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Now, let me ask you a question, how many of you watch HGTV, show of hands? You know, I know in the first service, I see those hands, good for you. The first service, one hand immediately shot up, it was my wife.
She loves those do-it-yourself shows, you know, redo your whole house. I don't know, someday I figure I'll come home and the entire wall, you know, one of our rooms will be missing and she'll be doing something there, but that's just kind of how she is.
But do-it-yourself projects have become very popular. I'm not very mechanically inclined, I don't really get it. I come in sometimes and it's just what's on TV. And I don't really relate to a lot of the shows, you know, like I can't wrap my head around struggling to pay $6 ,000 a month to live in a one-bedroom apartment in London, for example, out of choice.
That doesn't make much sense to me. And I can't really identify with the people who are struggling as their house shopping. Should we buy a wreck of a house that's only $650 ,000 and fix it? Or should we stretch our budget a little bit and go for the $850 ,000 dream home?
Oh, the difficulties. You know, I watch those shows and I'm going, I can hardly wait for the reveal. Sorry to be, you know, cynical. But there's a fascination with do-it-yourself projects, do-it-yourself shows.
I'd like to introduce a term to some of you, you may not be familiar with it, but DYO. DYO could be do your own, but it's design your own, design your own. I picked up that terminology a long time ago playing games.
They had design your own scenarios where you could basically take a game and make it fit whatever scenario you want. And you know when it comes to your home, design your own might be fine. Design your own kitchen.
There's software that actually allows you to sort of, you know, finagle things around, move things around, shift things around, and you can design your own kitchen, design your own living room. You can design your own stereo system, your own audio-visual system.
And again, in your home, that stuff's fine. Move your furniture around however you please. But when it comes to more important things, DYO won't work. You can't design your own salvation. There's only one way of salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ.
In our text this morning, I'm going to invite you to open your Bibles to John 5. In our text this morning, we're going to see people who were in the presence of the Savior, saw what he was doing, listened to what he was saying, and they rejected him.
Why? Well, the obvious theological answer is because of the hardness of their hearts, because of the sinfulness of sin. But the truth is, Jesus was not who they wanted him to be. He was not the Savior they wanted.
He was not the Messiah they sought. He was not the Christ they envisioned. They wanted a DYO Messiah, design your own Messiah. Now, to just kind of review a little bit, the Gospel of John was written a few decades after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are also known as the Synoptic Gospels, because they cover much the same material in a slightly different way.
And John has a different focus than they did. Matthew was written to present Jesus as King, the King of Israel, the rightful heir to the throne of David. Mark was written to really emphasize the humanity, well, the servanthood.
If Matthew was to show him as King, then Mark was to show him as a servant. Luke, the physician, wrote his Gospel to emphasize Jesus, the human being, the man who was encumbered by the restrictions of his own creation.
And John has a different focus, and that is to present Jesus as God. In fact, in John 20 -31, he says, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is to say, the Messiah, the Promised One, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name, eternal life in the name of Jesus Christ.
Last week, we saw five witnesses to the deity of Christ. First, the witness of Jesus Himself. Secondly, the witness of John the Baptist. Third, the witness of the works of Christ, His miraculous works, the works that would leave really no other explanation other than He was doing this by the power of God.
Our fourth witness was the witness of the Father, and the fifth was the witness of Scripture, that He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Now, let's read our text this morning, John 5, beginning in verse 41.
Our Lord says, I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.
How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope.
For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me. For he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words? Now, this morning, I want to draw your attention to three marks of those who love the Savior, drawn from our text so that you will be sure that you are not worshiping a Messiah of your own design, a D-Y-O Messiah.
Many today, even those who name the name of Christ, who call themselves Christians, worship a Jesus who is not found in the Bible. And today, I want us to see how even those who are devout, religious students of Scripture can be deceived as to their own spiritual state so that you won't be.
Our first truth about those, our first mark of those who love the Savior is that true worshipers love God. And it's contrasted because the Pharisees did not love God. The Pharisees mistakenly thought that their approval mattered to Jesus.
Look at verse 41. I do not receive glory from people. It's an interesting statement. That word glory, doxa, means praise, glory, honor, radiance, brightness, splendor. Now, how is it that anyone can receive glory from another person?
If someone says something, you know, exceptionally nice to you, if they compliment you, does that make you glow? Might you have a little rosiness to your cheeks? Well, you could, you could blush, but that's not what's being discussed here.
He's not talking about receiving a momentary rush from the words of another. He's talking about genuine praise. And he does not receive praise from men. To understand this, we really have to look back at this whole exchange between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees.
And it takes place in the aftermath of a miraculous healing. There was a man who had been wracked by infirmity for 38 years. And in our world today, we would expect to see this man in a wheelchair. He was incapable of moving himself around.
John 5 .5 tells us that the man had been an invalid for 38 years, almost four decades. Now, we think that we have a grasp of that. We think we understand it. We think that in our modern world, we know what it's like to be physically afflicted, and maybe we do to some extent.
We can instantly kind of empathize a little bit with him. We don't understand what it would be like to be in that situation back then. No wheelchair, obviously. And he would also be seen as possibly in that situation because of sin in his life, because of the judgment of God upon him.
He would be an outcast. There would be no disability program from the government. He would have no hope for a fulfilling life. Think about what he was doing. He's at that pool of water with all the other social outcasts, all the other disabled people sitting there waiting day after day after day with no hope.
There are a whole multitude of them. And out of that entire multitude, Jesus focuses on this one man. He asks him if he wants to be healed, and then he commands, who is now a former invalid, to pick up his bed and walk.
Something that would have been impossible for him just a moment before that. Now the Pharisees see this man, likely some way from the pool, a little distance from the pool, where Jesus has healed him, and they confront him about carrying his bed.
It really is a fascinating look at the wrong priorities that they had. Why were they so upset with him? Why were they concerned with him? Because he was carrying his bed on the Sabbath. And eventually they discover, the man tells them, that it was Jesus who did this.
It was Jesus who healed him. It was Jesus who told him to pick up his bed and walk. And so they go and they confront Jesus. Why would you command this man to carry his bed on the Sabbath? How dare you?
How did you do this? How did you take this man who could not walk, who could not care for himself, and heal him? Now they were concerned with his alleged violation of the fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
And Jesus responded in verse 17 what? That he was doing just what he saw his father doing. He's working just as his father does. It was the final straw for the Pharisees, because they knew what he was doing.
What did they say after that? They wanted to kill him because he made himself equal with God. Why? Because looking back at verse 17, he identified God as his father. Something a Jew typically would not do.
They might refer to God as father in a prayer, but to say, to call him your own personal father, is something they would not do. They understood that he was talking about this close relationship with the father, and they understood that he was claiming to be equal with God, and it outraged them.
They wanted to kill him. They wanted to murder him. So back to our text now. Verse 41. Jesus had no interest in their praise, it says. He could not get any glory or would not receive glory from them. And really he had little interest in praise, even from those he rightly could have demanded it from.
I mean, think about the man he healed. We would expect if there was a healer today, for him to do something like this and then parade the man around. Look what I've done. Everybody give me a big round of applause.
Give him a round of applause. Do whatever you want, but I deserve some of the credit here. He didn't do that. What did Jesus do after healing this man? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, the text tells us that he withdrew.
He disappeared. He left. He didn't wait to hear a thank you. He didn't wait for anything. He just left. Again, we would just expect this man to want to track Jesus down to thank him. After all, what Jesus did was more remarkable than, let's say he saved someone's life.
Well, anybody could go into, theoretically, anybody could go into a burning building, shove somebody out of the way of an oncoming car, do something like that, and appear on the 6 o 'clock news and be a hero.
But not everybody can take someone who was an invalid for 38 years and heal him. That's something that can only be done by the power of God. So we would expect there to be some form of praise, not only from the man, but maybe from these religious leaders.
Maybe they would acknowledge him and see the power of God at work in him. But they didn't do that. Not only should they have rejoiced with this healed man, but they should have lauded Jesus. They should have praised him.
At the very least, they should have been convinced of his heavenly commission, of the fact that he was sent by the Father. Instead, his words inflamed them so that their focus was on his death, on bringing that about.
As Jesus said in the words we read last week, that he did not rely on human testimony, even the testimony of John the Baptist. So he was not eager to have the Pharisees' lavish praise upon him for his actions.
It was immaterial to him. Why? Because he'd done exactly what the Father wanted him to do, what he saw the Father doing. He acted in a way that was consistent with his Father. Besides that, he knew that there was a glory coming.
In fact, in John 17, we won't look at it. But what does he pray for? He prays that the glory he had before he came to earth would be restored to him. Their praise meant nothing to him. The Pharisees also did not love God.
Look at verse 42. These are harsh words. Imagine just saying this to your theological opponents. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. Now, on first blush, we read that, and we just say, well, Jesus has just come to this realization right at this moment that they did not have the love of God.
But it's way worse than that. The words, I know. That's a verb, and it's in the perfect tense, not the present tense. What's the difference? This isn't just something that he recognized. This isn't just something that he discovered.
This is something that has happened in the past. It's long settled, and it has ongoing results. He knows why. Because at some point in the past, he came to the determination informed by the Holy Spirit, and he knows it then too.
It's ongoing. There's a hardness of heart with these Pharisees. It's not going anywhere. Now, remember back in chapter 2 of John, the text would tell us that many saw the signs that he was doing, the wonders that he was performing.
And the text says that many believed in him. But then it went on to say what? That he did not believe in them. He didn't trust them. Well, why not? Because the text tells us he knew what was in them. He knew where their hearts truly were.
It's the same thing with these Pharisees. He knew their hearts. They were determined. They had fixed in their minds what God should do, how God should act, and how the Messiah should act. Jesus didn't fit into that mold.
He broke their rules. He was not properly trained. He hadn't sat under the fine teaching that they had. He did not come in power, the kind of power that they wanted. They wanted a revolutionary. They wanted a political figure.
They wanted a political deliverer. They wanted somebody who would overthrow a Roman, and we'll see that in just a moment. He was nothing like what they wanted him to be because they wanted their Messiah to be like what?
Like them. They thought he should be the Pharisee of Pharisees. True worshipers love God. They didn't. Instead, they wanted to kill God incarnate, the unique Son of God, because in their hearts, they hated the God of grace and love.
Our second truth, true worshipers are discerning. That is, they can tell the difference between truth and error. The Pharisees were not discerning, no matter what they thought. The Pharisees rejected the true Messiah.
You want to talk about lack of discernment, they rejected the true Messiah. Look at verse 43. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. Now, there's an emphasis in the Greek on the word I.
He doesn't even have to employ it because the verb would assume that. But he emphasizes it. Why? Because he wants to say to them in a not-too-subtle manner that I am not like you. You want me to be like you.
I'm not like you. I, myself, have come in my Father's name. He doesn't meet them where they are. He throws down the gauntlet. He demands that they come to where He is. That He has come in His Father's name really expresses two things.
First of all, the nearness, again, of the relationship between the Son of God and the Father. There's an emphasis on that. He came in my Father's name. And then also, that He represents not just who God is, but what He is.
When we say the name of someone, that implies all that the person is. He's not claiming to be a mere prophet. He's not just merely a messenger, but He is something far more. It's true that Jesus was a representative of God, but He was not only a representative.
He was a representation. An icon. He was very God-veiled in flesh. The Pharisees were willing to accept false messiahs. There's an amazing thought. They were willing to accept false messiahs. They rejected the true one, and they were willing to accept false ones.
Look at verse 43 again. If anyone comes in His own name, you will receive him. I come in my Father's name, you reject me. But if someone comes in their own name, obviously less than God, you will receive Him.
Now, it's not hard to see that if someone had come in the name of Caesar or some other authority figure, they wouldn't have plotted to kill Him as they were with Jesus. They might not have liked Him. They might not have liked what He had to say.
But they wouldn't have gone kind of behind the curtains to plot His murder. But Jesus is referring to others who had come before Him and would come later. False claimants to the throne of David. Pseudo-messiahs.
We've noted before that there was some excitement about John the Baptist, some clamor, some wondering if he was the Messiah, if he was the Christ. In fact, the Pharisees had sent a small party to investigate whether or not he was the Christ.
They asked him directly. Why? Because there were many other Christs, many other messiahs, so-called messiahs, from the 2nd century B .C. until the final rebellion of the Jews against the Roman Empire that began in 132 A .D.
The end result of that when that rebellion was over in 136 A .D. was in almost all the Jews being enslaved, killed, or driven from Jerusalem. And you say, well, how does something like that start? It was begun by a man called Simon.
And Simon received a new name from an important rabbi who believed that Simon was the Messiah. And he added a surname that means son of a star in Aramaic. And it's a reference to the writings of Moses.
Numbers 24, 17, there shall come a star out of Jacob. And this Simon, the name that he picked up in Aramaic is Bar Kokhba, which means son of a star. This Simon led a rebellion that for two years, they put a serious whooping on the Romans.
I mean, they were beating them. But the Romans got a little tired of that and so they sent six legions, essentially six divisions, down to Jerusalem to put down the rebellion. Why is that important? Because it shows what sort of Messiah these Pharisees would receive.
One who would throw off the shackles of Rome and not coincidentally bring immense wealth to those who followed him. Prestige to those who followed him. We were part of the rebellion that got rid of the Romans.
And again, as I said, what happened? They followed this man and after four years, virtually all the Jews were either killed, captured, or enslaved. They were all moved out of Jerusalem. In fact, you want to know where the term Palestine comes from?
It comes from this exact historical situation. The Romans were tired of dealing with Israel so they took all the Jews out and they renamed it Palestine in 136 A .D. The Pharisees wanted a Messiah who told them what they wanted to hear.
Look at verse 44. How can you believe, Jesus asks, when you receive glory from another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? They did not desire to hear on Judgment Day, Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
They wanted flattery and they wanted it now in this lifetime. So what did that mean? It meant that they were susceptible to false messiahs and false doctrines. Even as I was thinking through this, I thought, this just reminds me so much of the false teachers who dominate Christian TV.
Quick to praise one another, to shower one another with compliments, to talk about how this or that teaching or singing or whatever was so anointed, was heavy with the Spirit. Whatever phrase they wanted to throw around, they just loved to slap each other on the back.
Pharisees were no different. They wanted praise. And the contrast could not be more stark. Jesus sought to obey the Father, to glorify the Father, to please the Father. The Pharisees sought their own pleasure, their own desires, to have others praise them.
Their ears and eyes were closed to the truth, but wide open to the flattery of others. They had high self-esteem, but they had a low view of the one they claimed to serve. True worshipers love God. That was our first truth.
Our second truth, true worshipers are discerning. They're not deceived. And our third truth, true worshipers love and understand Scripture. The Pharisees did not. The Pharisees claimed to love Scripture.
Look at v. 45. Do not think I accuse you to the Father, the One who accuses you. There is One who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. First notice how it says that there is One who accuses you.
Present tense. Even at the moment Jesus is speaking, Moses, he says, is accusing them. Jesus says in effect, your problem is not with Me, it's in the One whom you say you trust. Now some scholars think that the Pharisees saw Moses as an intercessor between God and men.
Others suggest that this is reference to his work in receiving the commandments from God. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. What we know is that the Pharisees misunderstood Moses. They said they loved him.
They said that he was their hope. But look at v. 46. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me. He's telling them, you don't even believe Moses. If you did, you would believe Me.
Look. What would they spend all their time doing? Studying Moses. But the law, the law that Moses wrote, was not intended to save men. If the law alone could save, then why would God send His Son? The law does what?
What's its purpose? It's our tutor. Our guardian. Our schoolmaster, as the King James calls it. Until Christ came. The law reveals the inability of every single person to obey. It shows the sinfulness of man.
And this should have been, or they should have been, the Pharisees should have been looking for one who would deliver them from their sins, not from one who would deliver them from the Romans. And again, the implication of Jesus' words are that they really don't believe Moses.
Now that suggestion would have shocked them. I mean, think about it. They spend thousands of hours being trained and thousands of hours studying Moses. And yet Jesus says you don't believe Him. If it's true what I heard one time, a man say that everything the Bible says is taught in the Pentateuch, that is the first five books of Moses, and the rest of the Bible is just commentary on the first five books.
In the first five books of Moses, they had everything they needed to know. In fact, even the first Gospel presentation is where? In Genesis 3. I heard that. Genesis 3, verses 14 and 15. You don't have to turn there.
I'm going to read it. The Lord God said to the serpent... This is after the fall. He's going to pronounce judgment on Adam and Eve, and now he's dealing with Satan. He says this, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, because you have deceived Eve, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.
On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
Who is the offspring of this woman? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the fulfillment of this. Born of a virgin, and thus the singular offspring of a woman. The only man ever conceived without the sin-filled contribution of Adam.
They reject Him. Why? The Pharisees rejected Jesus because they rejected Moses. Look at verse 47. But if you do not believe His writings, how will you believe My words? You have all the books of Moses, but you don't believe what He said.
So I'm standing here right before you now, and I'm talking to you, and of course you don't believe Me. I'm the fulfillment of what Moses wrote, and you don't believe Him, so you can't believe Me. If they had believed Moses, that is, if they really understood His writing, if they really took it to heart, if they believed what He wrote, they would have had faith, and they would have been determined to rely upon God.
They wouldn't have made up all these external rules. There's something else we should see here. It's the consistency, the internal consistency of Scripture. Jesus is speaking to them, and He's saying, listen, there's no conflict between what I am saying to you and what Moses wrote centuries ago.
There's an inherent consistency there because there's one author of Scripture, ultimately the Holy Spirit. Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets, all of the Old Testament. Moses' words would have led people to invest themselves in Christ if they really believed, to become His true disciples.
What did His words, the words of Jesus, do for the Pharisees? It led them to condemn our Lord to death. Listen to John 19, verses 6 and 7. When the chief priests... This is the trial before Pilate. When the chief priests and the officers saw Him, Jesus, they cried out, Crucify Him!
Crucify Him! Pilate said to them, Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in Him. The Jews answered Him, Listen, we have a law, and according to that law, in other words, according to Moses, he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.
They were students of Scripture. They professed to love Scripture. They wore it around on their forehead. They probably had Scripture earrings. I mean, they were all about Scripture. It was everywhere in their lives except for one place, in their hearts.
They missed the meaning of Scripture. They missed the heart of what Moses was writing about so greatly that they appealed to Moses to justify the killing of Jesus. He was the fulfillment of Moses' words and they wanted to kill Him.
They didn't make a mistake. They weren't just off in their calculations a little bit. They were filled with arrogance and hatred. The marks of unbelief. We've seen true worshipers love God. True worshipers are discerning.
True worshipers love and understand Scripture. Now, as I said in the opening, it's a great thing to design your own kitchen. It's a great thing to design your own front porch. We'd like to have a front porch someday.
It's okay to even design your own computer. But as created beings, we cannot say to our Creator, not only why did You make me like this, but You should act in this way or that way. So many Christians today are professing Christians or people who say they're open to it, say, well, you know what, if there's a God, He ought to do this.
He ought to stop that. He ought to behave in this way or that way. But, beloved, if those thoughts even enter our minds, we should think to ourselves, that is how unbelievers think. They design their own God.
One who agrees with them. That's not the God of the Bible. The psalmist wrote, Psalm 15, verse 3, our God is in the heavens. He does all that we please. He does all that He pleases. And what please, God?
Isaiah wrote it this way, he says, it was the will of the Lord to crush Him. Speaking of Jesus, He has put Him to grief. The Messiah did not come to conquer Rome. He came to conquer sin, to conquer death.
He came to take our guilt in the place of His suffering. He accomplished our redemption through His pain. He granted us His righteousness, our covering. How can we be right before a holy God? How can He see us as righteous?
Because we're wrapped in the robes of Christ's righteousness. And by His resurrection, by His being raised from the dead, we have what? Our hope, our sure hope. From the beginning, from the very words of Moses, God designed our salvation by the work of the one and only Messiah, the only Christ, the only Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, we're reminded even by the words of our Savior that there is one man, the man Christ Jesus, fully God and fully man, through whom You have accomplished redemption for Your people.
You have granted them eternal life. Father, for those who are here this morning who love You, who love Your Word, I pray that You would keep us steadfastly fixed on Your Word, viewing it through the work of the cross, that we might never think too highly of ourselves, that we might always think more highly daily of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lord, for those who don't know You, for whom this message this morning may seem as foreign as it did to those Pharisees long ago, Father, would You grant them the grief of a repentant heart and understanding of their guiltiness before You.
Father, they might know the joy of forgiveness, that they might for the first time see Jesus Christ for who He is, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the One who saves. Would You grant each one here this morning hearts that love You, that love Your Son, we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.