This is the manuscript of the seventh sermon in the series "Responding to the Living Word".
John 5:18 NIV For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
If Jesus is not God in the flesh, you are free to walk away, but if he is God in the flesh, you must believe or face the unhappy consequences of your unbelief. He either is or he isn’t. You either will or you won’t. You will either live or you will die. What will you choose? I urge you to believe Jesus and choose life!
The choice is yours. Do you want to face the curse of your sin? Or, do you want the blessing of God in your life? God says, “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. . . . Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!” (Deuteronomy 30:19 NLT).
Scripture
John 5:16-29 NIV So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.
Text
John 5:18 NIV For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Introduction
Occasionally people will say, “I can’t accept anything by faith. I have to have reasons for believing.” Theology has sometimes been defined as “faith seeking understanding.”
No Christian would deny that we are saved by faith, but not by faith in faith. We respond to God’s gift of salvation by putting faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the world.
Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not based on “blind faith”; we have reasons for believing in Jesus Christ. We have something called “reasonable faith.”
Reasonable faith is believing in something because of the evidence.
We have reasonable faith when we believe something because it is the most reasonable inference from evidence, even though we may still have some unanswered questions.
I believe, for example, that penicillin helps fight bacterial infections. There is laboratory evidence to support this claim, and I’ve personally had and used it to fight infections. I still don’t know how (or why) penicillin works, but I have faith in penicillin, even though I have many unanswered questions. In a similar way, Jesus encouraged us to have a reasonable faith based on the evidence He provided.
The greatest thing a child of God can do is to proclaim Jesus Christ as God’s Son, given to us for our eternal salvation, and urge people to use that information to make a decision as to what they will do with that knowledge.
At the end of Jesus’ earthly life, the Roman governor Pilate asked the crowd, “What shall I do then with Jesus?”
Matthew 27:22 NIV “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify him!”
Essentially, that is the question every person must face. And there can be no half-hearted decision. As the Scripture Jean read makes clear, Jesus claims to be the Son who “gives life to whom he is pleased to give it"
John 5:21 NIV For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.
The Jews were ready to kill Jesus because they understood that he was claiming God as his Father, “making himself equal with God”
John 5:18 NIV For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Jesus pointedly said,
John 5:24 NIV “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.
So let’s face the issue squarely.
Either Jesus is the Son of God and we must praise him, or he is a liar and deceiver and you are free, even wise, to walk away from him.
If that radical choice shakes you up, then you understand a little bit of what the Jews felt that day when Jesus would not back away from his startling announcement,
John 5:17 NIV … “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”
And
John 5:22-23 NIV Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
Remember Jesus and the people He was talking to were Jews and the Jews had come to a bedrock conviction that “the LORD our God is one LORD”.
Deuteronomy 6:4 NIV Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
They were strict monotheists, people believed that there is only one God, and who knew from their history the awful results of idolatry. For Jesus to claim to be God’s Son in a unique and shocking way was either blasphemy or a fantastic miracle. There could be no middle ground.
And you will either decide to come to him and follow him as God’s Son, or you will decide to walk away from him, rejecting his claim to be the giver of life. If you walk away, you will face the judgment God has placed in his hands.
John 5:25-27 NIV Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
Jesus did not simply claim to be the Son of man (a messianic title) and Son of God and expect people to believe it because he said it. He offered witnesses to the truth of his claim.
I. Jesus presented three witnesses as evidence of the integrity of his claims. (John 5:30–47).
The witnesses were:
John the Baptist
The works that He did
The Father Himself through the Scriptures
A. John the Baptist testified on Jesus’ behalf.
John 5:31-35 NIV “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true. “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.
The power of this witness of John the Baptist, is the courage and integrity that surrounded his ministry. Everyone knew he was a truth teller no matter the cost to himself.
In front of the crowds who came to hear him, he did not mince his words or seek to soothe. Like a hot iron his words had pressed the weighty judgment of God down on the minds of the people.
Matthew 3:7-10 NIV But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
John had been the first to see and understand.
John 1:29, NIV The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”
And then John the preacher did something amazing: he turned his congregation over to someone else! He said of Jesus, he “ranks before me, because He existed before me”
John 1:30 NIV This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’
And he also said
John 3:30 NIV He must become greater; I must become less.”
B. The mighty works Jesus did also bear witness to Jesus’ authenticity (John 5:36).
John 5:36 NIV “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me.
No magician could do the works Jesus did. He had turned water into wine. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago. He had told a woman all about her life and had given her living water that brought a joy she had never known. The story of the woman at the well is at John 4:1–42. Jesus healed a man sick for thirty-eight years (John 5:1–9). He would feed a multitude of more than 5000 people from a small shared lunch (John 6:5–14), and he would raise a man dead for four days to life (John 11:1–44). Every mighty work was a sign that brought people into an awareness of God’s extravagant love for them. These mighty works Jesus offered as a witness to the truth of his claims.
C. Jesus next cited the witness of the Father himself through the Scriptures (John 5:37–40).
John 5:37-40 NIV And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
The messianic prophecies of the prophets were often used by early Christian preachers as evidence of Jesus’ messiahship. But here in His conversation with the Pharisees, Jesus went all the way back to Moses—the lawgiver himself—the most important religious person in Jewish history. Jesus claimed Moses’ witness in the Scripture as God’s witness to the truth of Jesus’ claim to be God’s Son.
John 5:45-46 NIV “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible as we know it. For the Jews those books constituted the Law. The first of those books is Genesis and Moses wrote what God told Eve in the garden of Eden.
Genesis 3:15 NIV And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Jesus was the offspring of the woman who would indeed bruise the head of the evil one, Satan.
Jesus was also the fulfillment of the law, the Mosaic Law that God gave to Moses who wrote it down.
Matthew 5:17-18 NIV “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Jesus sought to move the faith and worship of the people past the written Word to the living Word, past the Scriptures to the One whom the Scriptures bear witness to. He is the Savior in whom there is eternal life.
John 5:24, NIV “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.
39-40 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
II. Today we can add even more evidence, more witness to establish the claim of Jesus’ unique place as God’s Son.
The first is History.
We have the advantage of over two thousand years of experience with the life and teachings of Jesus. This historical argument points to what it has meant to the world that Jesus lived among us.
Decades ago an anonymous person wrote: He was born in an obscure village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he became an itinerant preacher. . . . Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life.
B. Not only do we have history but in that history we have the entirety of Jesus’ life.
There was a wonderful harmony in Jesus’ life between what he taught and how he lived, what he said and what he did.
Who Jesus said that He was He was; what he said was true, he proved. Jesus said a seed must fall to the ground and die if it is to live, and then he went to the cross and offered himself in death for us.
John 12:23-24 NIV Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
He said you must love your enemies.
Matthew 5:43-45 NIV “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
He proved it because as he hung on the cross dying, he prayed,
Luke 23:34 NIV … “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
The ability to complete His mission which was the salvation of mankind and, to live completely as He taught, is evidence to His claim.
C. The church is a witness.
The life of the church after the crucifixion of Jesus would lead one to believe Jesus was much more than an ordinary man. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, there would have been no momentum for the church to live. The disciples were defeated and disheartened until Jesus appeared to them after the resurrection to empower them and send them forth.
Matthew 28:16-20 NIV Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The very existence of the church—baptizing, observing the Lord’s Supper, preaching the Word, and seeing lives changed—is evidence to the truth of Jesus’ claims.
D. And finally Your inner need is witness to His claim.
Each person’s life is an open testimony to the reality of Jesus’ claims. He offers to meet our deepest needs.
Do you experience sin and brokenness as a part of your daily experience?
Do you know the dark feelings of guilt that arise not because somebody is trying to lay a guilt trip on you but because you really are guilty?
Do you know about coming to the end of the day and having no reason to live another day?
Do you know about loneliness and a need for love that is frustrated again and again by counterfeit imitations of the real thing?
Are you afraid to die not knowing what, if anything, lies ahead for you?
Have you reached most of your goals in life but are finding with some discomfort that the goals you have achieved may not have been worth what it has cost you to achieve them?
If any of this description of human need touches you deeply, then Jesus has come to touch and to heal you at the point of your deepest need.
Jesus is the One who heals our brokenness, forgives our sin, removes our guilt in his own deep acceptance of us.
Jesus is the hope that gives purpose to life.
It is his love for us that makes us know we are important and valuable to God.
He is our eternal life, who fulfills the living of life now, who gives direction in the setting of lifelong goals, and who escorts us through death into the full and blessed presence of the eternal God.
Conclusion
If Jesus is not God in the flesh, you are free to walk away, but if he is God in the flesh, you must believe or face the unhappy consequences of your unbelief.
John 5:24-29 NIV “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.
He either is or he isn’t. You either will or you won’t. You will either live or you will die. What will you choose? I urge you to believe Jesus and choose life!
If you’re a believer, you can have the assurance that wherever you are, God is smiling on you. He’s gracious and attentive to you. He wants to give you His peace.
But this promise is only for the child of God. The blessings of the Bible are only for those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus was cursed so that we could be blessed. He died so that we could live. And He was forsaken so we could be forgiven.
The Bible says, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (Galatians 3:13 NKJV).
The choice is yours. Do you want to face the curse of your sin? Or, do you want the blessing of God in your life? God says, “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. . . . Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!” (Deuteronomy 30:19 NLT).
God has made it clear. He wants to bless you. He wants to come into your life.
Romans 10:9-13 NIV If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
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