God's Wake Up Call to the Church on Marriage

This is an article I wrote for our church newsletter: 

For every issue facing America and the world today, God's Word has an answer. His Church has been strategically placed in the midst of this fallen world to proclaim, demonstrate, and defend His truth on those issues. Sometimes, the Church finds itself rocked to sleep by the lullabies of this world, and loses its prophetic voice. When that happens, God has a way of sending wake up calls to rouse His Church from slumber. I believe that this week, such a call has come through the Supreme Court rulings on marriage. 

In Mark 10:6-9, Jesus gives a succinct synopsis on the Biblical definition of marriage. He says, "from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." In these brief words, Jesus makes it clear that God created marriage, that it was part of His plan from the beginning, and that He intends it to be for one man and one woman. Over the last several years, the Church has been very vocal in defending these aspects of Biblical marriage, and yet, the world has not given ear to this word. On the one hand, this should not surprise us, because a culture filled with unbelievers has no appetite for God's truth. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." Yet on the other hand, one reason why the world has ignored the voice of the Church on the marriage issue is that the Church long ago made compromises of its own on the issue of marriage. The ideals we champion so vocally today in the name of Biblical marriage are at best only a partial picture of Biblical marriage. The attempts that we are seeing today to radically redefine marriage should be received by the church as a wake up call to repent and return to the full understanding of biblical marriage. For, as Jesus' words make clear, marriage is not only a gift of God from creation for one man and one woman to enjoy, but God's ideal for marriage is that it be a permanent, life-long union. This aspect of the Biblical view of marriage has been ignored by the Church by and large for decades now. 

For a long time, the church has taken a soft stand on issues like divorce, adultery, cohabitation, premarital fornication, unbiblical remarriage, absentee fatherhood, and a host of other ills that have already struck at the root of Biblical marriage, long before any discussions of homosexual unions came to the forefront. The church turned a blind eye, or gave a wink and a smile while these things went on in our own ranks, instead of pursuing the course of corrective church discipline in such cases. Because we did not practice corrective discipline, we also abandoned the formative discipline of teaching the whole counsel of God on these issues, and thus, generations of church-going Americans are clueless to God's will for marriage, informed only by cultural trends. The result is that today, across the board in our nation, there is a divorce rate hovering around 50%, and no difference can be found among Christians or even Christian ministers than among unbelievers. The prophets of our day are right to sound the trumpets and call the church to action, defending a Biblical view of marriage. But as we do so, let us do so with integrity. Let us examine ourselves first, being willing to recognize our own sin in committing and ignoring violations of Biblical marriage in our midst, and repenting of that before the Lord, receiving pardon and cleansing through the blood of Jesus, even as we commit ourselves to uphold His will and Word on marriage by the power of His indwelling Spirit.  Maybe then, God will have favor on us, and will give us a hearing in a culture gone haywire. Until then, we cannot expect to be taken seriously by the world as we call out their sins and ignore our own.  

The Living Water that Christ Supplies (John 7:37-39)

Audio 

They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and having recently spent a week there, I think we would agree. One evening, after a riverboat ride and a long stroll along San Antonio’s Riverwalk and the Alamo, we were all craving a little late night snack. We found an all night café famous for its cinnamon rolls. But we soon discovered that one of those cinnamon rolls was big enough to feed a small army – it weighed three pounds and was bigger than my head. We did all we could do to it, and it was delicious, but we only ate about two-thirds of it. It satisfied our hunger, and then some. We started offering it to people sitting around us, and finally we suggested that the server share it with her coworkers. We left there so full that we could barely walk, but as is so often the case, we awoke hungry again the next morning. I was thinking, “Man, we should have kept the leftovers of the cinnamon roll!” Similar to that cinnamon roll, in our text today, Jesus offers the world something that will satisfy us and then some. He offers to provide living water that will satisfy the thirsty soul, and then some. It will flow forth from within us to spill over into the lives of others. But unlike that cinnamon roll, which fills for a while and then leaves us hungry again, the living water that Christ provides satisfies the thirsty soul forever. Drink of it and never thirst again.

The setting of Jesus’ words here is important to understand. Verse 37 says that it was “on the last day, the great day of the feast.” We have to go all the way back to verse 2 to remember that the feast here is the Feast of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles as it is more commonly called. This was the most popular of the three festivals in which it was expected that all Hebrew males who were physically and financially able must make a pilgrimage to celebrate the feast in Jerusalem. During the weeklong feast, pilgrims would dwell in crudely built shelters around the city, reminding them of the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites as they left Egypt and prepared to enter the Promised Land in the days of Moses. It was the most joyous of the Jewish festivals, as it celebrated the great acts of salvation and provision in the past and anticipated the coming of the Messiah, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the ingathering of the nations in the future. During the week of celebration, more animals were sacrificed than during any other time of the year.[1] The Mishnahs depict this season as a time when every road leading to Jerusalem would be thronged with festively clad worshipers, singing the songs of Zion, and bringing their gifts and offerings to the Lord.[2]

Over time, traditions and rituals developed apart from the Scriptural instructions surrounding this feast, and one of the most popular was the daily ceremony of drawing water from the pool of Siloam and the pouring out of that water on the Temple altar. For six days, one of the carefully chosen priests would take a golden pitcher to Siloam, accompanied by a great throng of worshipers playing instruments and singing the Psalms, and returned to the temple, where he would circle the altar one time as the multitude chanted the words of Psalm 118:25, “O Lord, do save, we beseech You; O Lord, we beseech You, do send prosperity.” The plea for salvation was voiced with the Hebrew word, Hosanna, “Save us now!” The final day of the festival, the “great day” as John calls it here, was known as the Hosanna Rabbah, “the great Hosanna,” because on this day, the priest circled the altar with the water of Siloam, not once, but seven times, accompanied by the repeated chants. It was a joyous demonstration of the prophecy in Isaiah 12:3, “You will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.” With this outpouring of water, they remembered how God had provided water from a rock in the wilderness to satisfy the deadly thirst of the people. They also did this as a prayer for the Lord to pour out rain on a dry and thirsty ground, to prepare the soil for plowing and planting in the season to come. The Hebrew Mishnah said that “he who has not seen the rejoicing at the place of water-drawing has never seen rejoicing in his life.”[3]

But on this particular day of the festival, something unusual, something very out-of-the-ordinary happened. Hear the words of a Messianic Jewish scholar describing the unusual events of that day:

Picture this scene … It was Hoshana Rabba, on the last and greatest day of the Feast. See the crowds in the temple courts, watch the white-robed priests as they climb the steep ascent from Siloam to the Temple. They are carrying a golden vase of the water they just drew with joy from the well of Siloam. The water was poured into the basin near the altar. Then as the priest stood with his empty flask, a Man who had been watching cried with a loud voice: “If a man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:37-38). These were strange words to say, anywhere, at any time. But in the Temple on Hoshana Rabba, they were not just strange, they were audacious.[4]

That audacious Man who spoke these audacious words was none other than Jesus, the Christ. In just two sentences, Jesus takes a ritual that spoke of the slaking of physical thirst and the saturating of hardpan soil and radically reorients it to point to a greater need, and a greater means of satisfaction. More than any weary desert pilgrim needs water to drink, more than a farmer needs rain to soften the hard dirt of his fields, every human being needs the living water that Christ supplies to satisfy the longing of our desperately thirsty souls. While the priest’s golden flagon has gone dry here at festival’s end, and the pilgrims will have to wait another year to see the water poured on the altar,  the Lord Jesus speaks of an inexhaustible supply of living water that He can provide, which will satisfy the aching thirst of our souls and spill over onto others as His life works itself through us. Here in His brief words, we find a gracious invitation and a glorious promise. And this invitation and promise are the core of the Christian gospel.  

I. Christ’s Gracious Invitation to Thirsty Souls (v37)

When I was preparing for Seminary, I got a book from the student life office on campus about scholarship opportunities. As I looked through there, I noticed that some of the funds were very limited in scope. Some of them said things like, “you must be a United States veteran living in the Pacific Northwest pursuing a degree in Nouthetic Counseling.” I was scouring through the book with a red pen, crossing out ones that did not apply to me. It was a discouraging process. But when it comes to the living water that Jesus has to offer us, His invitation is universal.

Notice in v37 that Jesus stood and cried out. He put Himself in a position for all to see and spoke out so that all could hear, and He announced, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” There are no limitations on the offer. It is available to anyone who is thirsty. Now, there may have been some in the crowd who thought, “Well, He’s not talking to me, because I am well hydrated; I’ve had plenty of water to drink today.” But Jesus is not talking about physical thirst. He is talking about a spiritual thirst, and that, my friends, is something that every person has. Each one of us has a gaping hole in our lives that nothing but God Himself can satisfy. Some of you know from experience: you’ve tried to satisfy your soul’s deepest longings with money, material possessions, education, career, relationships, and a host of other pursuits; and none of it satisfied. And all around us every day are multitudes of people who are chasing after empty promises, and who, if they were honest, would say that the theme song of their life is the Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” But to a world of spiritually thirsty people, the Lord Jesus graciously beckons saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” It doesn’t matter who you are: Jew, Gentile, young, old, rich, poor, man, woman, child, religious, unreligious, the invitation is given to anyone and everyone. Come to Jesus, and drink, and you will be satisfied. The only limitations on the offer are that you must be thirsty – and we all are; and you must be willing to admit you are thirsty – and that is something many people are unwilling to do. The late James Montgomery Boice wrote,

I never stand to preach the gospel but I am made aware of the fact that there are many who do not understand the gospel, and who, even if they do understand it, will not receive the Savior. To such we preach soul-satisfaction. We share Christ's invitation. But they, although they are in the midst of a spiritual desert of their own making, will not drink from this fountain. We warn them of their danger, and they dismiss it lightly. We speak of the Law's condemnation, and they laugh at such old-fashioned notions. The mass of men never thirsts after salvation. Do you thirst?[5]

You do. But will you admit that you do? Will you come to Him and drink? But what does it mean to come to Him and drink? First notice that the invitation is to come to Him, that is to a person. The invitation is not to come to a place – like a church building – or to come to a ritual that you must do. In America today there are multitudes who have come to church, they have come to be baptized, they have come to the Lord’s Table, and so on, but they have never come to Jesus! How can we come to Christ? Is He not in heaven, and are we not cut off from that place because of our sins? Indeed, but Christ has come all the way to you, being made flesh and coming as a man to live among us, to die as the sacrificial substitute for our sins, and to conquer sin and death through His resurrection. He has come all the way to you, so that the steps you have to take to come to Him are minimal. It is a decision of the heart to turn away from sin and turn toward Him.

And when we come to Him, we are invited to drink. What does He mean to come and drink? He tells us in the next verse: it is to believe in Him. It is to turn to Him in recognition of your spiritual thirst and in faith that He alone can satisfy that need in your life. To believe in Him is more than just to acknowledge the historical facts of His existence and the truthfulness of His claims. It is to personally trust in Him – to make a personal appropriation of the salvation that He has accomplished in His life, death and resurrection for you. It is to believe that He alone can save you from your sins and make you right with God, and to trust Him alone to do so.

 To come to Him and drink, to believe in Him, is not a means to seeking God; to believe in Him is to lay hold of God Himself. Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” This is the same promise that God had declared centuries before through the prophet Isaiah: “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live” (Isaiah 55:1-3). In making this announcement, particularly at the place and time at which He made it, Jesus is saying, “The God whom you seek is here in your midst in the flesh. Come to Me, drink, believe and live.” So, have you come to Him? Have you drank? Have you believed? The invitation is there to all who are thirsty. It is a gracious invitation, and it is coupled with a glorious promise.

II. Christ’s glorious promise to all who come believing (vv 38-39).

Sometimes, when we are presented with an offer of something that seems too good to be true, we wonder what the catch is. We think there has to be a hook hidden in that bait and we are skeptical to fall for it. Jesus says here that all who are thirsty can come to Him and drink. So, what’s the catch? Where’s the hook? No hook, and no catch. Only a glorious promise. And what is the promise? “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”

This is a glorious promise of everlasting satisfaction. That spiritual thirst that every person has in their heart will be quenched with living water. The words that Jesus speaks here are reminiscent of those that He said to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. There, beside the historic well of Jacob, Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). Just like Jacob’s well, it could be said of every would-be fountain in life that promises us satisfaction apart from the Lord Jesus: “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.” If any satisfaction can be found at all there, it is fleeting and temporary, and only leaves us thirstier than we were before. But the Lord Jesus promised that Samaritan woman, and all of us as well: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give Him will never thirst again.” The aching thirst of our souls is satisfied in Him, in Him alone, and in Him forever. This living water that He supplies becomes a “well of water springing up to eternal life.” Your greatest need in life is to be reconciled to the God who made you and before whom you will stand at life’s end to give an account. Jesus Christ, and Him alone, has met that need through His life, death, and resurrection. Come to Him and believe, and you will never have that need again. He will save, and save to the uttermost. Having redeemed you from the curse of sin, He has bound you to Himself in covenant love that can never be severed. Should life bring you rejection, you have acceptance before God in Him. Should life bring you sorrow, you have joy in Him. Should life bring you alienation and loneliness, you have in Him a faithful friend who will never leave you nor forsake you. Should life leave you an orphan or a widow, you have through the Lord Jesus Christ a Father and a Husband who will be with you forever. If you have come to Him to drink of His living water, believing and trusting in Him, you can say with the Apostle Paul, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” No, nothing “can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35, 39). He gives you the promise of everlasting satisfaction.

But the promise is not just that your thirst will be satisfied and your longings fulfilled. It is even greater. In addition to the promise of everlasting satisfaction, Jesus promises to those who believe in Him overflowing supply. He says that the living water will not just fill you, but will flow out from your innermost being.[6] So abundant is the supply of living water that Christ endows to those who believe on Him, that it sloshes out and gushes forth from within us and begins to impact others. What Christ has put in you, you will not be able to contain within yourself. It will spill over into the lives of those around you. My kids really enjoy swimming; I really do not. When I go to a swimming pool, I like to just sit on the edge, maybe get down in the water a little bit, and just relax. But there’s always some kid in the pool – sometimes its my own kids – who are not content to swim around in the water, they want to make sure that everyone else gets thoroughly saturated as well. They are cannonballing, splashing and flailing about, and ruining my attempt to remain predominantly dry. That’s kind of the idea here. The Christian in the world is like that kid splashing about in the pool getting everyone else wet. The blessings of God are overflowing and splashing onto the people you interact with and encounter. The living water is not just for our own enjoyment; it begins to flow into the lives of others as the life of Christ works within us and through us.

Now John gives a word of necessary explanation in verse 39. He says, “But this He spoke of the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive.” This living water of which the Lord Jesus speaks is the divine Holy Spirit, that third person of the Triune Godhead who would be poured out upon all who believe upon Christ.[7] But the time of this indwelling had not yet come on God’s timetable. Though the Spirit was active and present in the world, and particularly in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Himself, there was coming a day when all believers would be baptized of the Spirit and indwelt by Him. God had purposed that this should not occur until Jesus had “been glorified.” In speaking of Jesus being glorified, the Apostle is looking ahead to the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, by which He returned to His Father having completed His mission to rescue humanity from sin, and whereby He received “the glory which” He had “before the world was” (17:5).  Some ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven, Pentecost came, and on that day the Spirit came upon all who believed upon Jesus. Not only were they filled with His power, but the Spirit began to work mightily through them as they proclaimed the Gospel message on that day, and three thousand more were saved and received the Spirit. And from that day forward, the Spirit continued to work through believers far and wide, filling them with the living water, and flowing forth through them to impact multitudes wherever providence directed them. And He continues to do so through the lives of believers today.

The Spirit’s indwelling presence in your life is not a matter of mere personal satisfaction, though He certainly does this! He does more, not less, than this. He flows forth through us into the lives of others. He is one Spirit, yet He flows forth from us as “rivers (plural) of living water,” bringing blessing and refreshing to all we encounter. He does this through the gifts with which He endows every believer, and the fruit that we bear as a result of His presence within us. As you read the New Testament letters, you will note that the fruit and gifts of the Spirit are not inwardly focused on the self, but they are “other-focused.” In Galatians 5, the Apostle Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. What are these but divinely manifested qualities that affect how we interact with others? When we act with love, patience, kindness, and all of the other attributes that the Spirit produces in us, the rivers of living water are flowing through us and spilling over into the lives of others. And the gifts that we have because of the Spirit’s work within us are not a means of self-fulfillment. In 1 Corinthians 12:7 we read that “to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” As we serve the Lord in the power and gifting of His Spirit, others are blessed and edified. The waters flow through our innermost being and pour onto others. So you see that Jesus saves us, yes, for our own good, but we are also redeemed for the well-being of others. Your life, no matter how you estimate it, or how others do, is valuable to God and He has a purpose to use you in the work of His Kingdom. He desires to work through you to bring the living water to other thirsty souls. He desires to use your gifts within His church to strengthen and bless others. Are you living a life of isolation, cut off from the fellowship of fellow believers? If so, you are blocking the flow of living water that He desires to pour forth through you into the lives of others. You are depriving your brothers and sisters in the faith of the blessing that God uniquely wants to use you to deliver to them through your specific giftedness. He will do this, both within the church and outside of it, as His Spirit works in you and through you. He has not given you this Living Water to keep to yourself. You will never exhaust the supply. So let the river of living water flow through your life into the lives of others. Do not let the water of the Holy Spirit stagnate in a heart of self-centeredness. Others are in need of the water of life that Christ has promised to channel through your life as you live for His glory, with a heart that is fully satisfied in Him and Him alone.

So, in closing, allow me to ask a few pointed questions:

1) Have you recognized and acknowledged your thirst for that which only Jesus Christ can satisfy?

2) Have you come to Him in faith and trust, to drink, as it were, from the fount of Living Water? He bids you come, all who are thirsty, and never thirst again. Find the satisfaction that your soul desires in Him if you never have before.

3) For those who have, to whom, and in what way, will you allow the Spirit of God to work through you to bring blessing to others today? This week? And in the days to come? To whom in your circle of acquaintances will you show the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control of the Holy Spirit? Is there anyone in the church who will be blessed and refreshed as you exercise the gifts that the Holy Spirit has imparted to you for the common good? Will you let the Spirit of God flow through you into the lives of others? 

---

[1] Mitch and Zhava Glaser, The Fall Feasts of Israel (Chicago: Moody, 1987), 173.

[2] Daniel Fuchs, Israel’s Holy Days in Type and Prophecy (Neptune, NJ; Loizeaux Bros., 1985), 76.

[3] Sukkah 5:1. Cited in Fuchs, 78.

[4] Fuchs, 78.

[5] James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John (An Expositional Commentary; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 2.585.

[6] Jesus says here that this promise is “as the Scripture said.” Yet, there can be found no Old Testament passage that corresponds precisely with this promise. No one in recent times has surpassed the explanation offered during the Reformation era by John Calvin on this potential problem: “I think that Christ is not referring to any one scriptural passage but takes a testimony from the common teaching of the prophets. … Therefore all the predictions about living waters are fulfilled in Christ, who alone has opened and revealed God’s hidden treasures.” John Calvin, John (Crossway Classic Commentaries; Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1994), 197. Thus, it seems that rather than pointing to a particular Old Testament scripture, Jesus is alluding to an entire corpus of prophetic writings on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to those who believe upon Him.

[7] John knows this when he composes this Gospel, but like everyone else present when Jesus spoke these words, he was likely oblivious to the cryptic statement that Jesus declared. So, how did John come to know that Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit? In the Upper Room Discourse, recorded in John 13-16, Jesus taught the Twelve much about the forthcoming ministry of the Holy Spirit, including the promise that the Spirit would empower the Twelve to compose and oversee the composing of the New Testament canon (14:26; 16:13). After Christ’s ascension, the Spirit came at Pentecost. By the time John wrote this Gospel, he had experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for over half a century. Therefore, he is able to insert commentary here in the text to inform the reader of information that was not yet known at the time Jesus spoke these words.

Seek the Lord While He May Be Found (John 7:31-36)

Audio 

Have you ever put off something, thinking, “Oh, I can always do that later,” only to find that the opportunity vanishes, never to come around again, or that you have waited too long? Procrastination is something that all of us are prone to do, and sometimes those missed opportunities are not a big deal, while other times, it matters significantly. So, maybe you decided to sleep in rather than taking advantage of the big door-buster sale on the day after Thanksgiving, big deal. On the other hand, maybe you decided to wait a little while to get that clanking sound in your car’s engine checked out, and then your engine blew up. Or maybe you put off seeing a doctor about that little pain that you were experiencing, only to find at long last that you had a serious medical condition that could have been easily remedied had you gotten it checked sooner. Maybe you never got around to telling a loved one how special they were to you before they died. Maybe you put off making something right with someone you had wronged. That happened to me once. When I was a teenager, before I knew the Lord, I did a lot of things that I am not proud of. Once, I was caught doing something I shouldn’t have been doing at work by an older man who worked with me, and he reported me to the boss. When the boss confronted me about it, I lied, and I said the old man was senile, and he really didn’t know what he was talking about, and besides that I didn’t think the guy liked me very much and he was trying to get me fired. A few years after I became a follower of Jesus, I was praying one day, and that whole incident just flooded my mind. I knew that God was telling me that I needed to make things right. So, I wrote a letter to my old boss, telling him what I did and apologizing for it and for the lies I told about it. Then I wrote a letter to that older man to apologize for dishonoring him. I shared with him that I had become a follower of Jesus, and that I had sought God’s forgiveness and wanted him to forgive me too. A few weeks later, I received a letter from his wife – his widow. She told me that he had died a few years after the incident happened, but she remembered him talking about it. She said that she and her husband were Christians, and that they had prayed for me during all of that, and that she was overjoyed that God had taken control of my life. I was heartbroken. I waited too late to make it right. But I wrote her back to tell her that I was overjoyed to know that I would see him again in heaven, and that I was so grateful to know that he had prayed for me. See, sometimes putting something off, on the assumption that you can always take care of it later, could be a really big deal! And it is never a bigger deal than when it comes to doing business with Jesus.

Chances are, you know someone, maybe you are someone, who thinks, “You know, I can go through life doing my own thing, and Jesus will always be there, so I can just deal with Him later. Sometime, you know, when I get to be an old man, or when I get sick, I can turn to Him then, when I really need Him.” But the thing is, we never know what a day may bring. You never know when it might be too late. When the nation of Israel was threatened with invasion from enemies on every side, they were strongly tempted to depend on treaties and tributes and foreign alliances to secure them. But God had raised up the prophet Isaiah to awaken the people to their need to seek security in the Lord and in Him alone. The Lord spoke through Isaiah, calling the nation to “seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near” (Isa 55:6). God had given them a great and gracious opportunity to experience salvation and deliverance under His strong hand, but this opportunity was limited – it was vanish at some point in the future, so they must not delay in turning to Him.

The Lord has spoken the same message to all human beings since Isaiah’s day. In our text today, it is this very urgent call that the Lord Jesus issues to those who heard Him. With animosity and conflict toward Him rising, the Lord Jesus speaks all the more clearly to the people of His own day calling them to turn to Him in faith and trust in Him to save them from their sins. While some, like those described in verse 31, “believed in Him,” understanding Him to be the promised Messiah that the world had been awaiting, others were angered by His words. His exclusive claims and radical denouncements of the religious façade that had evolved in Israel were a threat to the prominence and power of the religious leaders in Israel. The seat of power in Jerusalem belonged to a group of people known as the Sanhedrin. This group consisted of leaders from the prominent religious groups – the Pharisees, the Sadducees (who were the priestly party), and the elders of the nation. Under normal circumstances, these various groups were at odds with each other, having differing theological convictions and political interests. But the presence of Jesus Christ, and the works He did and the words He spoke, were a threat to them all. So, as is often the case, a common enemy has a way of uniting strange bedfellows, and these groups conspired together to eliminate Jesus and secure their own power and prestige. Knowing that Jesus is already turning the hearts of many toward Himself and away from them, they conclude that the time for action is now. They issue an official arrest warrant and commission the temple guard to seize Him. In the face of this escalating scenario, the Lord Jesus remains confident and secure in His own identity and mission. The word “therefore” in verse 33 indicates that it is precisely because of His own impending circumstances that He utters these urgent words in verses 33 and 34: “For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me, and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come.” Before them stands an open door to eternal life – through which they can find forgiveness of sins and be reconciled to God. But this door will not remain open forever. It is closing soon, and when it closes, it will be closed forever.

The words of the Lord Jesus ring throughout the centuries and make their way to our ears today. If you do not know the salvation that Jesus Christ has come to secure for you through His life, His death, and His resurrection, you have this opportunity to know Him. It is a gracious opportunity, one that none of us deserve and none of us can earn. It is presented to us because God loves us, and in His grace does not desire that any of us should perish. But, this opportunity is limited. You have it now, you will not have it forever. So, the urgent need for anyone who does not know Him by faith is to commit themselves to Him even now! And the call to those of us who do know Him is to see to it that all those we know who don’t know Him understand the gracious opportunity that is set before them, before it is too late. It is a gracious, but limited opportunity. Let’s see this in the words that Jesus speaks here in the text:

I. The Lord Jesus presents a gracious opportunity to us (v33)

A few months ago, we were sitting along the sidewalk at in Frontierland at Disney World right in front of the shooting gallery waiting for the evening parade to begin. The kids had been wanting to try out the shooting gallery, but we’d been telling them, “No, its just a waste of money, and we’ve already spent so much to be here, we just don’t want to do that.” We are thankful to have such appreciative children; they had accepted our answer without complaining. Well, all of a sudden, a couple of Disney employees came up to us and said, “Which one of is the best shot with a rifle?” That’s kind of an odd question, so I really didn’t know how to answer. So, I did what any responsible father would do: I said, “My son is.” They said, “Well, how about we prove that? We’ve loaded up four rifles in our shooting gallery over here and you can all try it out for free and take as many shots as you want.” Now, you understand, this was not something we signed up for or paid extra for. We were just sitting there minding our own business, when these two people offered us something for free that we had not earned or deserved. There is a word in the Bible for something that is offered to you for free when you don’t deserve it or haven’t earned it. That word is grace.

You see, all of us, because we are sinners, are separated from God, and there is nothing we can do about that. We cannot do enough good works to make up for the wrongs we have done; there aren’t any rituals or payments we can make to reconcile ourselves to God. We are cut off. The Bible says, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear” (Isa 59:2). And that separation threatens to bar us from God’s presence forever – there is an eternal hell where all humanity would perish apart from God, if it were not for His grace. Because God loves us, He has graciously offered us salvation. In 2 Corinthians 5:19, we read that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” John 3:16 says it best: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” This is a free gift that God has given us. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Jesus came to dwell among us – God in flesh as a man – to live the sinless and righteous life that we cannot live, to satisfy the righteous demands of God’s justice on our behalf, and to die in our place, receiving the full penalty of our sins in Himself, so that we can be forgiven, saved, reconciled to God, and have eternal life with Him. That was the mission for which Jesus came, and that was the message that He proclaimed.

On the Temple Mount during the Feast of Tabernacles, the Lord Jesus stood before the people offering them the gift of eternal life through faith in Him. He said, “I am with you.” Many of you are aware that the name of our church comes from a precious promise of God’s word. In Isaiah 7:14, it is promised that a virgin would bear a Son and He would be called Immanuel, and that name means “God is with us.” He is with us in the person of Jesus Christ. God has come to dwell among men in the person of Christ. We didn’t ask for it; we don’t deserve it; we cannot earn it. But God in His grace has come to us. He is with us. Notice Jesus says to those who are present with Him on that day that He is with them “for a little while longer.” The Feast of Tabernacles took place in the fall: it may have been September or October. Six months later (in the spring, maybe March or April), it would be Passover, and Jesus would be crucified. But death would not mark the end for Him. It would not be a tragic thing that took Him away from life too soon. It would not take Him by surprise. He knew it was coming, and He knew when it was coming. His death on the cross was part of His divine plan to save the world, as He died in the place of sinners so that we can be forgiven. It is not the sorry end to a sad and tragic tale; it is the completion of His mission. When Jesus died, He could say with confidence, “It is finished.” And so He says, “For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me.” He would return to heaven, from whence He came, and to His Father who sent Him. When He prayed on the night before His death, He said to His Father, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

Even in the face of murderous threats, the Lord Jesus can speak at the Temple on that day of the gracious opportunity that God had set before the people. He could speak of the grace in His coming to dwell among us: “I am with you.” He could speak of the suffering and death He would endure on our behalf: “For a little while longer I am with you.” He could speak of the glorious resurrection and ascension by which He would defeat death and return to His Father having accomplished the mission of redemption for which He came: “For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me.” Did they even realize what grace was being extended to them? Surely some did, while obviously others did not. But more importantly, do you realize it? Do you realize that it was for you that the Lord Jesus came, and for you that He died, and for you that He has risen from death and ascended back to His father? Do you realize that none of us deserve this? Because of our sins, we deserve to be separated from God. But because of God’s grace, the Lord Jesus stands before us, as it were, today saying “I have come for you. I have come to save you through My life, through My death, and through My resurrection. Come to Me and be saved!” Do the people in your life realize that it was for them that Christ came, and died, and rose again? My neighbor walked by the house the other day and said, “Hey Pastor, have you heard any good news lately?” Oh friends, this is the greatest news there is to hear, and the greatest news to tell! In the Lord Jesus Christ, God is with us, and He is with us to save us! What a gracious opportunity we have to cast ourselves on Him in faith and trust to be saved!

II. The Lord Jesus presents a limited opportunity to us (v34)

Several years ago, you might recall a really clever ad campaign for Doritos that showed people crunching into their chips, with the tagline, “Crunch all you want, we’ll make more.” No one has to fear that we’ll ever run out of Doritos. You can always just go to the store and buy more of them. They’re here to stay. Every year, McDonalds rolls out their McRib sandwich as a “limited time” item, and people go flocking to the golden arches, because we never know when the McRib might go away for good. Marketing geniuses know that the idea of missing out on something that is only available for a limited time can be a strong sales motivator. But, a lot of folks are getting wise to the plan, and they know that though the McRib may disappear for a little while, it will come back around. And even if it doesn’t, we’ll always have Doritos. But the Lord Jesus says here that His offer is a limited time offer, and once it is gone, it is gone for good. The opportunity is not rolling around again, and if you miss it, there is no consolation. Though they will keep rolling the McRib out from time to time, and they’ll keep making Doritos no matter how many you crunch, there will come a time for every person when it is too late to turn to Jesus.

Notice that in v34 He says, “You will seek Me, and will not find Me.” Now, this isn’t like Richard Nixon’s so called “goodbye speech” in 1962 after he lost the race for governor of California, when he bitterly said, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” No, Jesus wasn’t spewing out in bitter anger over the way He had been treated by the world. He was merely stating a fact. “You will seek Me, and will not find Me.” Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord had declared centuries before, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” Here He stood in their midst saying, “I am with you,” but they didn’t want Him. Their hearts were hardened against Him. They were not seeking Him with all their hearts, and the only way they wanted to find Him was dead. So, rather than saying, as He had said through Jeremiah, “You will seek Me and find Me,” He says that days are coming in which they would seek Him and not find Him. The times would come for some of these folks when they would realize that they needed Jesus; and they would realize it too late. The reason was not because He was leaving the earth and returning to heaven. The reason, Jesus says, is that “where I am, you cannot come.” If they would seek Him with all their hearts, they could find Him still, even after He had died and risen and ascended back to heaven. But they would not find Him because they could not access Him. They would not turn from their sins and seek after Him by faith. So in John 8:21, Jesus says, “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.” They would not be able to find Him when they needed Him most because they will have died in their sin – unrepentant of the spiritual rebellion that had separated them from God since birth. And at that point, it would be too late. The door of opportunity will have closed at that point.

As was so often the case, here again, the crowd of people grossly misunderstood Jesus’ words. In v35, they say to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find Him?” Notice the error of their ways here. Jesus has spoken a plain truth to them, and they misunderstand. But rather than asking Him to clarify what He means, they are asking this of each other. Had their hearts been set on seeking truth, they would have asked Him what He meant. But instead, you have the pooled ignorance of all these confused people trying to sort out Jesus’ words among themselves. Try as they may, they could not discern His meaning. They said, “He is not intending to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks, is He?” The Dispersion (or Diaspora) referred to the places where Jews lived scattered around the world since their return from the Babylonian captivity. They think He must be planning to run off to those far away places and surround Himself with Gentiles. That was the best they could come up with. If He stayed in Israel, He could run, but He couldn’t hide. But if He went to the Gentiles, no pious Jew would chase Him there, because they wanted to avoid all contact with the Gentiles. Yet, even this marks a gross misunderstanding of God’s intention for them. Though they prided themselves on being God’s “chosen people,” they seemed to never pause to consider why they were chosen by God. God had declared time and time again that He had chosen the nation of Israel to be His missionary people in the world to take the message of His truth to all nations. But they failed at this task, and instead of taking God’s truth to the world, they isolated themselves from the world and kept the knowledge of God to themselves. Ironically, in Jesus’ last words to His disciples – the Great Commission – He gave them the mandate to take the good news of the salvation that He had accomplished for the world to all peoples, beginning in Jerusalem, and extending to the ends of the earth, yes, even among the Gentiles. The church would be commissioned to be the people that God had called Israel to be. Like Israel, the early church was reluctant to go among Gentile peoples with the Gospel, until the very authorities that put Jesus to death also began to persecute and scatter the church to lands far and wide. And as they scattered, empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and through the proclamation of the message of Jesus Christ, the church would see countless Gentiles come to know the Lord, while Israel remained separated, spiritually blind, hard hearted, and dead in sin. But, no, Jesus wasn’t going to the Gentiles – that’s not what He meant. He would go to the Gentiles later, after His death, through the witness of the church. But here His words mean something far more severe. He is returning to His Father in heaven, and they would not be able to join Him there, because they would die in unbelief and sin. Then it would be too late to find Him, too late to join Him in that place of glory. Their opportunity to call upon Him while He is near was limited, and Jesus is telling them that door would be closing very soon.

But compare what Jesus says to this crowd of unbelievers to what He says to His own followers. In John 13:33, Jesus says to His disciples, “Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’” Now, unlike those unbelievers, the disciples did the right thing. Rather than trying to sort it all out themselves, Peter spoke up and asked the Lord to clarify what He meant. Jesus said, “Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later” (13:36). Thank God for those words, “you will follow later.” This is a promise to all those who believe in Him. Though He is not with us in the flesh any longer, His promise is that we will be together with Him again. And as a guarantee of that promise, He has sent His Spirit to live within us. He remains “God with us”, living in us, reminding us, assuring us that heaven awaits us because of our faith in Him. He said in John 14, “I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” This time, it was Thomas who spoke up, asking the Lord rather than his fellow disciples what Jesus meant. He said, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” And Jesus said these wonderful words to Him: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (14:2-6). What a vast difference there is between the promise to those who believe on Him and the promise to those who do not. To the former He says, “Where I go, you cannot follow Me now, but you will follow later.” To the latter He says very matter-of-factly, “You will seek Me, and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come.” The gates of heaven stand open to those who have been cleansed of their sin through the blood of Jesus. But to those who die in unbelief and sin, those gates are barred shut forever. There will be no second chance once life has come to an end. As Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment.”

So, what must we do? We must heed the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near.” A gracious opportunity has been set before you. Jesus says, “I am with you.” In God’s grace He has come to us to redeem us from our sins. He has done this through His death where He took upon Himself our penalty. This would occur, as He said, in “a little while” after He spoke these words. And having conquered sin and death and hell on our behalf, He has gone to Him who sent Him. What a gracious opportunity to be reconciled to God and saved from sin and death. We don’t deserve this. We cannot earn it. It is ours because God loves us and because He is good and gracious. But let us not be deceived: it is a limited time offer. The day will come when we leave this life and this world and set foot into eternity, where we will stand before the judgment bar of God. None of us knows when that day might be. And if it comes before we have made things well with our souls by turning unto Jesus for salvation, though you may seek Him on that day, you will not find Him. He will not be there to plead your case before the Father on the basis of His wounds and His blood. Where He is, you will not be able to come. You will have sinned away your opportunity for grace, and it will be too late. As Hebrews 2:3 says, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation.” So, to any who do not know Him, be they here in our midst today, or elsewhere in your journeys this week, or in your home and family, your neighborhood, your workplace, even if they be at the ends of the earth, the message is the same: Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near.

When Ignorance is Not Bliss (John 7:25-31)

Audio

In a 1742 poem entitled Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, Thomas Gray concludes, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.”[1] And thus was born one of those mantras that we often hear and believe without examination: “Ignorance is bliss.” We sometimes hear it put this way: “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” But is it really true? A number of years ago, I went on a mission trip to Kenya. Every day, we would walk through waist high grass going from village to village. It was surreal and beautiful, and I was just excited and exhilarated to have that experience. UNTIL … one evening a local herpetologist came to do a demonstration at our hotel and began to show us the black mamba and the green mamba. He told us that we could be killed within seconds if we were bitten by one of these snakes. I asked, “Where do these live?” He told me they live all around in the high grasses of the area. Suddenly, the thought of walking through high grass was no longer appealing to me. The knowledge of the risk produced anxiety and fear. But, the risk was always there; I just didn’t know it before. Because I was ignorant, I could be blissful. But go back to Thomas Gray’s original words: “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” Let me ask you, was I better off knowing, or not knowing, about the risks of the mambas? Was it folly for me to be wise, when I had been, in the words of Jackson Browne, “a happy idiot” before? The fact is, what you don’t know could just kill you. Ignorance may be bliss in some instances, but it is never folly to be wise. What you don’t know can destroy you, so we need to be corrected when the things we think we know are not true, and informed when we are blissfully unaware.

In the text that we have read in John 7 today, the word “know” occurs seven times in the English translations. This entire text is about “knowing.” There are some things that the people claim that they know. But Jesus says that they really don’t know; they are mistaken and misguided. The same could be said of many people that we know and love, maybe some of us as well. Many people think they know some things about Jesus, but what they claim to know about Him is not true; and then there are other things that they just simply do not know about Him. And in this case, ignorance is not bliss, and what they do not know will hurt them. Spiritual ignorance is dangerous, destructive, and deadly. Jesus speaks to it here in this passage.

I. Ignorance of Jesus is not bliss.

In a 1988 Vice-Presidential debate, one of the most memorable lines of recent political history was uttered by the Democratic candidate, Lloyd Bentsen. When the Republican candidate, Dan Quayle, said that he had as much experience as a congressman as “Jack” Kennedy had, Bentsen famously said, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”[2] It was a really great line – maybe the greatest line ever spoken by a losing candidate in a debate.  Well, in our text here, you have this group of people who are essentially saying, “We know Jesus, and we know something about the Messiah, and frankly, Jesus, you are no Messiah.”

Notice that they say, “We know where this man is from.” They think they’ve got Jesus all figured out. They know Him, they know where He’s from. In that society, no one had a “last name.” And, there were not very many “first names” in circulation either. Think about how many Marys, James, Simons, and Johns there are in the New Testament. And there were a lot of Jesuses walking around Jerusalem (I’ve often wondered, is the plural of Jesus supposed to be “Jesi”?). So how could you specify which person you were talking about? People were referred to either by the place where they were from or by the name of their father. For instance, you find Simon bar Jonah – Simon, the son of Jonah (or John). There is also Mary Magdalene, meaning Mary from Magdala. And then you have Jesus – known far and wide as Jesus of Nazareth. So these people say, “We know where this man is from.” It’s His “last name.” He’s from Nazareth. So He can’t be the Messiah. They knew that the Messiah wouldn’t be from Nazareth. In fact, Nathanael gives voice to a common prejudice of the day when he says, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” So, is Jesus the Messiah? They are thinking, “No. We know Him. And He’s no Messiah.”

Notice Jesus’ response in verse 28. The Bible says that He “cried out.” He spoke loudly so that all could hear Him. And He said, “You both know Me and know where I am from.” Now, here is where we need an original audio recording of this. It would be nice to know what kind of inflection Jesus placed on His words as He said this. He could be just acknowledging the truthfulness of their statement. The only thing is—as He is about to tell them—they really didn’t know Jesus, nor did they know where He was from. So that can’t be it. It seems best to read these words as a kind of question, like, “So you think you know me and where I am from, huh?”

We all know people who think they have Jesus figured out. They think they know all there is to know about Him. Oh yeah, they know He’s this and that kind of person, and that He would say this kind of thing but not that kind of thing, and do this but not do that. You can just hear Jesus saying to them, “So, you know me, do you?” But in the next words that He speaks, He demonstrates that they do not really know Him. He says, “I have not come of Myself but He who sent Me is true.” The word “true” here carries the sense of “reality,” meaning something like, “He really is the one who sent Me.” So Jesus says, “If you really knew Me, you would know that I have not just meandered down here from Nazareth, but that I really have been sent to you from God, My Father.” And He would say the same to everyone who thinks they have Him figured out. If the Jesus they claim to know is not the one who has come from His Father on a mission to rescue sinners from perishing, then they do not know Him at all. You may think that what you do not know cannot hurt you, but if what you do not know is Jesus, this ignorance is dangerous! To not know Him is to not know salvation, for He alone can reconcile us to the God who created us and who will exercise judgment over us at the end of all things. In this case, what you do not know could very well lead to your destruction.

II. Ignorance of Scripture is not bliss.

Last Sunday afternoon, I had the privilege of preaching in a special service at another church here in Greensboro where one of my dear friends serves as pastor. I am always a little uncomfortable in those situations, especially when it comes time for the introduction of the guest preacher. Sometimes, people can lay it on pretty heavily. One of the church leaders introduced me by talking about how impressed he was when he visited my office and saw all of my books. He talked about how knowledgeable I must be because I own all of these thousands of volumes. I was just kind of squirming in my seat while he was going on and on about this. I didn’t want to appear unappreciative of his very kind words, but I also wanted to make something very clear to the congregation. When I came up to preach, I said, “Folks, I want you to know that it really doesn’t matter how many books I own or how many of them I have read. What really matters is whether or not I know this one book – the Bible. Because this is the only book that holds forth the promise of eternal life and reveals our God in all of His splendor to us.” If you do not know the Scriptures, no matter what else you do know, this is a dangerous kind of ignorance.

The people who were talking about Jesus in our text today were ignorant of the Scriptures. How do we know this? We know this from verse 27. They say, “We know where this man is from; but whenever the Christ may come, no one knows where He is from.” This statement reveals that they have formulated their beliefs on traditional ideas, not on the revealed truth of God’s word. Where did they ever get the idea that no one would know where the Christ was from? One of the rabbis had once said, “Three things come wholly unexpectedly: the Messiah, a godsend, and a scorpion.”[3] On the basis of this and other rabbinic speculations, it was a widely held opinion of many that the Messiah would burst on the scene from “parts unknown,” with no traceable lineage whatsoever. Had they known the Scriptures, they would have known that this belief about the Messiah, no matter how widely held, was false. The Scriptures had foretold much information, and with detailed specifics, about the origin and heritage of the Messiah.

Had they know the Scriptures, they would have known plainly, among other things about the Messiah, that He was to be born in Bethlehem. In Micah 5:2, the Word of God declares, “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth from Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” Even the priests and scribes under Herod the Great understood this. In Matthew 2, when Herod summoned them and asked where the Messiah was to be born, they said, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet.” Then they proceeded to quote Micah 5:2. But, the crowds did not know this because they did not know their Bibles. In fact, had they known the Scriptures, they would have known that although He was to be born in Bethlehem, “His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” They would have known that the Messiah was more than just a man, but that He was the eternal God in the flesh, as Isaiah said, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given … His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6). They would have known with specific insight much truth about the Messiah. But, since they didn’t know the Scriptures, they did not recognize the Messiah standing right in front of their eyes. Their ignorance was not bliss!

Still today, there are so many who are ignorant of God’s Word. Many of them have placed their confidence in the unreliable traditions of what we call “folk religion.” Just like the people here in this passage, they have knit together a web of beliefs from strands of old wives’ tales, cultural proverbs, things they heard some preacher say, and fables from children’s literature. Let me illustrate how folk beliefs form by asking you a couple of questions: (1) How many wise men came to visit Jesus when He was born? (2) Do people who die get wings and become angels? Now, if your beliefs are based on the pictures you see, the stories you read, and what you’ve grown up hearing, you will say, “I know that there were three wise men, and that of course, people who die become angels.” But when you go to the Scriptures, you will see that we are not told how many wise men there were, and angels are not the spirits of dead humans, but are an entirely different kind of creature.

Now, those are two somewhat silly examples of biblical ignorance, but the matters become more severe when we begin thinking about Jesus Christ and the redemption of humanity from sin. So for instance, some may believe that Jesus was just a nice man who died a tragic death, in a way not dissimilar to Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King. But, when we come to the Scriptures, we find a Jesus who was more than just a good man – He is fully God as well as fully man; and His death was no accident or tragedy. It was the fulfillment of His divine mission to become the sin-bearer for humanity. He died as a sacrificial substitute for your sins and mine, and rose from the dead victorious over sin, death, and hell, so that we could be forgiven of our sins and have eternal life with Him forever in Heaven. And yet, countless people, even those who own Bibles and carry them to church every Sunday, somehow think that they will be saved by being nice and friendly. They think that they can impress God on the day of judgment with their deeds, and that He will let them into heaven because they were good people. In a 2010 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 16% of Americans knew that Protestant Christians believe that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone. More alarmingly, only 19% of Protestants knew this! That’s less than one of every five Protestants! To put that into perspective, 22% of Atheists knew this. Meanwhile 81% percent of Protestants (4 out of every 5) knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic.[4] What does this tell us? It tells us that our churches are filled with people who do not know their Bibles! If we knew the Scriptures, we would know that we cannot be saved by our own good works! The Bible teaches us plainly that all of our righteousness is but filthy rags before the holiness of God. All of us are sinners who need to be rescued and ransomed from sin by the payment of the price of Christ’s blood shed on our behalf. And those who turn to Christ in repentance and faith, and only those who do this, will be saved.

In a debate with the Sadducees, the Lord Jesus said in Mark 12:24, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?” Repeatedly, He confronted the religious leaders of Israel with a simple challenge: “Have you not read …?” What would He say to us today? What would He say about the fact that less than 1 in every 5 Protestants even know how to be saved? Would He not say, “You do not know the Scriptures or the power of God! Have you not read …?” If one does not know the Scriptures, they may think that their ignorance is bliss, and that what they do not know cannot hurt them. But an ignorance of Scripture invariably becomes the root of ignorance of Jesus Christ, our only hope of salvation. The Bible points us to Him. It presents the full revelation of who He is and what He has done. As Paul told Timothy, these “sacred writings” are “able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:15-17). Ignorance of Scripture is not bliss; it is a dangerous predicament, for apart from the Word of God, we have no promise of redemption from sin and eternal life.

III. Ignorance of God is not bliss.

In 1 Samuel 2, we read about Israel’s spiritual climate in the days between the time of the priest Eli and the rise of the godly Samuel. The priesthood had fallen into the hands of the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas. The Bible says this about these men: “Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they did not know the Lord” (1 Sam 2:12). No wonder there was such spiritual darkness pervading the nation! If the priests did not know God, how could the nation follow Him? Though there were times of revival over the following centuries, they were brief and soon enough the leaders went astray again and the people followed, to their own destruction. Around the time of the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians, the Lord spoke through the prophet Hosea, saying, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6). Later, when Babylon stood on the threshold of conquest in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the Lord spoke through Jeremiah, saying that those who handle the law “did not know Me” (Jer 2:8). The Northern and Southern Kingdoms were both laid waste by foreign powers under the providence of God, who seemed pleased to chasten His people under the heavy hand of pagans rather than see them languish under their own spiritual leaders who, in spite of their outward piety, did not really know God.

During the Babylonian Captivity, the religion of Israel underwent many changes. With no temple, there was no sacrifice. With no sacrifice, the priesthood faded from prominence, and the scribe rose to a position of authority. The scribes led the nation of Israel by creating a system of law-keeping that focused on external appearances. A person was viewed as righteous if they did the right things and didn’t do the wrong things, and those dos and donts were found, not in Scripture, but in layers of tradition laid upon the Word of God through the scribes. The Pharisees had their origins in this movement, and by the time of Jesus, the nation was back in the same situation they had been in so many times before. Their righteousness amounted to the performance of a man-made list of religious requirements, while inside, the hearts of so many were still hard and dead in sin. Their religious leaders, Jesus said, were “blind guides of the blind,” and all were at risk of falling into a pit of destruction (Matt 15:14). The reason: they did not know God. Jesus says that here in verse 28. “He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know.”

The allegation would have been alarming to the religious leaders as well as the common people. There was not a nation under the sun so zealous for God than Israel. Yet, as the Apostle Paul says in Romans 10:2-3, “they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” Because they had tried to establish their own righteousness through the deeds of their own doing, they had discarded the knowledge of God. It was a shameful tragedy. After all, as Paul says in Romans 9:4-5, Israel had been the witnesses of God’s glory, and the recipients of His covenants, His Law, His ministry, and His promises. The great people of God throughout history had been their forefathers. And yet, in spite of all these gracious spiritual privileges, they found themselves now in the pitiable condition of being ignorant of the very God for whom they claimed to be zealous. And this ignorance is not bliss. What they don’t know can destroy them.
Today we find ourselves surrounded by untold millions who do not know God. Many of them are like the Jews of whom Paul spoke – they are zealous for God, but it is a zeal without knowledge. And while we could talk about the multitudes who are enslaved to all sorts of godless and false religions in the world, I think the greatest danger of all is that which confronts the person who occupies a pew in a Christian church every Sunday and yet does not know God. Religion for them is a matter of dressing up, showing up, signing up, and paying up, but in their heart of hearts there is a deep ignorance of God Himself. Having resorted to a self-righteousness of religious duties, they are cut off from the knowledge of God. Could it be that the reason that we are not making a larger impact for Christ among the 5.8 million lost people in North Carolina (60% of our state’s population)? Is it because, within our very churches, the pews are filled with people who do not know God? I wonder if that is why America finds itself today, in the almost prophetic words of Robert Bork nearly 20 years ago, “slouching toward Gomorrah.”  In Chaucer’s famous Canterbury Tales, in the tale of the Parson, we read these words: “If gold shall rust, what shall poor iron do? For if the priest be foul in whom we trust, what wonder if a layman yield to lust?” I think of that line nearly daily as I see the news of the increasing spread of darkness in our nation, and I wonder, “How can we expect our nation to return to God when the pulpits and pews of America’s churches are filled with people who do not know God?” Have we become blind guides of the blind?
What then is the solution? Well, if you don’t know someone, you need someone who knows that person to introduce you to Him. Jesus says to the crowd, “You do not know God, but I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me” (vv28-29). If they want to know the God of whom they are ignorant, Jesus can impart that knowledge if they will hear and believe Him. Here is one of many places in the Gospels where the Lord Jesus says clearly that the only way to know God is through faith in Him. In John 14:6, He says that no one comes to the Father but through Him, and in verse 7 there He says, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.” If you do not know God, there is only one place to meet Him, and that is in the person of Jesus Christ. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” To behold Him is to know God. Jesus said, “This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
The response to Jesus’ words on that day was predictable. Verse 30 says that the crowd of people sought to seize Him. So angered were they by His very exclusive words that they joined the effort to put Him to death. But they could not. John says that “no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” He had come on a divine mission from the Father, a mission that would ultimately lead Him to Calvary’s cross where He would die for sinners. But nothing, not even a violent mob, could preempt God’s sovereign purpose. Try as they may, the cannot silence the voice of the Son of God. It rings out still today, calling those who do not know Him, those who do not know Scripture, those who do not know God, to come to Him and find life. And on that day, verse 31 says, “may of the crowd” did just that. They “believed in Him,” and they were saying, “When the Christ comes, He will not perform more signs than those which this man has, will He?” In other words, He has done all that we should expect from one who claims to be the Messiah. What further evidence, beyond what Jesus has said and done, do you need to believe in Him? If you never have before, you can today. If we don’t know the Scriptures, and we don’t know the Lord Jesus, we cannot know God. And if we do not know God, our ignorance is anything but bliss, and what we do not know can be devastating. You can know Him as your turn to Him in repentance and faith today. And where those who do know Him live for Him and speak for Him, there is a light shining in the darkness, bringing truth to those who perish in ignorance – not knowing God, not knowing His word, not knowing the Christ who is mighty to save. We who know Him today were once ignorant as well. Our ignorance was not bliss! We were perishing in sin. If you know Him, remember what it was like to not know Him, and let that memory of our former ignorance compel us to bring the knowledge of God in Christ through His Word to all who still perish in spiritual ignorance. What they don’t know can destroy them. May we know Him make Him known by living in His truth and speaking it in love to as many who have ears to hear.

---

[1] http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec. Accessed May 23, 2013.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator,_you%27re_no_Jack_Kennedy. Accessed May 23, 2013.

[3] Cited in Robert H. Mounce, “John,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Luke – Acts, Vol. 10 (Revised Edition; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 10:462.

[4] http://www.pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey-Who-Knows-What-About-Religion.aspx. Accessed May 24, 2013. 

Judging with Righteous Judgment (John 7:14-24)

Audio

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 Israel? Well, what does the character of their lives say? Jesus demonstrates reverence for God’s Law, but overlooks the man-made traditions surrounding the Law in order to help His fellow man. The authorities would rather be enslaved to the minutia of their own opinions rather than demonstrate concern for another human being, and should anyone threaten their authority or influence over the people, they secretly begin to plot murder.

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.

---

[1] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 312-313.

[2] C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 140.