Gospel of John (2nd Yr Study 17 of 19, Chap19) — G.W. North

Ah, all right then, let's pray, shall we? Gracious Father, we thank Thee that You tried law and it didn't work, and now Thou art dealing in grace, and sometimes it seems that this isn't working for the majority of people.

We examine ourselves in Thy light and in Thy grace and in Thy great love to know that the law of heaven is love, and love and law are just the same. We thank Thee for the law of love, that You gave Your law to Israel of old because You loved them.

You didn't love them because they were more in number than any other nation. You just set Your love upon them. Hallelujah. We greatly adore and admire Thee, Lord, and the wonder of Thy ways, for nobody asks Thee to do it.

Thou didst make the demands on Thyself, and we bless Thee that even now the Holy Ghost is with us, to bring that love of Thine deeply into our being, transforming us, making us to be children of Thy love and of Thy grace and all the wonderful things that Thou hast revealed to us.

Teach us more, more and more integrate us in Thyself and in each other's lives, that we may be unto Thee a pleasure on this earth and in the next. So we bless Thee and grant that even this morning again we shall know Thy grace and love and cause Thy blessing to rest upon us, we pray Thee, for Thine own name's sake.

We just praise Thee, Lord. Thou art so wonderful, and that is about all we can say in the end. Father of Jesus, love's reward, what rapture will it be? Prostrate before Thy throne to lie and gaze and gaze on Thee.

Blessed Lord, for Thou to us love's fulfilment, and we adore Thee. So then you will know that I'm going to complete John, at least I trust so. It'll be my fault if we don't. So we have these hours this morning and then another hour tonight.

If I didn't get through it in an hour, could you take two hours tonight? Or would you be very tired? I don't know. Let's come on, shall we, into our chosen chapter, which is more or less selected itself, seeing we've been going chapter by chapter, or trying to.

Jesus as King and Lord of Personal Life

And I think we're coming into the 19th, that leaves 20 and 21. But into this 19th chapter then, we reminded ourselves, of course, that Barabbas was a rabbi in the end of that 18th chapter. And we also remembered that Pilate called him, actually called him, the King of the Jews, that he'd at last come to that recognition in his own heart.

But if you called him, or I called him, the King of the Jews, and he's not the king of our own lives, we mock him. You understand that? In the days when we used to sing much more meaty hymns than are being manufactured today, we used to sing, King of my life, I crown thee now.

Thine shall the glory be. Wonderful, isn't it? King of my life. Understand that. Because he was a meek baby lying in a manger, and he was wonderful, and everything else. But once you stray from the fact that he is to be the King and Lord of your personal life, in all that you do, and think, and say, he's not profited you much, was a robber.

You may know, of course, that Barabbas means son of the father. Did you know that? You, I'll let you see it a bit, perhaps if I take up the saying, the word Abba, father, is a diminution, Abba, of father, the thought of seeing a baby would say a child growing up daddy.

That's the idea. But you see this robber's name, this man was son of the father. They chose this false god, this terrible man, instead of the real son of the father. And you can do that. And I couldn't do it, or could have done it.

Be very careful. Not that it lies in names. You can say Jesus, but it doesn't mean he's your personal saviour in that you could describe it, all sorts of things, unless he is king of your life. It's in bandying names that counts.

Keep that very clear in your life. And you really ought not to use the word Jesus unless he is your personal saviour. You're mocking God. If you do, it's very easy to do it. Well, they condemned the true son of the father.

And they took Barabbas, a false one. Be very careful. You must take it to your heart that names in scripture mean something. I mean, you may have a wonderful name like Christabel, or something like that, or Christopher, if you prefer to be a male.

As for me, I don't like human beings. It's a personal like of mine. I don't think any human being ought to incorporate the name of Christ, whether she be female or male, into their own name. I would have it changed by deed Paul if it was conferred upon me by unbelieving or ignorant parents.

You put Christopher, Christine, Christina. Well, you come to think, when you do think and get down and humble yourself in the presence of God, you see, and it must have been ignorant parents, even though they may have been Christian, that gave you the name.

Christopher Columbus, he was a Roman Catholic through and through. He's nearly reverenced in history. All right, I won't keep going about that. I just want to bring this thing into focus. Pilate, therefore, because they chose this Barabbas, took Jesus and scourged him.

And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head. And they put on him a purple robe and said, Hail, King of the Jews. And they smote him with their hands. Pilate, therefore, went forth again and said unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you that you may know that I find no fault in him.

Not even a fault. Didn't say sin or wickedness or crime. Keep that clear. Not even a fault. It's some contribution from a heathen judge, isn't it? Amen. Without a fault. Leave alone without a sin or anything like that.

Then came Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said unto them, Behold, the man, the man. Pilate knew that. And Pilate's condemnation in the sight of God would be that he had Jesus Christ crucified when he was convinced he was absolutely clean, clear, and perfect.

The New Birth and Freedom from Cowardice

I hope none of us in this room finish up cowards in the sight of God. For that's what Pilate was. You can't be a Christian if you're a coward. If Jesus Christ hasn't, by the Holy Ghost, dealt with cowardice in you, you can't be a child of God.

Children of God are not cowards. That's why so many of them have been to prison, burned at the stake, hung upside down, because that is how Peter was crucified, they say, in the end. If Jesus Christ doesn't take away the coward spirit out of you, you can't be his.

A new birth deals with all that. It takes away fear. It takes away all kinds of things. Oh, well, you see, my mother was one of those people, my father, so-and-so and so-and-so. But God's our father.

If you're making this claim that God is your father, if you're making that claim, then you are a son of God. Sorry, ladies, but that's the thing. You are a son of God. God didn't have a daughter. You understand that.

That's why it's included in that. The thing is so wonderful to get into your heart. And if you are a coward, then you've got to face that with God. And see whether you've got hold of a sentimental Jesus instead of a real, true, great God manifest in you.

How wonderful it is for us to grasp these things. Ece homo, coming into the... Oh, this one's fled by my heart. Ece homo. That was what he said. Oh, it was Latin. Sorry, here it is. Ece homo. Behold the man.

Oh, I love to think of these things. Faultless Jesus was. We're all got some kind of a fault about this. But he was faultless. Not just sinless. He was absolutely faultless. Everything he did and said was perfect.

Amen. Now, that's what we all have. To strive after. Stop being shoddy. Stop making excuses for yourself. Stop anything like that. And get your eyes fixed on the perfect man. And God the Father's idea is to make you like Jesus.

I can think of it in the Acts of the Apostles. Oh, I must stop within our range. Time so much. Time is going. Stephen, his face shone as though it was an angel. Paul, he lost his head on a chopping block on the Appian Way, outside of Rome.

There, you couldn't frighten them. You couldn't put them off. You couldn't do anything with this kind of man. The only thing in the end was to kill them. Even so, Lord Jesus, they killed you. Or they thought they did.

Pilate, the Jewish Leaders, and the Rejection of the Son of God

And here, then, is the thing. The chief priest, verse 6. And the officers saw him and cried out, saying, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said unto him, take ye him and crucify him. For I find no fault in him.

The Jews answered him, we have a law, and by our law he ought to die. Because he made himself the Son of God. He did nothing of the sort. He showed himself to be the Son of God. Self-made men usually worship themselves.

That's their idol. Jesus Christ, never fall down and worship your own image. I don't mean you make images, but in your heart, in your mind, you have some great gift. You have some ability. You have a natural precociousness.

Or something like that. Or worship yourself. I tell you what, in the end you'll finish up to be a brute, rough shod. And you'll stride over everybody and grind them under your feet. That's what you'll do.

All you need to do is to grind yourself, your real self, under your own feet. And let God make you another self. That's the thing. And go with God. Never excuse yourselves. Never. I love Oswald Chambers.

I don't know whether you read him. And the title of his great book of daily readings is, My Utmost for Thy Highest. What a name. Hallelujah. Look at the time. Well, don't. Let's go on. Ah. We have our Lord.

He made himself the Son of God. Peter, Pilate, therefore, heard that saying. And when he heard it, he was the more afraid, and went again unto the judgment, and said unto Jesus, Whence art thou? Jesus gave him no answer.

Don't ask questions, beloved. When inside you are already convinced of this, this, or that, don't ask questions. That, by that, the devil will shake your confidence. Don't ask questions. Go on. And on.

And on. Hallelujah. Speakest thou not unto me? This is Pilate. Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.

Therefore, he that delivered me unto thee hath a greater sin. And from henceforth Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews had got him now. It was the Jews that crucified Jesus, you know, although the Roman soldiers did it.

Therefore, Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend. Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar. And they had. They sprung the trap.

They got him. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the Passover at about the sixth hour.

And he said unto the Jews, Behold, your king made a last effort, but they cried out, saying, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said unto him, Then shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.

Judgment, Rejection, and the Call to Receive the Gospel

Caesar. Liars were they all. Liars were they all. If they were true Jews, God was their king. God was their king. And you know, I believe this. I don't know whether you believe it, but most of the trouble that's come upon the Jewish nation has come their suffering and reaping what they sowed.

The way you treat the Lord Jesus in your life will say much about the life that is to follow. Keep it clear, I believe the terrible holocaust was something of that. His blood be upon us, they said. His blood be upon us and our children.

That's not in this gospel, read the others. You really should read every account. His blood be upon us and our children. Seventy years after, a great Roman general walked into Jerusalem and they say that the streets of the city were running with Jewish blood.

You be careful what you are saying and doing. Of course, we as humans say, well, haven't they suffered? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But hell is a terrible place of suffering, whether it's a Jew or a Gentile who rejects Jesus Christ.

He goes, oh, my poor mother, my grandmother, my, I know, it's terrible. Have love and whatever you do, get the gospel to every heart you love. You get it. That's why you're in this world now. If you're confessing Christ as your saviour, you have been conscripted spiritually.

Understand and understand it well. All right, I must stop and just go on. We have no king. But Jesus, they took Jesus, led him away and he, bearing his cross, went forth and to a place called Golgotha, a place of the skull, where they crucified him and two other with him on either side one and Jesus in the midst.

Taking Up the Cross and Rejecting the Love of the World

But that cross was my cross. I was crucified there. So were you if you were professing Jesus name. Don't you dodge the cross. Don't you try to judge. You know, if you were reading all these other gospels, you'll find it.

But here's a big theme of 17 and get this deep into your heart, young lady and young man. Don't you waste your time in here this morning. You get this in your being faced with the great truth. You will know that Jesus often said, you cannot be my disciple except you take up the cross.

And in one place, he said, your cross and follow me. You can't. Discipleship is forbidden to people that will not carry the cross. And when you take up the cross, every person that took up the cross in Jesus day were marked out as having been judged and tried by the world.

Every man that was crucified had to bear his cross. If you saw a man with a cross in his shoulder, he was a condemned criminal. Do you live like that in the world or do you want to love the world? John treats this further in his first epistle and said, if you love the world, the love of the father is not in you.

Now you plainly ask yourself now whether you do love this world. You engage in its practices, its pleasures, its ways, its works and so on. Do you? For Jesus says, if you do love the world, my father's love is not in you.

Oh, but I've been a Christian ten years, have you? That's the point. You shouldn't read John if you don't want your heart penetrated with the arrows of truth. Sharp are thine arrows in the hearts of thine enemies, David said.

Big thing. You really must be deadly serious about this. Much will depend upon you. This is the love of God. Your privilege, you will be like Jesus, you see. It's glorious. No tint thought about it. It's it.

I wouldn't tell you this unless I'd faced it myself. You have to take up your cross daily. That's what the scripture says. I believe it. It's so wonderful, isn't it? But I can't dare not leave these things out if I'm going to be true to you, as well as true to the scripture.

It isn't all clapping and dancing. Believe me. If you're going to be true to what God says. Oh, I mean, I have kicked my legs about when I've been so happy. Don't misunderstand me. But I never bought a pair of dancing shoes and a timbrel to beg.

Here is the thing. Hallelujah. Go right on. I'm walking in the steps of the great martyrs. Are you? And did you know that the word that is translated witnesses, you should be witnessing is the word martyr.

You'll be martyrs. Oh, let's read this. Jesus himself says we've got to be martyrs. You always associate that with stakes and racks and all those kinds of things. Perhaps. I don't know. Then let me disillusion you.

The greater the glory and the wonder in your heart will bring you to that lovely place. And Jesus never looked more lovely than he did on the cross. Torn and broken. You know what? I don't need to play on this.

Sometimes I remind large congregations about this. Hallelujah. All right. They crucified him to others with him on either side. Jesus in the midst. Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. The writing was Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.

This title then read many of the Jews for the place where Jesus was crucified was night of the city. And it was written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin. Then said the chief priest of the Jews to Pilate, write not the king of the Jews, but that he said, I am the king of the Jews.

Pilate answered, said, what I have written, I have written. He was a convinced man. He thought nothing of Herod. Nothing at all. He was a puppet king. Thought he was the king of the Jews. Pilate recognized is what you are in yourself as a person that makes you a king.

Self-Control, Spiritual Kingship, and the Lord’s Supper

Or not a king. If you cannot rule over yourself by God's grace and power. If you let your appetites run away with you. Chiefly the sexual appetite. You'll never be a king in this world, never. But God wants all his children.

Members of the royal family to reign as kings. Oh, dear. Paul once said to the Corinthians, you reign as kings without me. For they were reigning in lust, terrible sexual things, making mockery of the Lord's table, speaking in tongues out of the top of their head or out the back of their necks or something.

You see, that's the trouble. I won't say there weren't some. There were some of Corinthians that were disgusted with it and wrote to Paul about it. You should read his epistles to the Corinthians. It's all there.

Making mockery of the Lord's supper, all of his teachings. I told him it was so wonderful. It won't be when I come along, he says, Paul. He was going to judge them. He loved Jesus enough to judge a wicked, self-indulgent church.

Hmm. How wonderful it is, then, for us to go on. And so on and so on and so on. And then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, made four parts for every soldier, a lot apart, and also his coat.

The coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. You know, Mary, his mother, made it for him. All right. I want to say this. For decency's sake, the great painters of old always gave him a loincloth, but he wasn't.

A loincloth. He was hung there, naked, in all his humanity. Mocked. Shown up. The prince of absolute purity and holiness. That's him. And they were gambling for his clothes. So they said, oh, well, don't let us tear it, rend it, but cast lots for it.

Whose it shall be, so the scripture might be fulfilled, which says, They parted my raiment among them, and for my pasture he cast lots. These things did the soldiers unto him, insulted him, made him the epitome of everything that was wrong, rebel, murderer, thief.

That's what they said. They loved a man called Barabbas, did exactly those things. They did against Jesus. They mocked Jesus. Be careful, beloved. If your love of the world takes you wrong, you are doing the same thing.

So am I. Oh, but Jesus is gentle, and he forgives, forgives, forgives. Don't presume upon grace. Don't presume upon it. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.

Mary, John, and the Ministry of Divine Love

When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother and the disciple, notice John has not interposed himself, he hasn't put his name there, but he was there anonymously, bravely, he was there, a man full of compassion, I think, full of courage.

I must say, be quite honest, the people that I have found most courageous are usually women. Mary was there, Mary was there, Mary Magdalene was there, and all these great big men, including Peter, and, you know, the people you'll know, Andrew, where were they?

You just think, men usually are chicken-hearted. Generally speaking, I'm not casting aspersions, I'm telling you the plain truth, and you can read it and re-read it, and you'll find a Paul, of course.

There's only one Paul. You'll find all these other people. Stephen's wonderful, but that was when he was really baptized in the Holy Ghost, and it exuded forth from him. Men are very clever, and often found that the elders are, of explaining reasons why you should do this.

I pay all the ladies a tribute. I really do this. I've got my tongue in my cheek. I'll tell you a story. Oh dear, I shall want two lessons after six tonight, if I go this way, but here it is. I know a lady, a missionary, returned from abroad, and she was invited to go out speaking, and she was saying how many women were out.

I think you'll probably find twice as many women are missionaries than men. I would think that. To this day, to this day, I think I'm underestimating the number. Here is the truth, and they were, it was in a great big drawing room, and they would sit there in nice comfortable chairs.

Men, one of these men, whose background you shall guess I won't outline everywhere, said, is it right that women should be doing this thing, going out and doing the work, and why is it? So she says, it's because too many men are lounging in lounge chairs in posh drawing rooms.

Take it in, brethren, take it in, for it's true. Hallelujah. Well, I love doing what I'm doing to you, you just, I'd love to have you every day of your life, just speaking to you. Good old John. But this I'm not too sure about.

You said this is a verse, Mr Dawson, not sure about if you want to poke fun at me, but I'm not sure that in the next verse, and so on, the next two verses, Jesus, I'm not quite sure who was the son here.

When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciples standing by whom he loved, he said unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son. Now he wasn't able to point and say, here, was he saying, look at me, I'm your son, mother, I'm your son, or was he saying, look at John, he's your son.

It's a question I've got ready to ask when I get to heaven sometime. Who was he talking to? Was he saying, look at me, crowned with thorns, bleeding from nearly every pore in my body. That's me. That's the child you brought into the world from my father.

Was he saying, look at John, you make up your mind, behold thy mother. So that was John, all right. And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. Now this is one of the wonderful things about the inspiration of God in writing the Bible, the New Testament.

John took Mary home to his house, adopted her as his own mother. Now here's the wonderful thing. He must have extracted from her every detail about the birth of the blessed Lord, every anecdotal thing, everything she knew, but he never writes about it.

Now here's the power of inspiration. God never inspired him to write about the manger. All the wise men, or, or, or. That's the power of inspiration. Not putting the things that you know together and calling it God's word.

Keep that right. Keep it right. I want to tell you, this has kept me focused ever since the days that the Lord ordained to use me. It isn't your ideas or your knowledge. It's what God says you're to do.

And because he, if you like, disdained to take all the facts he got, and she must have said he was a wonderful baby, and all these things that mothers do. But you see, in the beginning was the Word. Word was God.

And so he went, and nothing of his young life, say when he was 12 years of age, you know, Luke can write that. All right, if God took Luke up to write that, that's fine. But dear old John, to me, he's a tremendous example of what love can accomplish in a man, and the power of the blessed Spirit in him.

And the Spirit of God will not inspire much in you if he hasn't filled you with love. Keep that clear. By love, I'm, I'm not talking about what's called love. I'm not. It's this great thing from God. If I ever really get down in my private studies, and think about God's love, I get wet behind the eyes ready to cry.

It's true. It's the nearest you'll get to heaven on this earth. Yeah, it's all right. Five minutes time. I shall want a cup of tea. So we're going to speed on a bit. Since this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, says, I thirst.

See, right to the very end, he only wanted to fulfill the Scripture. That's all. Is your life a fulfillment of Scripture? You've got to understand that people who don't want to read the Bible, they read you.

They know you exactly. The closer you are to relatives or people out there, they know you. They read your moods, your attitudes, your insolence, all a lot of it. They read it. Or else they read your absolute loveliness.

This is the law of being. You see, I'm not talking about the law of Moses now. It's so great. So great. The vessel, you know, full of vinegar was there, 29. He filled the sponge with vinegar and put it upon his, put it to his mouth.

When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, finished. He didn't say it is finished. Finished. The great shout of the conqueror. Tetelestai. It was what the generals in those days on the battlefield used to shout out.

When they'd won the victory, Tetelestai, he'd won. And the biggest battle he had was against sin. Because God made him the embodiment of it on the cross. Jesus overcame sin and God punished sin. Your sin and my sin because he took it.

Here's the great mystery about dealing with sin. The sin. He was so pure. His purity overcame it on the cross. And he shouted out at the end, Tetelestai. And you see, the next thing he gave up his spirit to God.

As I've said before, he didn't die like men die. He died by his will. He didn't die of his wounds. He never died of the cross. He died of his own will. And if he had not have dismissed his spirit, he would have been hanging on a cross to this day.

Sin never killed Jesus. The world didn't kill him. Cross didn't kill him. He just hung there until he satisfied that dear father heart in heaven. And that God was his family. I don't know whether you're in that family.

I suppose we're all to assume, each one of us, it's all at least to assume we're in it. But don't you assume anything. You know whether sin's being killed in you. That's the sin. Christianity is not, oh there again, I've sinned again, I've blown it again, I've done this, I've done that.

It's to be a life of holiness, body, soul, and spirit. Sin should be, if I may say, the accident. You know, if you're a musician, you will know there's a place in the score which is called an accident.

All right. It's not actually part of it. It should be that accident in your life. You are not to be a perpetual sinner. You are to know the glorious holiness and perfections of the Lord Jesus in you. You do know, if we were in Matthew's gospel now, we could read it at the end of chapter five, which says, Jesus said this now.

This came from Jesus's lips. Here it is. Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. So don't go around bleating and saying, I'm imperfect, I'm imperfect, I'm imperfect, and all that kind of thing.

Jesus said it, the last verse of that chapter. If I preach along these lines, people don't like me. I know, there are those who've liked it and wanted it. But that's the thing. That's what he said. It came out of his mouth.

Now, either he's a liar by implication, or else he is the truth. You've got to accept one or the other. What a marvelous thing. The first call to you is not to evangelism, or be in pastoral work, or operating gifts.

It's to be like Jesus. Yes, that's why you were born again. Not to develop your talents. I must go on, because you wouldn't come back next year for me to finish, would you? Here is the whole truth. Listen, he wouldn't have all these other things they offered him, myrrh and that, the gifts he was given as a baby.

They offered him that. It was a great painkiller. Did you know myrrh is used in painkillings? Painkillings you have. He bore the pain. He wouldn't become unconscious of it by fainting or something. He bore it to the end.

Every lash of a stroke. Everything. A stroke from the lash, I'm sorry. Is God calling you to this? If you want him to bend over you and say, my son, I'm well pleased in you. You've got to go through on the Jesus path.

The Pierced Side, Blood and Water, and the Meaning of New Birth

That's when the soldiers came, broke his legs. A must finish. That day Jesus didn't need his legs breaking. He'd finished his work and he'd already gone home. And it went right through and we do get through and remember this.

One of the soldiers, verse 34, with a spear pierced his side and forth with there came out blood and water. Now, remember this verse. You tuck this away in your memory. And he that saw it, that is John, he was standing there with Mary.

Their record, his record is true. And listen to this. This is grace to you through John. Here it is. And he knoweth that he said true, that you might believe. How about that? That you might believe. Joseph Arimathea came along.

The body of Pilate and Nicodemus to whom God, Jesus said, and the only time he said it in all his ministry on earth, he said to him, you must be born again. Bear in mind while I'm drinking my tea, this.

That blood and water are things that are manifest in every human birth. And that's why it is that John talks about the spiritual birth. Think about it and connect it with a chapter in his first epistle.

He said it for your sake. The blood and water, which would be significant in your new birth, was manifest there. All right. In the place, here it is, verse 41, where he was crucified, there was a garden.

Well, what do you know? The garden of Gethsemane. No, no, it was the garden of Golgotha. That's where he was crucified. Ever heard anybody preach about the garden of Golgotha? There was a garden. Blessed, blessed Lord.

Oh, I'd love to have you for a lot more longer, a long time. But here is the thing, beloved. He was laid in the garden in a new sepulchre and because it was nigh at hand. Isn't that beauty from ashes?

God wants you to learn something from these scriptures, but I must pass. Now hold on, I'll have some tea.