But here in John 7, and really the whole
Gospel of John, as we've known, the subject
matter of John more than anything else is
Jesus.
And you just cannot improve on that subject
matter.
And I have to say with all the issues and
problems that we have going on in the world
that we've discussed this morning, and even
many issues and problems that we continue
to have within the Church of Jesus Christ, the
professing Church of Jesus Christ in America
and the world.
I am so thankful, very thankful to be able to
preach the Word of God to a congregation
that really doesn't get caught up in all of
that.
You just want to have the Word of God rightly
divided, plain and simple, no extras.
You just want, when you come here, you're
expecting just straightforward biblical
Christianity.
That's the kind of church I would go to if I
wasn't a pastor.
That's the kind of church this is, and it just
really frees up the preacher to preach.
I mean, keep it simple, stupid is really a
profound philosophy when you really think
about it.
I think it is.
So let's get to it today by first reading our
text that we're going to look at and expound
in verses 14 to 24 of the Gospel of John, John
chapter 7, starting in verse 14.
"But when it was now the midst of the feast,
Jesus went up into the temple and began to
teach."
The Jews then were astonished, saying, "How
has this man become learned, having never
been educated?"
So Jesus answered them and said, "My teaching
is not mine, but him, his who sent me."
If anyone is willing to do his will, he will
know of the teaching, whether it is of God
or whether I speak from myself.
He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory
, but he who is seeking the glory of the one
who sent him, he is true, and there is no un
righteousness in him.
"Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none
of you carries out the law?
Why do you seek to kill me?"
The crowd answered, "You have a demon, who
seeks to kill you?"
Jesus answered them, "I did one deed and you
all marvel."
For this reason, Moses has given you circum
cision, not because it's from Moses, but from
the
fathers and on the Sabbath, you circumcise a
man.
If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath
so that the law of Moses will not be broken,
are you angry with me because I made an entire
man well on the Sabbath?
Do not judge according to appearance, but
judge with righteous judgment.
You have to understand that the most
significant and important human being who ever
lived on
this earth is not debatable.
The claims that he made that are recording for
us in Scripture are really astonishing.
They were shocking.
They're still shocking today.
They were beyond bold, and especially in that
day, to the natural ear, his claims were
beyond
outrageous.
I want you to keep in mind that Jesus, just
kind of take yourself back to that time period
that he lived in.
You think about Jesus walking down the dusty
roads of Galilee.
He was really absolutely indistinguishable
from any other Galilean man when he walked
the earth.
Most likely, I would say, surely he carried
with him the Galilean accent that he grew
up with.
It was the same over there as this here.
When you go to Brogbridge, they have an accent
that's different from the accent that's over
there in Lake Charles, right, or North
Louisiana.
Same thing in those regions.
So just looking at Jesus, if he walked up to
you outwardly, you wouldn't see any evidence
of his deity.
He didn't walk around like the paintings you
see with a glowing halo around his head.
There was no way you would see him, really,
back then any different than you would see
any other man for that matter.
The difference, though, with Jesus is that no
man living came anywhere close to making
the claims that he made.
And I want to give you a little montage here,
back to back, straight from Scripture, and
I want it to help you absorb kind of all
together at one time something of the weight
of a lot
of the things.
I'm not going to go through every exhaustive
thing, but most of the big ones that he
claimed
when he was here.
I want you to feel the weight.
Just think about a normal, average Galilean
carpenter in Nazareth making these claims.
And I'm not going to go through all the
Scripture references, but you're going to
notice every
single one of these when I say them.
He said he came down from heaven.
He said he eternally existed.
He said that he had been sent into this world
specifically by God the Father.
He claimed to be the savior of the world and
the only savior.
He claimed to be the determiner of everybody's
destiny.
He claimed to be the source of eternal life
and the only source.
He claimed to be the only way to God.
He claimed to have the right to be honored and
worshiped on an equal basis with the eternal
God.
He claimed to be one with the Father.
He claimed to have the power to give life and
even to raise the dead.
He claimed to be able to raise himself from
the dead.
He claimed to be the one of whom the Old
Testament Scripture spoke and the one who was
the main
subject of the entire Old Testament to Jewish
religious leaders.
He claimed to be the supreme judge of all men
who would one day return and judge all
of them at his return in glory.
He claimed to be without sin.
He claimed to have all authority in heaven and
on earth that's the universe.
He claimed to have the power and the authority
to forgive sin.
He claimed to rule over the Sabbath to Jews.
He claimed to be greater than the temple to
Jewish religious leaders.
He claimed to be greater than Abraham to those
Jews.
He even claimed to have been alive before
Abraham was born to the Jewish religious
leaders.
Think of that.
All of this from a man who lived 2,000 years
ago who was physically by appearance
absolutely
indistinguishable from any other Galilean man.
These claims, folks, were just beyond
comprehension and the Jewish leaders taking
this in, listening
to this, what was their appraisal?
He's a blasphemer.
I mean, this level of blasphemy when you put
all this together is beyond what any human
being, especially back at that time, would
even think about saying all this stuff.
Therefore, many of them said he must be under
the overwhelming influence of the ultimate
blasphemer Satan himself.
He must be.
He does what he does by the power of Satan.
He said he has a demon.
Now others were more charitable and they just
said, "Well, he's insane."
I mean, anybody says all that, they're out of
their mind.
But whether he's a false teacher that we can't
believe, whether he's a totally insane madman
or even possessed by a demon, wherever you
fall in those camps, you just made a judgment
on who Jesus is, as I've said, with severe
implications, whether you believe it or not,
with your judgment, implications and
consequences that last forever in your
judgment.
Back then, just like now, some people believe
most in Israel rejected him.
And in the case of the majority of the Jews of
Jesus's day, they decided these Jewish
leaders have been here leading us for a long
time.
This is all we've ever known of God all our
life and what they've taught us.
Most of them followed the Jewish religious
leaders in that day.
In fact, it all ended up with even the
majority of the crowd who at one time, many of
them
said he was a good man and were behind him.
Many of them lined the street leading into
Jerusalem, shouting, "Hosanna, Hosanna in
the highest, blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord," with their palm branches
on the day that he rode into Jerusalem on that
donkey.
But by the end of the week, many of those very
sane people were screaming for his death,
crucified him.
I'm telling you that even in his day, he was
largely rejected.
Only 120 people showed up in the upper room in
Judea on the day of Pentecost when the
Holy Spirit came, 120 out of all the tens of
thousands of people in Judea that had
seen his miracles that were impossible to fake
.
And I want you to remember the words of John
from back in John 1, 10 through 11.
He was in the world.
Look at this next phrase, "And the world was
made through him."
You realize that John right there, just that
phrase, what an incredible claim that is that
the Spirit of God inspired the apostle John to
write just that phrase, "The world was
made through him."
Wow, nobody else having him come.
And the world did not know him.
He came to his own, the Jewish people, and
those who were his own did not receive him.
His claims were rejected by and large.
He was rejected, that's how it was.
Look around when you go outside next week to
the places where you involve yourself with
other human beings, most people reject him.
Why do you believe and others don't?
Why do I believe?
Well, ultimately, in the biggest picture, it
is because God, in his sovereign grace,
has made us willing to believe because
naturally we don't want to.
Naturally, we want to believe in us.
That's how Christians are made.
God makes it happen.
Now, as we approach this text, try to remember
, I know it's hard from where we left off last
time.
We just spent seven months of time primarily
in Galilee training the twelve disciples.
There were some public ministries and miracles
, but primarily, most of the last seven months,
he's been spending time with them, teaching
them, training them, preparing them for what
was going to come after he left.
We saw in verse 2 of this chapter that it was
now the time for the feast of booths.
If you remember, every Jewish man was required
to attend this festival once a year in
Jerusalem.
Remember, we went over it, Jesus's brothers,
they wanted him to go with them.
Come on, Jesus, it's time for feast of booths.
Come on down there with us, but he didn't want
to go with them in the big family caravan
that they would take down there every year.
He waited.
They went on because he knew down there in
Jerusalem there were Jewish leaders at this
point who were wanting to kill him, really
wanting to murder him.
Remember what he said, "My time is not yet
here."
We saw in verse 11 how the Jews were looking
for him at the booths.
I mean, they're looking, they're scanning all
through the crowds, where is he at?
We don't see him.
This time he was so popular, I mean, you could
pick him out of a crowd.
So many people have watched him preach and
seen him do miracles.
They're saying, "Where's Jesus?"
And you remember Jesus, he holds back.
He lets the feast get filled up full of people
.
He waits until midweek when all the people are
settled in.
And even then, he takes a secret journey
through Samaria that no Jew would ever walk
through.
He's being stealthy.
Even though, remember, in his sovereignty, he
knew exactly when the time was coming.
He's still acting in his responsibility.
And as we come to verse 14, we find him
approaching the temple in Jerusalem right
where the leaders
are who are determined to execute him.
And even though he's being stealthy, he's
putting his life on the line just by being
there.
Now, imagine Jerusalem.
You've seen in movies, you think of pictures
of how it looked, with the smoke rising up
out of the temple and the big walls that were
around Jerusalem.
Imagine it being now filled to capacity, tens
and tens of thousands of people, masses of
people.
They've come from all over the area to come to
this annual feast, and Jesus shows up.
He walks into Jerusalem in the middle of the
week of the feast.
I'm sure by now the leaders would give up
probably looking for him, and so it would
have caught them off guard for sure to see him
.
Remember, they don't think he's there for the
first part of the week, and in some ways,
in some ways, if you think about it, they're
kind of neutralized by the crowd and the
public
exposure that Jesus already has.
So as he comes in this way, he's really smart,
and they just couldn't go over there and just
grab him.
And right here, it is his time to be doing
exactly what he's fixing to do.
He wouldn't have come to Jerusalem one day
earlier than he did, because as we talked
about last time, he was on a very careful,
accurate, precise, divine, sovereign time
schedule
right down to the very hours and the very days
.
And he steps into what would have been a very
huge, massive crowd in the courtyard of this
temple.
And if you remember from last time, there was
that little part of that verse that said
they had all been talking about him.
He was the talk of the town.
I mean, how could he not be?
So many people saw him feed 25,000 people,
right?
And remember, some of them, they said he was a
good man.
Some of them said, "No, he's a deceiver."
But nobody really, there was more whispers.
Nobody really formed their opinions publicly,
because why?
The average man was very afraid of the Jewish
leaders, because they could put you out of
the synagogue, which would put you out of
socializing with anybody, you would be a par
iah.
Later in this chapter, they're going to make
an attempt to arrest Jesus, but they couldn't
pull it off, because when they sent the temple
police to arrest him, the temple police came
back without him.
They were empty-handed.
And the Pharisees said, "What's the deal?
Why didn't you bring him back?
Why didn't you arrest him?"
To which they said, "Never has a man spoken
the way this man speaks."
They had never heard anything like the stuff
he was saying in their life.
So let's get started by looking at verse 14.
But when it was now the midst of the fee, so
against the middle of the week, Jesus went
up into the temple and began to teach.
Now, he's doing what rabbis did, okay?
The temple courtyard, again, was this massive,
huge area.
And the rabbis would find a spot, and their
disciples would gather around, and they would
teach him.
So you could see a rabbi over here with his
little group of people, he's teaching, and
then you could look further over here, he'd be
a rabbi over here, he's teaching his little
group, and so that's what Jesus does.
He starts teaching in the middle of the week,
feast of booths, temple courtyard.
And in this passage before us, Jesus is going
to provide for us five reasons to believe his
incredible claims, and that's going to be our
outline for today, if you're making outlines.
Five reasons why the claims of Christ are true
.
Number one, the divine source of his teaching.
So in this big courtyard, again, lots of rabb
is teaching all at the same time, and probably
really more rabbis than at any other time,
because this is the middle of the feast week.
And when the rabbis taught, in order for them
to give authority to what they said, what
they would do is they would quote other rabbis
.
And this did two things, first, it had the
effect of validating what they said so that
the people wouldn't think that this rabbi just
came up with this on his own and just
had invented what he was saying.
And then secondly, it kept them in the
tradition and they were big on tradition.
You wanted to quote other rabbis like a Gamal
iel or somebody who were respected so that you
could give some authority to what you said,
being in the tradition like that was very
important to these Jews.
So that's what they would do.
But that's not ever, ever what Jesus ever did,
not one time.
He never quoted any other rabbis ever.
At the end of the sermon on the mount, the
people were amazed because he taught as one
having authority, it says, possessing
authority within himself, which means he didn
't need
to quote any rabbis.
So the first reason to believe the claims of
Jesus is his divine knowledge in his teaching
and in his doctrine.
Look at verse 15, then the Jews, the Jews then
were astonished.
That's a strong word saying, "How has this man
become learned, having never been educated?"
Please notice they acknowledged his learning
to what they were listening to when he spoke
was way beyond anybody else that they had ever
heard in their life.
Regular rabbis would expound scripture,
explain scripture, and then quote the other
rabbis,
as I said, to validate their interpretation.
But this teaching of Jesus, way beyond
anything, anybody, had ever heard.
It was a level of wisdom and knowledge and
understanding that was without equal, and
they are absolutely dumbfounded with what they
hear, shocked.
He never quotes another rabbi ever.
He doesn't validate his teaching with any
other human source, there's never been
anything
like it.
They're sitting there, listening to Jesus,
teach, and they are overwhelmed by the extreme
clarity of what he's saying, the depth of what
he's saying, the ringing reality of what
he is speaking.
And everybody else is listening to this
amazing teaching, too.
So in their minds, and they're wanting to kill
him, remember, but they couldn't kill
him outright in front of all these other
people.
So they're thinking in their minds, well, how
are we going to discredit him, because
we've got to do something here.
These people are being swayed by this.
Everybody's ever heard anything like this?
Well, they think the same way that politicians
think today, and how politicians deal with
each other today.
Just watch any of the political talk shows.
They attack him directly.
They don't attack what he's saying.
They don't attack his teaching.
Notice again, verse 15, "How has this man
become learning, having never been educated?"
Now, really, this is what you call an ad homin
em argument.
They didn't want to argue with him.
And what he said, they didn't want to debate,
they sure didn't want to debate him, okay?
So they tried to discredit him by calling into
question what?
His lack of training, his lack of education.
Another time they wanted to discredit him
rather than deal with him in debate, they said
, remember,
huh, couldn't any good thing come out of Azer
oth?
I mean, attack him, attack him for his
hometown.
I mean, it's not a very strong argument, is it
?
As we know, every time they did enter into a
discussion or a debate with him, what happened
?
They were humiliated.
So they're just grasping at straws here, right
?
Not only were they astonished by his claims,
but oh, I wish we could hear every jot and
tittle.
I'm sure the biblical support that he was
getting for the claims that he was making
and the verses that he was quoting was just
spot on in a way they'd never heard.
That's why they called him "learned," because
for sure he's quoting scripture with
everything
he's got to say, and they just can't cope with
it.
They're sitting there knowing they can't argue
with it.
They can't debate it.
They can't even contradict it.
They're trapped by their own self-centered,
hypocritical system.
So all they can do is discredit him.
Notice this little slight.
They don't even want to use his name.
Look at it.
They say, how has this man-- they don't use
his name.
That was definitely a shot.
A definitely an expression of derision.
How has this man-- they're saying, don't let
this nobody pass himself off as somebody
legitimately teaching the Word of God.
He's just shooting off his uneducated mouth
out here.
That's all they could come up with.
We got men today in the ministry who give no
credibility to those of us who haven't
gone to the seminary.
A same thing.
That doesn't cause me any problem.
Charles Spurgeon didn't go to seminary.
So if Charles Spurgeon didn't go to seminary,
I think I can not go to seminary, too.
Now, think about this.
Jesus could have defended himself in a number
of ways here by simply saying, hey, you're
absolutely right.
This is my truth.
You know why?
Because I'm God.
And I'm telling the truth.
But he's smart enough, of course, and wise
enough to know that that would have been infl
amed
them and the issue even more.
So he doesn't say that he's self-taught.
He doesn't say, hey, I came across all this by
myself.
This doctrine comes from me.
Well, now, he doesn't walk into that trap.
Instead, watch this, what he says, verse 16.
So Jesus answered them and said, my teaching
is not mine, but his who sent me.
Jesus always responded with things they would
never, ever in a billion years expect him to
say.
I just, these guys, I wish I could see the
looks on their faces at the stuff he said.
My teaching is not mine.
This is his self-knowledge.
I didn't make this up.
I'm not teaching my own opinion, but his who
sent me.
I'm not quoting rabbis, guys.
I'm quoting God.
What a reply.
This is not just in defense, mind you.
This is an indictment of the Jewish leaders
and their endless circular rotations and quot
ations
of rabbis who quoted rabbis, who quoted rabbis
.
He's saying to them, you're right.
Oh, yeah, this teaching right here is
different.
This is learned teaching because this is
divine knowledge, and it doesn't come from
rabbis.
They come from the one who sent me, namely God
, as he had already explained to them on
numerous occasions.
Over and over in the gospel, Jesus makes these
claims.
Again, I want to take you through a little
montage here.
You'll recognize every one of these from the B
ibles that Jesus said, but we're just going
to run through them quickly, but just put them
into your own mind.
He said, I can do nothing on my own initiative
, remember that?
I do not seek my own will, but the will of him
who sent me, remember that?
The Son can do nothing of himself unless it's
something he sees the Father doing.
They had heard this.
He who hears my word and believes him who sent
me has eternal life.
They had heard that.
I didn't speak on my own initiative, but the
Father himself who sent me has given me a
commandment as to what to say and what to
speak.
They knew that.
He was constantly making the claim that he was
directly verbatim quoting God, when heavier
he spoke to them.
It's incredible claims that ever could be made
.
So the divine source of his teaching is the
first reason for us to believe the claims
of Jesus.
And this is not just an offense, I want you to
remember this is an indictment of those
who do not speak for God, even though they
think that they do.
So here is Jesus.
He knows the mind of God because it's his mind
.
He doesn't just know it in a general way, even
in his incarnation, not in some kind
of impression.
He knows the mind of God thoroughly,
completely, verbally in words because he is
God the Son.
He speaks the words that the Father gives him
to speak, he says.
He knows what God thinks.
He knows what God says.
He knows what God wills perfectly.
He says that over and over and over, I know
the will of my Father.
And he also has complete, perfect knowledge of
the mind of man.
Remember in John 2, nobody needed to tell him
anything about a man.
He knew what was in man, completely,
thoroughly, totally inexhaustible knowledge.
He knew scripture in a way that no one ever
has who has ever lived on this earth.
He knew perfectly the true interpretation of
every single verse in the Bible to the
absolute fullest perfection.
So that's where you have to start thinking
about accepting the claims of Jesus.
You start with the supernatural knowledge that
he had, secondly, not only the source,
the place from which the knowledge comes, the
mind of God, but also, secondly, his desire
to do the will of God.
And this is critical, folks, for all who are
considering, should I do Jesus, should I come
to Christ, should I become a Christian, should
I do?
If you say, what motivates someone to come to
Jesus Christ, what are you looking for
when you say that?
Are you looking for a better life?
Are you looking to straighten up and fly right
?
You want your sins forgiven?
Those are good things, but here next in verse
17 is the test that Jesus gives.
Verse 17, "If any one is willing to do his
will, he will know of the teaching, whether
it is of God or whether I speak from myself,"
and that is a boatload of profundity right
there.
Here's the simple reality, coming to Jesus
Christ is not motivated by your desire to
get what you want.
It's motivated by your desire, big picture, to
do for God what he commands, and that
is essentially what he is saying.
So the first reason to believe the claims of
Jesus is because of the divine source of
his teaching. The second is because you have a
desire to do God's will, and if you have
a desire to truly do God's will, you have to
come to Christ because there's no one
else to come to.
What I'm trying to get across to you is right
there, that is where salvation starts.
The Holy Spirit convicts a person of sin and
righteousness and judgment, and that person
becomes aware of it through the preaching of
the Word, the presenting of the Gospel,
and then it weighs down on that person, and
they become aware for the first time of their
total spiritual bankruptcy, and it's only then
that you start to become a seeker of
God.
When this genuinely happens, you're not
looking for personal fulfillment, you're not
trying
to go to therapy, you're not looking for
personal benefits and blessings, that's what
the crowd was looking for that eventually
turned their back on Jesus in John 6, remember
?
What you're looking for is to, I want to do
what God wants.
For the first time in my life, I recognize my
standing before God.
I want to do what He wants.
This is when you start to step in the
direction of confessing Jesus as Lord, coming
out of
the dominance and the mastery of sin over your
life and to the mastery of the Lordship
of Jesus Christ over your life.
Let me tell you, Gospel truth is not appreh
ended by debate.
We can't debate somebody into believing the
Gospel.
You don't win the day even with a rational
defense of Scripture, like I got when the
Holy Spirit first began with me, even though
you can rationally defend the Bible and debate
the authority and the veracity of Scripture,
you can do that and the Lord did use that
to draw me, but what really draws people to
the Gospel, what draws people to Christ once
that Holy Spirit starts is a desire to do the
will of God.
God exists.
He is sovereign.
He is both the judge and the executioner.
He pounds the gavel and he pulls the switch.
When you get that, you start to understand.
You look around at your life and you say, "I'm
on the wrong side of God.
I never realized that before.
I'm alienated from God."
This book of Romans says, "I'm an enemy of God
.
I need to submit to God.
I want to be delivered from what I am.
I want to be delivered from the way I've been
thinking about everything there is to think
about."
So if you want to know if Jesus is who he
claims to be, then here's the test.
Are you desiring to truly do God's will
according to God's word?
Do you want to go through the narrow gate?
Do you want to walk the narrow way?
That's the issue.
I'm telling you, it's costly to believe.
John MacArthur wrote that book, "Hard to
Believe."
You ought to read it if you haven't.
Remember the rich young ruler?
He came.
He heard.
That's too much.
He turned and walked away.
He reasoned within himself, "I guess I really
am not ready to do the will of God."
If that's what it is, but I'm telling you,
that's the essence of true faith.
You're not asking, "What can Jesus do for me?"
Praises go up and the blessings come down.
That's silly.
You're coming under the weight and the burden
of your natural condition and you're saying,
"How do I become delivered from this to the
will of God?"
That's Christianity.
That's Christian salvation.
And by the way, that happens in a person's
life when the Holy Spirit begins to draw,
when the Father begins to draw through the
Spirit that we learned about in John 6.
That's when you know the drawing is really
happening.
And there's a third reason to believe the
claims of Jesus.
His amazing deference to the Father's glory,
his humility.
False teachers, frauds, fakes, charlatans,
they are all in it for personal gain, money,
power, fame.
You've been here for any length of time, that
ought to give you a clue that I'm not a false
teacher because I don't have any of those
three things.
It might help you understand that.
The New Testament even says that they do it
for the money, they do it for the power,
they do it for the prominence, the ego boost.
False teachers are self-centered fleecers of
the sheep.
Paul makes that clear.
Later on, John is going to talk about false sh
epherds and he says they seek their own
glory.
Remember in John 5 verse 44, Jesus said this
to the Jewish leaders of his day, "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?"
Pow!
They were always more interested in the praise
of men than the praise of God.
Look next in verse 18.
Jesus says, "He who speaks from himself seeks
his own glory."
And again, he's going back to the fact that he
's not speaking from himself for his own
glory's sake.
He's not coming up with this to draw attention
to himself.
He speaks from himself, he seeks his own glory
.
He who speaks from himself, look at that verse
, seeks his own glory, but he who is seeking
the glory of the one who sent him, he is true
and there is no unrighteousness in him.
How do you tell a true teacher if he only
seeks the glory of God?
And that was Jesus.
Folks, this is part of his humiliation, that's
what we call it.
He laid aside what he was eternally entitled
to in glory and he came all the way down here
from heaven to this place and he even endured
an unjust criminal's execution on the most
torturous way for a criminal to be executed in
human history, the death of a cross.
Who's the true savior?
Well, the true savior is the one who washes
the disciples' feet, the one who came not
to be ministered to but to minister, to give
his life for his people.
He's the one who renders all glory and all
honor to the Father, always read through the
Gospels, never, ever to himself.
I challenge you to find another savior in all
of the religions like that.
I promise you, you can grok, you can Google,
you won't find it.
Jesus' life on this earth, he had no personal
glory in mind whatsoever.
We get to John 17, one day we will, coming to
the end of his life, he prays, "Father,
restore to me the glory I had with you before
the world."
He knew he was coming to the end and he was
looking ahead to what was going to happen
as he got back to his rightful place with the
Father and the Spirit and glory that he
left for us to come here to this cursed world,
to be a curse as we learned this morning in
Sunday school for us.
But while he was on earth, he was totally
humbled.
And he did only that which brought glory to
his Father.
False prophets rattled their own banks and
they glorified themselves, Pharisees were
like all other false prophets down through
history.
They were calling attention to themselves for
their own personal gain, Luke 16, 14.
Now the Pharisees who were lovers of money,
remember the still love of money is the root
of all evil, not just the money itself and
that verse right there says it all.
They constantly called attention to themselves
, remember when they prayed publicly so
everybody
could hear them and the clothes they wear,
Jesus was so utterly unlike that in every
way.
And then he humbled himself to the point of
actually becoming sin for us.
No false savior does that, folks.
No false savior hanging on a cross says Father
, forgive them for they know not what they do
while he is being unjustly executed, scan the
religions, you'll find nothing like that.
So it's the divine source of his knowledge, it
's the desire to do the will of God, it's
his deference to the glory of God that should
motivate a person to embrace the claims of
Christ.
Next reason is his declaration of man's simpl
eness starting in verse 19, he goes right to
the
heart of the matter.
Remember this is Pharisees, he says did not
Moses give you the law and yet none of you
carries out the law?
Right there, let me tell you, he says this as
he is fully aware that every single one
of them in that circle want to kill him right
at that moment and he says none of you carry
out the law, Moses, did Moses give you the law
?
Of course he did, they sat in the chair of
Moses, they looked at Moses, they thought
he honored the law, they thought they honored
the law but Jesus says none of you carries
out the law, not a one.
You really can't get a more concise, accurate
statement of truth regarding human simpleness
than that right there, none of you carries out
the law, none of you, nobody carries out
God's law from that time to this and before
all the way back to the garden, there's none
righteous, no, not one.
Galatians 3, if you break one law you got a
problem, Galatians 3 you broke the whole
law because what's God's standard, absolute,
lifelong, perfect obedience to the law of
God?
These proud legalists were daily law breakers,
the law of Moses was never intended to save
anyway.
It was intended to condemn man, it was
intended to drive people to an overwhelming
fear of
divine judgment for their inability to keep
the law that would cause them to repent and
to cry out for mercy and grace from God and
put their trust in Christ alone.
That's the purpose of the law, Romans 10-4,
just look at Romans 10-4, for Christ is the
end of the law for what?
Righteousness to who?
Everyone who believes, end of the law for
righteousness.
You don't go to the law for righteousness, you
can't because you can't keep it.
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
, perfect righteousness imputed to you when
you believe for everyone who believes.
The law drives you to the end of yourself and
pronounces judgment on you because you
can't keep it.
And there you get to the end of the law.
Once the law has given its verdict, stands
Jesus to give you the free gift of salvation
that will never be found available in the law
of God.
Now, the Pharisees were just fine with how
they were doing with the law, they were fine
and justifying themselves, they'd say, "Wait a
minute, I can hear them.
What in the world do you mean that none of us
carries out the law?"
So Jesus, He knows what they're thinking as He
says it.
Look at what He says next in verse 19, "Why do
you seek to kill me?
Get that way down on you."
He knew what they were thinking and that nails
them right between the eyes, their outrageous
treatment of Jesus seeking to murder Him was
an overt violation of thou shalt not.
What hill, the big one, murder.
So He indicts them right to their face, man,
big time.
You talk about much a man, Jesus, much a man,
okay?
In His incarnation, now this crowd around was
made up from people all over the feast.
They really weren't in on the murderous plot
that the Pharisees had, right?
Maybe some of them were, but not many of them.
So look how the crowd responds in verse 20.
The crowd answered, "You have a demon.
Who seeks to kill you?"
Anybody around here talking about killing you?
Remember that the heart of men is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked.
They don't know their own hearts.
Just six months later, after this very day,
when they all show back up for the feast, the
Passover, they're all screaming for His blood,
"Crucify Him, crucify Him, let His blood be
upon us and our children forever."
They all become murderers.
They react by saying, "You have a demon in you
to say something like that to these religious
leaders."
And so they are affirming what's kind of been
floating around one of the theories that
He has a demon that He leads people astray.
And so that just kind of keeps getting
repeated and repeated and repeated in these
masses
of people.
We're going to see it again in chapter 8,
chapter 10, this accusation of Jesus being
demonic.
Can you imagine?
God comes to earth and we call Him a demon.
I mean, it's just incredible.
They say, "Who seeks to kill you?"
The truth is they were just one step away from
doing that.
Six months down the road.
One more.
All right, we're going to close.
One more affirmation to believe the claims of
Jesus, His deeds of righteousness.
Look what He says next in verse 21, "Jesus
answered them.
I did one deed and you all marvel."
Now you have to have been reading the Gospel
of John, not just pull this out of thin air
to understand what He's talking about.
We're going to see in a minute.
He's going back to what happened in chapter 5
at that earlier feast in Jerusalem when
He healed that man, remember, at the pool of
Bethsaida on the Sabbath day.
And when He did that, remember, the man picked
up his mat and walked and all the Jewish
leaders
got a good case of the hives when He did that
because He did it on the Sabbath day.
"I did one deed and you all marvel."
Remember nobody ever denied any of His
miracles.
Certainly not that one because the man had
been going to that pool daily for decades and
everybody saw him every day down there cripp
led.
And so Jesus is saying, "Well, look here, just
to show you how warped you are, you reject
a miraculous thing and a display of the
goodness of God on the Sabbath day and you got
all
bent out of shape."
And then Jesus takes it a little further in
verse 22, "He's going to help them understand
the Sabbath in a way that they clearly don't."
Now look at verse 22, "This deserves our
attention, but this reason Moses has given you
circumcision,
not because it is from Moses, but from the
Father."
So circumcision, yes, is in the Mosaic Wall,
that all male children will be circumcised
on the eighth day, but actually it came from
the Fathers.
What that means, it goes all the way back to
the 17th chapter of Genesis.
It goes all the way back to Abraham.
So Jesus says, "You have circumcision."
It goes all the way back to Abraham.
It's repeated in Moses and then what He says
next in verse 22, "And on the Sabbath, what
do you do?
You circumcise a man."
What did He mean by that?
They did it on the Sabbath, because it had to
be done.
If the Sabbath happened to fall on the eighth
day of a month, it's on the Sabbath, guess
what they did on the Sabbath?
They broke it and they circumcised a child.
So in a sense, on that day, when they did that
, when it happened, they violated their
own tradition about what they would call work
on the Sabbath, because they had a
prescription
they needed to follow.
They had to circumcise this kid on the eighth
day.
So if it's necessary, the Sabbath, oh, for
this deal, we can set it aside, because this
is more important.
This is something better.
We got to do this circumcision.
So look what Jesus did to hit some wit next,
like with a Louisville slugger in verse 23,
"If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath
so that the law of Moses will not be broken,
can you angry with me because I made an entire
man well on the Sabbath?"
Who?
This is some kind of crazy thinking you guys
got going on right here.
I did one miracle on the Sabbath, and you got
the murder plot put in place for me because
of that?
One miracle that was done on the Sabbath,
which was a greater expression of the goodness
and mercy and divine power than any other kind
of prescription there could be on that
Sabbath.
And kill me for that when you yourselves
violate your own Sabbath rule, because you
thought
circumcision was more important.
Man, this is a major league rebut to these
Pharisees.
If circumcision takes precedent over the
restriction of Sabbath rest, well, guess what?
So does doing good.
So does showing the kindness and mercy of God
in healing a paralytic man who had been
that way all his life, and you watched him get
up and walk away with no pain with his
mat.
Verse 24, just to wrap it up, Jesus says, "Do
not judge according to appearance, but judge
with righteous judgment."
That's right, guys.
Have some discernment.
Make the right verdict concerning the claims
that I have made to you.
They had spent their whole life judging on
appearance, but let me tell you something,
that's the nature
of hypocrisy.
Stop doing that and judge with righteous
judgment.
And so, the end here today that we end with,
it's the same familiar theme that we have
been ending on with so many of these messages
in the Gospel of John, and it is the message
to every person, folks, there's no middle
ground when it comes to Jesus.
They just can't come halfway with Jesus,
impossible.
You either embrace Jesus completely as Lord,
or you do not.
One way promises heaven, one way promises hell
, whether you believe that or not, makes
absolutely
no difference on the reality of those two
endings for every human being.
There's plenty of reason to believe, but where
it has to start, as I said, is a desire to
do the will of God, to stop doing your own
will in life, to doing the will of this world.
It's truly desiring to do the will of God.
If you do, then I'm telling you absolutely
what you will do.
You will submit yourself to the Lordship of
King Jesus in repentance and faith.
You will.
If you don't, you don't really want God's will
.
You want your will.
You want to do life your own way.
You've got it all figured out.
You don't need Jesus.
Every human being, as I always say, gets one
lifetime of an unspecified number of years
to decide whose will will it be.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you.
I love absolutely love nothing more than
preaching Jesus directly.
There's no one like him.
There's no one like him who ever lived on this
earth before, since, or ever will be because
he's God in human flesh, and I love preaching
when he was here.
Lord, take Jesus today and elevate him even
more in our minds.
Let the supremacy of Christ rule in our minds
and our hearts as we have heard yet again
how he behaved himself in the face of murder
ous Pharisees with such clarity, with such
genius,
with such articulation from Scripture, with
such knowledge, such wisdom, such power.
We give you all the praise for King Jesus, and
I pray if there's anyone in here today
that is not bowed in me completely to his lord
ship, that they come grab me and not leave
this property until we've sat down to talk
about it.
Father, we praise you for King Jesus today.
We pray we honor you with our worship today,
and you receive all the glory for it.
Jesus' name we pray.