We are surrounded by many voices on all sides, saying many
different and opposing things. It’s true of politics, with those on the right
saying one thing, those on the left saying the absolute opposite, and we have
to figure out who to believe. It’s true of social issues, with one side loudly
shouting that they are in the right, and the other side shouting just as loudly
that we ought to side with them. With so many voices swirling around, it can be
hard to know whose voice to believe. I once saw a woman wearing a t-shirt that
said, “I just do what the voices in my head tell me to do.” A man walking
beside of her had on a matching t-shirt that said, “I just do what the voices
in my wife’s head tell me to do.” Well, I mean, at least they were making it
work, you know.
There are plenty of voices competing for our attention in matters
of religion as well. There are people on one side saying God is there and
people on another side saying that He is not. Well, either He is or He isn’t,
and it seems that there is a lot riding on the matter. There are people on one
side saying that Jesus is the only way to heaven, and people on another side
saying that He isn’t. If heaven is what the Bible says it is, and hell is what
the Bible says it is, I can’t think of a more important matter to resolve in
your mind than this. Which voice you believe can determine where you will spend
an infinite eternity! Who should we trust? Who should we believe? Who is
telling the truth? Is anyone telling the truth? It seems that today, the more
popular question is, “Why does it even matter?” Well, I should say that when it
comes to some issues, it matters a great deal. And it never matters more than
when it comes to spiritual matters.
In our text today, we find a crowd of people “stuck in the
middle.” On the one side is Jesus. He’s teaching in the Temple during the midst of the Jewish Feast
of Tabernacles. What’s He saying? Well, we aren’t told what He was saying, but whatever
He was saying, it provoked the religious authorities, who were already angry
and incensed over the things Jesus has said and done. So over here, you have
Jesus saying, “I am telling you the truth, and you should believe Me.” And over
there, you have these leaders saying, “No, don’t believe a word He says! We are
telling the truth and He is lying.” And here’s this whole crowd of people stuck
in the middle trying to figure out who to believe. And given the nature of
these matters – who God is and what He is like; what it takes to get to heaven;
and things of this sort – it’s kind of a big deal to figure out who we should
believe. That means that a judgment call has to be made.
Now, in our day, we like to say that we shouldn’t be
judgmental. Once upon a time, the most beloved Bible verse among average people
was probably John 3:16. These days, it seems that it has been usurped by
Matthew 7:1 – “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.” The only thing
people today are comfortable judging is judgmentalism. Nothing is right and
nothing is wrong, except saying that something is right or wrong, then that is
just wrong. You might have discovered that it is absolutely impossible to live
for ten minutes in this world without making judgments. You go through life
just like everyone else does, deciding that some things are true and some
things are false, some things are right and some things are wrong, some things
are good and some things are bad. But do we do with Jesus’ words that we should
not judge lest we be judged? It’s really interesting that in that entire context
of Matthew 7, Jesus is talking about making judgments. You’ve got to make
judgments about the logs in your own eye and the specks in your brother’s eye.
You’ve got to make judgments about what things are holy, and who are the swine
that you should not give the holy things to; what things are pearls and who the
dogs are that you should not throw them to. You’ve got to decide what are
stones and what is bread, what are fish and what are serpents, before you give
them to your children. You’ve got to make a judgment about which gate to choose,
the narrow one or the broad one. You’ve got to make a judgment about who are
sheep and who are wolves, and who are wolves in sheep’s clothing; who are the true
prophets and who are false prophets, what is good fruit and what is bad fruit.
He goes on to talk about how He will make a judgment between those who know Him
and those who do not. And Matthew 7 concludes with a parable about building
your house on a rock or on sand. You’ve got to make a judgment about whether or
not you are building your life on the solid rock of His word or the shifting
sand of other ideas. So, after saying “Do not judge, so that you will not be
judged”, Jesus speaks for 28 verses about the necessity of making judgments.
We have to wonder, could we have misunderstood what Jesus
meant? I think we have! It seems that Jesus is condemning a judgmental spirit
that is always out to condemn others without realizing our own daily need for
God’s mercy. This is the person who sees himself or herself as self-righteous
and everyone else who doesn’t live up to their standards as wicked. This is the
person who is on a relentless hunt for heretics, oblivious to their own false
beliefs and character flaws. In short, He’s condemning people who think like
the Pharisees and religious leaders of Israel instead of people who have
Gospel-saturated hearts. If we recognized our own need for mercy, we would be
more inclined to give it to others. That is Gospel-living! But nowhere does Jesus
say that we should naively go through life accepting every voice and moral
choice as good and valid. He says the opposite of this on so many occasions!
And He says it here. There’s a crowd of people caught in the
cross-fire between Himself and the religious leaders in Jerusalem , and Jesus is not telling the
crowd, “Well, who’s to say who is right and who is wrong? Let’s just live and
let live, and agree to disagree.” No, on the contrary, He is saying, “OK folks,
I am saying one thing and they are saying another, so which one are you going
to believe?” Jesus says in verse 24, “Do not judge according to appearance, but
judge with righteous judgment.” There is a moral and theological discernment
that is demanded in order to make sense of the swirling opinions surrounding us
on all sides. We are not to make these judgments based on external appearances
only. This is a very serious and severe matter. We must examine the matter
carefully, spiritually, and biblically, and then based on our understanding of
God’s truth, we have to make a judgment. So, how do we do that? How were they
to determine which side of the argument to believe? Jesus gives them three
criteria to use to determine whether or not they should listen to Him with
faith and obedience, or reject Him and side with the religious officials.
I. What are His credentials?
(vv15-17)
When someone makes a claim about something, it should be a
natural instinct for us to wonder what authority they have to make such a
claim. Often we see and hear celebrities in the news spouting off about matters
of national politics, global economics, and social issues, and we should ask,
“On what grounds do they make these claims? Why should we listen to them?” Does
the fact that someone knows how to play the guitar mean that we should listen
to them about who to vote for in the election? Just because someone is a good
actor, should we side with them on the issue of marriage laws? That is kind of
what is going on here. Jesus was becoming something of a celebrity in that day.
The previous verses indicate that everyone in Jerusalem was talking about Him. So when He
stands to teach in the temple during the Feast of Tabernacles, saying things
that contradict the long and strongly held opinions and traditions of the
Jewish religious leaders, these leaders begin to question His credentials.
We read here in verse 15 that the Jews were astonished. Using context as our guide, we know that
“the Jews” here refers to the Jewish authorities – those political and
religious leaders in Jerusalem who held the nation under the control of their
own traditions and interpretations of the Law; the Pharisees, the Sadducees,
the chief priests, the scribes, the Sanhedrin. And we know that the kind of
astonishment that these people felt was not the kind that accompanies faith. No,
they were astonished that He had the audacity to stand and teach in the temple.
They say, “How has this man become learned, having never been educated.”
Basically, what they mean is, “You can’t believe a word He says, because He
hasn’t even been to rabbinical school.” When the traditional rabbis of that day
taught, they would undergird their claims and arguments with quotations of
rabbis and scribes that had gone on before. They would often boast of how they
had studied under someone of prominence. Before He was converted to be a
follower of Jesus, the Apostle Paul had studied under the esteemed Jewish rabbi
Gamaliel. And as an accommodation to this traditional method of teaching, when
Paul proclaims his own testimony to the hostile crowds at the Jerusalem temple
in Acts 22, he says, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in
this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to
the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today.” He said
this because he knew there would be people in the crowds saying, “Why should we
listen to this jackleg preacher?” So, just as one of their rabbis would do,
Paul gave his credentials: “I am a graduate of Gamaliel Seminary.” He knew that
would open the ears of some of them. But Jesus never studied under any other
rabbis. He never quoted them. He never appealed to them for the support of His
claims. Rather, Jesus said things like, “You have heard it said … but I say to you….” He always appealed to
His own divine authority to substantiate His claims. And when He spoke, it was
as if He was saying, “You have all these teachers, with all these letters after
their names, and all these degrees from prestigious institutes who have learned
under renowned scholars. Well, I say that you should not believe them, but
believe Me instead.” It is not hard to imagine the astonishment of the
religious leaders and their outrage at this.
So, Jesus, if you want us to take you seriously, tell us
where you got your diploma and who you studied under and what famous teachers
influenced your thinking? Or are you just making this stuff up and pulling it
out of your own head? Jesus responds to their question by saying, “My teaching
is not Mine, but His who sent Me.” Do you see what He is doing here? He is
saying, “No, I didn’t attend your seminaries or study under your scholars. But
I was sent here by God, My Father, from heaven, and I appeal to Him as the only
authority I need. You want me to appeal to a great scholar for proof of My
claims? OK, fine, I appeal to the God who sent Me.” Now, we might think this is
some kind of sledgehammer argument that Jesus is trying to make: “You say this
but I say that, and God told me to say it, so there!” But Jesus knows better
than this. He knows that this kind of “God told me” reasoning is invalid. It
didn’t take me long as a pastor to discover the kind of folks that I
affectionately call the “God told me” crowd. I would say something in a sermon
or in a meeting, and someone would immediately counter with “Well, God told me
….” And they would expect me to just roll over and play dead because they threw
out the “God told me” card. But here’s the thing, and this is what Jesus is
saying to the leaders here: If you are going to say “God told me,” then what
God told you better line up with God has revealed in His word. Otherwise, God
didn’t tell you that.
Jesus says in verse 17, “If anyone is willing to do His
will,” that is, the will of His Father, God, who sent Him, “he will know of the
teaching whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.” This is a
fascinating statement. Where do we discover God’s will? It is revealed in His
Word. And these Jewish officials prided themselves on the possession and
meticulous study of the Mosaic Law. It was not that they did not what the Word
said. Jesus says that their problem is that they have not committed themselves
by faith to the doing of God’s Word.
They have set themselves up as intellectual referees over God’s Word, and God’s
Word to them is not what it says, but
rather what they say that it means. The Word of God had become for them an
artifact of academic analysis, and not the life-giving breath of God that not
only sets out what to believe, but also how to live. If they were committed to
believing God’s word rather than merely analyzing it, and doing God’s will rather than merely trying to expound upon it, then
they would understand that the things that Jesus was saying to them were
perfectly in line with what God had revealed. But this would also require a
confession that they had missed the boat! And this is something that their
pride made them unwilling to do.
Now there are many points of practical application here.
First, and perhaps most importantly, there is an epistemological reality here
that we have to comprehend. What is truth and how can we know it? People talk
about this as if there were some sort of ivory tower that we could climb, and
from it we could gain a bird’s eye view of “reality” from the outside that
would enable us to decide truth from falsehood. But the thing is, we cannot get
“outside” of reality in order to study it. We study it from within it. And so
what Jesus is saying here is that divine revelation can only be assessed from
the inside.[1] As we
accept God’s word as truth by faith, and commit ourselves to practicing it,
that truth authenticates itself in our hearts as the Spirit of God affirms it,
and we begin to see the truthfulness of it play out in our experiences. As C.
S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has
risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[2] As
we believe and do God’s Word, we see the truth of it, and the truthfulness of
all that corresponds to it.
Second, this tells us that the mere focus on “credentials”
is a matter of external judgment, not righteous judgment. For instance, there
are some who make certain assumptions about me based on the churches that
licensed and ordained me, the schools from which I graduated and the degrees I
hold. I was told when I came to this church by someone, “I read your resume, so
I know that you are this-and-that kind of person and that you will do
such-and-such.” To some, that was maybe a bad thing, and to others a good
thing. But, my credentials on paper do not really say anything about the person
I am. One of the most popular writers of our day on the subject of the Bible
and the Christian faith is a man who holds a prestigious position at a
prestigious university, a PhD from Princeton Seminary (magna cum laude, no
less), who studied under the foremost New Testament scholar of the last
century. And yet, this man is not a believer! He rejects the claims of Christ
and the authority of the Bible. If we judged him by his credentials, we might
think that we should believe every word he says. Jesus here warns us to beware
of that kind of thinking. Before we believe what a man says about God and the
Bible, we must ask where he stands with the God of the Bible. I would rather
take the word of an elderly widow who has spent her lifetime on her knees
before God and worn out the pages of her Bible with her own tears than this
man, because her teachings come from God. Don’t believe what I say simply
because I have an advanced academic degree. Rather, be like those Bereans of
whom Paul said that they “received the word with great eagerness, examining the
Scriptures daily to see whether
these things were so.” What Jesus says of Himself here is true of everyone else
in the world: Don’t accept or reject someone’s claims just because of the
credentials they present. Check the Scriptures – the very Bible that you have
committed yourself by faith to believe and to obey – and see if the things
being said resonate with God’s revealed truth.
Jesus is saying here that if you want credentials, He can
give them to you. His teachings come from God, and if you were committed to
believing and doing what God has
revealed, you would recognize that. That’s part of judging with righteous
judgment. It is rooted not in credentials alone, but in commitment to believe
God’s word and do His will.
Now, the second issue we see here about judging with
righteous judgment is …
II. What is His motive?
Some years ago, I was in the market for a vehicle. I was
talking to some folks in the church we were serving at that time, and one of
the members was a salesman for a local dealership. He told me how the make of
vehicles that he sold was the finest on the road and certainly the best option
available to us. Now, another guy in our church was a mechanic, and not knowing
what the other guy had said, he told me, “One thing I can tell you for sure is
to stay away from this particular kind of car (the same one the salesman told
me I should buy) because before you get 60,000 miles on it, you’re going to
need major repairs.” Well, who do I believe? I have to look at motive. The one
guy has a vested interest in me buying that car, because he’s going to get
commission and sales credit for it. Now, the other guy, might have reason to
agree – he knows I am going to bring it to him when it breaks down, and he’s
got a guarantee of future business if he encourages me to buy a clunker. But in
spite of that, out of love for me, he warned me against it, even if it means
that buying a better car means less business for his garage. So I took the
mechanic’s advice because I trusted his motives.
Well, Jesus says here that part of judging with righteous
judgment involves examining the motives. Who should we believe? Jesus or the
religious authorities? Jesus gives a litmus test for motives here in v18. He
says, “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.” In other words, “Am I out to
promote Myself and bring glory to Myself? Do I have a vested interest in saying
these things?” I mean, the things that Jesus was saying were about to get Him
killed! If He was really interested in self-promotion, He’d change His tune a
little and say things that were easier on the ears. But Jesus never altered His
message for the sake of popular opinion. He was not seeking His own glory.
Rather, He was seeking the glory of His Father, who sent Him. So, He had to
speak the truth of the Father at all costs, even at the cost of His own life.
Had Jesus been seeking His own glory, He would have taken His brothers’ advice
earlier in this chapter, and gone into Jerusalem
to do a little miracle-working sideshow. But He came in secret, and was doing
no miracles here, just teaching people the words of His Father. Though in His
divine nature, Jesus was all-glorious and had every right to seek and promote
His own glory, this was a right He never exercised. We see Jesus in humility
and meekness, going to “the least of these,” interfacing with the poor and the
desperate rather than pandering to the rich and powerful. And this He did
because He sought the glory of His Father rather than His own. He spoke
powerfully and truthfully the Word of the Lord, even when it was not popular,
even when it got Him in trouble, because He could do nothing other than that.
Anything other than this would have not glorified His Father.
Now, there is a veiled accusation here. In contrast to
Jesus, whose glory were the religious leaders of Israel seeking? While Jesus said of
Himself that birds have nests and foxes have holes, but He has nowhere to lay
His head, some of these guys had gotten rich, and all of them had gained power,
by virtue of their position. They had a vested interest in keeping Israel under
their thumbs. Jesus says of them in Matthew 6 that when they give, they sound a
trumpet so that everyone will know how much they gave and they will be honored
by men. When they pray, they make sure everyone can see them and hear them. In
Mark 12 He says that they love to walk around in long robes and receive
respectful greetings in the marketplaces, and to be invited to hold the seat of
honor at banquets. When Mark records for us the story about Jesus seeing the
widow who gave her last mite to the temple, it was not in order to guilt you
into giving more money. It was to illustrate the fact that these charlatan
priests and religious leaders were fattening their own pockets at the expense
of the poorest of people. Jesus said that they “devour widow’s houses.” Who’s
glory are they seeking? It should have been evident to all that they were
seeking their own glory.
What did Jesus have to gain, personally, by saying the
things He said and challenging the religious institution of Jerusalem in the way that He did? If these
things were not true, He had no motive to say them. He was not seeking His own
glory. But what did the religious leaders stand to lose if the people started
believing Jesus? In short, everything: their wealth, their power, their
prominence! Jesus threatened their livelihood and luxury, and therefore, out of
concern for their own glory, they had a great motive to silence Him. Jesus’
only motive was to glorify His Father.
What can we draw from this? First, we should beware of
people who are only telling us what they want us to hear. The prophets of Israel warned
the people against those false prophets who were crying out, “Peace, peace,”
when there is no peace. There are people on television today telling you that
God’s greatest desire for you is to be healthy and wealthy, and then they tell
you that if you believe that, you can prove it by sending your money to them.
There are few people in the world who have ever gotten rich off of preaching
the pure, unadulterated truth of God’s word. A few years ago, when I was
preaching through Mark, I came to a text that I didn’t want to preach. I knew
that if I preached that text faithfully, it would anger people, that some might
leave the church, and the very people whose tithes and offerings pay my salary.
What could I do? Could I adulterate God’s word to be more palatable to the
audience? If I were interested in my own glory, that is exactly what I would
have done. But if I know that I have to stand before God and give account for
my life, my doctrine, and my ministry, then I have to tell the truth,
regardless of the outcome. The same is true for you. There will be times that
you have to take unpopular stands. You will face a great temptation to water
down the truth in order to please people. But, if you are intent on seeking the
glory of God, you know that you cannot do that. You will have to stand firm and
speak truth. But you won’t do that if you are seeking your own glory. You will
say what you have to say to tickle itching ears and make yourself look better
in the eyes of others. I’m so thankful Jesus didn’t do that. We can have full
confidence in His word, knowing that He spoke the truth of God, even at the
cost of His life, so that we can know God’s truth and be set free. If you are
going to judge righteously, you won’t look at the external things, like your
own self-interests or those of another. You’ll look at the motives underlying
the issues, and you will trust the one who speaks with a pure motive.
III. What is His character?
We have to remember that the antagonism toward Jesus that we
see on display here is not something new. In the early verses of this chapter,
it says that they were seeking to kill Him. Why would they want to kill Jesus?
Well, we have to go back a few chapters to His last visit to Jerusalem and the surrounding region to find
out why. In chapter 5, Jesus healed a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years.
Well, what could be wrong with that? He did it on the Sabbath – the day of rest
which God had prescribed for humanity in His Law. The religious leaders of Israel had been
so obsessed with keeping the Sabbath Law that they had determined 39 categories
of work which were forbidden. Bottom line, you couldn’t do anything, at all, on
that day. And by healing the man, they claimed that Jesus had broken the
Sabbath. By commanding the man to arise and carry his mat, they claimed that He
had also led the man to break the Sabbath as well. And then, as if that weren’t
enough, Jesus claimed that He had the right to do that because He was God. And
John 5:18 says, “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.”
So, the accusation is that Jesus is a lawbreaker – He has
broken the Sabbath law, and the blasphemy law. Now, we have to ask, “Is the
character of Jesus consistent with the accusation?” Or, is that Jesus is within
the Law, and those who are opposed to Him are the lawbreakers? Notice what
Jesus says in v19: “Did not Moses give you the Law?” They would all readily
affirm this. They prided themselves on possessing the Law of God that came to
them through Moses. But Jesus says, “and yet none of you carries out the Law.”
He turns the table on them. “You all pride yourselves on having the Law, and
yet none of you keeps it perfectly.” Then in verses 21-23, He gives them a
comparative case study to illustrate that He has not violated the Law. He says,
“I did one deed, and you all marvel.” Of course, He has done many more deeds
than one, but there is one that is at issue. What is that one deed? He healed a
man on the Sabbath.
He says in v22 that “Moses has given you circumcision.” They
would all affirm this. But notice that Jesus exposes their biblical ignorance
and says, “No, it not from Moses, but from the fathers.” Circumcision was in
the Law of Moses, yes, but it came into practice long before Moses, with
Abraham. Now, he says, “on the Sabbath you circumcise a man.” No one would deny
this. The Law of circumcision said that a male child had to be circumcised on the
eighth day of his life. But what if that fell on the Sabbath? Well, the scribes
and priests and rabbis had wrestled with this question over the years and had
concluded that circumcision, because it predates the Law, also takes precedence
over the Law, so it was permissible to circumcise on the Sabbath. They did this
all the time. Probably every Sabbath, some Jewish baby was being circumcised
somewhere. No one had a problem with it. But Jesus asks, “Are you angry with Me
because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath?” Now, had this man’s life
been in jeopardy, the scribes and priests and rabbis had made a special
exception clause. It was permissible to save a life under necessary and urgent
conditions on the Sabbath. The Law didn’t say that, though. It was an inference
that they made from the Law based on their own opinions and traditions. But,
this man had been paralyzed for 38 years. What was one more day? Why couldn’t
Jesus just wait another day? If He had, there would be no turmoil. But Jesus is
saying here that if it is permissible to perform a procedure on a baby that is
not life or death, simply so that the circumcision law would not be broken, why
should He not also be permitted to make a whole man well on the Sabbath? You
can’t say it is because his life was not in danger – the Law never said that;
it’s a man-made exception clause. And who’s to say – perhaps Jesus knew that
this might have been the man’s last day of life if he were not healed. But the
point is that they care more about the minutia of their own opinions and
traditions, all in the name of pseudo-piety, than they do about the well-being
of their fellow man. If they truly loved their neighbor as themselves, which
the Law also commanded, they would rejoice that Jesus had not passed up the
opportunity to good for a suffering man on the Sabbath. That is, if they really
cared about the Word of God and their fellow man. So, no, Jesus is no
lawbreaker.
Yet on the other hand, what about the religious leaders of Israel ? Are
they lawbreakers? When Jesus asked them, “Did not Moses give you the Law, and
yet none of you carries out the Law?”, there would have been an instinctive
protest from these officials. They would insist that they were not lawbreakers.
But in order to prove His point, Jesus said, “Why do you seek to kill Me?” I
mean, look, the matter of whether or not it is lawful to make a sick man well
on the Sabbath might come down to an interpretive difference, but how hard is
it to understand Exodus 20:13 – “You shall not murder”? That’s pretty
clear-cut, isn’t it? Ah, but they think their killing of Jesus is justified
because He is a lawbreaker. But He has just shown them that He is not a
lawbreaker. It is them who are guilty of breaking God’s law. He speaks truth;
He is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him; and, unlike them, v18 says
“there is no unrighteousness in Him.” They are out to kill an innocent man.
Now, in verse 20 the crowd chimes in. They say, “You have a demon!” This is probably not the same kind of thing that the rulers will say about Him later when they accuse Him of being in league with Satan to do the miracles He performed. There’s probably nothing theological about this statement. You could just read this to mean, “You’ve lost your mind!” They say, “Who seeks to kill you?” This is not the leaders denying that this is their intent. This is the crowd, expressing their own disbelief. For the most part, they don’t know that the leaders are out to kill Jesus. Verse 25 indicates that some of the people were aware of the plot, but the bulk of the crowd could not imagine that someone was trying to kill Jesus! Now, don’t you think if the religious leaders had a firm capital case against Jesus, they would have made it known in order to win the support of the crowd? We know from other passages that they were plotting stealthily for fear of an uprising among the people, because they knew that many people thought highly of Jesus. But here, the tide of opinion seems to be shifting. Here’s a guy we used to think highly of, but now He’s gone a little kooky – He thinks everyone’s out to get Him. You know, its only paranoia if everyone is not really out to get you. But here, Jesus hasn’t gone crazy. He knows about the plot to kill Him; its just that the crowd doesn’t.
Well, what are we saying here? That to judge righteously, we have to examine the character of a person. Should the people believe Jesus, or should they believe the religious authorities of
Now the question comes down to us: Will you side with Jesus or against Him? Will you side with the One who speaks truth, or with those who tell lies about Him? Will you side with the One who seeks the glory of God alone, or with the one who seeks his own glory? Will you side with the one in whom there is no unrighteousness, or with those harbor evil in their hearts? You may wonder, “Well, when will I ever have to make a decision like that?” It will happen more often than you may think. Every time you open the pages of God’s Word, you may find yourself wondering, “Should I believe this? Should I do it?” And of course there will be those who say, “Oh no, don’t believe that, and don’t do that.” Or maybe it is more subtle. When those uncomfortable passages of Scripture come up, we may wonder if we can tweak it or tinker with it to make it suit our own lifestyles and preferences. But Jesus says that if we are committed by faith to believe and do what His Word says, then we will know the truth of it. And then also, every time the Gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed anywhere in the world, He is on trial, and the judgment is called for. Will we believe Him to be who He claims to be and submit ourselves to Him as Lord? Or will we side with those who say that He is not what He claimed, and that His Word cannot be trusted. Unaware, or perhaps unconcerned with, their own sin multitudes turn away from Him and rally their voices together to crowd out the gospel from our lives. Were they alive in that day, they would have joined in on the plot to put Him to death, even though there was no unrighteousness in Him. But herein lies our only hope. The fact that this perfectly sinless and righteous Jesus was willing to embrace death when He could have escaped it is our hope of glory. Because we are all sinners, from birth prone to untruth, prone to self-glorying, prone to lawbreaking, none of us has a hope of being found acceptable before God and entering heaven. But in the death of the righteous One, the Lord Jesus, He has borne our sins for us that we might be forgiven and made new, made righteous, made whole before God. Just as Jesus healed that paralytic man on the Sabbath, He is still in the life-changing business, and He can change your life today if you turn to Him in faith. Judge Him with righteous judgment and see if He is worthy of your faith. Because, my friends, the day is coming when He will judge you with righteous judgment. He will not merely look at the external matters of your life. He will examine your heart – is there truth therein? Is there purity of motive therein? Is there righteousness therein? Apart from Him, none of these things can be found in any of us. Ah, but in Him, and only in Him, do we find these things imparted to us as we trust Him by faith.
But, don’t take my word for it. Take His word for it. His teachings are not His own, but those of His Father who sent Him. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching whether it is of God or whether He speaks from Himself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.
