Dead Men Walking (Pt 1)

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Dead Men Walking (Pt 2)

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I invite you to take out your copy of God's Word and turn with me to John chapter 3 and hold your place at verse 17.
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John chapter 3 verse 17. What do you think of when you hear the phrase dead man walking?
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Dead man walking. That particular phrase is one that has long been used in the prison systems to indicate a man who is on death row, particularly his last walk from his cell to face whatever instrument of death is going to be used by the state to bring about the end of his physical life.
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There was a movie in 1995 that was entitled Dead Man Walking. It was about death row.
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It was about a nun who went and visited a man who was on death row and the whole idea of the movie was there was coming a day when he would take his last walk.
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There was coming a day when he was going to be making his way down that corridor.
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Another film called the Green Mile was about a man who had to take that walk and the corridor was painted green and so they called it the
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Green Mile. That last walk going from the cell to the death chamber.
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When we call, when we say dead man walking, a dead man walking, we're saying this person is condemned.
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He's a corpse in waiting. He has no hope.
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His fate is sealed. That's the idea.
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Well today, as we open God's word together, we are going to read a portion of scripture which tells us that Christ came into the world with a mission.
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And his mission was to give salvation to condemned men.
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Again, to take those who were condemned and give them pardon.
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And not just pardon, but righteousness. To take away their judgment and give them life.
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So let's stand together and read about our Savior who came with this wonderful plan of salvation, this rescue mission as it were.
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Now we did three weeks in John 3 .16, so I'm not going to exegete it again today, but we're going to read it.
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I said we're going to start in verse 17, but we're actually going to start in verse 16 so that we can get the context of verses 17 to 21.
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John 3 .16 says, And this is the judgment.
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Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
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We come, Father, asking this moment that you be with us in our time of studying the word.
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And I pray, Lord, first for myself, Father, that you would keep me from error as I am a fallible man.
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And I know that I can preach what is wrong from your word, so I pray that you would protect me from that for the sake of my conscience, for the sake of your great name.
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But also for the sake of your people, I pray, God, that you would keep me from error so that they would not have to endure false teaching, and even worse, to be moved to believe that which is not true.
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So Father, I pray for sanctification over my own heart and over this message.
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Pray that it would be preached clearly. Pray that I would not seek to intermingle my own ideas, my own opinions, but that I would seek to preach your word.
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And I pray, oh God, for those who are in this room who have already gone from death to life, who have already been regenerated by the power of the
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Holy Spirit, that today they would be reminded of who they are in Christ.
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For if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
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But Lord, for anyone who is not in Christ, whether he be young or old, whether he be member or visitor, whether they be man or woman,
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Lord, if they are not in Christ today, at this moment, that they would hear the call of the gospel, that they would turn from their sin and that there would be rejoicing in heaven at the repentance of a sinner.
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And that they would place their faith in Jesus Christ for salvation.
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We pray it all in His name. Amen. John chapter 3, verses 1 to 21 is a unit in the text and can be preached all as one unit, but I have broken it up into several parts because there was so much need be said.
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And, even though we did break it into parts, we've tried not to forget where we are in the context of John.
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John's gospel is unlike the other gospels in that Matthew, Mark, and Luke set out to give a narrative of Jesus' life, each one with his own focus, no doubt, but each one gives a very similar narrative.
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This is why we called Matthew, Mark, and Luke the synoptic gospel. Synoptic means to view from the same direction, to view the same way.
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But John is the outlier. John does not give us a strictly chronological encounter with Jesus Christ, but he gives us a theological encounter with Jesus Christ.
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And every narrative that we see in John is then followed by either a message by Jesus or a commentary by John himself telling us why this particular event mattered the way that it did, and it tells us what we should be getting out of this text.
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So in John chapter 3, we have Nicodemus come to Jesus at night. We have that interaction which we spent many weeks with, so I won't rehearse everything that we learned, but you'll remember that when
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Nicodemus came to Jesus and Jesus said, you must be born again, and he explained to him, I'm not talking about physical birth,
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I'm talking about spiritual birth. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit. And then
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Jesus uses that example of the serpent in the wilderness being lifted up.
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And he says, as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so too must the Son of man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes on him will have eternal life.
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That's the point in John 3 where it is possible that we are now moving from Jesus speaking to a commentary on what
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Jesus said. Now, scholars disagree on this. If you have a red letter Bible, I mentioned this a few weeks ago, the red letters go all the way to verse 21.
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But there is some debate as to whether or not verse 16 comes from the words of Christ or whether verses 16 to 21 are a commentary on verses 14 and 15 inspired, no doubt, from the
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Holy Spirit, no doubt, no less God's word, whether Jesus said it or not, but still, whether Jesus said verses 16 to 21 or whether it is a commentary by the gospel writer under the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit, it is no doubt that verse 16 through verse 21 is meant to explain verses 14 and 15 so that we don't mistake what
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Jesus is saying when he says, as the serpent was lifted up, so too must the Son of man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.
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In fact, the phrase, whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but will have eternal life, that phrase is what is being expounded.
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So in chapter 3, verse 16, we have these words, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
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Son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. We have the declaration of God's love.
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God loved the world. We have the demonstration of God's love. He sent his only Son. And then we have the delineation of God's word, in order that all who believe on him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
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And then this moves to verse 17, which I am convinced, having spent now many months with this text, that verses 17 to 21 are actually an expansion on verse 16.
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So, as much as 16 is a commentary on 14 and 15, 17 to 21 is an expansion on what he has said in 16.
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So that we will not mistake or misunderstand the words that are in the text.
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The text gives us commentary of itself. It tells us what it means by what it's saying.
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And so I want to give you my outline for today. I have wrestled in my mind since about 5 o 'clock yesterday.
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That's not when I started writing, just so you know. I start on Monday. But about 5 o 'clock yesterday, I sat down.
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I normally do this on Saturday. I sit down with my text. And I've been wrestling. Am I going to do one? Am I going to do two? Because it's a lot of text.
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17 to 21 is a lot to get through. But it's one idea. So we're going to see how the Lord leads. But this is the outline for 17 to 21.
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In verse 17, we have the difference in the purpose of Christ's two advents.
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And then in verses 18 to 21, we have the position, condition, and disposition of man, first apart from Christ and then in Christ.
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And so that is the outline of these verses. And so it is my desire now to just begin.
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And we'll go as far as the Lord will allow us to go in the time that we have. And when it is so, time will pray and be finished.
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So let's look first at verse 17 as it's the difference in the purpose of Christ's two advents.
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So look with me again. It 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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Now, I call this, as I said before, the difference between Christ's two advents.
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The difference between Christ's two advents. Now what does the word advent mean?
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Advent of course is a season that's celebrated in the liturgical calendar. If you look at the high church liturgical calendar from church history, you'll notice there are two preparatory times in the seasons.
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There's the preparatory time up until Easter, and that's called
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Lent. And then there is the preparatory time up until Christmas, or what we call the
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Incarnation, and that is called Advent. Advent means arrival or coming.
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That's what the word advent means. And so, in the Old Testament, we are promised a coming
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Savior. We can go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15, and we are given the first glimpse of the promise of a
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Savior. You'll remember this. When the judgment was being leveled on the serpent, what did
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God say? He said that there would come one who was going to crush his head.
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And who was he going to be? He was going to be the seed of the woman. He said there is a seed of the woman who is going to have his heel struck by the serpent, but the head of the serpent would be crushed by that seed.
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And the idea of seed is actually a theme that runs throughout the whole
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Old Testament narrative. And what we are told by the Apostle Paul, as he looks back at that, and we say,
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Paul says in Galatians, when he's talking about Abraham's seed, he says, notice he doesn't say seeds, plural, but he says seed, because the one that matters, the one that all the seeds were pointing to, the one that the promises were looking to, was the coming of Jesus Christ.
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Jesus Christ is the seed of Abraham. This is why you and I can call ourselves sons and daughters of Abraham.
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You remember when you were a kid, I talked about that song last week. Father Abraham had many sons.
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I am one of them, and so are you. Why are you a son of Abraham?
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Most of you do not have Jewish ancestry. Most of us are not descended from Shem.
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By the way, that's where the term Semite comes from. If you ever heard the term anti -Semitism, refers to the descendants of Shem, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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The seed is Jesus, and we are united with him, and therefore we become, through adoption, the sons of God, but we also become part of the commonwealth of Israel.
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We become sons and daughters of Abraham, according to Romans 4, Galatians 3.
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It is those who are of faith who are the children of Abraham, because of Jesus Christ.
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So if anyone were to tell you, and there are those who would say, that Jesus isn't mentioned in the
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Old Testament, Jesus is all over the Old Testament. He is promised in his coming,
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Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name
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Emmanuel. Wait a minute, his name is Jesus. No, Emmanuel is not a name as a given name.
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Emmanuel is a title. It means God with us, because Jesus Christ is
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God with us. So we have this promise of Jesus' coming.
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But here's the thing that often we don't think about,
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Jesus' coming is promised in two ways.
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He will come as a suffering servant, and he will come as a conquering king.
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And these two advents will be separated by what we today might call the church age, the millennium.
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Amen. That's a whole other discussion. We're in the church age now.
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We're in the age of the new covenant now. Christ came into the world the first time as a suffering servant on a rescue mission.
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His own words, I have come to seek and to save that which was lost.
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That was the purpose of Jesus Christ's first mission. His first mission was a rescue mission.
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In fact, you don't have to turn there if you don't want to. And anytime I want to say this,
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I know some of you like to take notes and that helps you concentrate, and that's great. But anytime, if you just want my notes, just send me a message.
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I'll just email them to you. That way you don't have to sit here and write the whole time. You can listen better if that's easier for you.
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But I want you to consider just a few passages about what
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Jesus came to do in his first advent, his first coming.
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We already read Luke 19 .10, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. That's Luke 19 .10.
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John 10, verse 10 says, the thief comes to steal and kill and to destroy.
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But I came, for what reason? That they may have life and have it abundantly.
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Now, I know the health and wealth mouthpieces on television have really abused that idea of the abundant life.
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And what that means is you're supposed to have the best parking space at work and the best car in the parking lot and the best biggest bank account and all those things.
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And hey, if that's the way God's blessed you, in that sense, you know, if you've got a nice bank account, a nice parking lot, spot, whatever, praise the
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Lord. But the abundant life is the life lived in Christ.
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He came that you may have life and that you may actually know what life is. And what we're going to see as we go through verses 17 to 21 of John 3, we're going to see that those who are apart from Christ do not have life.
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They're condemned. They're dead where they stand. Paul says, when we come to Christ, we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but he made us alive together with him.
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And so we see here in this text, it says the thief came to steal and kill and destroy, but I came so that they may have life.
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That's why Christ came. Christ came to give life to the dead. Christ came to breathe, to breathe life into dry bones.
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We talked about that a few weeks ago, the valley of dry bones that were dead. And God through Christ and by the
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Spirit of God brings life. Hebrews 9, 26 says this,
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He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
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That was why he came. He came at the end of the ages to put away sin. And you might say, wait a minute, it wasn't the end of the ages.
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It was 2 ,000 years ago. In God's economy, the end of the ages began when
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Christ came the first time. We are in the, people say, are we in the end times? We've been in the end times since Christ came.
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Because now what's the next event on Christ's prophetic calendar? The Son's return.
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Don't let me disappoint you if you're a pre -tribulation rapture person. It's okay. We'll talk you out of it.
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I kind of got eschatologically minded this morning. Be careful, I get booed off the chancel here.
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No, the idea of what's the next step in God's prophetic calendar is His second coming,
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His second advent. And what are we supposed to be doing in the meantime according to scripture?
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We're supposed to keep the oil in our lamps ready. Right? We're supposed to be prepared. We're supposed to live every day as if Christ could return.
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And so we are called to live since the first advent. We are called to live in light of the second advent.
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His first mission was a rescue mission, but His second mission is not a rescue mission. Understand this.
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There is a big juxtaposition between Christ's first coming and Christ's second coming.
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Christ came the first time to save. First Timothy chapter 1, verse 15 says the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
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That's what Paul says. That's what He came to do. He came to save sinners. Then He says of whom I am the chief or the foremost.
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That's why He came the first time. But the second time He will come in judgment. The second time
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He will come as the judge. This is why it says in the text,
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For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world. And when we get to verse 18 we're going to talk about the fact that the world's already condemned.
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But for just now, Christ did not come into the world the first time to judge the world. Christ came into the world the first time to save the world.
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But He will come again. And when He comes again, He will come again as judge.
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He came as rescuer. He will then come as the
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King who judges. For God did not send
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His Son into the world to condemn the world. Now I want to say something else about that.
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If you're reading from a New American Standard Bible, which I know some of you are, or other translations, the word here is judge.
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It'll say God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world. And that word comes up again in verse 18.
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Whoever believes in Him is not judged. And that's fine. The ESV says condemned. The word judge, condemned.
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They both come from the same Greek. The word krema in Greek for judgment. Krema, it's a root use of the word.
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But the idea here is negative. In the same way that Matthew chapter 7 says judge not lest ye be judged.
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That means don't condemn. And so when it says for God did not send
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His Son into the world to judge the world, the word condemn is fine here, whichever word you want to use, whichever word your translation is using.
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But it's also being juxtapositioned against this. It's being juxtapositioned against the word saved. Notice what it says.
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It says 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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So the two parallel ideas are condemning and saving. Christ came to save the world.
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The ESV says in order that the world might be saved through Him.
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The New English translation says should be saved through Him. The New International Version says to save the world through Him.
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And the reason why I'm addressing those different translations and the way that they're translated is because when you see in the
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ESV the world might be saved through Him, it adds the idea of potentiality.
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Well, it might be saved through Him. Like if my children say this afternoon are we going to get ice cream?
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I say we might. That kind of adds the idea of might, might not. But the word might is not in the original language.
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It's added by the translators. It's a translational choice. And I think that the reason, at least a potential reason, to add in the word might or should is to alleviate the concept of universalism and to move us away from any idea that Christ's coming is going to save everyone.
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Because the original language as it says, it actually is literally translated but in order to save the world.
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That's what it says. In order that the world is saved through Him.
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That's the literal translation. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but in order to save the world.
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That's the simplest way to translate it. But we have an issue with that because we step back and we say wait a minute.
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Is the whole world saved? Well, the word world as you remember from if you've been here for the last few weeks.
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The word world has different ways that it can be understood. Oftentimes we hear the word world and we think it's talking about every single person who's ever lived, ever died.
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That's the idea of the world. It's universal. And as I said, I do think there is a certain universal nature to the word world when it says
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God loved the world because I do believe God has a love that goes and extends to all men. But we have to be careful and not allow that to cause us to think that what that means is that all men will be saved.
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God's omnibenevolence does not cancel out God's righteousness. Omnibenevolence means
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God is all loving. But the fact that God is all loving does not mean that God is not also just.
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There are those who hold a universal position that all will be saved in the end.
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And those who hold that position will often look at verses like John 3, 17 and they'll say,
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For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him all the world will be saved. And they say,
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See, all the world will be saved. And that has led, unfortunately, to some very dangerous doctrines.
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And I would say the most dangerous doctrine being that evangelism is unnecessary because everyone's going to be saved in the end.
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That the gospel is ultimately unnecessary because everyone is going to be saved in the end.
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Now, there is a sense, as I said, there is a sense in which Christ does bring salvation to the whole world because his purpose is to redeem the cosmos.
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His purpose is to redeem the creation that has been destroyed by sin. And remember, that's what the word world is, the word cosmos.
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It means the created order. And we actually read, I don't know if you remember this, and it's been several weeks,
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I don't want to ask Judah to try to find it. But no, you don't have to. But there was one of our catechism questions.
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And we're on break from catechism right now. If you notice, we didn't read the catechism earlier because we're on break this month. Our catechism class is on break, so we didn't read during worship.
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But in one of the questions, it says, What else does Christ redeem? Every part of fallen creation.
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That's a true statement. Christ came to save sinners, but he also came to reverse the curse.
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We sing this when we sing Christmastime. We sing joy to the world. No more let sin or sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.
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He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.
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Right? That's the idea. The curse of sin did not just affect man. Now, has it affected man?
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Yes, it brought death, disease, destruction. Everything Mike prayed about earlier. Everything that caused tears this week.
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Whether it was death, whether it was disease, people losing their children in a flood, swept away in a moment, is unthinkable.
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And it is part of the sin -cursed world that we live in that we have to experience such as that.
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You realize in the new heaven and the new earth, there won't be a flood. Mike talked about it in Sunday school this morning.
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We are told in the new heaven and the new earth, there will be no sea.
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And all the surfers get sad because they love the sea.
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But the sea in Revelation is referring to the chaos and disorder of this world.
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That which was brought about by sin will be done away with.
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Why? Because Christ who came, came not only to redeem people, but He came to redeem creation.
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Far as the curse is found, His redemption goes.
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Christ came into the world not to condemn the world, but that through Him the world would be saved.
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What a blessing to consider. But also, I want to mention something else regarding the word world here.
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Two thoughts actually. One, is anyone in this world who is going to be saved, is going to be saved through Jesus Christ?
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So when it says that He came to save the world, understand this. This is very clear.
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As many people who have claimed to be saviors in this world, as many people who have claimed to be the ones who you can look to for your salvation, there is no other
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Savior in this world than the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which you must be saved than the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And at the name of Jesus Christ, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is
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Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is key. There is no other Savior. And the word world reminds us that the gospel extends beyond Israel as a physical ethnic people.
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Who came to see Jesus that night? It was Nicodemus. What was one of the things that the people that Nicodemus represented, what was one of the things that was a mistake among them?
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It was a mistake that God's plan included only them.
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God's plan from the time of Abraham included not only the
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Jews, but it included Jews and Gentiles. Because we are told when
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God gave His promise to Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who curse you, and in you, that means in your seed, in Jesus, in you all the nations of the world will be blessed.
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Understand this, this is so key to understanding just basic doctrine of salvation.
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When Abraham was given his promise by God, Abraham was given the gospel.
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That's not my words and that's not my opinion. That's what Galatians says.
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It says God preached the gospel to Abraham when
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He said through you all the nations will be blessed. How was someone saved under the old covenant?
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They believed the gospel. They believed the gospel. You can go back to Genesis 3 .15,
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that passage we talked about earlier with the snake and the serpent being crushed to the head. You know what we call that?
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We call that the proto -evangelium, which means the first gospel. That's the first time the promise of a
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Savior is mentioned. Genesis 3 .15, we're promised a Savior. In Genesis 12 .3,
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we are promised a Savior who would bless the world and He would come through the seed of Abraham.
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This is the gospel. And so now, when we look out at the world, you know what we see?
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We see a vast tapestry of nations. And all of the nations have people within them who name the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And those people are the beneficiaries of that promise.
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When God said to Abraham, all the nations will be blessed through your seed, He was talking about today.
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You know, there are people today all around the world doing the same thing we're doing.
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Now they may be wearing different clothes than us and they may have a different shape and size building than us and they may sing different songs than us and their skin may be a different color than ours.
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But God has saved them the same way He saved us and He has united us in Christ and broke down the barrier between all of us by making us one new man in Him.
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That's the beauty of the gospel. That's what the gospel does. So when it says that the world might be saved through Him or in order to save the world, it does have an expanded view beyond Israel.
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And if this is Jesus speaking to Nicodemus, as I said earlier, I'm not certain that that's the case, but if Jesus is speaking this to Nicodemus, this probably would have been the time
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His ears perked up. Israel expected a
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Savior for them, but they did not expect a
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Savior for everyone else. They expected their Savior would come and save them and conquer everyone else.
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But no, Jesus came to save men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
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I love that passage in Revelation. Mike preached on it or taught on it a few weeks ago in Sunday school class.
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Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be in there when he preached on it. But it says this in verse 9 of chapter 7,
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And I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number. People often think,
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Oh, I can't believe in election. That means God's only going to save a few. No, no, no. No one could number.
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Behold, I looked, and there was a multitude no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the
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Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our
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God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Why did
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Jesus come the first time? He came to save.
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That's why He came the first time. But for a moment,
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I want to mention this. Even though He came to save the first time, there was still judgment in His first coming.
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Now, I don't want to confuse you because I've pretty much made my sermon on the case that Jesus came to save and He's coming back to judge.
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Which is true, and I'll stand on that as a basic juxtaposition.
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He came the first time to rescue, the second time to judge. But, that is not to say that in His first coming there was no judgment.
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Because in His first coming there was judgment. And the judgment that came in His first coming was primarily a judgment on unbelieving
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Israel who had the oracles of God and who had in their hypocrisy established their own traditions as the commandments of God.
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In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus over and over and over again offers up a word of condemnation.
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I love it when I hear people say Oh, I love Jesus because He never condemned anybody.
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I don't know what Bible you're reading. You know what it is about the
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Bible, folks. And everybody does this. So before you go, yeah, that's them.
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No, it's us too. Everybody does this. We tend to focus on the passages we like or the passages we understand really well.
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And the parts we don't like we kind of push to the side. That's bad about everybody. But it's real bad when
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I hear someone say Jesus never condemned anyone. Because what
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Jesus did in Matthew chapter 23 is He said, Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites.
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And He gives a list of the reasons why they are hypocritical.
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Do you know what the word hypocritical means? Do you know what it means to be a hypocrite? The word hypocrite, if you break it down into its constituent parts, it actually has the same word, the root word.
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Remember I said earlier that the root word for condemnation here, the root word for judgment is the word cresis or crema that word.
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It's actually the same root word for hypocrisy. Hypocrisis.
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Here's how it works. Hypocrisis is a person who does what they're doing because they're being watched.
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Because they're under the judgment of others. It's the same word that was used for an actor.
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The actor did what he did on stage. Why? Because he was being watched.
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He was being judged. He was being evaluated. So when
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Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, He says, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You who do what you do as a show unto men.
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That's hypocrisy. That's hypocrisy. Those who are concerned with being seen and heard but behind closed doors are vicious and evil.
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What did He call them? He called them whitewashed tombs. He said you are like tombs that have been cleaned on the outside but inside full of dead men's bones.
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Jesus came to save the lost. But what did He say to the
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Pharisees? Woe unto you. Now does that mean a
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Pharisee couldn't be saved? No because Nicodemus gets saved. There's one right here who later in the story we're going to see him defending
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Jesus in chapter 7 and then we're going to see him actually go with Joseph of Arimathea and help bury the body of Jesus in chapter 19.
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So could a hypocrite be saved? Praise the Lord, I hope so because that would mean if hypocrites can't be saved there's a lot of Baptists and everybody else who would have a hard time because we've all at times suffered from hypocrisy.
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But Jesus comes and He says woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
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Woe unto you. Why? Because you do what you do as a pretense.
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You do what you do as a show. You do what you do as a show unto men.
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This is why in Matthew chapter 6 when Jesus is in the Sermon on the Mount He says when you pray don't pray out in public in a big show but go into your closet and when you fast don't make yourself look like I'm so miserable that I'm fasting.
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He says but put oil on your head and actually look normal so that God will see you're fasting. So that what you do won't just be for a show.
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Jesus did come and bring judgment. In fact I want to show you one verse that's interesting because in chapter 3 it says
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God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world. That's true and we don't deny that God did not send
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His Son because it says it. But in John chapter 9 and if you want to look you can. Just turn with me over to John chapter 9.
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Jesus had just healed a blind man. Go to verse 35. Go to verse 35. It says
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Jesus heard that they had cast him out. This is the blind man got cast out by the religious leaders and having found him
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He said do you believe in the Son of Man? Do you believe in the Son of Man? He answered and who is
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He sir that I may believe in Him? Jesus said to him you have seen Him. By the way interesting because He was blind before He saw
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Him. Now He's seen Him. You've seen Him and it is He who is speaking to you.
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He said Lord I believe and He worshipped Him. By the way I don't want to preach this text but I can stop right here and say
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Jesus received worship for people who said Jesus was not God. Right here it says He worshipped
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Him and Jesus didn't tell Him not to do that because Jesus is divine. Notice verse 39.
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Jesus said to that man for judgment I came into this world that those who do not see
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Me may see and those who see may become blind. So I'm not saying
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John 9 and John 3 contradict each other because they don't. The Bible has no contradictions but in John 3 it says
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God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but there was natural condemnation that came with Him because when
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He came those who saw Him and rejected Him were under the condemnation for that rejection.
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And that's why Jesus can say for judgment I came into the world because I'm going to draw a line. In Me there will be a line and the line will be you will either trust in Me or you will reject
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Me. Next week we're going to see more about that when we get to verses 18 to 21 because I ain't going to get to it today apparently.
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But in verses 18 to 21 He's going to say they were condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only begotten
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Son of God. But notice again we're here in John 9. I do want to show you this though. He says some of the
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Pharisees near Him heard these things and they said are we blind also? Jesus said to them if you were blind you would have no guilt but now that you say we see your guilt remains.
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That was their problem. They were the ones saying we know, we see, we understand and Jesus said you don't understand anything.
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You don't understand anything because God in the flesh has come and stood before you and you have rejected
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Him and called Him a devil. God in the flesh has stood before you and instead of hearing
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His words and doing what He has said you have sought to kill Him. God did not send
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His Son into the world to condemn the world but condemnation came with His Son because with His Son came a line in the sand.
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With Christ comes a line in the sand and beloved that line in the sand is the one thing that you can't get wrong.
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I joked about eschatology earlier and here recently I've had a lot of fun joking with my different friends with different end times positions because I've got friends that are dispensational, pre -millennial,
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I've got friends that are post -millennial and I've got everybody in between. You can be wrong about that and that's not gonna condemn you.
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You can be wrong about baptism as important as it is and we do believe it is.
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We are Baptists and we believe in the importance of baptism but you can be wrong about baptism and it not condemn you but if you are wrong about Jesus Christ, the one who came into the world to save that has eternal consequences.
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I'm gonna mention Matt David because you mentioned him earlier. Please pray for Matt. Mike and I both have talked to him and he is dealing with some, but I know he's watching so I figured he might be listening right now.
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I want to tell you a story about Matt and he doesn't mind me telling it because I've asked him before.
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When Matt first called me he'd never been a member of a church anywhere and he left a message on our church phone and he just said
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I got saved recently, I've never been a member of a church, I want to come visit your church and I was excited so I called him and I said, hey man, tell me what happened.
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He got saved from a preacher on TikTok and before you turn your nose up if you ever wonder why you know, we do the things we do here on social media and actually try to reach out, it's because that's where the town square is right now and I want people to hear about Jesus I don't care if they hear about it through TikTok or not as long as Christ is proclaimed that's what matters so Matt and I get on the phone and he said he said
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I believe in Jesus and he said and I do, I feel like I've trusted him for my salvation
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I feel like I'm saved need to be baptized but he said but I just don't know about this
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Trinity thing and I said
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I'm glad that you're being honest with me but I want you to know something that is not optional
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God in three persons is how the Bible has defined God for us and we don't get to redefine that because that is speaking to the nature and character of our
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God that's not optional when we talk about what are the essentials of the faith
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Jesus is essential and a right understanding of Jesus is essential because there's a lot of people out there that claim the name of Jesus that have a false
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Jesus Muslims believe Jesus is a prophet, they believe Jesus is the
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Messiah to the Jews, they even believe Jesus is sinless they believe
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Jesus was born of a virgin all of those things are good but the
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Koran says cursed is anyone who says God has a son well it says
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Allah, cursed is anyone who says Allah has a son and you know what that means they're not worshipping
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Jesus Christ in fact they reject worshipping Jesus Christ, Jehovah Witnesses come to your door they want to talk to you about Jesus as a created being, that is not what the
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Bible teaches about Jesus, the Bible teaches Jesus is the creator not the created one the
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Mormons want to come to your door and talk to you about how Elohim was a man on another planet that surrounded a star called
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Kolob and through his fidelity to Mormon teachings was able to himself become a
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God and have spiritual offspring and Jesus is one of his spiritual offspring and there's a Greek word for all of that and it's baloney my friends
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God sent his son into the world to save and he drew a line in the sand and he says unless you believe that I am you will die in your sins, so I ask you today do you trust in the
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Lord Jesus Christ as for who he truly is or are you a dead man walking
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Christ did not come into the world to condemn, we were already condemned, but in his coming our condemnation is added to when we hear who he is and we reject it, do you know the
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Savior if you do rejoice in a moment we're going to celebrate the table, we're going to remember what he did to save, we're going to take the bread and we're going to eat it in remembrance of his body, we're going to take the cup and eat it in remembrance of his blood and in doing so we're going to show forth his return, his second advent, that's what
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Jesus said, he said every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you show forth my death until I come again, that's what we're going to do but if you're outside of Christ if you are today not a believer
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I ask you what is holding you back what are you trusting in other than the
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Lord Jesus Christ, what could possibly provide you hope that's not him, my prayer is that God would open your heart to believe, let us pray,
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Father I thank you for your word, I thank you that you sent your son into the world not to condemn the world but that through him the world might be saved,
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I thank you Lord that those who trust in him will be saved but Lord I am fearful, as always
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I'm fearful for those who refuse to trust in him your motivation in sending your son was to be a savior and we were so unworthy of it while we were yet sinners