This miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is probably one of the best known miracles in the Bible. Perhaps that’s because it is the only miracle that is presented in all four gospels. And as such it is perhaps difficult to provide new insight that hasn’t already been presented elsewhere at some point in the past. But that’s not really my job anyway. A pastor’s job is not to try to find out new information, or a new perspective and show everyone how smart he is because he has something different. But the pastor’s job is just to present the old, old story – to a new audience. So I probably won’t have anything new to say this morning, but I do hope that God will provide the impetus of the Holy Spirit through the Word, so that it will come home to you in a practical way.

The danger of familiarity is that we can lose sight of the practicality and the purpose, and think we already know the answers. It’s like the little boy who was asked what his favorite Bible story was. He said, “I like the one where everyone loafs and fishes.” He was familiar with the story, but he misunderstood the meaning. Maybe some of you may have that kind of familiarity. I know I do. I grew up in the church. Literally. My dad was a pastor. I was born while he was at Bible college. I grew up attending church about 4 times a week. Back in those days, they used to give you a little pin for attending Sunday School if you attended every Sunday during the year without missing one. And each year thereafter you got another pin that hung off the bottom of the primary pin. It was like a medal, that had a ribbon added every year that you were in attendance every Sunday. By the time I was a teenager, I had about 13 little ribbons on my pin. I was like a Sunday School hero.

But growing up in the church has it’s downside. One was I knew all the songs in the hymnbook by heart. But the downside was I learned them before I could read. So in later years I discovered that some of the lyrics to songs were quite a bit different than what I thought they were. For instance, it was a few years before I realized it was “blessed assurance, Jesus is mine” and not “blessed insurance, Jesus is mine.” I had heard what I thought were the words, but turns out I was substituting another word that sounded like it, but had a different meaning.

Maybe that illustrates the difficulty in coming to familiar passages of scripture. We think we know the words, but we may have missed the meaning. So rather than give you some new geography insights, or historical insights, or even theological insights, I want to just focus on the purpose of the miracle this morning, and make sure that we all have the right message.

This is the fourth miracle that John presents in his gospel. And yet at this point in Christ’s life, Jesus has been in public ministry about 2 years. So John leaves a lot out. In fact, since the end of chapter five, it’s probably been at least 6 months to a year that has elapsed. But the miracles that John does give us are strategically presented in order to illustrate his stated purpose found in the 20th chapter. John 20:30-31 “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 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.”

So that’s the purpose of this miracle. It’s to teach us that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that if you believe in Him, receive Him, then you will have life though Him. That is the summary of John’s opening thesis of chapter one where he sets forth the theology and doctrine of Christ whom he calls the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And then he says that in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

You should know by now the principle that I state almost every week – that every physical miracle presented in the gospel is given to illustrate a spiritual principle. And that is especially true of this event. There have been many misinterpretations of this miracle over the centuries. Not the least of which is that of a social gospel, the idea that this presents a template for what the church is to be about; feeding the hungry. Or another favorite interpretation of Sunday school teachers, that it teaches little boys that we need to share, and if we share, then we contribute to the accomplishment of the purpose for which Christ came; to make us nicer, more gentle, giving people, and to make the world a better place.

But the fact is, that Jesus took care of natural needs only as a means to take care of spiritual needs. I have to be constantly reminded of this myself as I go through life. I tend to focus on the physical, on the immediate, and I lose sight of the spiritual. But what this miracle illustrates is that Jesus did not come to set up a physical kingdom on earth, where peace and goodwill would prevail. That is exactly what He took great pains to avoid, as you can see in the last section of this passage. Look at vs.15, “So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.”

Jesus didn’t come to set up a physical kingdom, where He would provide universal health care, and universal welfare. People will vote for that kind of king. But Jesus didn’t come to establish an earthly kingdom, or overthrow a political empire. Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom. So whatever He did in the physical, was designed to serve that purpose, and no other.

And as Christians, we need to be reminded of that. Christ always sought to expound the spiritual principle through the physical illustration, and not vice a versa. So when Christ works in our lives, it’s to promote spiritual growth, not physical growth. There may be times when He works in the physical, but it’s to bring about a spiritual transformation. It’s not just for physical comfort or success or profit, or just to make life more enjoyable. That’s how we get the cart before the horse.

But the fact that Jesus is also compassionate towards our physical needs goes without saying. These people were hungry and so Jesus is concerned about that and wants to provide for their needs. But there is a big difference between God supplying our needs and supplying our wants. Our wants never get satisfied. And God will not serve our wants. But He does promise to provide for our needs.

The multitude may have been following Jesus for less than perfect reasons, but He was still compassionate towards them, and so He feeds them physically, but as a means of feeding them spiritually. That’s what we really see going on here. It says in Luke 9:11, that when Jesus saw the crowds following Him, “He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing.” In effect, His miracles were designed to teach them that He was the source of all life, even the Son of God. That’s what it means to teach them about the nature of the kingdom of God. But as is often the case, the people were a little short sighted. Most of them really only cared about the immediacy of the miracles and the signs that He was doing.

But it shows the mercy and compassion of God towards sinners that Christ does not rebuke them, knowing their lack of spiritual insight. But rather He continues to be gracious to sinners, in order to open their eyes to the truth. Romans 2:4 says that the kindness of God is designed to lead us to repentance. God is gracious and compassionate and kind, even towards sinners who are selfish, or motivated by self serving reasons. Paul said in Titus 3:4 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.”

So Jesus has already determined that He is going to feed the multitude, but He’s going to do it in such a way as to teach some important spiritual lessons. And so He turns His attention first to His disciples. That’s the first principle. That if we are going to change the world, it starts with us that are saved. It starts with the church. God wants to include us in the building of the kingdom of God. Why? Because I believe that this is merely practice for what we will be doing in eternity when we rule and reign with Christ in His kingdom. He wants to teach us and prepare us now for the day when we will be exalted to sit with Him on His throne in His kingdom.

Jesus turns to Philip in vs.5 and says, “‘Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat?’ This He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do.” Now understand something. When it says that Jesus said this to test him, it doesn’t mean to trick him, or to embarrass him by asking him a question that he knew he would get wrong. Jesus isn’t like our old high school teachers who liked to ask us questions when they knew we hadn’t done our homework. The idea of testing is to prove something. To prove that something works as it was designed to work. David, you will remember, said about Saul’s armor that he had not tested it, or proven it. That means he had not tried it out and knew that he could depend on it in a fight. Jesus wants to prove or test Philip’s faith. And maybe sometimes that means He has to stretch our faith. He presents an obstacle, and gives us the leeway to tackle that obstacle, not to watch us fail, but to show us the way that He wants us to overcome it. At the time, it may seem impossible, and we might not handle it right, but the divine purpose is to teach us to be overcomers, and that nothing is impossible with God, when it is God’s will.

Philip though pulls out his calculator. He is a practical guy. Maybe he was an accountant in his old life. But irregardless, he is practical. He does the math, and says, “Listen Lord, if we had 200 days worth of wages, we couldn’t buy enough bread to give everyone here a snack.” By the way, Matthew says in Matt.14:19, that there were 5000 men, not including women and children. So there were probably 15000 people in attendance. A denarius was a day’s wage for a Roman soldier, so we could estimate that equates to about $20,000 by today’s standards. Philip says we don’t have nearly enough money to feed these people. He was practical, but he was missing the point.

The point Jesus wanted to make was that it was impossible. Not practical, nor possible, but impossible. That’s the whole point of the gospel. It’s impossible for us to be reconciled to Christ. Our sins have created a chasm between us and God that cannot be jumped across. God gave us the law to show us that it was impossible to achieve God’s standard of righteousness. So God made the impossible possible through the impractical; holy, righteous God became sin for us, that we might be made righteous through Him.

Now in Mark’s gospel, chapter 6 we read that Jesus tells the disciples to go into the crowd and see if they could find some food. And when they come back Andrew reports that there is only one boy’s lunch, which is five barley loaves and two fish. But that only further emphasizes the impossibility of the situation. “What is that for so many people?”

Now a lot of commentators want to disparage the disciples for their lack of spiritual comprehension. Personally, I cringe whenever I hear preachers disparage the disciples, as if to say if they were there, they would have had all spiritual discernment. They wouldn’t have been like those knucklehead disciples who couldn’t see the forest for the trees. But I prefer to think we should give the disciples the benefit of the doubt. If Andrew didn’t have any faith, then I don’t think that he would have offered Jesus the boy’s lunch. I think he would have looked at that lunch and said, “there is no need to bring this to Jesus.” But I think there is a hint of a little faith here.

And let me tell you some good news. God can use a little faith. I preached last Wednesday on Psalm 121, and I never got past the first verse which was “I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains, from where comes my help?” And if you were there then you will remember that I used that as a pretext to go to Zechariah 4, where God tells Zerubbabel that the rebuilding of the temple will not be accomplished by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord. And then the Lord goes on to say that he is not to despise the day of small things, but He will make this great mountain into a plain. Now I don’t want to go off on another tangent on that passage, but the point that I want to make is that God doesn’t despise small things, and He can use small things to move impossible mountains. Not by might, not by power, but by His Spirit.

In Matthew 17:20, there was a demon that the disciples could not cast out, and Jesus said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” The point is, a mustard seed is the smallest seed in the garden, and yet even faith of that small size, when it is faith in the right source, can move mountains. And nothing will be impossible with God.

Andrew had a little bit of faith. And the little boy had a little bit of lunch. But it was still an impossible situation. And Jesus wants to illustrate that even more. So He says, “have the people sit down.” It was a grassy knoll there, and the other gospels tell us that Jesus said to make the people sit in groups of 50 or 100. I like that. It shows Jesus had a sense of humor. Tell 12 disciples to go into a crowd of 15000 people and get them to sit down in groups of 50 on the ground. That’s 300 blocks of 50 people. That’s like a miracle in of itself to get that many people organized and quieted down and seated in rows. I think that was another test of faith. But the disciples didn’t object, they didn’t complain, and they got it done. They had enough faith to be obedient, even when it didn’t make sense or they didn’t understand it or it wasn’t easy.

Listen, that’s an important principle. When you are faced with an impossible situation, don’t start running around in circles like a chicken with it’s head cut off crying that the sky is falling. Go to God with what little faith you have, trust God to deal with the impossibility, and then just do what He tells you to do. Do what you know you are to do. Let me put that in practical terms for you. When your life is in chaos, don’t stop coming to church. Find your place in the congregation, sit down, and put yourself under subjection to God in spite of the difficulty. Be obedient to what God has already told you to do. Don’t stop praying, don’t stop reading your Bible. Order your life under the authority of God and make yourself ready to trust in God’s providence.

So Jesus takes the food in His hands and blesses it and breaks it and gives it to the disciples to distribute to the crowd. John doesn’t say that He gave it to the disciples, but the other gospels do. Again and again, you see Jesus using the disciples. But notice that He blesses the food, He gives thanks. He is giving thanks to illustrate that God is providing the miracle of feeding the multitude. Jesus isn’t doing this for His sake. If He were hungry He would not have created food for Himself. Satan tempted Him with that in the wilderness and Jesus rebuked him by saying, “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Jesus is doing this to glorify God, and to feed these people spiritually.

By the way, I hope you are in the habit of blessing your food before you eat. Jesus did it as an example to us, that we should give thanks in all things. Give thanks when you have but a little and God will multiply His blessings unto you. And don’t be ashamed to do it publicly as a testimony to others. That’s what Jesus was doing.

So how did Jesus feed 15000 people from 5 loaves and two fish? Well, he obviously created food already cooked and ready to be eaten. That’s what they call in the military MRE’s. Meals Ready to Eat. But I bet you Jesus’ meal tasted a whole lot better than the military version. Anyhow, the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how the miracle happened. But what it does tells us is the result of the miracle. Everyone ate until they were full. And the disciples gathered up 12 baskets of leftovers. John 1 told us that Jesus made everything in creation. So that is exactly what is being illustrated here. Jesus is manufacturing fish and bread out of His hands, and giving to the disciples and they give it to the people.

The how of the miracle is not as important as the why of the miracle. One thing that was being taught was that someone greater than Moses was here. That is what they meant in vs.14 which says, “Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, ‘This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.’” What they are referring to is the prophecy made by Moses in Deut. 18:15 who said, ”The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.” Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and fed them with manna and quail for 40 years. But of course, Moses didn’t feed them himself, God rained down manna from heaven. Now they see Jesus, manufacturing bread and fish out of His hands to feed 15000 people. The parallel was apparent. This was the prophet that Moses spoke of. This was the Messiah. So their impulse was to make Him their king, thinking that He would overthrow their oppressors the same way that Moses did.

But that was not God’s purpose in doing the miracle. Yes, it was to confirm that someone greater than Moses was here. The Messiah was here. The kingdom of God was at hand. But not a physical kingdom, but a spiritual kingdom. Jesus told Pilate in John 18:36 “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”

So if Jesus did not come to establish a physical kingdom, then what was He coming to do? Jesus will say later in chapter 6 vs.35 “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” The real significance of the miracle is to illustrate that Jesus is the bread of life, the source of spiritual life. That is how He establishes a spiritual kingdom, by transferring sinners from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God through the forgiveness of their sins. He is the bread of life that was given for us.

My wife is the baker around our house, I am not. But I do know that to make bread there are certain things you have to do. The grain that grows in the field must be cut down. The grain must be crushed under the grinding stone to make flour. And then that flour is mixed with oil, and then baked in an oven. And all of that pictures the life and suffering of our Lord Jesus. So when the Lord says, “I am the bread of God that comes down from heaven,” or “I am the bread of life,” we need to understand the process by which bread becomes bread. And Jesus becomes bread by virtue of the fact that he gives his life for us. So it is a lesson in the sufficiency of our Lord for salvation. In order for him to become bread He must be cut down and crushed, He had to be filled with the Spirit of God, and He also bear the punishment of God for sin — the fire of God’s wrath on sin. He must be baked in the oven of God’s wrath, executing penalty upon Him for our sins.

Isaiah 53 records the beautiful prophecy concerning Jesus doing just that. It says “For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground….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.”

So the significance of the miracle was to show the impossibility of man’s situation; that man was without hope, cut off from God, cut off from the source of life, and unable to accomplish his own deliverance. There was no way to provide for what was lacking. Spiritually speaking, we were starving, facing an impossible barrier, an impossible mountain that we could not overcome. But God in His compassion and mercy sent Jesus to offer Himself as the bread of life, as our substitute, that by faith in Him, even a little faith, by believing in Him; believing what the Bible said about Him and what He was claiming to be, believing His teaching and His works, by even a little faith, we are able to partake of that bread and receive life.

Salvation, as I’ve said over and over again, is by repentance and faith. Repentance is simply acknowledging your sin, your inability to attain the righteousness that God requires. Repentance is coming face to face with the impossibility of your situation, and recognizing that Jesus is your only hope. And then the second step is faith. Your faith is just a willingness to believe that He is sufficient to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That He is God and the source of life eternal. By simple faith and repentance you receive Him, just as the multitude ate of the meal and were satisfied, Jesus is the bread of life that satisfies forever. You will never hunger for righteousness again. Because Jesus is the source of spiritual life.

Listen, there are a lot more applications that I could make from this miraculous event. Most of which I’m sure you probably have heard before. But what I want to express to you today above all else is that the gospel is for lost people. It is for broken people. The gospel is for destitute people, hopeless people. Jesus did a lot of things in that miracle to emphasize the hopelessness of their situation. I think He even planned it so that they would be far away from every source of food so that they would realize the hopelessness of the situation. Jesus came to save sinners. He came to seek and to save those that are lost. He did not come to make good people better. He came to make sinners righteous by the grace of God, because of the compassion of God towards man.

And that primary application demands a response from you. Have you received the bread of life? Have you tasted and seen that the Lord is good? Have you received the forgiveness of your sins and been clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ? Listen, no amount of money could purchase the bread that was needed to feed that multitude. Jesus gave it without charge, without cost, so that whoever would receive it might receive life, and be filled abundantly.

There is one other obvious application as well which must be made and that is the involvement of the disciples. When Jesus had witnessed to the woman at Samaria in chapter 4, He sent the disciples away to buy food in town. And when they came back, urging Him to eat, He told them that He had food to eat that they did not know about. He said in vs. 54, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”

And that principle is laid out for us here in this passage through the disciples. He wants them to do even as He did in Samaria. He wants them to find spiritual food in feeding others. And when they do that, they end up with 12 baskets left over. Twelve baskets for 12 disciples. That was the disciples’ spiritual food. In doing the will of God, God provided more than enough for their own needs. Each of them ended up with their own basket filled with provisions. So for us that are Christians, our job is to be obedient, even as the disciples were, and feed His sheep. And when we do that, we will find food for our souls, and life for our spirit.

I want to close this service today by asking you once again, have you eaten of the bread of life? He was broken for you. God loved you so much that He sent Jesus to be broken and bruised, to bear your sins upon the cross so that you might know the forgiveness of sins and receive eternal life. Have your received Jesus as your Savior? He says, “eat, drink, this is My body, which is broken for you.” You can’t do anything to earn salvation, or buy it, or try to find it on your own. But what you can do is come in faith to Christ as your Savior and the source of all life, and you will find spiritual life in Him. Do it today. It’s already bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ, and He offers it to you as a free gift today. Receive Him, eat the bread of life and live.

As we continue in this study of the fifth chapter of John, I would remind you of the claims that Jesus made concerning Himself in the second half of this chapter. They really are amazing. He claims to be the Son of God, equal with God, the One sent by the Father, the source of eternal life, the one in perfect unity with the Father, the judge of all the world, and that He would raise all the dead in the earth either to stand in judgment before Him, or that He would give them eternal life. Now those are exceptional claims. No man in history has ever made such outrageous claims.

As I said last week, Jesus was either the Son of God as He claimed, or He was a lunatic and a blasphemer deserving of being locked up or executed. But there is no middle ground. He could not be just a good teacher, or a good man, or just a prophet. He was either God incarnate, or a complete fraud. Jesus doesn’t give us any other choice.

It’s no wonder really, that the Jews were skeptical of Christ’s claims. Couple His claims with a lack of prestige or pedigree, and you can almost understand the animosity towards Jesus by the Jewish establishment. But I say almost understand because in reality there were many accompanying signs which should have verified who He claimed to be. The fact is, that the evidence for Him as the Messiah was overwhelming, but they choose not to believe in Him, because He did not fit into their template for how they wanted the Messiah to operate. It’s almost as if God sent Jesus to be the Messiah, and they looked Him over pretty good, examined His resume, and said, “No thanks. He’s not what we’re looking for right now.” And so John says in vs.18, that the Jews were already conspiring to kill Him. Not only did they not accept Him, but they believed the best way to get rid of Him was to murder Him. Pretty amazing really. They hated Him without cause. Without proper justification. They hated Him simply because He did not fit into their plans for self-aggrandizement.

The first part of the chapter illustrates their attitude perfectly. Jesus healed a paralyzed man who had been sick for 38 years and all they seemed to care about was that Jesus healed him on the Sabbath Day. They really didn’t care about the sick man or the Sabbath Day. They just wanted to exercise their power and position over Jesus and the traditions of the Sabbath served their purpose. They really wanted Jesus to have to submit to them instead of them submitting to Christ.

That’s not just an exclusively first century bad attitude, by the way. That’s a common 21st century bad attitude as well. We still have people who want Christ to serve them, rather than to submit to serve Christ. People may be willing to believe in Christ, but they want to limit Him to serving their agenda, to helping them achieve their goals, their happiness, their success. Rather than understanding that the crux of the gospel is the cross of the gospel. And as Jesus went to the cross for us, so we are to go to the cross for Jesus, sacrificing our world, our goals, our priorities for the sake of Christ. So we have the same problem today that the religious Jews had in that day. A convoluted, self serving sense of entitlement at the expense of Christ.

So Jesus made these outrageous claims, in effect saying that He was equal with God, and now in verses 31-47 He is going to present validation for His claims. And to do so, to establish His deity, He is going to put forth five witnesses. That was in keeping with the law, by the way. The law said in Deuteronomy 19:15, that every word was to be corroborated by 2 or 3 witnesses. In other words, in a court of law, in order to establish truth, there must be at least 2, or better yet 3 witnesses to validate one’s statement as truth. So Jesus is upholding the law here and actually exceeding the requirements of the law. by offering multiple testimonies to His deity.

But I have to say as I have studied John’s writings over the years, I’ve often struggled with his writing style. I get the sense sometimes that he is overlapping things or being repetitive in laying out certain principles. And I have to admit sometimes I am almost frustrated by it. I kind of want to move the pace along a little bit. But as I was thinking about this style that he seems to have, I found myself comparing John’s writing style to something which is called in engineering terms, redundancy. According to Wikipedia, in the field of engineering, redundancy is the duplication of critical components or functions of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the form of a backup or fail-safe. So redundancy is very important in engineering things like airplanes. When you are 30,000 feet in the air in a tin can going 600 miles an hour, it is comforting to know that the essential hydraulics and components of the engine have redundant features. So if one system should fail, there is at least one or two more that are designed to sustain the aircraft. Redundancy may produce a more complicated system, but it generally produces a more reliable system.

And perhaps that is what John does with His gospel. He takes the essential doctrines of the gospel, and overlaps principles or evidences or witnesses in such a way as to provide a fail safe salvation. It provides for a faith that will prove to be reliable, no matter how great the stress that is placed upon it. And that should be a comfort to us as we go forward in his gospel. Sometimes as we study it, it may seem complicated, but I hope when you feel that way you will remember that the principle of redundancy is there for your safe keeping.

So John is going to be somewhat redundant in this passage in order to verify the claims of Christ, upon which we base our faith, and thus our salvation. And so he records several testimonies or witnesses of Christ. And the first witness that Jesus mentions is that of His own testimony. He gave witness of Himself as we read in vs.19-30. In them He makes the claims that we enumerated earlier which are all statements reserved for deity. But Jesus says that they don’t accept them as true. And so Jesus sets His own testimony aside, because He knows that they will not admit His testimony alone as legal proof. However, of course we know that His testimony is true, just as we know His words are true, because the Spirit says amen in our hearts. But these men who don’t know God, do not have the Spirit of God, and so they do not know the truth, nor recognize the truth. They were blind to the truth, even as Paul said in 2 Cor. 4:3-4 “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case 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.”

I’ve noticed this phenomenon myself from time to time. I can preach a truth until I’m blue in the face and not get any response but some sort of vague skepticism. But then someone in the church hears another preacher say something similar, and they accept that as the truth. I don’t know what to attribute that to. I guess it’s just a natural skepticism on the part of man or inability to recognize truth as truth.

The second witness that Jesus presents is that of the Father. In vs.32, Jesus says, “There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.” Now He is going to go on in the next verse to the witness of John the Baptist. But in vs.32, He is speaking of His Father. And he picks up this witness of the Father again in vs. 37, “And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form.”

Now how did God bear witness of Jesus? Through multiple dispensations. There were several instances at His birth when angels who are the messengers of God spoke concerning Him as being born of the Spirit of God, as the Son of God and as the Savior of the world. And God appointed a special star to shine out of heaven to guide the wise men to birth of the King of the Jews so that they could worship Him. Then there was the Spirit of God in the form of a dove descending upon Him at His baptism in fulfillment of prophecy. And there was the voice of God declaring “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” So God the Father bore witness of Christ’s deity.

The third witness Jesus brings forth was that of John the Baptist. Vs.33, “You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth.” Now John was an important witness, and yet Jesus says in the next verse that He did not receive the testimony of man. What does He mean by that? He means that God is self sufficient. He does not need the testimony of man to validate Himself. Christ needs no letters of recommendation from man – He is able to establish His own credentials. But He includes John’s testimony so that they might be saved. So then, He brings up John not to prove Himself, but as a benefit for our salvation. God has ordained that by the foolishness of preaching we are saved. And God has chosen to use men to preach the gospel to other men, so that they might believe. He includes John’s testimony for our sake, and not for His own.

He goes on to say that John was a lamp that was burning, and they were able to rejoice for a while in that light. They received for a while the ministry of John. It was a novelty in their minds, he was popular for a while. But because they did not truly believe his testimony, they eventually grew tired of him. But Christ says that His testimony was greater than the lamp of John, because He was the light. John was a lamp in which the light was reflected. But Jesus is the Light of the world, that sets ablaze the lamps of men. Jesus’ testimony is greater than John’s testimony even as the light is greater than the lamp. But nevertheless, God uses lamps to draw men to Himself so that they might be saved. God has designed you to be a lamp as well. You are to reflect the light of Christ in your life that men might see your light and be drawn to Christ. We are told not to hide our lamp under a bushel, but set it on a hill that men might see the light of salvation and the result of that salvation reflected in us.

The fourth witness then which is greater than the witness of John was the works of Christ. Vs. 36 “But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish–the very works that I do–testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.”

Now we know that the Jews knew that Jesus did the works of God, by the testimony of one of their own and that was Nicodemus whom we were introduced to in chapter 3. Remember Nicodemus said in 3:2, “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.” They knew that He did miracles that only God could do, and so He had to be of God. And yet they still planned to kill Him. That’s why I said last week that I am convinced that the Jews knew that He was the Son of God, and yet they still wanted to kill Him because He did not fit into their religious paradigm which was designed to promote themselves. That is a damning accusation, and as such it is more than enough justification for God’s judgment to fall upon Israel as it did in AD 70.

So the miracles and works that Jesus did were testimony to the fact that He was God incarnate. John the Baptist didn’t do any miracles. Did you ever think of that? God designed that John would simply preach the gospel of repentance. The miracles Jesus did were evidence that He was the Son of God. The miracles that the apostles did were evidence that they were spokesmen for the Son of God, appointed for the foundation of the gospel. Paul said in 2Cor. 12:12 “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.” Are there true apostles today? I would say there is not. They were specially commissioned men who had been with Christ that were given attesting miracles to show the veracity of the word of Christ that they were speaking.

So then we might wonder if God is doing miracles today? I would say a resounding yes. But I would add the caveat that God does not work through apostles any more, and He has not appointed certain people to be healers. He may heal as He sees fit, but the purpose of that healing is not to validate the word of God, nor to validate a person as a spokesman of God. God has sufficiently done that through Christ, through the apostles and His word is established and verified and sealed as being true. It does not need continual verification by miraculous means. But yet God may still heal as He sees fit.

I remember a service we had on the beach last summer, and afterwards a woman came up to me and said that she had recently been diagnosed with stage four cancer. She was a believer, yet she wasn’t coming to me for healing, but simply to ask for prayer and to let me know that she desired to live out her remaining days for the glory of God. I prayed with her there on the beach, and I asked that God would grant her wish that her life would bring glory to God, and that if it was His will, that He would heal her. Well, that lady’s name is Pat Nordstrom. And I can tell you that today this woman is cancer free. I don’t know how or claim to have anything to do with it. I am not a healer. Lot’s of people besides me I’m sure were praying for this lady. But I will tell you that God healed this woman, and that all the glory goes to God. And today she is very involved in a Christian ministry. So God heals as He sees fit.

But I also will tell you another story. I was at a pastor’s conference a few years ago. And a missionary from Africa spoke there and he began telling stories of an evangelistic campaign that he was a part of to many villages that had not had the gospel presented to them before. And at one point of that ministry he said there was an entire village that accepted Jesus as their Savior. And in this large conference in which were over 1000 pastors, I heard a few isolated “amens” sound out as he described the conversion of an entire village. But as he continued his message he talked of another village in which they were baptizing people who had become saved. And as the townspeople were standing beside the river, one of the women supposedly realized that her baby had died. And the pastors called the woman to come into the river, and when the baby touched the water, the baby supposedly came back to life. And when the missionary reported this, the entire 1000 attendees stood to their feet and gave a standing ovation.

Now I found the story skeptical to begin with. But what I found even more ironic was that when an entire village was saved from eternal damnation, hardly a few grunts and amens emitted from the crowd. But when one baby was supposedly brought back to life, all 1000 men jumped to their feet and applauded. Now what is the greater miracle, I ask? To give physical life to one child, or eternal life to an entire village? What should we be excited about? A physical healing or a spiritual healing? I would remind you of the two healings we have looked at so far in John, that Jesus made sure that they were spiritually healed and not just physically healed. Christ always sought to expound the spiritual principle through the physical illustration, and not vice a versa.

The fifth witness that Christ brings forth is the testimony of scripture. Vs. 38 “You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” What was amazing about this statement was that the Jews were the custodians of the scriptures. They of all the people in the earth had been given the word of God and were supposed to be stewards of it. Yet though they physically possessed the scriptures, they did not spiritually possess it. God wrote the law upon tablets of stone, but He desired to write it upon the tablets of the heart.

That is speaking of salvation by the way. Jesus will say in the next chapter in John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” When the word of God is combined with the quickening power of the Spirit of God, then it brings about spiritual life. Jesus gave a parable concerning the soils, and He said that the seed was the word of God and some fell on good soil and some fell on bad soil. That soil which was good caused the seed to spring up into life, producing fruit, which was spiritual life. These men were those who were illustrative of bad soil, on which the seed fell but did not remain. So that Jesus says they didn’t have the word abiding in them. And they didn’t have spiritual life because they did not receive Jesus whom God had sent.

Ironically, they searched the scriptures, they memorized the scriptures, they knew the scriptures backwards and forwards. And because they knew them, they thought that they had eternal life. They saw the rules and the laws and read ordinances between the lines and found symbolism in every syllable, and they thought that they could do the things of the law and find righteousness, thereby earning eternal life. But they missed the point of all the scriptures. The scriptures present Jesus Christ from Genesis to Malachi, and yet they did not see Him. They saw only themselves as being more righteous and honorable and deserving than others, and so they missed the entire point of the scriptures. So in vs.40 Jesus says that you missed out on eternal life, because you do not come to Him who is the source of eternal life. He is not talking so much about ignorance, as about their will. Their was ample evidence, but the problem was that they were not willing.

I think that is true of all men that reject Christ. It is not that there is not ample evidence of God that men and women become atheists. It is because they do not want to have this Man rule over them. Men and women today champion independence as a virtue. While that may be true of nations, it is fatal for individuals. Our total salvation is dependent upon being dependent upon Christ. That is one of the reasons we go to church by the way. We go to church to declare publicly our dependence upon God. Those that claim to believe in God and yet will not bow to depend upon God, and declare that dependence in the congregation must still be intractable in their independence from God.

Note that is what Jesus continually asserts He cannot nor will not do. He is never independent from God. What God does, He does. What God says, He says. They are unified, but never acting independent. And by the way, that is the purpose of the Holy Spirit as well. So many Christians today seem to think that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, and that was replaced and done away with by Jesus Christ, who is the God of love. And now that Christ has gone into heaven, He has given us the Holy Spirit, who is the God of experience. So when some spiritual experience happens in the Christian realm, whether at church or a concert or crusade or whatever, they attribute such things to the Holy Spirit.

Folks, that is poppy cock. That is borderline heresy. The Trinity is One God. There is one faith, and one baptism. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. And furthermore, listen to the unity of the Trinity as Jesus describes it in John 14 an 16. John 14:9-11 Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 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. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.” So everything Jesus did was mirrored in the Father. He was the exact representation of the Father God.

Now consider what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in John 16:13-14 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” So then, Jesus is the perfect representation of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the perfect representation of Jesus Christ, so that all three are One. One nature, One essence, and one voice, but separate in persons.

So in vs.41, Jesus says that He does not receive glory from men. He does not need glory from men because He receives glory from God. But Jesus is rebuking them because they should have been glorifying Him, but they were not. He says that they don’t glorify Him because they don’t have the love of God in them. That means that they don’t love God. Instead, they love the glory of men. They love receiving honor from men. That’s the condemnation of mankind, that they are lovers of self, and lovers of men, lovers of ungodliness, and rejecters of righteousness. That is our nature. We love darkness rather than light. We love the adulation of men. We love the glory of men. And as such we dishonor God who made man for His glory.

That is why repentance is a constant staple in the diet of a Christian. We must constantly be renouncing the pride which is such a part of the warp and woof of our lives that we hardly even recognize it. It seems normal, and perhaps it is. But normal means natural and therefore it is not spiritual. That’s why God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. God hates pride.

So because men love the honor and glory of men more than God, then God will give them over to a deluding spirit. Jesus says that they will receive those that come in their own name, that seek after their own glory, and in accepting those false prophets they condemn themselves.

Jesus says in vs. 44 “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?” Paul classified such men this way in 2Cor. 10:12 “For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.”

The point is that they used religion to compare themselves among themselves and even to commend themselves, and as such they did not seek to glorify God nor the glory of God. And so they are unbelievers. And as such they will deserve the judgment due them for rejecting Him. Vs. 45 “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.” The very scriptures in which they professed to know, will be the thing that accuses them and judges them.

But, Jesus says in vs.46, if you truly believed Moses, you would have believed in Me, for He wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

I think that Jesus is indicating there that the greatest witness of all is the Word of God. Not the miracles, though God did use miracles. Not some experience, though God may use experience. But the great expression of God is the Word of God. John says in chapter one vs one, that Jesus is the Word of God manifested in the flesh. To reject the Word of God is to reject Jesus Christ. To believe the Word of God is to believe in Jesus Christ. It is the testimony of God, the testimony of Jesus, and the testimony of the Spirit all in One. That is a greater testimony than miraculous works, that is a greater testimony than John the Baptist, and it is a testimony that will endure forever. 1Peter 1:25 “BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER.”And this is the word which was preached to you.”

I hope that you do not reject the testimony of God’s Word concerning His Son. If you believe in Him, in all that He claimed to be, then you will receive life, and His word will abide in you, and you will be fruitful. But if reject His Word, then you are rejecting the solemn testimony of God, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and as such you will enter into judgment. And that judgment will be merciless. Because you have rejected Mercy and lived independently.

When I am judged, thank God I will not be judged independently. I will be judged as dependent upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Because I have trusted in Christ as my Savior, and my substitute. 2 Cor. 5:21 “God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” When I come before God I will stand dependent upon Christ’s righteousness alone, and not my own.

You can either be found righteous in Him on that day, or you will stand alone in your independence, and have no answer when you are asked why you rejected the gift of God’s Son’s righteousness. You want to remain in your sins and face that judgment? That is your choice. But I pray that you choose to come to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the One equal with God, the One sent by the Father, the source of eternal life, the One in perfect unity with the Father, the Judge of all the world, and the One who will raise all the dead in the earth either to stand in judgment before Him, or choose Him, and believe in Him and be saved.

This is difficult material. It would be more gratifying perhaps to give a sermon that is more energizing, uplifting, or empowering rather than deep theology. But if our faith is going to really and truly be those things, if our faith is going to have any power, or any energy, or any ability to lift us up out of darkness, then it has to be grounded in truth. Jesus said in the previous chapter (4:23) that they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. He would later declare that He was the way, the truth and the life, and that no man comes to the Father except through Him. So foundational to our theology then, Jesus has to be God in the flesh, or our faith is in vain, and our worship is worthless.

Now that is the crux of the difficulty that Jesus has found Himself in after healing the man at the pool of Bethesda. By what authority did Jesus do these things? Jesus had told the paralyzed man to get up, take up his pallet and walk. And so the man was immediately made well and obediently picked up his pallet and headed to the temple, presumably to give thanks to God for healing him. But the Jewish religious leaders see him coming and say, “You aren’t allowed to carry your pallet because it’s the Sabbath day.” But he said, ““He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’”. Well of course they wanted to know who that was. But he didn’t know who had healed him. However, later Jesus discloses Himself to him in the temple and so afterwards he tells the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

The Jews then, it says in vs.16, began plotting to persecute Jesus because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. John reveals here by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the reason these religious leaders persecuted Jesus was that He was disrupting their religious system. They had a system, and they had learned to manipulate that system to their advantage. Jesus would later accuse them of being hypocrites, because, according to Matt. 23:4, “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”

This is the thing about false religion or false doctrine that is so damning, and which I believe will justly bring the judgment of God upon it one day. And that is that men find a way to manipulate religion to serve their own interests, while at the same time keeping the naive under bondage. That’s why I get so angry over false teachers. Because they are manipulating what should be liberating, in order to feather their own nests, and at the expense of naive people. Jesus said you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. But when it’s not truth, then it leaves people in captivity. And so false teachers and false doctrine has to be exposed.

So in vs.17, Jesus has presumably been cornered somewhere in the temple by the religious leaders, and accused of breaking the Sabbath. And His response is to say, ““My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” The Jews knew that, of course. They knew that God’s work is to keep all things in existence, all things holding together, working together. Nothing exists outside of the power of God. If God shut down the power by which He holds the world, then it would be destroyed. God has to be working, or nothing works. What causes the earth to stay in it’s orbit? What keeps the sun in it’s course through the galaxy? What keeps the atoms spinning by which all life exists? It is the power of God.

1Cor. 8:6 says, “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” So God is the Creator, through whom are all things, and yet He shares that responsibility with the Son, so that Jesus can say, God is working, and I too am working. Specifically, He is working as Col. 1:15-17 declares: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” So Jesus says, “My Father is working until now, and I myself am working.”

But notice how that really infuriates the Jews. Vs.18, “For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” Why does this infuriate them so? Was it because they honored God so much? Hardly. It was because if He was the Son of God, then He was equal with God, and therefore He had the authority to over rule their religion by which they had established their livelihood and power base in Israel. I believe there is evidence to support the idea that the Jews knew for certain by the time of the crucifixion, that Jesus was the Son of God. And they knew the full implications of that title, as evidenced by this verse. It meant that He was equal with God. For our western, modern minds the title Son of God seems to be a lessor title. But in their minds, in a patriarchal society where all the rights and privileges of the father were passed on to the son, they understood the full implication; that He was making Himself equal with God. And yet their response is to want to kill Him even more.

I mean, these aren’t “sincere, but sincerely wrong” kind of people here. Their response to the paralyzed man being healed shows that clearly. There is no interest in the man’s healing. There is no rejoicing that a man 38 years lying paralyzed has been restored fully to health. They obviously could care less about that. They are frothing at the mouth at Jesus in an insane desire to kill this man who could heal the sick. The only reason for that kind of hatred is that they were demonic, steeped in apostate religion that took advantage of people, and they wanted to protect their position and lifestyle at all costs. They could care less that people were being healed. You will see that attitude evidenced by the Pharisees again and again in the gospels.

So Jesus is going to use this as an opportunity to authoritatively declare His unity with God, even though He knows it will be just more fuel for their hatred, and eventually be used against Him in order to put Him to death. But in the process, we get one of the most comprehensive perspectives on the divinity of Christ, from Christ Himself.

So let’s just take Christ’s statements in order then and I’ll give a running commentary as needed. In vs.19, Jesus declares His unity with the Father. This is one of the greatest mysteries of the gospel. How Jesus could be fully God and fully man in one bodily form. It is a mystery that we cannot fully understand I think until we get to heaven. But though we can’t understand it, we can believe it, and in fact we must believe it in order to be saved. Saving faith is believing that Jesus was fully God in the flesh. John has already declared that in his opening prologue in chapter one. Jesus was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Unity and equality.

So Jesus says to that effect, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” Now what Jesus is saying is that this is proof that I am God, because I do what the Father does explicitly. I do the works of the Father. Jesus says this over and over again in His ministry; that His works, and His words, are of the Father and therefore offer proof that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. 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.”

Incidentally, that is how we know we are children of God, is it not? That we do the works of God. We are known by our fruit. Eph. 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Peter says that now that we are saved we are to follow in Christ’s footsteps, according to the pattern which He gave us through His own obedience.

So as we study the gospel, we need to remember that the key to the unlocking all of the treasures of this gospel, is that we are to be to Christ all that He was to his Father, and that Christ is willing to be to us all that his Father was to Him.

So Jesus is saying that He cannot, nor will not act independently of the Father. In some mysterious way, He was both separate, yet unified with the Father. I would suggest that in Spirit He was unified, but the separation was in HIs flesh. In HIs flesh He was a man, and yet He lived constantly, continuously in the Spirit in unison with the Father. And that is how we are designed to live now that we are saved. Though we are in the flesh, we walk by the Spirit and not according to the passions of the flesh. We put to death the lusts of the flesh, that we might do the works of God through the Spirit.

Now for us, it is never perfect while in this body, but progressive. But in Christ it is an absolute unity, something that could only occur in the life of an individual who was equal with the Father. He speaks about the fact that “He can do nothing of himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” That’s an expression of absolute unity. Later on he will say even more clearly, “I and the Father are one.” Meaning not simply one in will, but I and the Father are one in essence.” Literally, He says, we are one thing. So he’s talking about absolute unity only possible for those who are truly possessed of the same nature.

Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature.” That is the basis for their unity, and that unity is the basis for Christ’s deity. Now that perfect unity that Christ claimed an amazing thing for someone to profess. C.S. Lewis said, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher. He’d either be a lunatic — on the level with a man who says he’s a poached egg — or else he’d be the devil of hell.” And J. B. Phillips said something similar, “You must take your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But don’t let us come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He hasn’t left that open to us.”

Now then in vs.20, Jesus said, “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.” The word Jesus uses there for love is interesting. Usually the word for love found in the NT is agape. But this time the Greek word is phileo. It’s the word we get brotherly love from. It speaks of a familial love, the love of family. Jesus loves His Father, and the Father loves HIs Son, and so the Father reveals all things that He is doing, so that the Son may do them. They are united not only in nature, but in love. This is perfect love. There is no independence, no contest, only a perfect mirror of activity because there is perfect love.

And note that He says that because the Father loves Him He will show Him even greater works than these. There is a progressive nature to Christ’s ministry. There is a progressive nature to the gospel and it’s revelation. And there is a progressive nature to our revelation by sanctification as we are obedient to what God shows us, and we do it, then He will show us greater works than these. And the same was true with Christ. He learned obedience from the things which He suffered, and so God produced in Him ever more works, greater works, until the great work was finally accomplished in His resurrection.

But specifically these greater works that He speaks of are shown in vs.21-23, and they are the work of giving life, and the work of judgment. Vs.21, “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.” Now what Jesus is talking about there is that the Son of God is able to give life to whomever He wishes. Now He is not talking about just physical life to a dead person. He will do that with Lazarus and others. But He is talking primarily about giving life to spiritually dead people.

And we know that to be true because He elaborates on that principle in vs.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. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.” Now that is clearly talking about salvation. The dead He speaks of are not those in the grave. He will talk about them in a moment. But for now He is talking about spiritually dead. That He has the authority to give life to the dead, sight to the blind, ears to hear the word of God and that by hearing and believing in His word they might be saved. He says that explicitly in vs.34, “I say these things so that you may be saved.”

Notice that salvation, eternal life comes through hearing the word of God. This is such an important principle. Rom.10:17 says, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” That’s why I put such an emphasis on preaching the word. It’s not that I can’t find some nice stories to tell, or that we can’t find a Christian themed movie to watch, or listen to some Christian singers give a concert. We could do all of those things, but we chose to preach the gospel because it is how God has ordained that men might be saved. 1Cor. 1:23-25 “but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 1Cor. 1:18, 21 “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. … 21 For after that 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.” So we are saved by hearing the word of God.

Now what does it mean to be saved? Simply speaking, to be saved from judgment. From the wrath of God against sin. And that is the next work that God has given Christ. The work of judgment. Vs. 22, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son,so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. 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.”

So Christ has the authority as the Son of God to give life to whom He wills, and that life results in deliverance from judgment. He has the authority to deliver from judgment because He also is the judge of the world. Christ has been given the authority as the Son of Man to judge the whole world. Vs.27 “and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man.” That is an interesting distinction of titles. Many times Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man because it is a title of humility, but also because it is a Messianic title. In the Old Testament it is used almost exclusively in the book of Ezekiel. It is a title used in conjunction with the judgment that was coming upon Israel for their rebellion. But I also think that in this case, it may be that Jesus switches from Son of God to Son of Man because as Son of God He is our Redeemer; only God could redeem mankind by His substitutionary death. But as the Son of Man He is qualified to be our judge, because He suffered in the flesh as we did, yet without sin. He knows our frame, He knows our weaknesses. Because He too was in the flesh, and so He is intimately acquainted with man and thus able to judge man justly. He says that in vs.30, “My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” His judgment is just, because He is righteous and lived righteously while in the flesh.

But what about that judgment that Jesus will render? Jesus describes it in vs. 28 “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” Now notice the difference between this verse and vs.25. Vs.25 says the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of God and be saved. That’s speaking of the spiritually dead. In the present time. The time that now is.

But vs. 28 speaks of the time to come. An hour is coming. It isn’t here now. It’s in the future, when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come forth. The tomb or the grave speaks of physical death. They are not literally in the tombs, of course. Their bodies are there, and as such they represent the person who lived in that body. But the spirits of men are either in Hades or in Paradise. Either of which I believe is taught clearly is in the heart of the earth. Jesus gave a very clear description of it in Luke 16. Between Hades and Paradise there is a great gulf fixed, Jesus said, which no man can cross. I believe this is where Jesus went for three days upon His death, as He told the believing thief on the cross, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” And Paul, speaking in Ephesians about the resurrection of Jesus said, Eph. 4:9 (Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth?” And Peter, in 1Pe 3:18-20 says, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, (He was laid in the tomb) but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.” He is speaking of the demonic angels in hell, in prison who were disobedient to God’s restrictions upon His creation, when the sons of God went into the daughters of men in Genesis 6.

Now I don’t say all of that to start a eschatological debate with anyone. But I say it to illustrate that the tomb or the grave speaks of the abode of the dead which was Hades. And Jesus says that one day everyone will hear His voice and come out of the tombs. Everyone. Christians and non Christians will be raised from the dead and will either go into the resurrection of life, or the resurrection of judgment under the supreme Judge of the earth, King Jesus.

Rev. 20:4-6 speaks of the resurrection of life, the resurrection from Paradise of the souls that are saved; “Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.”

And then it speaks of the second resurrection, which is called in this place the second death, which refers to those that are spiritually dead in Hades; Rev 20:11-14 “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.”

And then finally in vs.30, Jesus basically recaps His unity and authority with God. “I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” It’s amazing how Jesus can state authoritatively His unity with God, His authority as God to be the judge of the whole earth, the source of life for those who believe in Him, and at the same time express so eloquently His humility. And so once again Jesus expresses through His nature how we are to be unified to Him.

The best commentary on scripture is scripture. And so upon that note I will close by reading Phil. 2:5-11 “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ 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. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

May God give you the grace to walk after the example of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. Amen.

I have said before that every miracle presented in the gospels is given to illustrate a spiritual parable. And so it is with the miraculous account of the healing at the pool of Bethesda. In fact, this text perhaps more than many others offers several spiritual lessons which I would like to bring out today. Not the least of which is the nature of healing. That is the most obvious application in the context and so we should look at it first.

I suspect that everyone sooner or later will come to a point of desiring to receive a healing from God. If not for yourself, then perhaps for a loved one. It is the nature of human frailty to find oneself afflicted in the flesh sooner or later. It is the nature of man to die. That is a certainty. And the same curse of death also produces various illnesses, not all of which produce immediate death – we may in fact recover – but eventually everyone will one day still die.

However, there are numerous examples in both the Old and New Testament of people being healed. And while I believe that they symbolize a greater spiritual principle, I do not want to minimize the fact that physical healing does occur in the Bible and that the possibility exists for physical healing today. But I would strongly emphasize that being healed of an infirmity is not universally promised in the Bible. And that is proven by our text today. Not every facet concerning healing is dealt with in this text, but let’s start by looking at what it does teach us, and then at the spiritual principles it teaches.

First of all, a little historical background is necessary. John says that Jesus has left Galilee, where He had healed the nobleman’s son, and now has returned to Jerusalem to attend a feast. There were three feasts which Jewish men were required to attend, and it’s possible that this could be any of the three or even a lesser feast. Many would like to say this is THE feast, that is the Passover. And that is possible, but to say that extends the ministry of Jesus by a year more than that which the synoptic gospels seem to indicate.

But as to which feast it is, it is not really that important to John, otherwise he would have made it clear. He then describes a pool which is by the sheep gate. It was called Bethesda, which means “house of mercy.” That sounds like one of those holy roller healing churches, doesn’t it? I recently saw one called “The Holy Ghost House of Deliverance and Healing” or something like that. You see them here and there in Sussex county, and I suspect other places as well.

So I suppose that people are drawn to that sort of thing. The promise of miraculous healing. John tells us that this pool was called Bethesda and it had five porches or porticos. Now there is a very interesting historical fact here which is helpful to know about. And that is, when you read early commentators, particularly those in the 18th and mid nineteenth century, there was a common consensus that this place did not exist. And many skeptics said that was evidence of the unreliability of the scriptures. Additionally, they pointed to the fact that the Bible said it had 5 porticos and suggested that it had to be untrue because that would indicate a five sided pool which would have been unheard of in those days. But in any event, there was no evidence for it’s existence, so it put a doubt upon the reliability of the scripture.

But in the late 19th century certain excavations were made by archeologists during which this pool was discovered, and they found that it actually did have five porticos. Turns out that the pool was rectangular shaped, but divided across the middle to form in effect two pools, and the center division had it’s own porch on it. Thereby creating 5 porches. So as in so many other cases, archeologists came to verify what the Bible claimed all along, but they had not yet discovered.

There is another situation regarding these verses which have been viewed suspiciously as well. Starting halfway in vs.3 and through vs. 4, you will notice that your Bible may have brackets around those verses indicating by a side note that they are not found in the best manuscripts. Some Bibles eliminate them altogether. And so a lot of translators say that those words were not inspired in the original text, but were added later by an overzealous scribe.

The fact is that the information contained there is not essential to the story. Most commentators dismiss the legend concerning the pool being stirred up as superstition and therefore not factual, and furthermore should not even be in the Bible. But I am not so sure about all of that. I am hesitant to dismiss something that God let stand as scripture for 500 years. The truth is, that there are no original copies of the New Testament. However, there are a tremendous amount of early copies compared to other historical texts. There are about 6000 early copies of the New Testament. But of those, some are considered earlier than others. The KJV of the Bible used one set of texts called the Textus Receptus. But since that time, translators have found other copies which they believe are older and thus more reliable which are called the Morphological Greek New Testament. But both are copies of the original texts. There are not a lot of differences between the two, but this is one of them.

However, there is some other evidence that this suspect information does in fact belong in the text. It is found in the Alexandrian manuscripts, and in the Latin and early Syrian versions. The second century Christian writer Tertullian refers to it. So all of this points to a wide acceptance from the second century onwards, which lends a lot of credence to it being claimed as original.

So that being said, I have no problem accepting those verses as part of the original text. However that does not answer the question if what it’s speaking of was just superstition or if it was a divine act of God that brought about healing at certain seasons.

There is another historical note that is of significance and possibly has bearing on the correct understanding of what happened in this pool. When archeologists discovered the pool of Siloam which is mentioned in context with another miracle healing of Jesus in John 9, it was determined that it was a mikveh, which was a pool constructed in such a way as to perform ritualistic cleansing. And since the discovery of the pool of Bethesda, it is also believed by some to be a mikveh. So there is a possibility that Jesus deliberately healed two people at mikvehs, which may have some theological implications in the stories.

Now I know this is a lot of technical stuff, but I promise it has some application if you will just bear with me for a moment. In order for a pool to be considered a Mikveh, it had to have a well of water or spring of water coming up in it, so that it had fresh water flowing through it. They referred to it as “living water.” Interesting, isn’t it? Especially in light of the previous chapter when Jesus was speaking with the woman at the well and said that whoever asked of Him He would give them to drink of the living water.

The purpose of the mikveh then was to provide a means of ritual cleansing according to Jewish law. A man had to be ritually clean before he could enter the temple. And there were a number things that could make him ceremonially unclean. The bath by the way had to be big enough and deep enough so that they could be fully immersed. This was also the bath that was used to baptize persons who wanted to convert to Judaism. So this is the predecessor of the baptismal pool. And it should answer the question of whether baptism is by immersion or sprinkling. John the Baptist did not initiate a new ordinance, but he simply administered it to everyone as a means of repentance, which symbolized spiritual cleanliness.

So that’s the context of the pool. The pool at Bethesda then was more than likely a mikveh, and also had become known as having miraculous powers at certain times. Now the question remains was the angel stirring up the water causing healing true or just superstition? I would say it is impossible to know for sure. But I would lean towards being true. To accept the text at face value, then at certain times, an angel of the Lord would stir the water and the first person who made it into the water was healed. I would suggest it may have just been a way that God showed His mercy towards HIs people, and especially towards the sick. I would also suggest that it would seem that this man had been there a long time (maybe as long as 38 years, but not necessarily), and there were many others there as well, so that there would undoubtedly have been multiple examples in those years of people who were healed. Otherwise, I think that it would have soon been proven to be a false hope, and the sick people would have deserted it. Many infirmed people in those days survived by begging, and there would have been limited resources for that if all of them stayed there together. So I think they stayed there because there was real hope, but it was only achievable for a few.

And I think there is Biblical evidence of God showing that kind of compassion upon His creation. Jesus said in Matthew 5:45, “for [God] causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” And Paul said in Acts 14:17 “and yet [God] did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” So God does good because it is His nature to do good, to be merciful, and to leave Himself a witness on the earth so that men might turn to Him.

Now note also that it says all kinds of sick or infirmed people were lying around this pool. Vs. 3, “In these [porticos] lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered.” Now to this place Jesus comes, we are not sure why. Maybe He or His disciples needed to ritually cleanse themselves prior to entering the temple. But irregardless, He goes to this place full of sick people who were lying around this pool under these porches. And yet He focuses His attention on just one man there, the paralytic who had been sick 38 years in that condition.

There are a couple of points to be made about this. First, that Jesus does not heal everyone who is sick at the pool. Some people have a hard time with that. They have a hard time with the sovereign prerogative of God. That He has a right to choose some and not choose others. We want to know why. We want to try God according to our understanding, according to our concept of justice or fairness. But I would suggest that to question God is to have a failure of faith. And the Bible says whatever is not of faith is sin. So I would caution against questioning God’s motives. Rom.3:4 says, Let God be true and everyman be a liar. God is true, He is just, He is good, and He is merciful. But He is also sovereign. Our responsibility is to trust Him.

So the obvious conclusion that we can make from this is that not every person is healed of every disease. Everyone there at the pool was desirous of being healed. But only one was chosen to be healed. God does not chose to heal everyone.

This man laying there did not even seem to know who Jesus was. But Jesus knows who He is. He knows that he has lain there for 38 years in that condition. And if Jesus knew that, then obviously He knew the man’s heart. Jesus reveals His omniscience with this man the same way He revealed His omniscience with the Samaritan woman. So for reasons which are the domain of only God to know, Jesus spoke to this man and asked him what seems to be a superfluous question; “Do you wish to get well?”

But I would suggest that it isn’t superfluous. I don’t ever see Jesus do anything superfluous in the gospel accounts. His every word and action were in obedience to His Father. Rather, I think that Jesus asks this man a simple question, similar to the question that He asked the Samaritan woman, in order to produce a desired response. Even though God acts in His sovereign will to do whatever He pleases to do, He almost always includes the agency of man. He doesn’t override man’s freedom to choose, but operates His will through the agency of man’s will. So Jesus asks a question designed to get the man to admit that he wants to be healed.

I have some experience with people that are caught up in addictions. And one fact I have learned is that rehab or AA or anything like that cannot deliver a person. They can help, they can be tools to help that person who desires to be healed. But in order for a person to be healed of addiction, they must come to the point of surrendering all hope of doing it themselves out of their own strength. They have to come to the point of asking God to heal them. And when that point is reached, then the help of God is there for them. I know of many people who have done that and have been delivered from addiction, but as far as I know they may not have been saved. But God heals people who stop trusting in themselves and call on Him.

So that is what I think Jesus is doing. This man is hopeless, helpless, depressed and probably close to giving up. I would suggest Jesus picked him because he had already given up. He had no friends to help him get into the pool. Year after year he must have waited only to see someone else, maybe someone who didn’t even have as serious an illness as he had, and yet they slipped into the pool and were healed when he wasn’t hardly able to move. Perhaps he had given up on anyone helping him. Perhaps he had given up on having enough strength to muscle his way into the pool. Perhaps he had come to the end of hope in himself and his circumstances. And that is the point at which God can help us, when we surrender.

So the paralyzed man says to Jesus, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Notice the phrase, “I have no man to put me into the pool.” What a tragic statement. I have no man to help me. I can hear the heartbreak in this man’s voice, even 2000 years later. Lying by this pool in misery for years and years, being in this paralyzed condition for 38 years and there is no one to help him, no one who cares about him.

But Jesus has compassion on him. Jesus said I have come to seek and to save that which is lost. This man was surely lost. He was hopelessly, helplessly lost, and he knew it full well. And perhaps in response to some private unspoken prayer, God sent Jesus to help him. In 1 John 2:1 John says that Jesus is our Advocate with the Father, acting on behalf of sinners. Advocate is from the Greek word Paracletos, which means one called alongside to help; an Intercessor. Jesus comes along side this man to help him because of the mercy of God.

So Jesus said, “Get up, take up your pallet, and walk.” I love that. I think there is a sermon in that statement alone. Get up, take up, and walk. That’s a formula for the Christian life. Get up out of your sin, get up out of the world, take up the full armor of God, take up the helmet of salvation and the shield of faith, and then walk with your feet shod with the gospel of peace, walk in the power of the Holy Spirit in obedience to His commands and after His example.

Now notice something. This man didn’t even ask to be healed. Christ chose to heal him out of compassion and out of a desire to show forth the glory of God. And notice that Jesus didn’t ask him if he had enough faith to be healed. I don’t think this man had any faith at this point. He had no man, no one that showed him compassion, so he had no reason to hope in any man or even perhaps in God. The Jews really believed that to be infirmed was evidence that God was punishing you for your sins. So he had no reason to have faith that God would heal him. And note that Jesus doesn’t do all kinds of physical remonstrations in order to heal him. He doesn’t smack his head, He doesn’t knock the poor guy over backwards, He just simply speaks and gives him a command to get up, take up his bed and walk.

You might say, well the guy had faith in that he tried to obey Jesus. I don’t think that is indicated in the text at all. I think that the power flowed into this man’s body, and he suddenly felt strength in his legs that hadn’t been there before. He was able to move, to feel, and so he got to his feet. Vs. 9, “Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.” In fact, I think that the spoken word of Jesus brought this man to his feet. It says immediately. He didn’t have to think about it, or get used to the idea, or try it. Jesus spoke it and it came to be. That is the power of the Creator. He spake everything into existence and it came into existence. That’s what John was talking about in chapter 1,vs.3, when he calls Jesus the Word and says about Him that “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” The Word spoke and it came into being. So Jesus spoke and the man got up completely and immediately healed.

This man is obedient as well. Jesus said “walk”. And I”m told by Greek experts that the tense of that word indicates “keep on walking.” So this man walked right out of the porches of Bethesda and kept right on going. Some have criticized this man for not stopping to thank Jesus and find out more about Him. We see in vs.13 that the man did not know who it was who healed him because Jesus slipped away into the crowd.

In fact, most commentators I read seem to want to find fault with this man. They say that he ratted out Jesus to the Jewish leaders. That he showed more allegiance to them than he did to Jesus. They say that he was some sort of obvious sinner since Jesus said to him to stop sinning or something worse would happen to him. But I just don’t buy all of that. I believe this man was sincere, earnest, and appreciative of what Jesus did for him. And I’ll tell you why. Because immediately after being healed this guy headed for the temple. Why would he do that? Maybe because his prayers had been answered. Maybe he didn’t know who Jesus was, but he believed that God had healed him and so he went to the temple to give thanks to God. Maybe he had lain there in that portico for umpteen years and had wanted to go to the temple, but couldn’t. But now that he was healed he made a beeline for it.

I would to God that more people were like this guy. I’ve seen far too many people caught up in some sin, or some addiction, or some debilitating situation and they pray and pray for God to have mercy on them and deliver them. But then when God does deliver them, they quickly forget all about God and all the pledges that they made to Him when they were in need. When God answers your prayers folks, then He expects to find you worshipping and praising Him in HIs temple.

So this man picks up his pallet and walks, and heads for the temple. But the Jewish religious leaders head him off at the gate and say “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” I don’t think that they could have known at this point what happened to this guy. I think that they just see this man walking in the gate of the temple carrying his pallet on his head on the Sabbath day. He probably stood out from the crowd just a little. So he says, ““He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” See, I told you this guy was obedient. He didn’t care about the laws concerning the Sabbath because the One who made him well told him to pick it up and walk. He was just being obedient.

Of course they want to know who that was. And he says he doesn’t know. So presumably they left him alone. But then afterwards, Jesus found him in the temple. That’s why I think Jesus went to the pool to be cleansed or His disciples needed to. Because Jesus was going to go to the temple. Remember they had stayed in Samaria for two days. That wasn’t forbidden by the law particularly, but who is to say that something there did not ceremoniously defile them. But anyway, Jesus finds him at the temple. To me that is an indication that this guy was sincerely ready to surrender to God. Jesus didn’t find him at the bar, Jesus didn’t find him fishing, or at a nice restaurant. It was the Sabbath, and he was in the temple. Boy, we can learn a few things from this guy for sure. We aren’t under the law of the Sabbath anymore. I will be the first to declare that and defend that freedom we have in Christ. But I think the principle is the same. That there is to be a day set apart to the Lord as His day. A day of rest. A day of worship. A day to come together corporately as a body to give thanks to God for all that He has done for us.

I’m appalled that Sundays have become Little League days. They have become football game days. They have become “get out of town” days. Us Christians love to blame the woes of this world on the sinfulness of the unsaved. But I think that’s the wrong focus. I think that the world is so corrupt because the salt has lost it’s savor. We can barely give an hour a week to God, and everything seems to take precedence over church. And then we wonder why the world is in the mess it is. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and heal their land.” 2 Chron. 7:14

So Jesus found him in the temple. When the Lord comes back, I hope that he finds us in church, don’t you? I hope He doesn’t find us in a bar, or at a rock concert, or watching some Hollywood movie. I hope we are not embarrassed when He comes back.

Vs. 14 “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.”

So this is where the critics point to say that this man was obviously guilty of some heinous sin and was loyal to the priests and not Jesus. But again, I don’t see that at all. I would rather believe that this is the means by which this man was saved. Up until this point, he was merely healed. But as I said concerning the nobleman and his family last week, God had something bigger in mind than just a physical healing. God desired salvation; spiritual healing. The physical healing was just to bring him to the point of recognizing that Jesus was the Son of God.

Jesus meets him and says don’t sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you. What could be worse than 38 years of being paralyzed? Well, the answer of course, is an eternity in hell. That’s far worse. So what Jesus is presenting here is the need of this man for repentance. To turn away from his sin. To be willing to turn from it, to want to turn from it. He needed to understand that if he really wanted to be well, then he needed to be spiritually well. He needed salvation. He already had a belief in God. That’s why he was in the temple to thank God, to worship God. But as Jesus said in the last chapter, they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. What is truth? Well, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father except through Him. So this man needed to know who Jesus was in order to be saved. And so I believe that Jesus introduced Himself to him there in the temple. I’m sure that John does not record all the conversation that occurred there. He doesn’t say that Jesus said, “Hello, I’m Jesus.” But yet the man tells the priests that it was Jesus who healed him. So there was obviously more conversation than what was stated in the text. And I believe it was enough for him to know that Jesus was the Son of God.

So then salvation comes to the former paralytic by repentance and faith the same way all men come to Christ. The physical healing was only an instrument of God’s grace to show this man Jesus Christ. The physical healing had not saved him. It merely was the means by which Jesus opened his eyes to see who He was and to believe in Him.

That’s the spiritual application. This whole scene was divinely designed to illustrate a greater spiritual truth, the only truth that can set you free. All of humanity is represented in the multitude of sick and lame and blind and withered people that were lying by the pool of Bethesda which was by the sheep gate. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have each turned to our own way.”

So the entire world lies in the sickness of sin, bound to the captivity of sin and under the penalty of death. The world is gathered together in the “house of mercy” where the living water is supposed to be stirred up on occasion so that some may be cleansed of their illness, but where many come to be washed ceremoniously. It’s a picture of the ineffectiveness of ceremonial religion that believes in a form of God, but denies the power thereof, and relies upon the sick person’s power to get himself into the pool at just the right time.

But Jesus comes into this world, into this world of death, into this world of religious ritual, into this world of hopelessness and helplessness, and He finds there one who is ready to be well. Who wants to be made well, but who realizes that there is no way to be made well without God’s intervention. And so to that aching heart, Christ speaks, “Get up, take up, and walk out.”

Jesus told the Samaritan woman that “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.” This water that the angel stirred up in the pool of Bethesda could only heal one person. The water of the mikveh could only make one clean until they sinned again. But the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin, for all time and forever, and purchases for us an inheritance which will not fade away. He is able to save completely. He is able to heal completely, both inside and outside. Both physically and spiritually.

The question for each of us today is the same as it was for the paralyzed man. “Do you wish to get well?” Not just get healed from some malady. That may or may not be in the plan of God. But it is the desire of God that you would be made well. That you would not have something worse happen to you. The formula is simple; repentance and faith in Jesus Christ results in forgiveness of sins and new birth resulting in eternal life. God will produce in you a well of water springing up into eternal life, everlasting life, where sin and death will no longer have dominion over you. I trust that you wish to get well. Surrender to God and trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior today and receive the eternal life that God has promised.

There are many degrees of faith. Often, Jesus rebuked people for not having enough faith, or too small of faith. So as believers, it is important for us to consider our faith and examine it in light of what the word of God says.

There are a lot of ideas out there which seek to say what constitutes faith, but the best definition of faith is found in the scriptures themselves. Several places in the scriptures speak of faith, but Hebrews 11:1 says it very succinctly; “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith then is believing in what is unseen, but hoped for.

Many professing Christians however, if questioned, base their faith not necessarily on the unseen, but on a tangible or physical experience that they had sometime in the past. Perhaps they were going through some sort of crisis and they prayed to God for help, and He seemed to bring about deliverance in some miraculous way. And so they believed in God and now consider themselves to be people of faith. They believe in the existence of God because of something that happened which established their belief.

That may be well and good up to a point, but I would suggest that sort of faith which is founded on an experience is a lower tier type of faith. I believe God does sometimes work in visible ways in order to bring about the beginnings of faith. So that may serve as a starting point in our faith, but I think that is not the kind of faith that satisfies God. I think that God desires us to grow in faith so that we believe what God says without having to rely on substantiating evidence.

A good verse which speaks of that kind of faith is found in Romans 10:17, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” This is the standard for faith in the scriptures. God speaks, and we believe it, and trust it, and then act in obedience to it. So then our actions prove our faith, and not waiting for God to prove our faith before we act. That is the example throughout the scriptures, from Abraham through Moses, and on into the New Testament. God spoke, they believed and then acted in faith. So faith that pleases God is that which trusts in God’s word and acts upon it.

Today in our exposition of this text we are going to see four examples of faith. Two that were pleasing to the Lord and two that were not. The Samaritan woman exemplifies that sort of faith that was pleasing to God. You will remember she had a conversation with Jesus by the well, and though they started off by talking about Jesus being thirsty and wanting a drink of water, He skillfully led the conversation around to spiritual things. And in the process, He brought her under conviction of her sin. She responded by trying to talk about religion and the difference between the way the Samaritans and the Jews worship God. But Jesus continued to press her towards the goal of accepting the truth of God. And then Jesus said one of the most forthright claims to His divinity to ever come from HIs own mouth, He said in response to her statement about the Messiah, “I who speak to you am He.”

Now at that point is where she believed in the word of Christ and she was saved. She doesn’t have some out of body experience, she doesn’t walk down the aisle or repeat a sinner’s prayer, she isn’t even baptized at that point. But the fact that she is saved by faith in Christ is evidenced by the fact that she leaves her water pot and goes back into town, telling everyone about Jesus.

There are a number of things that can be learned from this text. But the main point which is brought out in this passage is that saving faith is believing in the word of God and then acting upon it. The Samaritan woman believes in the word of Christ, His declaration that He was the Messiah promised in scripture. And she obviously believes Him and so begins to share her new found faith.

Now much has been made by commentators about the way she phrases the question found in vs.29 as if she expected a negative response. But I don’t think that’s really born out by her actions. I’ve looked at all the major translations of this phrase, and I think it is best understood as follows, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; is this not the Christ?” Now that statement still lends itself to some ambiguity. But I don’t think she is really being ambivalent at all. I think it’s evident she believes that Jesus is the Christ. And obviously that is not all that she said, as evidenced by the men of the cities answer to her in vs.42: “and they were saying to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.’” Obviously she told them much more about Christ than that simple statement because what she had said was enough to make them believe in Him. At least enough to be a starting point in their faith.

And there is another important aspect to her testimony. She says “Come and see…” Not go, but come. She is inviting them to come with her to see Jesus. She left her water pot by the well with Jesus because she was coming back. And she was coming back with her townspeople. That’s evidence that she was rejoicing in the news about the Messiah. And she knew that her people would rejoice as well. In spite of the flaws in their theology they knew that the Messiah was the promised seed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He was the Savior of the world, and so it was only reasonable that she would share it and rejoice in it.

What a contrast to most Christians view of sharing their faith. I don’t know if it is a product of the PC culture, or just a reticence on our part to give testimony to our faith, but how many of us fall far short of the example given by this Samaritan woman. She boldly goes into town and begins to broadcast the fact that Jesus was outside of town at the well. And she invites them to come with her and listen to Him.

Our lack of willingness to witness makes me wonder if we really believe what we say we believe. Do we really believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life? Do we really believe that our friends and loved ones who are without the Lord will end up being cast into outer darkness for eternity? Do we really believe that there is coming a day when everyone will be judged by what they did concerning Jesus? I’m afraid we must not really believe what we say.

You know, back to the Samaritan woman’s statement, I think there is not a hint of unbelief there at all, but rather a hint of a challenge. She is suggesting that they need to decide for themselves based upon her testimony. I know that some of you may feel intimidated about sharing your faith. The culture is not very tolerant towards real Christianity it seems. And maybe you feel intimidated because of that, or because you don’t think you know enough to be able to answer people’s objections or questions. But I would encourage you to consider this woman’s example as evidence that you don’t have to have all the answers to point people to Jesus Christ. If you don’t feel adequate to explain everything, then simply invite them to “come and see.” To come to church and hear the word of God for themselves.

I will also suggest to you what else made her testimony effective. And that is the transformation that she obviously exhibited. There is no more effective testimony to the saving grace of God than a transformed life. We don’t have a description here in the passage that articulates her transformation. But we do have the evidence. When she began spreading the word about Christ through the town, all the townspeople started coming out to see Jesus. Something about this woman was different than before she went to the well. It must have been very obvious. And so people wanted to see this Jesus, if He made such an impact on this woman. It’s evident from the text that she was a woman with a sordid past. It must have been well known to everyone in a small town. But after being with Jesus, there must have been a noticeable change is this woman’s demeanor. I believe she was rejoicing, for one thing. And people took notice of that and wanted to examine it further.

I remember when I got right with the Lord in California after years of living in sin and rebellion against God. And the next night I stopped by work after the shift was over and all my coworkers were sitting in the lounge. And when they saw me they thought I was drunk. I wasn’t staggering around or acting boisterous or anything. But I must have had a different demeanor than what I normally had. Maybe I seemed happy. And so they noticed it, and it gave me a chance to share with them about my faith. It wasn’t too long after that my friend who worked with me gave his life to the Lord as well, and he cited the change that he saw in me as a reason for his faith.

So the first example of people believing the word of God then is that of the Samaritan woman. She believed, and was saved. Consequently, she immediately began to confess Jesus as Lord in her community. And people believed in Christ due to her testimony. Vs. 39 says, “From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all the things that I have done.’” God wants to use our testimony to bring people to Christ. That is our mission; to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel, starting in our homes, then our neighborhoods, then our communities, and then to the ends of the world. This woman may not have been the best role model before she was saved, but she is a great example of the transforming power of faith after she is saved.

There is a second example of faith that is given in this text as well. It’s sort of understated, we need to read between the lines so to speak. But it’s not such an exemplary example of faith. It’s a lower tier faith. And that is the faith of the disciples of all people. They have faith, but at this point it’s a superficial faith that eclipses the spiritual and focuses on the physical. Even to the point of neglecting their commission.

The Samaritans were considered outcasts, half breeds who the Jews would disdain to even speak to. And yet their response to Jesus is that of coming out from the city in droves to hear Him. In fact, some commentators have suggested that when Jesus told the disciples that the fields were white unto harvest, He was referencing the white robed Samaritan’s coming out of the village and walking across the fields the half mile or so to the well.

Jesus uses that illustration as an inducement to the disciples to be about the Father’s business. It’s ironic that all of the disciples had just been in the village buying food. And yet in spite of the fact that 12 Jewish men descended on this little village in Samaria, when Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid Samaria, yet not one Samaritan was presented with the news that the Messiah was sitting just outside the town by the well. The disciples were just too focused on buying food. They were hungry. They were in a hurry. They didn’t like those people anyway. So they missed an opportunity. And in reality, they missed the purpose of their discipleship. They missed the purpose of their faith.

The disciples came back from their mission with the food and saw Him talking to the woman. They were surprised by that, but didn’t want to ask Him why He was talking to a woman, much less a Samaritan. So they just kind of ignored it, and when she left they offered Him the food that they brought. But Jesus isn’t thinking about food at that point. He says, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” And their answer is to ask did someone bring Him food while we were gone?

You know, the disciple’s cluelessness would be funny if they were not so indicative of the way we are oblivious to the opportunities that God puts in our path to be about the kingdom of God. I’m afraid too many times that we are just thinking of the physical, rather than the spiritual. Our concerns are our appetites, our work, our little routines or duties that we do each day. Instead of looking for opportunities to witness for Christ.

Jesus said to the disciples in vs.35 “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”

Now there is a whole sermon in that which I don’t have time to delve into today, but suffice it to say that Jesus is saying that half of the work has already been done, all you have to do is reap the benefits of what other’s have done. Now that’s pretty amazing isn’t it? That should encourage you to witness to people that God puts in your path. He is saying, I have already begun a work in those people’s hearts, they have already had the sowing of the word into their hearts. Now if you will just be willing to act in faith and speak to them, you will reap what other’s have sown.

But as I said, many Samaritans believed in Him, simply by the word which He was preaching. He did not do any signs or wonders or miracles in Samaria. But then it says that He went into Galilee, which was His own country. And the people were coming out to Him, but not because they had accepted Him formerly when He was among them, but because they heard of the miraculous works that He did when He was in Jerusalem. So Jesus quotes what was probably a well known proverb; “that a prophet has no honor in his own country.”

I will attest to the truth of that. I’ve lived in this area 16 years, not all of which I was a pastor. And the result of that proves another true proverb which is; “familiarity breeds contempt”. In other words, it is much easier to go someplace where you are not known and be received with a certain respect than it is to grow up around people who think they know you. I think that’s part of the reason why our summer services on the beach are well received by out of town people, but the locals rarely come.

So anyway, the Galileans are coming out to see Jesus, but they are not necessarily believing in Him the way the Samaritans did. They don’t believe Him for His word, but for His miracles. So Jesus rebukes them when He responds to the nobleman’s request by saying, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.” I don’t think Jesus was necessarily rebuking the nobleman, but He was rebuking the Galileans who obviously were gathering together hoping to see a miracle. Perhaps they would believe in Him if they saw some astonishing miracle, but not because of His word.

So the third group, the Galileans, receive a rebuke because they did not have the faith in HIs word, even though many of the Samaritans who were hated by the Jews believed in Him simply from His word. They were more noble than the nobleman and the rest of the Galileans. And I’m afraid that most Christians today fall into that category of the Galileans. We go from church to church, from concert to movies, to revivals, to conferences, all in the hopes of finding some new experience which is going to galvanize our infantile faith into something substantial. But in fact faith comes by hearing the word of God, not by signs and wonders or music or concerts or movies or conferences.

And that leads us to the fourth group which is illustrated in the nobleman. He is from Capernaum, which is about 25 miles from Cana, where Jesus was at that point. Cana, you will remember, was the site of the first miracle Jesus did in His ministry, in which He turned the water into wine at the marriage feast. Now Jesus has returned to Cana, and this nobleman, probably of Herod’s court, has heard that Jesus has returned from Judea. So he made a 25 mile trip from Capernaum in order to come to Jesus and implore Him to come home with Him and heal His son. In fact, his son was at the point of death.

I can commiserate with this nobleman. When calamity strikes your child, there is nothing you wouldn’t consider doing to save them. I would suggest that this example is given to us here for a number of reasons, but not the least of which is to provide a contrast between the apathy of the disciples who felt no pity on the Samaritans, and the anguish of this father for his dying son. Would to God we felt the anguish over our brothers and sisters and loved ones impending death the way that this man felt over his son. It’s just that we cannot see the cancer of sin which is leading our loved ones to a certain spiritual death, but we can see the physical suffering from sickness that leads to physical death.

So this man travels 25 miles in hopes of seeing Christ and getting Him to come home with Him to heal his son. And certainly, the Galileans who have gathered there are watching to see what Jesus will do. Perhaps many of them would follow Him to Capernaum if it meant they could see a miracle. I’m not surprised that so many Christians will pay all sorts of money and travel great distances to see some supposed faith healer. It was common then, it’s common today. I had a business partner once who stole money from our business to fly to have a private meeting with Benny Hinn. It only cost him $10,000 to get a private audience and his blessing. Didn’t do us any favors though. Our business went bust in 3 months because of that kind of foolishness.

But Jesus is not going to go to Capernaum. Not because He doesn’t commiserate with the nobleman, or because He isn’t compassionate. It’s noteworthy that no one ever comes to Jesus for help and leaves without Jesus helping them. Jesus said in John 6:37 “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.”

But Jesus doesn’t go to Capernaum with the nobleman because He wants to teach an important lesson. And that is the lesson that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” He wants this nobleman to believe in His word. Jesus is going to heal the boy. But for 24 hours this man is not going to know that for sure. He is going to have to take Jesus at His word. So Jesus said, “Go; your son lives.”

Now the rest of that verse is amazingly understated. It says, “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.” Let me tell you why it is understated. It’s understated not just because it took a lot of faith to believe Jesus could heal with a word from 25 miles away. But it is also understated because it doesn’t just mean that the boy was healed, but it also means that the nobleman was saved. Jesus didn’t go with him because He wasn’t compassionate, but He didn’t go because He was compassionate. Jesus wanted to give more than just the physical healing, He wanted to give spiritual healing as well.

I have told you many times before that every miracle in the gospel is a spiritual parable which illustrates a spiritual principle. And this one even more so. Because as a result of this man’s faith, he was saved, his son was saved and healed, and his entire household was saved.

Vs.51-53 “As he was now going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living. So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives’; and he himself believed and his whole household.”

There are so many applications that we could take from this illustration. But let me just try to leave you with a couple. One, our faith is not founded on experience, but on the promises of God. That is what we are talking about when we talk about the word of God. We are talking about God’s revelation of Himself, what He has to say about Himself, and His plan and purpose for the world. And He gives that to us in the form of promises. He gives us His word, His promises, by which we may believe. And when we believe in Him as He has revealed Himself through His word, He credits that to us as righteousness.

Three times in the New Testament, in Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6, and James 2:23, it says “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” This is how we are saved, by grace through faith in the word of God, made flesh, and written down for us.

Another application we can take from these verses is that when we are saved by faith, God can use our faith to save our families. We saw that with the Samaritan woman. I believe she started witnessing to all her former husbands. That was probably half the town. But the whole village responded as a result of this woman’s faith. And of course this nobleman’s faith resulted in his whole household coming to the Lord. And we see other examples of that in scripture. I think of the centurion who called Peter to come and preach the gospel, and the whole house was saved. I think of the jailer who was saved when Paul and Silas presented themselves after the earthquake, and his whole house was saved.

The point being that you can have a confidence that when you believe in the word of God resulting in your salvation and you share that with your family, then they can be saved through your testimony. I’m not going to say it is guaranteed. That is not taught in this text. But I do think it’s a principle that we can use to reach our families and that God will bless when we act upon it.

Well, let me close by encouraging you today to make sure that your faith is grounded in the word of God. If God said it, then trust Him and obey. God may give you an experience, He may give you a miracle, but more importantly He has given you His word. And that is the greater miracle, which produces a greater faith, and a greater work in you. Because God’s word is sufficient for every circumstance, for every day. We don’t need to wait for a sign, when we have the word made more sure, the written word of God, tested and proven for thousands of years. And that is what John calls this miracle – a sign. It points to something greater, and that is Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. That was the purpose of the miracles Jesus did. They point to Him.

And then finally, don’t keep your faith to yourself. God didn’t give your salvation to you so that you can say, “us four and no more.” God gave you your salvation so that you might be an ambassador of the gospel. He has given you the good news to share with those that He has already started a work in their hearts. There is no greater work on earth than leading someone to Christ. As Jesus said in vs.36, there is reward in heaven for those that reap souls; “Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal, that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.” We were saved that we might bear fruit for eternal life. I hope that you will focus on the will of God and accomplish His work in the time we have here on earth.

Jesus said in John 15:16 “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.” Let’s pray.

Today in 21st century Christianity, one of the most misunderstood words or principles in the church is the word worship. If I were to ask you this morning to write down a succinct sentence describing worship, I would not be surprised if there were as many definitions as there are attendees. Today when we think of worship, we think of a church service, or worship music, or even a worship pastor. The connotation is that worship is a part of a church service, or a separate experience in the church or life of the believer.

But as I indicated, worship is misunderstood by most Christians today. In our passage we are looking at this morning, Jesus talks about worship with a Samaritan woman by the well. And in the process of this conversation, He teaches us the Biblical meaning of worship and how we are to engage in it. In fact, in just 5 verses, the word worship or a derivative is used 10 times. I believe this indicates that God wants us to worship Him, and that He has a plan for worship. So I want to take this passage this morning and break down the principle of worship so that we might be sure we are accurate and authentic in our worship. Because as Jesus said in vs.24, God is Spirit, and those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. That’s an imperative statement. If we are to worship God, then we must worship Him as He wants us to.

So I am going to apply all the standard questions, like what, where, why, how and when, to this question of worship. Rather than asking you to define worship according to your perception or experience, or rather than consulting the so called experts out there for their two cents worth, I want to go to the source, which is the word of God. Because I believe that what Jesus is saying, in addition to all, is that you must get it right. God is not obligated to accept false worship, or strange worship, which does not meet His requirements.

So let’s start with what is worship? We could look it up in the dictionary and get a human definition. But let’s look it up in scripture. Worship simply means honor paid to a superior being. The common word in the New Testament Greek used for worship is prosekuneo, which means to kiss toward, and it came from that ancient custom of kissing the hand or foot of a superior, a person bow down on the ground, bow his head and kiss the hand in a sign of submission and honor.

But I think we can go a little deeper into all that scripture teaches us concerning worship by employing a principle of hermeneutics called the principle of first mention. The principle of first mention says that the first time a word or principle is mentioned in scripture provides a basis for how we are to perceive it or understand it.

Now if you go to your concordance and look up worship, the first one will be in Genesis 22, when Abraham is taking Isaac to the mountain that God showed him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. And I am not going to take the time to review all of that story this morning as I’m sure most of you are very familiar with it. But perhaps you missed the word worship there. Abraham says in vs.5, ““Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.”

Now think about that for a moment. God asked Abraham to take his son and offer him as a sacrifice on an altar on Mt. Moriah. By the way, this is really interesting. When the Samaritan woman tries to wiggle out of the convicting questions of Jesus, she says something interesting. She says, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Now the mountain she and Jesus was on was called Gerizim, which was the place the Samaritans built their temple in opposition to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. But the thing was, both the Jews and the Samaritans believed that their temple was seated on Mt. Moriah, the spot where Abraham offered Isaac.

Now knowing that helps us to understand why she brings up worship, and then Jesus says to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” Jesus is saying the time is at hand when neither mountain is going to be the place of worship. There is going to be a new place, a new way to worship, which will not be defined geographically. So that’s the historical significance of Abraham taking Isaac to the mountain to offer him as a sacrifice. Both Samaritans and Jews claimed to have their temple on the correct mountain. And what Jesus indicates, is that the Jews were on the correct mountain. But that is not going to matter anymore. What had served to be an argument between them would be completely done away with when Jesus was sacrificed on Mt. Zion. The temple veil was rent from top to bottom, signifying that the way into the presence of God was open to all, through the blood of Jesus Christ.

But let’s think back to Abraham and Isaac for a moment. Abraham has been commanded to kill his son, and he speaks of this offering of his son on the altar as worship. Now that’s a heavy thought. Can you imagine comparing sacrificing your son as worship to God? Well, what can we learn from that incident concerning worship? First of all, it shows me that worship involves an offering. Secondly, worship involves sacrifice. Thirdly, worship involves obedience. Fourthly, worship involves submission, humbling yourself. Abraham’s pride and joy was his son. And yet he was willing to humble himself in order to worship God.

Now that is the first mention of worship. But there are a couple of other examples that come to mind which are not described as worship, but which obviously incorporate worship. The first one is that of Cain and Abel, in Genesis 4, when they come to bring an offering before God. “So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.”

What does this example tell us about worship? Once again, that there was an offering, a sacrifice. We recognized that already. But what new thing do we learn about worship? That God accepts some worship but not others. God isn’t obligated to accept all forms of worship. To worship God in an unacceptable manner is to reduce God to an image, to reduce God to a material representation, to reduce God to an idol, or to reduce God to anything that is the result and product of your own thinking.  I very often hear people say, “Well, everyone is free to worship God as they think Him to be.”  But if your definition of God does not square with the Word of God, then your worship is unacceptable even though you may identify it with the true God.

And that correlates with what Jesus said in John 4, that they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. It has to be a worship based on the truth that God has given us, if it is going to be acceptable to Him. So then we might define worship as a sacrificial offering, as obedience, as humbling yourself before God, and according to His truth. That’s the what of worship.

We could say from those examples what worship is not but we won’t take the time to produce a definitive list since that could go on forever. But let me just be brief; worship is not a song, worship is not ritual, worship is not a building. And you can do the rest of the list on your own.

So the scriptures have defined what worship is. Next, Where. Where should we worship. Well, we have already answered that to some degree. Worship is not a building, or an auditorium, or a mountain or even a temple. Jesus said in vs. 21, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” And then vs.24, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.” The first reference to Spirit is capitalized because that refers to the nature of God; He is Spirit. That means He is not corporeal. But the second use of the word spirit in vs.24 is not capitalized, because it is speaking of our spirit. He is saying, we must worship God in our spirit. It’s not physical, it’s spiritual. It’s not a location but a state of the heart.

True worship must come from the heart. Worship is not dependent upon where you are, but who you are.1 Cor. 6:19 says we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. If you have been born again, then you are the temple of God because the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. You don’t just come to church, you are the church.

Unfortunately, though a lot of people may have heard that truth, they don’t live that truth. We get all cleaned up for Sunday morning, we dress a certain way, talk a certain way, act a certain way because we know we are in church. And yet on Monday we act completely different. We talk differently. We behave differently, seemingly unaware that the Lord of our temple is still in the building.

Worship should then be a way of life. Not just on Sunday. But in all our ways, in everything we do we do it for the glory of God. We are obedient to what He asks us to do because our body is HIs church. Our time is His time. Our possessions are His possessions. You can’t expect to have an intimate relationship with the God who dwells in us when we act like He isn’t there 6 days out of the week and then suddenly act all friendly to Him on Sunday. God isn’t blind. He was there all week. We just ignored His presence.

When we have a full time, 24/7 intimate relationship with God, then we are worshipping all the time in private. And what’s on the inside will reveal itself on the outside. In other words, what was private produces corporate. What is spiritual will produce physical. We are the church so we come together with the rest of the body as the church to serve the body. Not for routine and ritual, but to serve Him.

And that brings up another definition of worship. To serve God. Romans 12:1 gives us a great illustration of that. Paul says, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” Present your bodies as a sacrifice to serve God. That’s worship. Once we are born again spiritually, we become holy, which results in becoming obedient, which in turn produces righteous living, in the fear or honor or reverence of God knowing that God is in you, and then God can use the body that you submit to Him in humility to serve Him. And that comprises worship. The where of worship then is wherever we are, we are the temple of God, and therefore all that we do is for the glory of God.

The next question is Who. Whom do we worship? Well the answer of course is God. But Jesus narrows that title down further in vs.21 and 23. Three times Jesus calls God the Father. That is specific. God is the Father of who? Well, first He is the Father of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of God. The only begotten of the Father. So we know who God is by who Jesus is. Jesus told Philip, “If you have seen Me you have seen the Father.” He told the Jews in John 10:30, “I and the Father are One.”

Now that narrows God down. Those that worship Allah cannot be worshipping God because Allah is not the father of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, because He is the only Son of God. And if you do not believe that Jesus is God’s Son, then you cannot worship the Father.

Secondly, God is the Father of the saints. The believers. Those that have been made holy by the blood of Jesus, that have been born again by the Holy Spirit. So that we are children of God. John 1:12 “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 God then as our Father speaks of our relationship. We are born again not of the flesh, but of the Spirit into the family of God.

And thirdly, God is Spirit. Vs.24, Jesus said, “God is Spirit.” That means that God is not corporeal. He is an invisible being. He does not have a body like we have, but He is eternal, divine, unknowable, unsearchable, holy and righteous. He is a person, but not a body. His essential nature is that He is Spirit. And so we must be made spiritual to have communion with God who is Spirit.

1Tim. 1:17 says, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.” Those qualities, eternal, immortal, invisible, are spiritual qualities. God is Spirit speaks to His immortal, eternal and invisible nature.

The next question is who can worship? Who can worship God? In vs. 23 Jesus said, “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” First, note that God seeks worshippers. God wants to have a relationship with men, and so He has made it possible through Jesus Christ. So in order to have this relationship, Jesus said in John 3:16 that we must be born again. We must be born of the Spirit, and this is accomplished by faith in Christ. So in order to worship Him, God must become our Father. We must be born again. The Holy Spirit must dwell in our hearts by faith. Just as the Old Testament saints had to bring a sacrifice to offer to God in order to worship, so Hebrews 10:14 tells us that “by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” The sacrifice of Jesus Christ has purchased for all who believe in Him the sanctification by which we may be reconciled to God.

The Old Testament priests had to always offer a sacrifice first for their sins and then the sins of the people before approaching the Holy of Holies into the presence of God. Heb 9:11-14, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Notice the phrase, “serve the living God.” So then, those that can worship God are those who have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

The next question, is how do we worship? And Jesus makes that clear in vs.24, we worship God in spirit and in truth. First we are made spiritual by new birth through faith in Jesus Christ. I think we have made that point. But also we must worship God in truth. According to His truth. Not according to our understanding of God, according to our concept of fairness or righteousness, or any standard other than God’s standard.

There are lots of people in our society who think they worship God, and they have some self-invented way to do that.  I heard about the lady in New Mexico who baked tortillas, named Mrs. Rubio.  The Chicago Tribune recorded the story some years back, and one day she was frying a tortilla, and she took the tortilla out of the pan and she said with a great amount of shock, “It is the face of Jesus.”  Because burned on that tortilla were skillet burns that she said looked like Jesus.  And so, she was so thrilled she showed it to her husband who agreed that it must be Jesus.  And she showed it to her family and they agreed, and a neighbor and she agreed.  And she went to her priest to have the tortilla blessed.  And the priest, who had not really been accustomed to blessing tortillas, was somewhat reluctant to do so, but nevertheless he did it.  And she took the tortilla home and she built an altar in her house.  She put the tortilla in glass and put piles of cotton around it so it looked like Jesus floating on a cloud.  And within a matter of months, Mrs.  Rubio had over 8,000 people come to the shrine of the Jesus of the Tortilla.  And everyone unanimously agreed that it looked like Jesus except one reporter who said it looked to him like Leon Spinks.  And so, she worshipped the tortilla and she gave her testimony which was recorded in the Chicago Tribune, and said the tortilla had changed her life.  And her husband agreed she’d been a more peaceful, happy, submissive wife ever since the tortilla had arrived.

We must worship God as He is, and for who He is, and not as we imagine Him to be. Anything less is idolatry. And the only way we can worship God as He is with any certainty is if we rely upon the truth of God’s word. In John 1 Jesus is presented as the Living Word made flesh. In Hebrews 1 He is the exact representation of God. And then in John 17 Jesus says that the word of God is truth. God has presented Himself in His word. When we combine the Living Word with the written word, then we are worshipping God in truth.

To worship God in spirit and in truth then signifies that of the heart and the head. Worship must be authentic and accurate. Worship in spirit speaks of our attitude. Our heart must be aligned with God by faith. When that happens the Holy Spirit dwells in us, linking the inner man with God. And truth speaks of information. God has revealed Himself most completely and accurately in the scriptures.

As I said last night at the Valentine’s dinner. Knowledge produces intimacy. The more you know and learn about your loved one, the more you love them. We tend to worship God but a little, because we only know a little about God. But the more you know about God the more it produces true worship.

Spirit and the truth signifies worship from the heart and the head. It’s kind of like Valentine’s Day for some of us men. We know that it is Valentine’s Day because the calendar tells us. So we know that we have to respond by buying a card, maybe some chocolates or flowers. The expectations of what we know about Valentine’s Day produces a response on our part which is expected. But if that is all that it is, then it’s a form of legalism, of ritual that your wife is going to know is not from the heart. But she wants much more than just fulfilling an obligation or a ritual. She wants romance, passion, love, intimacy, fellowship. She wants you, she wants your heart.

And so does God. He wants all of us. Yes, He wants us to follow His word. He has written down His expectations and requirements for worship. But when we just show up for church and drop our offering in the box and sing a few songs and go through the rituals only then we are missing the heart of worship. God wants your heart. He wants a heart in love with Him, a heart that wants to intimacy with Him, fellowship with Him. That comes from a right relationship with Him.

Finally, one last point. The result of worship. In vs 25 the Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” This is the most clear statement that Jesus ever makes concerning the fact that He is the Messiah with the possible exception of His response to Pilate before His crucifixion. But what did the Messiah accomplish? Jesus declared His purpose in John 14:6. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Through Jesus, and only through Jesus, has the way to God been made available. He is the peace between God and man. He has made it possible for us to be reconciled to God. So when we come to Him and worship Him, we have fellowship with God, we have the benefits of being the children of God, and we have the inheritance of ruling and reigning with Christ for eternity. Worshipping God in spirit and in truth is simply began in salvation, and it continues as our sanctification, and will be consummated in our glorification. We who worship God now as He has presented Himself and according to His requirements, will worship Him forever and ever in glory. I don’t think that’s going to look like what popular imagery indicates though. I don’t think we will be sitting around on clouds playing harps, or even just having a praise service for eternity. But I think that we will be serving God for eternity, and all that we do will result in praise to His glory. Worship here on earth is just practice for what will go on for eternity.

Eph. 3:14-21 “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”

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.

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.

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.”

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 2^nd 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.”

3^rd 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)