Jet Tour Of The Gospel Of John

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You know, one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, wrote this of Jesus.
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He said his parentage was obscure, his condition, poor, his education, nil.
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I don't know what that says about, you know, what he may have been taught at home.
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But listen, his natural endowments, great. His life, correct and innocent.
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He was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested.
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And by the way, that's a good thing. And of the sublimest eloquence, as a theologian and Pastor Mark Dever points out, if Jefferson had said something like that about one of his opponents, his political opponents, or even one of his political comrades, that would have been seen as very, very promoting of him, very complimentary of him.
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If he'd said that about himself, people would have thought him arrogant. And I'm not here to knock
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Thomas Jefferson, but listen to what he said later in the same letter to a Unitarian minister.
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The doctrines which he, Jesus, really delivered were defective as a whole.
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And only a fragment of what he did deliver have come to us, mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.
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They have been still more disfigured by the corruption of schematizing followers.
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Jefferson wasn't even close. And by the way, Pastor Mike does have a Jefferson Bible in his office, but he doesn't study it.
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I decided to pass it along. But Jefferson was not alone. He was not the only person who thinks like that.
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Others have suggested that Jesus was promoted to godhood during the writings of Paul, that he was never a god.
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He never claimed to be a god. It was Paul that made him out to be a god. Interesting when we think of Paul's origin and how he was persecuting the church, as Saul, that he would suddenly turn into this promoter of Christ.
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Another writer claims that Athanasius, church father in the fourth century, created this doctrine.
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But now listen to John chapter 7. And by the way, you can open your Bibles to John chapter 20.
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But listen to John chapter 7, verses 10 and 12, 10 through 12.
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But after his brothers, Jesus' brothers, had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but in private.
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The Jews, the Jewish leaders, were looking for him at the feast saying, where is he? And there was much muttering about him among the people.
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While some said, he is a good man, and others said, no, he is leading the people astray.
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Some things never change. 1900 years ago, they said those things. 200 years ago, they said those things.
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They're still saying them today. In recent decades, there's been no end of controversy about, as scholar after scholar puts forth his own theories about who
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Jesus was, what he actually said, and even his significance. And I would suggest,
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I would submit to you today, that we live in a day and an age where people are more biblically illiterate.
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That is, they know less about the Bible. And so really, they have absolutely no idea who
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Jesus is, or they're skeptical. They're more skeptical than ever. And sometimes they're even outright hostile to the claims of Christ.
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It is fashionable and intellectually profound these days to be boldly atheistic.
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And so it is into that headwind that we enter into the Gospel of John. And this morning, we're going to do a jet tour.
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And I have to do a jet tour in one week. I can't do what I'd like to call the blimp tour of, you know,
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Pastor Mike, where, you know, he says it's a jet tour, but it takes four or five weeks. And we're just going to hover around. This is going to be a jet tour.
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So I can't get into all the nuts and bolts of the Gospel this morning. But we're going to take this kind of high -altitude overview of it before we start our verse -by -verse walking through the passage of the
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Gospel of John. I'm going to read... Well, let me give you my main point this morning.
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As we fly over this Gospel, I'm going to ask... Now, I'm going to ask three questions, but then
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I have to give you the answers, too. Otherwise, it would be a class and not a sermon. I'm going to ask and answer three questions about Jesus and what he taught to erase any doubt in your mind about who he is.
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You'll notice all three questions are drawn from John chapter 20, verses 30, and in particular, 31.
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Now, some of this morning will say, I'm a Christian. I know who Jesus is. And I say, great.
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You'll be encouraged by hearing these truths reaffirmed this morning. But for some here this morning, some who even maybe believe that they're
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Christians, this is going to be challenging. And it's a challenge that you need to hear. And by the way, these verses here give us the purpose of John's Gospel.
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And that's why I wanted to focus on these and then kind of back out and give us an overview of the Gospel. Verse 30 of John chapter 20.
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Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.
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But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.
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That's the purpose of this book, by the way.
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Just a quick note in verse 20. There are many other signs that he did in the presence of the disciples. You know, it's interesting that there are very few miracles, relatively speaking, in the
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Gospel of John. He sprinkles in a few, but it's not as many as in the other books.
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And he tells us that right there. There are many other miracle signs that he did in the presence of the disciples that are not in this book.
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That wasn't his focus. He wrote what he wrote so that you may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God. John tells us his purpose, but it's not just enough to know
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Jesus. Look at that. He says that you may believe Jesus, not that you may know.
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There's a difference between knowing and believing. We're going to develop that. And he gives us his purpose.
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It's really, as we like to say in Greek, it's a hinnah. It's a purpose. It's when you see so that, that's a purpose statement.
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And he says, so that you may believe. That's his purpose right there. So some of you may be saying, well, why another gospel?
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There are already three written at this time. We already had Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So why did John feel the sudden urge?
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Probably sometime around 80 or 90 AD. Why did he write this gospel? And it really was to fill a specific,
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I don't want to say hole, because you could dig these truths out of the other gospel, but he had a different perspective that he wanted to give.
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The other three are known as the synoptic gospels because they pretty much give a synopsis of the same events, just in different orders, sometimes different details, but they're pretty similar.
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And if we looked at the other three gospels, we could say, generally speaking, that these are their purposes. Matthew is written to a primarily
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Jewish audience, and he wanted to outline Jesus as king, as the long coming king, the fulfillment of the promises to David.
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Mark, written to show Jesus as servant. Luke, written to demonstrate
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Jesus as fully man. Not in contrast to his deity, because he still, Luke didn't deny his deity, but the emphasis was on his humanity.
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Why? Because Luke was a physician. So we learn a lot about the humanity of Jesus in the gospel of Luke.
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Why? I mean, if you Google this, you'll find out that more books have been written about Jesus than anyone else. Of course, a lot of them are skeptical, but why are so many figures throughout history, why do they write so many books about them over and over and over again?
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I mean, if you go to Amazon right now and you type in Abraham Lincoln, there are going to be a lot of books that come up. If you go to the
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Library of Congress and you type in Abraham Lincoln, there are going to be more because a lot of them are out of prints. People like Lincoln, like Washington, like Napoleon, and some not so great figures in history, have book after book after book written about them.
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Well, why is that? You know, is there anything new that we can learn about these people? I mean, imagine this.
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Here's a blurb for the latest Abraham Lincoln book. Same old story, different words.
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Please buy me. It's always got to be something new, right? And you know, it's some kind of new, like, well, this was
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Lincoln with his generals. This was Lincoln with his family. This was Lincoln. You've got to have a different kind of perspective on it, a different paradigm, or nobody would buy it.
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But we come to John, and really there are some differences in his structure.
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The other Gospels focus so much on the works of Jesus, what he did, how he did them.
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And this one really focuses on his words. I've always been fascinated by the Gospel of John because it really is a theological gospel.
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And that's one of the reasons why I'm drawn to it. But there's so much truth just packed into everything that Jesus says.
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Listen to what Mark Devers says. He says, it seems like every time Jesus speaks, he speaks in this gospel.
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He speaks about himself, why he came into the world, or what he will do for those who believe in him.
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Theologians call this gospel, the Gospel of John, a spiritual gospel, a biography focused on the theology of Jesus.
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In other words, John wrote this to kind of amplify, to kind of focus on the deity of Christ to show that Jesus Christ is
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God. And again, as I said, he wrote it about 80 or 90 AD. Church tradition and secular history would generally agree that this is
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John the Apostle, one of the sons of Zebedee who wrote this. And so as we go through this gospel, we're going to see this is not just some kind of, you know, dry history.
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We can look at it this way. This is like, well, because it's way better than this.
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But it's like if we had just somebody who walked around with Abraham Lincoln and saw everything that he was doing and then wrote down notes and wrote down a book later, we'd go, well, that's pretty authoritative.
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And here we have one of the inner circle of Jesus. You know, one of the three most often referred to disciples in the gospels.
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It's Peter, James, and John. So John was on the inner circle. John was everywhere with Jesus.
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And he writes this. He's not just somebody who later on decides to write a book. He's an eyewitness.
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He's an ear witness. And he really is our tour guide through this gospel.
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How do we know that John wrote it? Five times in the gospel, there's a reference to the disciple that Jesus loved or the one whom
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Jesus loved. And if someone else had written the gospel other than John, they would have just said, oh, it's
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John. But they didn't do that. Why? Because it's a way of not using his own name.
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And it's a way of showing humility in that culture. That's how they would have looked at it. And it's interesting historically, because again, as I said, 80 or 90
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AD. Well, what happened in 70 AD? For those of you who know your history, you know that the
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Jews rebelled in about 66 AD. And they would do this over and over again.
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And you want to know why the Jews were gone from Israel for so long. Because in 135 AD, the
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Roman emperor had had enough. And he sent his legions in there and he dragged them all out. But in 66
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AD, they rebelled. Roman legions came in. They laid siege to Jerusalem.
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And they literally, as Jesus said, they left no stone upon another. I mean, they just took the whole place apart, including the temple.
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And so when we think about that, we think about if you're writing this. And this is the thinking that John wrote this for the benefit largely of Jewish audiences.
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It's 80 AD. It's 85, 90 AD. It's 10, 20 years after the temple is destroyed.
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The Jews are, they're distraught. Their temple, the center of their worship, where they went to do everything is destroyed.
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John wrote this gospel as an evangelism. It's more than a tract, but as an evangelism tool.
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Why? Because, listen, your temple may be gone, but your
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Messiah rules and reigns in heaven. You have something better than the temple.
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Something beyond the power of Roman legions. Our first question this morning
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I'm going to ask you is, who is Jesus? And again, I'm going to read this, these two verses again.
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I'll just read verse 31 again. But these are written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God. That gets us right to who he is. We're going to look at Jesus as the
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Christ, and Jesus is the Son of God. How are those things demonstrated in the gospel of John?
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To kind of set the scene for us in John chapter 1. And we're going to be going through a lot of verses, so get ready.
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John the Baptist has already been baptizing and evangelizing Jews, proclaiming the coming of the
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Messiah. And he testified, he's already testified that Jesus is the
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Son of God. And we're going to go to chapter 1 verses 35 to 41. John chapter 1 verses 35 to 41.
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Sometimes I'm going to ask you to turn there, other times we're going to be there and gone so quickly, I'm just going to read them. So John the
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Baptist is really stirring people up here. He's already baptized
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Jesus. Now listen to this. The next day again, John was standing with two of his disciples.
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This is verse 35, now 36. Standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said,
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Behold, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed
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Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, What are you seeking?
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And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? He said to them,
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Come and you will see. So they came and saw where he was staying. And they stayed with him that day, for it was about the 10th hour.
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One of the two who heard John speak and follow Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
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He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, We have found the
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Messiah, which means Christ. They spent one day with him. And it wasn't like they were just walking around doing nothing, you know, and he was just kind of eating and going about his business, maybe making some furniture.
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He was teaching them the whole time. But listen, we have found the Messiah, which means
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Christ. Messiah or Christ, they both mean the same thing. Anointed one. And then
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John, the the apostle here, when he writes that he says, you know, we have found the
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Messiah, which means Christ. And you go, well, why does he even have to explain that? Because Messiah, they would have said it.
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It's an Aramaic word, and they would have said it. I want to say they would have Greek eyes that they would have just kind of, you know, made it into a
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Greek word. But some people want to say, well, I don't even know what that means. So he explains it. He puts it into the
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Greek. Some people who were listening might have been rusty in their understanding of Aramaic or might not have understood it at all.
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So Christ and Messiah mean the same thing. Anointed one. In other words, what this implies is that Jesus was anointed as only the prophets, priests and kings in the
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Old Testament were. They were specifically chosen by God and then anointed for a specific task.
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And this was the Christ. This was the Messiah. This was the anointed one.
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Jesus was sent from his father's side to be the Messiah, to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies.
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He was anointed prophet, priest and king. Now, again, to kind of set the stage for this,
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Jesus had just been tempted by Satan. He'd been baptized by John the Baptist. In other words, he was just in the beginning of his ministry.
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And yet Andrew had already figured out that Jesus was the Messiah. And so we just read that.
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We go, well, this must be pretty easy. It's going to be a slam dunk. People are going to be lining up to follow him.
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Maybe not, but the early disciples quickly figured out that Jesus was the fulfillment of scripture, even if they didn't fully understand who he was.
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Listen to, we're going to read a few verses later here in John 1 verse 45. Philip found
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Nathanael and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote,
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Jesus of Nazareth, the son of prophets or the son of Joseph. This is reminiscent of when
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Jesus said, you know, when he talked about scripture and how Moses and the prophets and all those things referred to him, same thing.
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But it wasn't going to be as easy as those first few days made it seem as we go through the gospel of John.
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What we're going to find out instead is that some people who listened to him were offended by his teaching. Some grumbled about his teaching.
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Some of his disciples abandoned him because of his teaching. And that's at the end of John chapter six, almost all of them leave.
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His half brothers did not believe in him. He was called a liar.
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Some questioned his parentage saying he wasn't even Jewish. They called him a Samaritan. Some said he was demon possessed.
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Some said he was crazy. Many sought to seize him or to arrest him and even to stone him.
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And the Jewish leadership, they were so terrified of him that they plotted over and over again to take his life.
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They harassed his followers and they even tried to, I mean, the ultimate one is
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Jesus brings Lazarus back to life. And what do they try to do? Kill him. Can't have somebody walking around who raises people from the dead.
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And then worse, the guy that he actually raised from the dead. Jesus is the
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Christ, the chosen one, the anointed one. And this is a theme that we will see over and over and over again.
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And you must believe that. You don't know Jesus, you don't know the Jesus of the
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Bible if you don't understand him as God's chosen one, prophet, priest, and king.
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Secondly, Jesus is the son of God. Look at John chapter 1 verses 46 to 49.
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Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, come and see.
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Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.
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Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered him, before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree,
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I saw you. Now that is something that people can't do.
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And Nathanael knew that right away. Listen, if you kind of wonder what it means, look at his response. Look at Nathanael's response.
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Nathanael answered him, rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. People respond to what
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Jesus does and their response tells us a lot about them. Not about him, but about them.
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One of the things I found when I was doing this study is that the Hebrew language really doesn't have as many adjectives as other languages do.
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I mean, in our language, I think we make up adjectives. But sometimes they would use this phrase, this idiom, son of something.
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Let me give you some examples. They use those in place of adjectives. So, for example, a wicked man.
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A man known for wickedness would be called a son of wickedness. They wouldn't say he's terribly wicked.
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They wouldn't say something like that. They'd just say he's a son of wickedness. People who are in trouble would be sons of affliction.
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Men who are brave, valorous, would be called sons of valor.
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Those deserving of execution would be called sons of death. And of course,
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Judas Iscariot became known as a son of perdition. So Nathaniel, when he says that Jesus Christ is the son of God, he's using an adjective to describe the wonders of what he has just found out.
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He would have meant it in the sense of being a fulfillment of the Old Testament. For example, in Psalm 2, verse 7, the
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Lord said to me, You are my son. Today I have begotten you.
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So he would have had that kind of mindset in saying that Jesus was the son of God. He would have meant that he was the pure essence of God.
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D .A. Carson says this, Readers of John's gospel will quickly learn that the category son and son of God are used to depict the unique relation of oneness and intimacy between Jesus and his father.
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Jesus' sonship to God, however functionally described, involved a metaphysical, not merely a messianic relationship.
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Nathaniel spoke better than he knew. In other words, this goes back to all of eternity.
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I mean, John 1, which we're not going to talk that much more about here, but right in the beginning of the gospel, the triune
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God, the second person of the Trinity, this is Jesus Christ. It involves a metaphysical second person of the godhood to the first person of the godhood relationship.
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Another writer says this, Do not misunderstand this sonship kind of language. Jesus did not use this language when he said son of God to mean that he is secondary to or created by the father.
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He used it in the opposite way, to associate himself with God in his very nature, as if to say,
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I am of the same essence, I am of the same stuff as God. I mean, as I was contemplating this and just studying the gospel of John this week, you know,
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I mean, did you ever have one of those really dumb moments? I mean, I'm reading John 3, 16, and we all know
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John 3, 16, right? For God so loved the world. We all know that verse.
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They said his only begotten son, the whosoever. Yeah, you all know that. But listen, I'm sitting there reading that, and all of a sudden it just hits me, who's speaking?
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This is Jesus. He's telling Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, that he is
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God's only begotten son. In other words, and just think about how that is.
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Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, comes to him in the middle of the night, and Jesus, towards the end of this little discussion they have, says to him,
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I'm God's son. Now, if you're
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Nicodemus, you've got to be thinking one of two things. Either this guy has a lot of chutzpah, or this is an amazing statement.
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I need to think more about it, which I think is how he wound up leaving. But there are those today who say that Jesus never claimed to be
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God. That's what is so implicit in this claim to be the son of God. Turn to John 10.
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John 10. We're going to be looking at verses 27 to 39. By the way,
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I once had a Muslim man tell me that he was working for me.
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It's so nice to be the boss, you know. He was my trustee in the jail. And I'm up on the floor one night, and we discussed some of his moral views about the world.
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And, you know, that really wasn't going real well. And, you know, he sees me studying my
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Bible, and he says, you know, that Jesus never claimed to be God. And I said, really? So we went to John 8, 58, and the
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I am statement there, and he wasn't really having that. I said, okay, well, let's go to John 10. And I said, look, the original audience wanted to stone him.
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And that convinced him. He knew how serious stoning was. And so he was willing to listen after that.
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But we need to go back to the scripture to establish who Jesus is.
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Look at this. John 10, verses 27 to 37 through 39. Jesus speaking, says,
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My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
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My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the
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Father's hand. I and the Father are one. That's a dramatic statement.
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Verse 31. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Verse 32.
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Jesus answered them, I've shown you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you going to stone me?
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I just want to know what you guys are accusing me of. The Jews answered him, It's not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy.
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Because you, being a man, make yourself God. They understood exactly what he meant when he said,
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I and the Father are one. But it goes, it keeps going on. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law?
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This is Psalm 82, verse 6. I said to you, you are gods. And he was talking about judges there.
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Judges who were human, and who died, and who failed to bring justice, by the way, to Israel. In verse 35, he says,
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If he called them, meaning God, if God called them gods, to whom the word of God came, it just meant that they had the power over life and death.
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To whom the word of God came, a scripture cannot be broken. Do you say of him whom the
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Father consecrated, anointed, and sent into the world? Again, you know, getting back to the eternality of Christ.
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Sent him into the world. No one else was sent into the world, consecrated. Well, when did that happen?
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It had to happen before time began. Do you say of him whom the
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Father consecrated, and sent to the world, you are blaspheming me because I said, I am the Son of God? Said it right there again, right to them.
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If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. In other words, if I'm not doing the right things, in opposition to what those judges were doing, then don't believe me.
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But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the
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Father is in me, and I am in the Father. This did not please them. Again, they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
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His original audience had no doubt what he was saying. None whatsoever. Who is
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Jesus? Original audience understood exactly who he was. He is the
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Christ, the Messiah, and the Son of God. Second question, what does it mean to believe in Jesus?
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What does it mean to believe in Jesus? Now, I could cite a poll. I didn't even look this week. I know I could find a poll that would say anywhere from two thirds to 99 .9
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% of Americans are Christians. Everybody says they're a Christian. And I'm sure if you asked, nearly all of them would say in some form or another that they believe in Jesus.
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Well, what does that mean? In other words, does it have to have any content?
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Do you have to believe any specific truths about him? Does it have any impact on your life?
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Pastor Dave, I thought, gave a great sermon last week about Jesus Christ, says, Lord, it has to change your life.
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These truths, these things that you must believe, they must not just be intellectual facts, but they must control your thinking and thrill your soul.
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Listen, if you don't think Jesus Christ is my savior, he bled and died for me, and I can't believe that he would do that, and I'm overwhelmed by that truth, and I love him, then maybe you're not a
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Christian. I mean, you know, we have these polls that say all these different things.
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I just wonder what God's poll is. I wonder what he would say, you know, well, yeah, I read the AP poll, but, you know, let's invert those numbers.
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I think it'd be a lot less. So what are the truths that you have to believe?
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What do you need to believe about him? First, that he is the savior. You must believe that he came to redeem people from sin.
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John 12, verses 47 and 48, Jesus speaking, he says, if anyone hears my words and does not keep them,
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I do not judge him, for I've not come to judge the world, but to save the world. And you say, perfect, that's the
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Jesus that everybody wants, right? Yeah, you can accept, not accept, it's all good. The kind of non -judgmental
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Jesus. But you have to keep reading. That's the problem. Verse 48, the one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge.
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The words I have spoken will judge him on the last day, on the day of judgment. Rejecting Jesus is not something that Jesus is going to look over, overlook.
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His very words will judge those who reject him. Jesus didn't say that he came to save everyone universally.
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I mean, look at that. Those who reject him will be judged. Not everyone will be saved.
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But the converse is also true. Those who receive him, those who receive his words, those who believe his words will be saved.
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Jesus is the savior, the only savior. Jesus is also the sacrifice.
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John 1, verse 29, John the Baptist said, the next day he saw, we read this earlier, he saw
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Jesus coming toward him and said, I think we read it earlier, and said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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John's gospel tells us that Jesus is God, that he's always existed. I didn't even cover that in John chapter one, that he created everything.
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I didn't even cover that in John chapter one. And that he came into this world at the father's direction to take away, it says there in John 1, 29, to take away the sin of the world, which literally means to lift off.
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You know, it's like the people of the world are oppressed. They're weighed down by their sin and Jesus lifts it off.
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He lifts off the collective sin of all who would ever believe. But Jesus' death holds no hope for those who reject him and for those who reject his words.
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Again, listen to the words of Jesus. You know, I want people to be angry this morning, but I want people to be angry for the right reasons.
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If you're sitting here thinking that somehow I'm judging you, I just want you to listen to the words of Jesus. Again, speaking in Nicodemus in verses 17 and 18, following John 3, 16.
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This is all the same discourse, same interaction with Nicodemus. He says, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
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Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the son of God.
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There are two groups of people, those who are going to be saved and those who are going to be condemned. And who are those that are condemned?
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Well, they've been condemned already. Those are the ones who are not going to believe. They might hear the gospel. They might hear it a thousand times, but they will not bow the knee to Christ.
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Now, the imagery of, back in John 1, 29, of him being the lamb of God is rich.
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It depicts the Old Testament sacrificial system. A spotless lamb had to be sacrificed for the sins of the people.
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And they would do this over and over again. Why? Because sin's very serious and must be dealt with.
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And the only way it could be dealt with was by death. Without shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
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We tend to forget just how bad sin is. We say things like, no one's perfect.
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Well, no one is. But God's standard is perfection. So he sent a perfect lamb, the second person of the
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Trinity, who existed as God from all eternity past, to come to take on a human body, to be slain, to lift our sins off of us.
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One sacrifice for all, for all time. It took
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God himself to become flesh, to live among us, to do everything that the
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Father commanded, to say everything that the Father commanded. We'll see that in the gospel, John. And finally, to be sacrificed in a way that was pleasing to the
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Father. So Jesus is the sacrifice. There is no other acceptable sacrifice.
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How could there be? Every other potential sacrifice would be flawed. Jesus is also the supreme object of your affection.
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In other words, you must love him more than you do anything or anyone. Again, people will say,
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I love Jesus. They'll wear their big crosses. That'll make them lean over like this. It's not enough to say,
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I love Jesus. The question is, do you? Listen to some of these verses. John 14, 21.
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Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my
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Father. There's no such thing as a carnal Christian.
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One who is indifferent to obedience. Again, Pastor Dave spoke about that last week.
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You can't just have Jesus as Savior and say, I don't want him as Lord. I don't want to obey him.
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I don't want to follow what he said. There is no bifurcation there. It's one or, well, it's all or nothing.
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You're either in or you're out. If you love Jesus, you will do what he says. Listen to John 15, 19.
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If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
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Again, this is the cost of loving Christ. The world is going to hate you. You're going to have enmity with the world.
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But what would you expect? They hated Christ. They're going to hate you. To love Christ means that you must forsake everything else.
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Now, let's turn, please, to John 21. John chapter 21. This is a much discussed passage in verses 15 to 17.
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Lots of debate over the different kinds of love used here, but I don't really think you want to get into one of these wordplay things.
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I mean, I read enough this week where I was just like, okay, I get it, you know, because this idea of phileo love being only used of God.
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Well, that's not exactly true. Some very sinful people loved the world more than they loved
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God. And in that phileo way, so I don't really think we can go there. But John 21 verses 15 to 17.
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When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
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In other words, than the other disciples? Come on, Peter, boast. It really wasn't like that.
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But listen, he just says, Peter replies. He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
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He said to him, Jesus said to Peter, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time,
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Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
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He said to him, 10, my sheep were 17.
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He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me?
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And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.
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Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. Now, I think it is interesting.
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And I think it is a parallel that Peter denied him three times. And here he gave him the opportunity to three times profess his love for him.
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I think that's good. And I think that's right to note that. But notice in his third response, two things happen.
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Peter is grieved. And he says, not that Jesus knows that Peter loves him, because he's already said that.
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He says that Jesus knows all things. In other words, he ascribes to him omniscience, which only
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God knows everything. One commentator says this, if Jesus does not know that Peter loves him, what can
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Peter say to assure him? Exactly right. But the key issue here is what?
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Jesus doesn't say, oh, I'm so glad that you love me. That's great. I've been waiting to hear that.
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What does he say? He gives him something to do. He gives him a task. Why?
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Because anybody could say, I love Jesus. Anybody could say, I love you,
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Lord. But our love for Christ is demonstrated by serving him.
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It's demonstrated by obeying him as demonstrated by serving him. If you love
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Jesus more than anything else, you don't have to prove it to me.
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You don't have to prove it to anyone else. God knows, but that will evidence itself in service to him.
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Your service will speak more loudly than your words ever could. Now, it could be behind the scenes.
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It could be in ways that aren't so flashy. But in some form or fashion, your life will demonstrate what your mouth articulates.
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Your life will show what your mouth says. Our first question this morning was, who is
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Jesus? Our second question was, what does it mean to believe in Jesus? It is a life transformed.
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It is not mere intellectual knowledge. It is a change of life. I mean, I can think of no greater.
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I'm not going to go there because that'd be outside of the gospel of John. But I think the apostle Paul went from hating him to loving him.
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And that's a picture of what it means to be saved. That's what it means to believe.
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Our third question is, what is eternal life? What is eternal life? And as we study the gospel of John, we're going to see a lot of contrasts, a lot of.
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Kind of he really does present an either or picture of the world. There's light and there's darkness.
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There's love and there's hate. There's joy and there's anger. And there are many other kind of duels going on.
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But there's one I want you to think about for just a moment here that maybe isn't so obvious. During the entirety of his ministry, the
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Jewish religious leaders were out to kill him. In fact, I was reading when
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I thought this was really interesting, that they even kind of rushed to clean things up when he was crucified because they didn't want to break the
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Sabbath. You know, they just put this man to death. And their main concern was they didn't want to break the Sabbath. But I digress.
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They were out to kill him. And what was Jesus out to do? To give life.
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To give eternal life. What is eternal life? Well, first of all, it's available only in Jesus.
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John 11 verses 25 to 26 say this. Jesus said to her,
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I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.
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There's the promise of eternal life, resurrection. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
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They're going to suffer that first death, but not the second death. How could Jesus make such a promise?
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Because he was the very first to be raised from the dead. He prophesied not only of his own death, but that he would raise himself from the dead.
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Listen to John 2 19. Jesus answered them, destroy this temple. And in three days, I will raise it up.
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And he did. Eternal life is available only in Christ.
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And secondly, it is costly. John 12 25 says this. Whoever loves his life loses it.
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And whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Jesus simply cannot be added on to your life.
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Look at that. He says whoever loves his life loses it. If you are consumed by the things of this world, then you just kind of want to add
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Jesus on. Jesus says, I'm not going to have anything to do with that. You have to hate this life. What he said in John 3 to Nicodemus again, he said, you must be born again.
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What was he talking about? A spiritual rebirth, a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. He gives you, the
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Holy Spirit gives you new desires such that you actually hate all that you have done before your salvation.
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You hate all that you do even after your salvation that falls short of the perfection that God demands.
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You long like Paul to be delivered from a body of death. You want heaven. You can't wait for heaven.
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D .A. Carson says, talking about this, hating this life.
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He says, you choose not to pander to self -interest, to the things that you are longing for here.
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But at the deepest level of your being, you decline to make yourself the focus of your interest and perception.
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Therefore, you die to self. That's exactly right. Eternal life is also deliverance from hell.
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Jesus did speak of hell and John wrote of it. John 5, 24 says, truly, truly,
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I say to you, whoever believes my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.
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He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
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To hear is not enough. Believes is a present active participle. It means to go on believing.
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It means it's part of your being. Being a believer is like being a human being.
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I mean, it's your new nature, but it is who you are. It describes you 24 -7.
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No longer headed for the second death. No longer subject to judgment. No longer a child of Satan.
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No longer bound for hell. No longer under the dominion of darkness. You have passed from death, the sure sentence of death to eternal life.
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Eternal life is also irrevocable. John 10, verse 28 says this.
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I give them eternal life and they will perish and no one or I'm sorry, and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
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If your creator and your sustainer grants you eternity with him, who can take that away?
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Who can remove you from his control? The answer is no one. He says it there. Listen to what J .C. Ryle said.
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What kind of head would he be if any of the members of his mystical body, and we are all the body of Christ if you are in Christ.
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What kind of head would he be if any of the members of his mystical body could be torn from him? What kind of shepherd would he be if a single sheep of his flock was left behind in the wilderness?
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What kind of physician would he be if any patient under his hand were at length incurable?
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What kind of high priest would he be if any name once written on his heart were found wanting when he makes up his jewels?
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What kind of husband would he be if he and any soul once united to him by faith were ever put asunder?
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That's not Christ. Nothing is beyond him. We cannot be lost once we have been saved.
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Finally, eternal life is beyond our wildest imaginings. John 10 .10,
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a verse often misused on television, says the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
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I, Jesus, came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
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This doesn't refer to this life. Jesus promises that word abundantly means a remarkable, extraordinary, over -the -top life.
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It's over and above, above anything that we could rationally expect or hope for.
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That's not what he promised. Any fool can win the lottery. Any hell -bound titan of industry can have wealth untold.
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That's not the purpose. Many conquerors, many evil men have had massive control over vast areas of land.
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That's not the point. This is eternal life, in the presence of Christ forever, beyond the grasp of sin, beyond the grasp of sorrow, beyond the grasp of sickness, free from Satan, free from everything that we so struggle with in this life.
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That's eternal life. Our three questions this morning, who is
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Jesus? Secondly, what does it mean to believe in Jesus? Third, what is eternal life?
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Have you ever read the Gospel of John? Think about it. An eyewitness, a disciple whom the
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Lord loved dearly, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote this account of the
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Lord's ministry so that you, today, may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the son of the living God, and that by believing in him, you may have eternal life, may have life in his name.
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And all that he asks is that you love him. But that love is absolute.
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It is without qualification. Do you love
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Jesus? Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for sending the
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Lord Jesus Christ to bear the sins of many, to be that perfect spotless lamb, to be the sacrifice for sin.
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Father, I would pray for everyone here. If they know you, that they would rejoice again and marvel that you would do such a great thing on their behalf.
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We look at so many in the Gospel of John, the other Gospels, the other accounts throughout the
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Bible, even thinking about the apostle Paul and how resistant people were, even his own half -brothers, how they sought to grasp him, to kill him.
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And Lord, before we were saved, we were no different. Our hearts were hardened. We hated your son.
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It is only by your grace that you have opened the eyes of those who do love him, to see his beauty, to see his glory, to truly love him for who he is, not for whom we would like him to be.
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God, I pray for anyone here this morning. Father, anyone here who does not know you, who has not received your son, who has not believed on the
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Lord Jesus Christ, Lord, would you so work through your word today to convict them that this is the
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Christ. This is the Messiah, the anointed one. This is the son of God, and that by believing fully in him, trusting in his work, in his life, in his resurrection, by loving him more than anything else, that we can have eternal life.
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Father, for those that are here struggling, don't know where they are, maybe made profession, have been struggling with sin,
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Lord, I just pray that you would give them just a clear wake -up call today, that to love the world is to hate
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Christ. Father, would you give us all more love for your son,