in the flesh, much the same as the sign in the flesh of circumcision which was given through Moses. So John the Baptist comes with the sign of baptism, and this sign points to Jesus Christ. First by showing their need for a Savior, and then when John baptizes Jesus it points to Him as being the Son of God. So in all aspects, John’s ministry points to Jesus and Jesus alone. Never does it magnify John the Baptist.

Now then the last point, who John testifies that Jesus is. Who John says Jesus is. Vs. 28 These things took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John says Jesus is the Lamb of God. Now that goes back to what I just said about John’s baptism. The first purpose of baptism is to show us our need for repentance, for forgiveness of sin. And as he is baptizing, which has no power to forgive sin in and of itself, he sees Jesus coming to him and says “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Baptism then has no power to take away sin, but the Lamb of God does take away sin.

Now any Jew would understand the imagery that John is referring to when he says the Lamb of God. First of all, hearing that a Jew would naturally be reminded of their father Abraham when he offered up Isaac on the altar, and was about to slay him as a sacrifice, and God stopped him and provided a ram that was caught in a thorn bush behind him. God provided a substitute. God provided a lamb. That is the first lesson of the Lamb of God. He is our substitute. God placed our sins, our punishment upon Him, so that He died for us, so that we might be made righteous with His righteousness and live.

And that brings up the second point of the Lamb of God that every Jew would think of. And that would have been the Passover Lamb that was slain on the night when God caused all the first born male children in Egypt to die because of the hardness of the Egyptian’s hearts and their refusal to let Israel worship the Lord. So God told His people to take a lamb for every household and slay it and put the blood on the doorposts of their houses so that the angel of death would not strike them. And as they obeyed God’s command and sacrificed the lamb and put the blood on the doorpost of their house, the angel of the Lord passed by and they were saved from death. Now that illustrates the second principle of the Lamb of God, He saves us from death, eternal death.

So first who John says Jesus is, He is the Lamb of God. Secondly, John says Christ is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. As opposed to his baptism with water, Christ will baptize in the Holy Spirit. (and by the way, it is noteworthy that Christ is never recorded as baptizing anyone in water) So John says in Vs. 30 “This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ I did not recognize Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water. John testified saying, ‘I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’”

Now there is a lot in those verses and we don’t have time to unpack everything there. But one thing I want to say that John says it was necessary for him to baptize in order that the Christ might be made known. Now certainly John knew of Jesus before this time. He was his cousin. And though they may not have lived near one another as they were growing up we must imagine that John knew of Him, and perhaps even had met Him or known Him all his life. That is certainly possible but I don’t think that is what John is saying here. What he is saying is that I did not know Him as the Christ, as the Messiah, as the Son of God until it was divinely revealed to me in the baptism. God had spoken to John previously and said He who the Spirit descends upon is the Christ.

So John knew Jesus not by sight, not by human intellect or knowledge, but by divine revelation from the Holy Spirit. And this illustrates an important principle of salvation. God has to open men’s eyes to see that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Remember the famous situation with Peter when Jesus asks, “who do men say that I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” And what did Jesus say to that? “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you Peter, but my Father who is in heaven. (Matt. 16) It takes a divine intervention to open a blind man’s eyes, and we that are in our sins are blind. Jesus said in John 6:44 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”

But it also reveals the two fold nature of salvation; on the one hand there must be a removal of sin, but also a filling of the Holy Spirit. Both are necessary for salvation. One sanctifies you, the other makes you a temple of the Holy Spirit and empowers you to live as a witness to the world in obedience to God. You must be born again of the Spirit of God if you will have the life of God in you.

Then the last statement that John the Baptist testifies as to who Jesus is, is found in vs. 34 “I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.” This is the ultimate witness of John the Baptist. That Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah, and He is also the Son of God. He is God in the flesh, the Word made flesh. And John saw the Spirit of God descend and remain on Him just as God said, and he heard the proclamation of God as recorded by Luke in Luke 3:22 when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” This was the witness of John, and this is his testimony, that Jesus is the Son of God.

And of course that testimony correlates perfectly with the Apostle John’s stated purpose for writing this book in John 20:31, “but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”

Now there are two quick applications that I would point out that makes the believing in Christ efficacious for you. One is to recognize the One whom you do not know. Notice vs.26, John says, “among you stands One whom you do not know.” Some have decided that they do not want to know Him. They have rejected the idea of God and Lord, and so they have rejected the Savior of the world. Knowing God is a decision that everyone must make for themselves. To know the truth about God. Everyone, atheist or believer, starts with a presupposition which is either God exists or He does not exist. That decision comes before all evidence, before all science. There is either a rejection of God or a realization that God is. And based on that presupposition, then man goes about living out either his theology or philosophy.

But knowing God is a choice. And it’s a choice that all of us make. And then the second point of application is that you must receive Him as your Lord and Savior. It is not enough to just believe in God, or even believe that Jesus lived on earth 2000 years ago. It’s necessary to receive Him as your Lord and Savior. You must accept Jesus’ substutionary sacrifice on your behalf, for forgiveness of your sins, and receive the promise of life by the Holy Spirit. If Jesus is truly the Son of God, then there is no alternative but to bow down before Him and plead for His mercy. And Jesus said that to them that call upon Him He will surely save them. In vs. 12 of our text, John says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.”

Today we have heard the testimony of the Apostle John here in this passage before us, who lived with and followed Jesus for 3 years of his life. We have heard the testimony of John the Baptist who heard the voice from heaven declaring that Jesus is the Son of God and saw the Spirit descend in the form of a dove upon Him as was prophesied. We have heard the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures which present the Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We have around us the testimony of creation which reveals His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, so that we are without excuse. But most importantly, we have the witness of the Holy Spirit inside us, convicting us, drawing us to Christ, opening our eyes that we might see Him and believe in Him and be saved. I hope if you are here today, and you do not know Him, that you will not reject these faithful witnesses. Jesus came to earth to save those that are lost. All that is necessary is for you to believe in Him and receive Him as your Lord and Savior, and you will have life everlasting. You will come to know Him who is the source of all life and the Light of the world.

The Word became flesh, John 1:14-18

There is a lot of sentimentality at Christmas time. For a multitude of reasons, the holiday season evokes a lot of nostalgia, and it plays upon some of our deepest emotions. That is why Christmas is sometimes such a stressful time for many of us. It can seem ironic to wish people a Merry Christmas and yet find yourself almost overcome with sadness.

The solution, of course, is to remember or be reminded of the real meaning of Christmas. But unfortunately, even the Christmas story has become so sentimentalized that the real joy to be found in the advent of Christ is kind of lost due to an over familiarity with the scenes of a manger and the baby Jesus. So as we enter this Christmas season, and consider the incarnation of our Lord, I for one am happy that the Apostle John does not dwell in sentimentalism, but focuses on theology. Because though most people may think theology and doctrine sound dull and uninteresting, I believe that a proper understanding of the truth is the path to true joy.

The truth is that the Christmas story is not just a sentimental story of a baby born in a manger, but it’s the greatest love story ever told. In preparing this message, I thought of trying to find an example of a great love story in order to illustrate this passage, but I ended up discarding every possibility because they could not come close to the magnificence of the story of Jesus coming to earth in human form. Ironically, last night my daughter was watching a modern movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. But even though that story is often called the greatest love story of all time, it pales in comparison to the story we have in front of us.

In addition to being a great love story though, vs. 14 represents one of the greatest theological statements in the Bible. This entire prologue of John’s gospel is one magnificent presentation of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ. So far in our studies, we have seen that the Word was God, the Word was Light, and now today the Word became Flesh.

Now let me try to explain why this statement can be called the greatest love story of all time. But to do that we must go back once again to Genesis, to the creation account. In chapter 1, God said “let us make man in Our image, in Our likeness.” So God made man in the image and likeness of God. He made man spirit, soul and body, a triune being like God Himself. And then in John chapter 1, we see God making Himself in the image of man. “The Word, who was God, became flesh and dwelt among us.”

That in and of itself is a tremendous thought. That the eternal God who existed in the form of the Word, who was life, and was Light, who made all that was made in the universe, became a man. The question is why would the eternal, creator God stoop to become one of His creation?

Well, the answer I would suggest is illustrated in chapter 2 of Genesis, that after God had made man, God declared that it was not good for man to be alone. But after God made that statement, He did something interesting. God caused all the animals of the creation to parade before Adam so that Adam could name them. And in the process, something else was discovered by Adam. Gen.2:20 says, “but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.” Then once Adam realized that fact, then God put him to sleep and took a rib from his side and made woman for man.

Now that scene illustrates a great truth, I believe. I think that it illustrates why God made man to begin with. God existed before creating the heavens and the earth. And we don’t know of all that He created in eternity past, other than that He created the angels. By the way, the Bible doesn’t teach that all angels look alike. We do see that different types of angels were created for many different purposes. So we could speculate on what God might have created beyond what the Bible tells us, but I’m not sure that it would be profitable. However, suffice it to say that when God made trees He did not make just one type of tree, but thousands of types. When God made birds, He made thousands of different types of birds. And the same with all types of His creation; there is a multitude of diversity in each thing that God made. Even with people, there is great diversity. So we can assume that though we call them “angels” there is great diversity in that type of being. So contrary to popular images of angels, it’s not likely that they all look identical. However, the Bible does indicate that the number of angels correlates with the number of stars. Possibly billions of angelic beings. But beyond that we do not know what else God has created.

But what I think God is illustrating with Adam and the animals is that God viewed all of His creation in eternity past, and there was not found anyone suitable for Him. And in a manner of speaking, God decided that it was not good for Him to be alone. So God created man in His image, in His likeness. Another indication of this desire of God for a help mate is that in all of the rest of creation, He merely spoke and they came into being. But with man God bent down and formed man out of the ground with His hands. And then God put His mouth on man’s lips and breathed into him, and man became a living soul.

So creation itself was no less than a great act of love. The same thing is illustrated when God made woman from man. He does not just speak woman into existence, but He takes from Adam’s side a rib, and makes or literally the word is builds woman from that rib. So that woman was a part of man. Now the Bible is resplendent with imagery of the church being the bride of Christ, and Christ being the bridegroom. In chapter 3 of John, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the bridegroom and the church as His bride. Jesus Himself talks about the kingdom of God as the marriage supper of the Lamb. In Revelation 21 the angel shows John what he calls the bride of Christ, the church, spotless, having no spot or wrinkle, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. But probably the best passage that illustrates this principle is Ephesians 5, which talks about the way a husband must love his wife, and says in vs. 25-32, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 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.” So Paul is saying that human marriage is a picture of Christ’s marriage to the church, the bride of Christ. We are made from His body to be united with Him as one flesh, joined together with Him for eternity.

But looking back at Genesis again, we see that Adam and Eve enjoyed walking with the Lord and communing with God, having fellowship with God. But not long afterwards, they sinned by eating of the forbidden tree. And as God had promised, their spirit died. That part of their being that was in communion with God, that divine spark that they were created with was extinguished as the now sinful bride of God was removed from His holy presence. They were banned from the garden and they no longer were able to be in the light of His glory. Consequently, as their spirit died, their flesh soon followed after. And every offspring of Adam thereafter not only inherited his sinful nature, but he also inherited his mortality. But thank God for 1Cor. 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”

Now that brings us back to our text. Because God did still love the world. Specifically, He loved the human race. And He loves the human race so much that though His holiness and justice requires that man suffers the penalty of his sin by separation from the Life of God, yet His love found a way to satisfy that requirement. And God satisfies His judgment by the most incredible means possible. He becomes one of us. Man could not come to God, he could not bridge the chasm between God and man. He could not climb up to God, so God came down to man. Phl. 2:6-8 “[Jesus] who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. As we were first made in the image of God, so God must be made in man’s image in order to be the representative man who would be able to become man’s substitute, savior and high priest. Now that is love. We cannot imagine a love story to equal that story. If we were to imagine a king becoming a pauper so he could marry a peasant girl that would not come close to Christ’s love for the church. If we were to imagine a man blinding himself in order to be married to a blind bride that still would not rival this story. There is no greater story of love than to consider that the eternal God created man to be like Him, to be His mate, His companion, and then that mate rebelled and sinned against Him, and was expelled from His presence, only to have the same Holy God humble himself to take on sinful flesh so that He might die for His bride as her substitute. It’s beyond our comprehension.

So the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Even so He remains fully man and fully God. The deity of Christ is not diminished by His humanity, nor is His humanity overpowered by His deity. Because as John says, even though we beheld Him in human form, He retained His glory, and He was seen in His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

We need to explain that word glory. What is glory? When I was a kid growing up in an old country church, I used to hear sometimes one of the old timers yell out “glory!” when the preacher would really get them riled up or some singer would do a number. Never knew what it meant, but I it usually managed to snap me awake. Well, I’ll tell you what it means. There is a hint right there in the verse; it’s the word “dwelt”, or skenoo in the Greek. And it means tabernacled. You will remember that the tabernacle was the tent that God designed to house His glory when the children of Israel set out for the Promised Land. God dwelled in the tabernacle, and His shekinah glory indwelled the tent so that it lit up in the nighttime with the light of His presence.

So what John is saying here is that the Word was Light, the Light of the world, and He came into the world, becoming human, one of us, and His shekinah glory tabernacled among us in the human form of Jesus. Now John says we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And one explanation for that statement would be the transfiguration, when Jesus’ glory began to shine out of Him and the Father God rebuked Peter by saying “this is My beloved Son, listen to Him.”

But for even more insight into His glory we need to go back to Exodus 33 and 34, when Moses asked to see God’s glory. And God told Moses in Exo. 33:19-22 “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” Then the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.”

Now in the next chapter we see the Lord put Moses in the cleft of the rock as His glory passed by, but listen how God describes that glory. Not as a blinding light, but with words describing His attributes. Exo. 34:6-7 Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”

Now that’s incredible isn’t it? We know that there was also a great light because Moses came down from the mountain with a veil over his face because it shown so much the reflected glory of God that the people could not look at him. But when God describes passing His glory by Moses, He doesn’t describe the light, but with words describing His attributes. And what two attributes do we see on parade above all others? Grace and truth. The very same attributes John ascribes here in John 1:14, “and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

So how did John and the disciples primarily see the glory of God revealed in Jesus? By His attributes. He was holy and righteous, full of grace and truth. Though He was fully man, yet He was fully God and manifested the character of God in all that He did. So Christ’s attributes attested to His divinity as clearly as a blazing light from heaven.

Then in vs.15, the apostle also includes the testimony of John the Baptist as to Christ’s divinity. Listen to vs.15: John testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” You will remember the in the story of Jesus’ birth, Mary His mother visited Elizabeth who was already pregnant with John. So John was about 6 months older than Jesus. He was born before Jesus, and yet John is saying that Jesus existed before Him, that means that He was preexistent. Eternal. And immortality is another attribute of divinity. And John the Baptist adds that Christ had a higher rank than him. Jesus then was more than a great prophet, He was the Son of God. But the main point that the apostle makes from John’s statement is that Jesus existed before John being eternal in nature.

John continues this great love story in vs16. The eternal God became human flesh and we beheld His glory. So that we might receive that same glory. Vs.16, “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” Now what does this mean? Well let’s start with the word “fullness.” It is really referring back once again to His attributes, all the attributes of God, epitomized by grace and truth. John is saying Christ was fully God.

Paul says the same thing in Col. 2:9, “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” So Christ is fully God in human form. But then John says we received that fullness. We received God’s fullness? How does that work? It works because Christ died in our place to satisfy the justice of God, effectively purchasing us to become His bride, the church. That divine spark that was extinguished in the fall of the first Adam, was rekindled in the Light of the second Adam, when we believed on Him and received Him as our Savior, and we were remade in His righteousness, so that now the Spirit of God tabernacles within us. His Light in us gives us the Light of life so that our divine spark in reignited. The Word became flesh so that the glory of God might tabernacle in us. So that we might be like Him.

Eph. 1:22-23 says about the exalted Christ “And He (God) put all things in subjection under His (Christ’s) feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” Christ fills us with the fullness of the Spirit of God that we might exhibit the attributes of God to the world and so that we might be conformed to His image, made once more in the likeness of God. That we might become suitable unto Him as a help mate. That we might become His spotless bride.

So John says not only did we receive His fullness, but we received grace upon grace. Never ending grace is certainly one interpretation of that. Grace that never runs out. Grace that is greater than all our sins. But even more to the point, I think it means we not only receive the grace of our salvation, but then we receive the grace of our inheritance; that we shall rule and reign with Christ – as the bride of Christ we will sit on the throne next to Him and share in His glory. That shekinah glory of God that man could not look on and live, one day we shall share with Him. We will receive glory, glory like the glory that He has. 1John 3:2 “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” That is the epitome of the beatific vision, is it not? When we shall live forever in the light of His glory, so that His glory becomes our glory. That is the fullness of joy. And that is our inheritance. That is our future.

Up until that time, John says, “No one has seen God at any time.” God cannot be seen by any man while he is in sinful flesh. But we have seen Jesus, and if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father. Vs.18, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” The Greek word is exēgeomai, which means to unfold, or explain. It’s the word we get exegete from, which is the term we use to explain the style of preaching that I use. I attempt to unfold the word of God, explain it, expand it, unpack it. And that is what John says Jesus has done by coming in the flesh. First in vs.17 John says Jesus manifested God. Then in vs.18, Jesus exegetes God. The Word made flesh and dwelt among us, and then we beheld the glory of God in Him and through Him as He exhibited the attributes of God. And all of that is so that we might become like Him, to be united with Him as the church, the bride of Christ.

Well, that is enough for today. But let me leave you with this thought. The beginning of the Christmas season is called advent. But advent did not always mean the birth of Jesus. It simply means the coming of Jesus. And in the first centuries of the celebration of advent, they were looking forward to the imminent return of Christ, not looking back at His birth. I want to leave you this morning looking forward to the coming of Christ for His church, for His bride. That was the purpose of coming as a baby in a manger. To become tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin so that we might become the children of God, the body of Christ, even His church. Jesus is coming again. This time not in a manger but in the clouds. This time not in secret, but at the sound of trumpets. In the fullness of His glory. He is coming for His bride. I hope that He finds you ready to meet Him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Word was Light, John 1: 5-13

As we are still in the prologue of the book of John, I think it would help us to realize that John is not occupied with merely presenting a biography of Jesus. We are all, I’m sure, more or less familiar with the history of Jesus Christ. So to simply retell the story of Christ’s life on earth would have limited benefit. But what John is presenting in his gospel is doctrine: the facts about Jesus which according to his stated purpose in chapter 20:31, “have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”

So as we pointed out last time, John doesn’t start his gospel as a biography might begin – with the birth of Jesus – but he starts with the theology of Jesus; that He was in the beginning with God, and He was God. So in the first five verses, John establishes that in the beginning was God, and God was the Word, and the Word was life and the Word was Light.

Now last time we spent a lot of time talking about the significance of Jesus being called the Word. Today I would like to focus on the stated fact that Jesus, or the Word, was Light. I believe John as well as many other Bible writers give great emphasis to the fact that Christ is the personification of Light. In fact, Jesus Himself frequently applied that designation to Himself. For instance, in John 8:12, “Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’”

Interestingly, Jesus there presents the Light as being part of life, which is exactly how John presents it in vs4: “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” Now in order to understand the connection between life and light which both Jesus and John were speaking of, it’s necessary to once again go back to Genesis chapter one. In the creation account, we have not only a historical, factual record of the beginning of creation, but I believe there is incorporated in the story of creation an allegory which illustrates certain themes of salvation. So look at Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” So God was in the beginning, before time, existing in three persons who were one God. And we see all three in this passage; God the Father, the Spirit of God and the Word of God.

Now that was day one. God created the heavens and the earth, and they were formless and void, and the Spirit of God moved over them, and God said, or we could say the Word said, “let there be light.” And there was light in the darkness, and the light was good. God doesn’t say the darkness was good, but that the light was good.

But if you look down at day four, in vs.14, you notice that God made the sun and the moon and the stars. So the light that God made in the first day was not light which came from the sun, moon or stars, but light that emanated from somewhere else.   And to add even more mystery, in day three, God made plants and seeds and trees, which sprouted even though there was no sunlight at that time.

So what we can discern from this passage is that God existed in three persons, and the Word was life, creating the heavens and the earth, and the Word became Light, which was the light of the world, and it was a real light emanating from life which caused plants to sprout and life to exist. Science tells us that light is simply a visible form of energy. So you cannot have light without a source of energy, and what the Bible is teaching is that the energy of all life and producing light is none other than the Word of God who was with God and who was God.

So now we can understand the relationship of life and light as John said in vs. 4, “in Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” Because He was the life, nothing came into being without Him, nothing had life without Him. He is the source of life as Paul said in Acts 17:28, “for in Him we live and move and exist.”

John then is saying that the Word was life, He was the source of all life, He is spiritual life and physical life and God manifested that life as Light. First in creation, and secondly in the Word, and thirdly in salvation.

You don’t need to turn to it, as I’m sure you are all familiar with it, but in the third chapter of Genesis there is recorded the fall of man. God said if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will surely die. But we don’t see Adam and Eve fall down dead after biting into the fruit. But what we do see is God removing them from the Garden of Eden. He removed them from His presence and when man was removed from the source of life, the light went out and man died spiritually. That divine spark that man was made with, made in the image and likeness of God was extinguished. And man did surely die. I liken it to a potted plant that sits on your porch which flourishes when it is in the sun, but if you were to put it in your closet it would surely die. It may still look somewhat alive a few days later perhaps, but eventually it would shrivel up and die. And so with man, when he was removed from the Light of life, he shriveled up and died.

That is why God correlates darkness with man’s world without Christ. The scriptures use that description over and over again in both the Old and New Testaments to describe the world that we live in. For example, in the book of Job the world is pictured repeatedly as being in darkness, without understanding, without hope. And that lack of divine understanding is what darkness illustrates. We live in darkness, separated from God and from the life of God. We are lifeless, formless and void, without the light of God. But then God spoke, and said “let there be light, and the light shone in the darkness and separated the darkness, and it was good.”

Now last week we said about vs. 5 that some manuscripts translate the phrase as the darkness could not overpower it, rather than the KJV translation which says the darkness could not comprehend it. And there are merits to the first translation, as I pointed out last week. Light triumphs over darkness. Christ triumphs over darkness, ie, sin, the world, death and Satan. But there is also merit in translating it as comprehend. The darkness does not comprehend it, or apprehend it. And today we want to lean more in that direction because that is the idea presented it the following verses. The Light appears, shines in the darkness, but the world in darkness does not receive the Light, does not understand the Light, and ultimately rejects the Light.

This idea of comprehending the Light is evidenced further by John in vs. 10 and 11; “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.” See, that is saying that the world did not comprehend Him. They saw the Creator of the universe, the source of all life in human form, and did not understand Him, and ultimately rejected Him. Man was in darkness, and though the Light appeared, he did not accept it, did not understand it, and so turned from it to the darkness.

Now man’s lack of comprehension results in God’s compassionate desire to help men to believe in the Light. And to do that He raises up men to testify of the Light. Vs. 6. “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.” Were it not for the fact that St. John had just said the world did not comprehend the Light, we might wonder at the abruptness of the introduction of John the Baptist. But now we can understand that God sent John in order to bear witness of the Light. To explain the Light.

I think it was Matthew Henry who said, “That is indicative of the severity of the darkness and blindness of men that they needed a witness to the light.” And I agree that man’s depravity has blinded him to be able to see the Light. But I also think his depravity is so great that he rejects the Light because He doesn’t want to be ruled by the light. Back in Genesis 1 God said about the lights of heaven that they were to govern the day and govern the night. And I believe that indicates the contrary nature of man’s fall and of his rebellion. He wants to govern himself. He wants to decide what is right and what is wrong. God said the light is good. Man says I will decide what is good.

In John 3:19-20 Jesus said, “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.” See, man loves evil, so he loves the darkness. He doesn’t want anyone to be a ruler over him.

That love of darkness reminds me of the old song by Simon and Garfunkel, “The Sound of Silence.” The apostle Paul quoted Greek poets so I guess it’s ok if I quote modern poets. Now I doubt that Simon and Garfunkel intended their song to be meant in the way I understand it, but it’s interesting that the songwriter says, “Hello darkness my old friend…” Man loves darkness. He prefers it, welcomes it. And it’s even more interesting that Paul Simon correlates the sound of silence, the lack of speech as resulting in a darkness of life in which people lived without life, without words. It’s ironic that the great theologian John Calvin translated the Word in John 1 as Speech. Paul Simon describes this darkness as silence where words do not penetrate, though prophets warn of the peril of rejecting it. But the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made. His last two stanzas say; “Fools,” said I, “You do not know. Silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you.” But my words like silent raindrops fell And echoed in the wells of silence. And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made. And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming. And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls And tenement halls And whispered in the sounds of silence.”

Man rejects the light because he loves the deeds of darkness. I was talking with my daughter the other day about society and how the rejection of God’s law produces anarchy. The utter depravity of man is fully exposed when there is no fear of detection or punishment. That’s why when law and order breaks down there is chaos and rioting and looting. When people can act out there basest desires without fear of retribution society can quickly become a terrifying thing. And that is why the scriptures refer to us Christians as being salt and light in the world. The law of God stifles corruption, it acts as guard against anarchy. The light of God’s word drives back the darkness and keeps it from overpowering the creation.

So John was to be a witness of the Light; to testify of the Light. He was the first prophet to appear on the scene in 400 years. He was to prepare the people’s heart to receive the Light. And how did John do that? By preaching, “repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”   Man needed to repent of his evil deeds, his rebellion, his sin in order to receive the Light which leads to life.

Notice though the apostle John makes a point of saying John the Baptist was not the Light, but he was sent to bear witness of the Light. In other words, John the Baptist was one of the lights of heaven, bearing witness of the Light of God, reflecting the Light of God to the world by word and deed. John was like the light of the moon in comparison to the sun. He reflected the Light. He did not have light in and of himself, but he reflected the Light of Christ to the world.

And I want to point out another word in vs.6 that bears mentioning. And that is the word sent. John the Baptist was sent by God to bear witness. John is a model preacher. He was by all accounts a prophet of God. He did not tailor his message to the world. He did not survey the interests of society and then tailor his message to their perceived desires. But he preached a message from God to the world. He did not try to be popular. He did not rise to great prominence in order to have a huge church and draw attention to himself. But he said about Jesus; “He must increase, but I must decrease.” He simply preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I was talking with someone the other day about pastoring. And the conversation eventually ran the gamut from sizes of churches, to denominations, to what seminary someone had graduated from, and I said as far as I’m concerned, and I think I can say as far as God is concerned, there are only two characteristics that are important when it comes to pastors. One you have to be born again. I think that eliminates about half of the pastors in the United States right there. And at least half of the other half would be eliminated by the second requirement, which is that you have to be called by God. To use the apostle John’s words, you must be “sent by God.” I’m afraid there are a lot of people in pulpits today that are not sent by God. And it’s apparent because they don’t preach the gospel. If God calls you, then He will equip you. He is the one that gives us the Spirit to empower us, He is the source of our wisdom and discernment. And you can have all the tools and all the books and all the degrees and a huge building and all the acclaim of men but if you have not been called by God to preach the gospel then all those things are not going to be of any benefit to fulfilling the purpose of God. And furthermore, I cannot understand why Christians would want to sit under those pastors, but I guess it goes back to the principle that we love darkness rather than light, because the light exposes our evil deeds.

But whether or not you are called to be a pastor, all Christians are sent to be witnesses of the gospel. Matt. 5:14-16, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

All of us are to bear witness and testify to the Light of the gospel. Romans 10:14-15 says, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!”

Now though John introduces John the Baptist here, the emphasis is not really on him but on the Light. And so he goes on to say about the Light in vs. 9, “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” Now just as John the Baptist was a minor light, a reflection of Christ, so all the prophets of old were reflections of the light of heaven. And I believe that there was a degree of light that came through the Word given through the prophets, which became the Old Testament scriptures. I also believe that even as Genesis 1 illustrated, there was the light of creation which Paul said in Romans 1 was enough to teach man that there was an eternal God. Paul said in Rom. 1:20, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” That was the Light of the world seen through creation that enlightens every man.

But in the next verse Paul says that though they recognized that it was divine light, they rejected it and were plunged into ever greater darkness. Rom. 1:21 “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

Thus we see in Matthew’s gospel a quote from the prophet Isaiah referencing the advent of Christ as being like a great light coming to a people living in darkness. Matt. 4:15-16 “THE LAND OF ZEBULUN AND THE LAND OF NAPHTALI,BY THE WAY OF THE SEA, BEYOND THE JORDAN, GALILEE OF THE GENTILES– “THE PEOPLE WHO WERE SITTING IN DARKNESS SAW A GREAT LIGHT,AND THOSE WHO WERE SITTING IN THE LAND AND SHADOW OF DEATH,UPON THEM A LIGHT DAWNED.” This great light spoken of by the prophets was none other than the Light of the world. The Light of Life. Jesus Christ.

But as vs.10 and 11 tell us, the Light came into the world that existed through Him, and it did not receive Him. “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.” Paul said virtually the same thing in 1Cor. 2:14, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”

Actually, that’s what I think Genesis 1 is indicating when it says after the heavens and the earth was created but they were in darkness, that the Spirit of God moved upon the waters and then the Light appeared. Though the Light has come into the world, it is necessary for the Spirit of God to move on the hearts of men if they are going to receive Christ. Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Now God draws people in many ways, but one way is through the witness and testimony of His people, particularly His preachers. God has ordained that by the foolishness of preaching men would be saved. 1Cor. 1:21 “For since in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

And that leads us to the conclusion of this paragraph concerning the Light of the world, in vs.12-13. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” So this is where the will of man and the sovereignty of God come together. Man is rebellious and depraved, rejecting the rule of his Lord, rejecting the Light of the truth for the sake of loving his own sin and wickedness. But the Light of God persists, piercing the darkness, the Spirit of God moves upon his heart in conjunction with the preaching of the gospel by the witnesses of the Light, and some believe and receive Him and are saved.

There is on the one hand the responsibility of man to respond and receive the Light, and on the other hand the necessity for God to extend unto man the grace to believe the gospel. And the outcome is that man when man believes and receives Christ he is born again, moved from darkness into light, from death to life, reborn spiritually whereas he was previously dead in his trespasses and sins. When we receive the Light, the Light produces life, spiritual life, eternal life. We are made alive with Christ. We are made a new creation. We walk no more in darkness but in life. Eph. 5:8 “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light.”

To those who receive the Light, we are now made children of Light, even children of God. Not by blood, that is by human lineage. Not by heredity. Not by the will of the flesh. That is not by self effort to become righteous. Nor by the will of man, not by the decree of man, the decree of a priest or church or institution. But by the will of God. God is the giver of life, and He gives it to whoever believes in the Son of God, whoever receives Him. To receive Christ as our Savior and our Lord, and as our God. That’s what it means to receive Christ. To know Him, to accept Him and trust Him. To know all that He is, and all that He is to be, to believe it, and then to trust Him. To trust in His atonement for our sin. To trust Him to raise us from the dead. To know that Christ is good, even as God said the light was good. And we can yield completely our lives to the very source of life and then walk in the Light, even as He is in the Light. 1John 1:7, “if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

I will just close by asking one question; have you received the Light of the world? Have you been born again into spiritual life as a child of God? As many as receive Christ, to them God gives the right to be the children of God. That is a promise of life that lies waiting for you to accept, if you will just accept who He is and trust Him with your life. Don’t reject him and stay in the darkness.   Come to the Light.