Resurrection of Life, Resurrection of Condemnation

Resurrection, Judgment, and the Context of John 5

We return this evening to our studies of the gospel of John specifically p45. But we are in John chapter 5 as we were this morning. We will simply be picking up where we left off in our study this morning.

John chapter 5. So let us begin reading at verse 24 for the context. Truly truly I say to you that the one hearing my word and believing in the one who sent me has eternal life and shall not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life.

Truly truly I say to you that an hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and the ones hearing shall live. For just as the father has life in himself in the same way also he is given to the son to have life in himself and authority has been given to him to do judgments because he is the son of man.

And then our text for this evening do not be amazed at this because an hour is coming in which all the ones who are in the tombs will hear his voice. That is the voice of the Son of God or the nearest antecedent is son of man and shall come forth the ones having done good deeds unto a resurrection of life and the ones having practiced evil deeds unto a resurrection of judgment.

The Loss of Judgment in Modern America

It is I think a appropriate observation in looking at what has taken place over the past number of decades in our nation to say that a fear of God and a fear of the day of judgment has passed from the consciousness of the vast majority of our fellow citizens in this country.

That in decades past in generations past even men who gave little thought to religion gave little thought to the Bible had as a part of their worldview as a part of their way of thinking the reality that someday there would be judgment.

They would even try to justify themselves by comparing themselves with others because they had in the back of their mind the reality that this life cannot be all that there is that there will be a day of reckoning.

It was a common at times merely cultural but still a common possession and belief that functioned very plainly as a restraint upon the evil of men. When you were pondering and considering doing evil in the back of your mind there was the reality that you don't know what tomorrow is going to bring and someday you will stand before God and he will judge you he will judge you righteously and he will judge you by a holy standard.

He will not judge on the curve. He will not judge as you have in so much of modern education where we can't have anyone who fails we have to have everyone happy and these days it's mainly because the parents will come after the teacher if the child isn't doing well they won't go after the child.

That wasn't the concept. That was not the idea. The standard was God's holy and just standard and this was reflected in our laws and in really how the society functioned. Even when you went into the court of law there was that tradition of laying your hand upon a Bible and you would swear by that Bible and what was behind that?

If you didn't believe that there was a day of judgment coming if you did not believe that there was a judge himself what would it matter if you put your hand on a Bible and swore by just an ancient collection of writings from a people who no longer exist?

How would that be relevant? Well it was relevant because you believed that there was a God who was looking down at you and was examining your heart and would actually hold you accountable for what you said being true and proper and just.

That type of a concept simply doesn't exist amongst most of our fellow citizens today. The idea of a life after death if people still hold to it and many do is no longer the Christian concept which involves the fact that unto every man is appointed death and after death judgment.

No, not judgment. No, God has become a force, a light, something good and loving and accepting. There's no moral standard, there's no law, there's no judgment to come. How could there be? How could a life that is but an accident just the random bumping together of stardust?

How could the random bumping together of stardust ever be judged for anything? It's just random, there's no purpose, there's no transcendent meaning, there's no law. And what we're experiencing in our society right now, this rapid degradation, what seems to those of us who are on the other side of half a century of age, what seems to be a culture that is clasping its hands over its ears and running in self-destructive fashion toward the edge of a cliff.

The reason it has accelerated so much is because the next generation is now a generation that has thrown off the last shackles, the last impediments to running headlong toward that self-destruction that comes from no longer seeing man as the creature of God, made in the image of God.

And so we have a government that cannot find a way to stop giving hundreds of millions of dollars to an organization that is well known to exist solely for the murder of unborn children and for the sale of their body parts.

That's the nation we live in. That's the nation we live in. The same nation that can turn around and condemn past generations for doing very similar things now considers that organization to be the highest good that we can affirm and must defend.

This kind of insanity, moral and ethical insanity, can be traced back to the acceptance of a secular worldview and the idea that we as human beings have no transcendent purpose and we have no creator.

If we have a creator, then there must be a day of judgment. We know this innately. We know this in our hearts and our minds. There will be a day. Those of us who are parents or now grandparents know how many times we have seen our children when they were but little.

And in those first formative years, they didn't think anyone was looking. And mommy and daddy had said, don't do something. But you know they wanted to do something. And so you leave the room and maybe you stick your head back around the corner.

They're very young. They haven't figured out we can do things like this. You stick your head back around the corner. And there is that. You can see that little mind working. Weighing the consequences against the desire.

And then you see the head swiveling, looking around. Not looking far enough around, but looking around. Why? Did we have to teach them to be concerned about being caught? Did we have to teach them that?

No. They understand from a very young age the idea of responsibility. And in fact, it takes a number of years of state-sponsored education to try to drive that out of the mind. Because it's not the natural way that God has made us.

Judgment, Resurrection, and the Misuse of John 5

And so when we come to this section of this text where we talk about resurrection, judgment. We come to a section that does not excite the hearts and minds of men. We live in a day where in seminary you're taught, don't talk about judgment, repentance, sin.

We need to find other ways of talking about such things. We can sort of introduce some of the concepts, but we need to really protect the character of God. That's what we're told in seminaries today. You come to texts like this, and for many people in our society, there's a disconnection.

But one thing we always must keep in mind. What is the point of connection? It's not a moral neutral ground. There is no such thing as neutrality in a universe that was created by God. Every fact is a fact because God created it to be a fact.

There's no neutrality toward his claims. So we're not looking for that kind of a connection with the lost man. The point of contact, biblically speaking, that we have is that individual, no matter how much state education they have received, that person is still made in the image of God.

And when you bring God's truth to bear against an image bearer of God, and the Holy Spirit of God is active in their life to bring conviction of sin, that is the only way that anyone is ever brought into the kingdom of God in that fashion.

And so, when we consider these words, when we consider the judgment that is described here, we need to recognize that this is something that, while unpopular, must be presented, must be presented as a part of the gospel message.

When we take away judgment against sin, when we take away the fact that there is going to be a resurrection, death is not going to hide you from the eyes of God. Then we turn the gospel into a self-help methodology just for this life, that you can take or pass by, sort of like a diet plan or something like that.

It's just, well, maybe, maybe, I'll give it some consideration. When you think, for example, of Edward's sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and you consider the images that were presented in that sermon, and the result amongst those who heard that sermon, what was the power that was there?

It was the imminent reality of judgment. That all of the barriers that you had built up, thinking that you were hiding yourself from God, could be ripped away from you in a second. That you were walking on a rotted bridge over the very abyss of hell itself.

And any moment, it could go, and in you plunge, all at God's pleasure. We are told today that we can't, we can't say that. No, don't you understand? That's, that's hate speech. That's hate speech. Well, it isn't.

It's actually truth speech, which is the only language that love knows. But in these words, we also find a text that could be twisted and misused. I'm sure you thought about it as we read those words.

There are many who would look at these words, or similar words, in Romans chapter 2. And they would say, see? It's laid out right there. If you do good works, you get life. If you do evil works, you get judged.

None of this faith in Jesus stuff. It is amazing to me. I remember speaking to a former Mormon missionary many, many years ago. Many years ago. And when he came to know the gospel, he had been a missionary.

He still had his missionary Bible. And he had been a good missionary. He had read his Bible and his Book of Mormon, Dr. Cohen's Pearl of Great Price. And he had marked things and so on and so forth. And he said, you know, after I came to know the Lord, after I came to understand the gospel, I went back and I looked at my missionary Bible.

And I looked at the things I marked. And I was looking through in John, for example. And I would mark stuff, but the most important stuff about faith, and following Christ, and how He can save. I didn't mark that stuff.

I marked other stuff that I could make fit with my system. But it's like it wasn't even on the page. And when I just had a debate just a few weeks ago in Atlanta, at the Atlanta Convention Center there at the G3 Conference with Adnan Rashid, a Muslim speaker and apologist, teacher.

And some of you may have seen it. You may have seen that he quoted from 1 Corinthians 6. And that whole vice list. It says, so who did Jesus die for if all these people can't go to heaven? He didn't see the very next verse.

It said, and such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were justified, but you were cleansed in the name of our God, so on and so forth. It's like it wasn't there. And so often my Muslim friends will look at this and go, see, that's what we believe right there.

You do good works, resurrection of life. Do bad works, resurrection of judgment. It's all there is to it. And so you look at this, and I suppose as long as you didn't read all the verses before verse 29, that you can come up with the idea that what the Bible is teaching is, it's just scales.

Because that's the Muslim idea. God has scales. And you got your good works on one side and your bad works on the other side. Yeah, you made it. You didn't. Type of situation. But that requires only, in this case, hearing the last third of a sentence.

Now I know there are people that are capable of only hearing a third of a sentence. Teenagers are very good at hearing only a third of a sentence. Like when you say, clean up your room, finish your homework, then we'll go get pizza.

That last section just blows all the rest of it right out of the water. And from their perspective, they are correctly exegeting their parent's statement, we're going to get pizza, and everything else is just gone.

Well, that's how people handle the Bible a whole lot as well. And so they skip right past hearing, believing, the word of Christ, the powerful capacity of Christ to raise the dead, the spiritual life, and that Christ has life in himself.

You skip past all that stuff, and that the Son of Man is going to be the one who judges, and judges rightly and justly, and all the rest of that stuff. And you just get down there and go, oh look, if you do good works, you get the resurrection of life, and if you do bad works, the resurrection of judgment, and that's all there is to it.

Well, those words are there, but as I have had to say so many times, and for those of you who have Roman Catholic friends and family, you need to understand this. When you read texts like this, you must understand the difference between prescriptive and descriptive.

Between prescriptive and descriptive. What do I mean? Well, those who have a tradition that focuses the capacity upon man in salvation, it's man's work, God just sort of makes a system available, especially within the Roman system, you have the sacramental system, and so the sacramental system requires the will of man to be active, to engage in this activity and that activity, and to desire forgiveness and do these things, and go to the priest, and all of the various penances, and everything else that takes place.

And so, if you have a prescriptive idea, then you read texts of scripture as if they are a prescription for how you can have eternal life. Now, the clear, plain texts that say, hear and believe, Christ saves, no one is able to save themselves, no one is able to come to Christ, that stuff gets explained away.

What you hear are the prescriptions, so he who endures to the end shall be saved. So the prescription is, work up that type of continuous action in yourself, and you'll be saved. Which, of course, is a recipe for total depression, because you never do it.

Oh, you might do it for a while. You might do it for a few hours, maybe a day. But when you think about what the standard is, the standard is, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, your neighbor as yourself.

Walking in pure holiness, well, doesn't work. Or so you go to Romans chapter 2, or you go to this text here, and see, here's the prescription. This prescription is good works. Doing good works, that's how you get the resurrection of life.

Practicing evil works, resurrection of judgment. Now, various systems will differ as to how they make application. I mean, there's almost always sort of, again, a curve upon which the grade is based. Most people recognize you're not going to get perfection.

And so God is merciful, and so he'll overlook maybe the small sins. And so you maybe come up with venial and mortal sins, for example. So you've got venial sins in Roman Catholicism that don't destroy the grace of justification, but you've got mortal sins that do.

Who knows which is which, because there's never been a dogmatic definition to tell you one way or the other. So you get that type of a system where there's some wiggle room. There's a little bit of room in there.

But the idea is, these are prescriptions, rather than the only way to allow Scripture to hold together consistently. These are descriptive. Descriptive. Once you have a biblical view of man, and yes, you can derive a very strong biblical view of man from Romans 1, all the way through Romans 3, but when you think about it, what do you have in Romans 1 through 3?

When Paul summarizes his argument in Romans 3, verses 10 through 18, what is that? That's a catena of Old Testament texts that have been strung together. And when you work through the Psalter, or especially when you work through Jeremiah, wouldn't you agree, when you've read through Jeremiah, there's just an extra level of insight into the human heart.

There is such an understanding of the human heart, and the evil that lurks in that heart, and the rebellion that is there. Jeremiah really understands what's going on in the heart of man. And once you grab hold of that, then when you come to the New Testament, it's not like you're reading something new, you're just seeing a crystallization of those things.

And once you understand what man is all about, then you have the firm foundation for even considering the issue of, can man in and of himself, or even with some kind of prevenient grace, like we talked about this morning, not a saving grace, but sort of a helping, assisting grace, can man truly do good deeds that would be worthy of resurrection to life?

The answer plainly is no. Well, the only way that anyone can say that yes, mankind can do good works that will bring him into the presence of God, is to say that God's holy standard will be lowered at the judgment.

Will be lowered at the judgment. They have to have some kind of concept of mercy and grace, but on what basis? On what basis? Once you start talking about, well, on the basis of what Jesus did, now you've changed everything, because now you've got to start talking about, well, what did he accomplish?

For whom is it accomplished? Is it just simply a means of helping us to save ourselves? What does substitutionary atonement mean? Everything changes at that point. And especially the liberal denominations today.

They no longer have even a basis for understanding the concept of substitution. They don't believe in a God who has wrath. There is no punishment, therefore the cross becomes this very strange, sentimental type of thing where, well, you sort of see God's love there, but you have to sort of not think about the violence and everything else going on, and they just really, really struggle with it.

It almost becomes an embarrassment. Well, it's not almost. For many liberals today, it is an embarrassment. They are embarrassed over the history of the church and its focus upon the cross as such a central issue.

They're embarrassed by it. And so when we look at what is said here, those who did good deeds is descriptive. It's descriptive. Even when you think about the good deeds that you do, are they truly good?

I mean in the perfect sense. In the sense of Isaiah standing before the throne of God good. Because it's real easy to compare yourself to others. But when Isaiah, probably the most holy man in his day, stood in the very presence of God in Isaiah chapter 6 in his vision of heaven, what did he say?

For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst a people of unclean lips. In the light of God's holiness, everything we think was really good is going to be seen for what it really was. Every imperfection of motivation, every bit of pride, every bit of ignorance will be seen for what it is, and will not live up to the standard.

There is only one who is truly good. And so what makes the good... Are you saying we don't do good works? Well, yes, the Bible says we do good works. But good works and perfect works are not the same thing.

We do good works because the Spirit of God within us, that changed nature that is ours, it's natural for us to desire to do those things, to engage in those things, to honor and glorify God, but not to add to the work of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, I would suggest that one of the primary motivations that is ours in doing good works is that if we don't do good works, then we're doing things that actually add to the very weight of the sin that our Savior bore in our place.

Sort of gives a lie, doesn't it, to our claim to love Christ when we willfully add to the very debt of sin that He bore on Calvary Street. We're not adding to His righteousness so we do good works. It's our nature as believers in Christ, as resurrected, transferred out of the realm of death into life, followers of Christ, to want to walk in His footsteps.

And so this is descriptive. These are the ones in whose life God was active, and so they can be described as those who did good works, but obviously those who reject God's light, God's guidance, who practice evil works, receive a resurrection of judgment.

And so when we see the picture of that great judgment in the book of Revelation, this is what we see. The great and the small stand before that great judgment day, before that throne, and a book is opened, and another book is opened.

And when they're judged by the book that contains their works, no one's saved. The only ones that are saved are those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. The judgment of works yields only one result, condemnation, condemnation.

So these are clearly descriptive. And so what we have, when Jesus says, do not be amazed at this, He's talking about the previous section, about the Son having the authority and the power to raise to spiritual life.

So don't be amazed at that, because you want to really be amazed? That same Son of Man, who is also the Son of God, those are not contradictory terms, they are further descriptions of the same truths, that same One will raise the dead on the day of resurrection.

And the judgment will be overseen by Him. Judgment has been given into His hands. It will be a righteous judgment, it will be a proper judgment. That's what we see in verse 30. Just as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just or righteous.

It will be a righteous judgment. There will be no questions as to the rightness of the verdict that is rendered, because of the One who does these things. So why would this be amazing? Well, because everyone understood.

Again, we know this is Jesus. We have all that background, we have all those other texts that the people who heard these words initially did not have. And so when they heard these words, we too sort of have to stand back and go, okay, so we have someone here in front of us who is actually claiming not only to be able to raise people to spiritual life now out of the realm of death, but this man claims that someday his very voice will raise the dead for the judgment.

What kind of a claim is that? Did Moses ever say anything like that? Abraham, David? Of course not. But once again, we skip over those evidences of the tremendous position of our Lord and Savior because we already know it, and so it's sort of natural to us, and we don't grab hold of it, and we don't see here is yet another evidence of who Christ truly is.

It should be amazing, except when we take everything the Scripture tells us about Christ, you put it all together, and it makes perfect sense. His should be the role of doing this because He is the one who has lived that perfect life.

He is the one who has entered into flesh. He is the one who has humbled Himself to the point of obedience, even the death of the cross. And therefore, He has the standing to judge righteously. How often when we bring God's moral law to bear in our society today, if we talk about God's right to judge in light of what He has said, how we should behave in the sexual realm, men, women, marriage, when we speak to the results of that activity, children, pregnancy, the termination of those things, when we speak to what should be our priorities in life, our relationships to others, what do we always hear from our society?

Who are you to judge? Who are you to judge? The first thought across our minds should be, I'm not the one who judges. But let me introduce you to the one who will be the one who judges. And be careful, because unfortunately, many people in our society, when they think of Jesus, they primarily think of a little baby in a manger or a strangely long-haired, white-skinned fellow, maybe with a lamb, a little cute fuzzy lamb in his arms, or that real famous one where he's standing outside a locked door that doesn't have a knob on it, meekly knocking.

That's what they think about Jesus. It doesn't surprise me that in the book of Revelation, where you see Him acting as judge, where you see the lamb standing as a sling, where you see eventually people calling for the rocks to fall upon them and hide them from the wrath of the lamb, that that book starts off in describing Jesus not as meek and lowly knocking on a door.

But when you see that description of Christ, He's kingly and powerful, and from His mouth comes a two-edged sword. He's exalted. He is Lord and King of kings. You can't simply assume anymore. There was a day when evangelism was a little easier in our country than it is now.

There's no question about it. But you cannot assume that people do not have an extremely warped view of this Jesus. And so when you raise the reality to them, who are you to judge? I can't judge anyone.

But my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said that someday He will speak, and the dead will come out of their tombs, and He will judge them justly. Do you even know what standard by which you're going to be judged might open a few conversations?

But oh, how many will just chomp at the bit. How dare you try to restrain my freedom because we live in a day where man's absolute autonomy is now the greatest good of society itself. My suggestion to you, no society can possibly survive that is based upon the idea of human autonomy.

There is one supreme autonomous will in this universe, and it's not man's. We know the one who will judge. We have the opportunity of introducing Him to our fellow citizens. May we, as we serve Him this week, may we have opportunity.

Because I'm going to tell you something. With the conversations going on in our society right now, we'd almost have to be dodging the opportunities to present Christ's claims. We'd have to be hiding ourselves.

The opportunities are there. The question is, will we take them? Will we present the words of our Lord to those around us? That's the question. Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we bow before You.

We recognize that You are our maker, our creator, and You have the right to judge those You've made in Your image. It is right, it is proper, and we recognize that if we were to stand in and of ourselves, we would have no hope.

But we've gathered here this evening because we are Your people called in hope, that great hope that is ours in Jesus Christ. You have provided the way. And Lord, as we think of His great exalted status, the fact that the Son of Man will bring the dead out of the tombs, Lord, we would ask that as we have the opportunity to speak into the lives of those around us, that we would be bold, wise, zealous, disciplined, but Lord, that we would not hold back, that You would use us to proclaim Your powerful gospel in this dark, dark day.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.