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Take out your Bibles with me and turn to the 7th chapter of the Gospel of John.
And we are going to be today looking at verses 14 to 31.
The title of today's message is a rhetorical question.
Who will ever know or do more? And the whole title didn't fit.
Who will ever do more than Jesus? Who will ever know more than Jesus? Who will ever do more than Jesus did?
That's the idea behind the title. An education is a good thing.
It's a great thing. It's something that we shouldn't neglect. But at the same time, it is also true that in Jesus' day, as well as in our own, it is often those with great educations who seek to be challengers to the
Word of God. If you think of Jesus' day, who is it that he was always at odds with, it seems?
The teachers, the lawyers, the scribes, those who were well educated in the law, the religiously trained were often his most active opponents.
And in our day, it is still true. Challenges to Christ often come from the academy, from those in positions of high esteem, from those who have a lot of letters behind their names.
When you see their names, there'll be comma, you know, doctorate or some other set of letters behind to let you know that this person has a range of degrees.
Over the past few weeks, I've seen a man rise to a pretty high level of notoriety. He's a man who is running for Senate out in Texas, and he's making a lot of ground.
He's very liberal as far as his positions go, but a lot of people like to hear what he's saying because he is using biblical language.
He was trained in a seminary from the Presbyterian Church of the USA, which is the liberal
Presbyterian. There's the PCA and the OPC, which are the more conservative Presbyterians, but this man was trained in the liberal side.
So he's using Mary's saying okay to Gabriel as a reason for abortion or quoting from the
Gospel of Thomas to say that Jesus believed in transgenderism, all kinds of things that are just gross and an affront to the
Lord and affront to Jesus Christ. But he sounds good because of his education. And I fear is leading many people into a very dangerous direction.
And I bring that up because over the next few weeks as we continue to examine
John 7 and then move into John 8, we're going to see that Jesus continues to interact with the educational elite, with those who've been to school.
In fact, one of the things we're going to see today is they're going to say, where did you get your learning? You didn't go to school.
They're going to challenge Jesus. They're going to say, you don't have any letters behind your name. You don't have a doctorate. You don't have an education.
Where does your knowledge come from? And in the end,
Jesus will assure them and remind us that he came not to reveal a substantial earthly education, but he came to reveal the
Father's knowledge to us. And that's what Jesus did. So with that in our minds, let us stand together and we're going to read beginning at verse 14.
And we'll read down to verse 31. John 7 and 14 says,
About the middle of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying,
How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?
So Jesus answered them, My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.
If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
Has not Moses given you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill me?
The crowd answered, You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you? Jesus answered them,
I did one work, and you all marveled at it. Moses gave you circumcision.
Not that it was from Moses, but from the fathers. And you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the
Sabbath a man receives circumcision so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the
Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.
Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said, Is not this the man whom they seek to kill? And here he is speaking openly, and they say nothing to him?
Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ? But we know that this man comes from.
We know where this man comes from. And when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.
So Jesus proclaimed as he taught in the temple, You know me, and you know where I come from, but I have not come of my own accord.
He who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.
So they were seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.
Yet many of the people believed in him. They said, When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?
Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for your truth.
And I pray, oh Father, that you would, even in this moment, give us eyes to see and ears to hear what your word has to say to us.
I pray, Lord, for forgiveness of my sin, and preparation for the preaching of your word, that you would keep me from error, that you would open the hearts of the people who will listen to this, to your truth, that your
Holy Spirit would ultimately be the teacher, that I would decrease, that Christ would increase, as John prayed. And Lord, I pray, that those under the sound of my voice who know your word, who believe your word, who trust in you, would be edified.
And for those who have not yet believed your word, that today would be the day of salvation.
We pray it all in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. John chapter 7 begins with Jesus in Galilee with his family, and his brothers are encouraging him, goading him, maybe a better term, to go to the
Feast of Tabernacles to make himself known. They challenge him by saying that no one who wants to make himself known does so where there's no crowd.
You need to go where the crowds are. You need to go where things are happening. And as we noted last week,
Galilee was the more rural northern part of the area, and Judea was the southern and more cosmopolitan part.
And this was the call of his brothers, go with us, go to the feast, make yourself known.
The Feast of Tabernacles was an important celebration among the Jewish people. It was prescribed for them in the book of Leviticus that one time during the year they would come together, they would live together in mobile dwelling places they called booths or tents, and they would do so in remembrance of their time spent in the wilderness where they lived in tents and in tabernacles as they were traveling along from Egypt to the promised land.
So this was a big celebration. And some of the things that happened was, and we're going to talk about this a little bit more in the weeks to come, there was a water pouring ceremony which remembered the time of the water coming from the rock during the time of Moses.
Remember when the rock gave forth the water for them to drink? And there was a lighting ceremony which was supposed to represent the
Shekinah glory of God which led them by night and by day during the time of the wilderness wanderings.
There were all of these ceremonies and celebrations, and there was a time of waving palms similar to what
Jesus did when he came in on the donkey on Palm Sunday. There was this long celebration, a joyous time of celebration for the people of God here at the
Feast of Booths. And the brother said, Go there, make yourself known. And Jesus says,
No, I'm not yet going there. I'm not going in the way you want me to go. I'm not going down there to be known.
I'm not going to do that. So the brothers went, and it doesn't say this but we know from other passages that normally they would go through a caravan.
Many people from Galilee would gather together and they would go caravan down, similar to what we see when Jesus is 12 years old, he's in the temple, left in the temple.
Why was he left? Because his parents were in this big caravan. The father thought the mother had him. The mother thought the father had him.
And they were separated by this large group of people who were traveling to Galilee.
So Jesus doesn't go down with the group, but he goes down privately.
He goes down secretly. And when he goes down, the people are asking the question,
Where's Jesus? When's he going to get here? And there was discussion going on about what people thought of him.
Some people thought that he was a good man, according to this text. But other people thought he was leading people astray.
So the crowds were divided over Jesus. But it also says in verse 13, that they would not talk openly about him out of fear.
They were afraid. Why were they afraid? Because they knew the Jewish leaders had taken great issue with Jesus and many of them wanted to see
Jesus killed. And if you thought Jesus was a good man and you knew the leadership hated him, well, you wouldn't want to be associated with him.
You wouldn't want people to know you thought he was a good man if the leaders are wanting to have him killed.
That would be sort of a sin by association. You don't want to be one of his followers in that situation.
So this leads us to verse 14. In verse 14, we see
Christ enter up and begin teaching. And then comes the questioning of his credentials.
So let's begin back there at verse 14 and we'll read. It says, About the middle of the feast,
Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled and said,
Literally, the Greek here, the word learning there is the word gramma.
It's where we get our word grammar. And this is why in certain translations, maybe the translation that you're holding, it will say, how does this man know letters?
Is that what the King James, something to that effect, referring to knowing how to read, knowing his letters, knowing how, where did he get his education?
That's the idea behind gramma, behind his understanding. Where did this man get his knowledge?
And what we need to understand is the very next phrase, they make this point.
Where did he get his learning when he has never studied? You see, in the culture of the day, when a rabbi or when a person wanted to receive a religious education, they would receive their religious education from the rabbis.
They would go and they would sit at their feet and they would become their disciples and they would learn and they would then, when they became rabbis, they would then quote their rabbis.
They would carry on the teachings of their teachers. In fact, this was part of the tradition of learning was it wasn't about new ideas, but it was about carrying on the ideas, the traditions and the beliefs that you had been taught.
And so one of the questions about Jesus' ministry was, he's not quoting anyone.
He's not basing his teaching on anyone else's authority. He's not quoting Gamaliel, who of course was a famous rabbi at the time of the
Apostle Paul. He was the rabbi the Apostle Paul learned from. Remember he says, I was trained by Gamaliel.
And there were others. There was Hillel and there were a few other very famous rabbis who from the time carried great weight and had many disciples.
Jesus didn't have that. And we understand in one sense, kind of we still do that today.
Oftentimes, if you hear a preacher preach, he might say, well Charles Spurgeon said, or he might say, well
John Calvin said. And why do we do that? Well, we're saying on this particular point, here's someone who had great learning, who had great education, who was a great preacher, great pastor.
This is where he agrees with this understanding. We do this when we go to school.
I don't know how many of you remember writing papers when you were in high school or in college and you wrote a fact.
You had to cite your source. You had to say, well here's where, here's where I'm getting this information.
Like if you, so let's say, you're writing about an infectious disease and you say, well this infectious disease, you know, a hundred thousand people in China have this disease.
Well, they would say, how do you know? You didn't do the study. You have to cite the study.
You have to cite the source. Where are you getting your information? That's the question.
Where are you getting this information? And the issue with Jesus is they knew that he had not had formal education, at least as far as anyone knew.
Jesus did not sit at the feet of the rabbis. Now he did at 12 years old go and sit in the temple and have an interaction with the rabbis, but that was not formal rabbinical education.
Jesus, as it were, came with no educational background as far as anyone knew.
And so the question is, well did he go somewhere else and learn this? Did he get this information from somewhere else?
Because he didn't get this from us. The things that he is saying didn't come from us. And I want you to understand something about this argument.
Because really this is an argument against Jesus' qualifications. We see this in other passages in Scripture.
Who is this guy? He doesn't have any education. And they say the same thing about the apostles. Remember in the book of Acts?
When the apostles come in and they're preaching, what do they say? These are untrained and unlearned men.
These are agramata. These men have no letters. That's the word that's used there in the book of Acts.
What this is, and I just want to share a thought with you, this is what we call an ad hominem attack.
In rhetoric and in debate there are things that are called logical fallacies.
And you've probably heard this term logical fallacies, especially if you've ever engaged in any type of polemics or apologetics or any engagement with someone who disagrees with you.
Because you will listen to people's argument and you will often hear that arguments are not good based upon the fact that they're using some type of a logical fallacy.
For instance, the logical fallacy of the law of non -contradiction. You can't say something is and isn't in the same relationship and both of those be true.
So for instance, I can't say, Gary, you are a man and you're not a man. And mean that in the same way and in the same relationship.
If I say you're a man and you're not a man and I mean it in the same way in the same relationship, one of those is false.
Because I am stating a contradiction. Right? That's the law of non -contradiction.
Someone says something that contradicts something he just said, that is a contradiction. And if you're ever in a conversation or an apologetics situation where you're talking to someone, listen for that.
Listen for the self -contradictory statements because that often shows you the sign of a bad argument. That's how rhetoric and conversation and polemics and apologetics when you're engaging with people on an intellectual level, that's how that works.
Well, one of the most egregious forms of logical fallacies is called the ad hominem argument.
Ad hominem literally just means against the man, against the man. And an ad hominem argument is when they're not dealing with what you're saying, they're dealing with you personally.
You've all been in this situation where you're talking to someone about something and they can't overcome what you're saying, so instead of overcoming what you're saying and the argument you're making, they begin to attack you.
And if you've never had this happen, maybe you're just not on social media. And that's praise the
Lord if you're not. That would be great. But if you are and you've ever engaged with anyone where they begin to lose the argument, they'll start attacking you.
They'll start attacking your person. They'll start attacking your character. They may even attack your looks.
I said a few weeks ago, if you've never been called stupid, ugly, and I forget the third word
I used, but it was three things I was called in the period of 24 hours. I said if you've never been called stupid, ugly, and uneducated, then you probably have never been in ministry.
Because people will attack you personally. And that's what this is. This is an attack personally against the
Lord Jesus Christ. They're saying he doesn't have an education. Where did he get this from? He's not been trained. And in a sense, there's a part of that which is saying how do we know what he's saying is right?
How do we know what he's saying is true? We don't have any... There's nothing behind it. There's no source. He's not citing anything.
Where did he get this knowledge? And so Jesus answers them.
Jesus actually answers the question. In verse 15...
I'm sorry, verse 16. In verse 15 it says, The Jews therefore marveled and said, How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?
He has no education. So Jesus answered them, My teaching is not mine.
But his who sent me. See, understand this.
Jesus did not receive this information, this education, this knowledge by going to school.
And by the way, I'm not saying going to school is bad. I'm not saying getting an education is bad. I don't even want anyone to think that that's the point.
That's not the point. What I'm saying though is Jesus didn't get his education that way. I want to ask you this and I want you to think about this.
Did Jesus learn? Yes, yes he did. Yes, but I think sometimes we get a little nervous with that one.
Because we say, Well Jesus is God in the flesh. Yeah, but as God in the flesh, he is literally in the flesh and we use the phrase incarnate.
He became a man and the Bible says he grew in knowledge and wisdom. He grew in knowledge and wisdom and in favor with God and with man.
So this is where we have to begin to parse out what we call the hypostatic union. The hypostatic union refers to Jesus' human nature and divine nature united in the one person of Jesus Christ.
We say Jesus is a divine person. He is a God -man, the only
God -man who has ever been. He has the full nature of divinity in him.
The Bible says in the book of Colossians all the divinity, all the Godhead was found in him bodily.
Right? All the fullness of God is found in him bodily. So no doubt, this is why like Dr. White said yesterday, for those of you who weren't here, when someone wants to call
Mary the mother of God, if what they are saying is that Jesus is truly God in the flesh then there's no problem with that.
If what they're saying is that they're trying to exalt Mary, then that's where we could have a problem. But if we just simply say,
Mary bore the God -man in her womb, yes, praise the Lord. We have no problem with that because Jesus is the
God -man. But the part that we often will not realize is the man part of that is very important as well.
We stress the God but we diminish the man. No, he was fully man.
The Latin fathers, you've heard me say this a thousand times, vera homo, vera deus. Vera homo,
Latin, truly man. Vera deus, Latin, truly God. Everything that is
God was in Christ. But yet everything that was man was also in Christ and therefore he grew in physicality.
He was born as a baby. He was a little baby. Born out of his mother's womb and you know what?
He wasn't faking his diaper changes. You know what
I mean by that? He had to go through the diaper phase and he had to go through the toddler phase and he had to go through all of those phases.
Yet he did so without sin. A soiled diaper is not a sin, parents. Amen. It can smell like it.
But Jesus grew in knowledge but we would also say in touching his divine nature
Jesus also had access to the Father in a unique way and we see this through we would say the work of the
Spirit on Christ in his ministry was able to say things and know things that no man could ever know.
He was able to proclaim things that no man could see and this is why he says my knowledge is not mine.
He's not denying his divinity just to be very clear. Jesus is not denying that he's divine but he's saying in this role as the incarnate representation of God I come to you not in my name but in the name of the one who sent me and I come with the message of the one who sent me and this is where I think we as Trinitarians have to be very careful not to get mixed up here because there are those who are what are known as oneness
Pentecostals oneness modalists they believe that the Father, the Son and the
Spirit are all the same person. That is a heresy condemned in the fourth century.
It is not the case. We do not say Jesus, the Father and the Spirit are all the same person.
We say they are all one God. They share the essence of God but we distinguish between the person of the
Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. We say God eternally exists one in substance, three in subsistence.
This is how we define it in our confessions and our creeds and therefore we can say there is co -equality and there is co -eternality between the three persons but there is still a distinction between the three persons that we can make so that the
Father sends the Son and the Father and the Son together send the Spirit. This is why
Jesus says I must go away because if I don't go away the Spirit cannot come but when I go away I will send to you the
Holy Spirit. Right? So we make these distinctions and so when Jesus says
I come, I'm coming with the message of the one who sent me because Jesus is sent by the Father for God so loved the world.
That He gave His only begotten Son. This is
Jesus' message to them. You want to know where my education came from? Well it's the family business.
I got it from my Father. Now did Jesus read Scripture growing up?
I'm certain He did. And was there times where even in His family and in His home
He learned things from His Father and from His Mother? I'm certain that He did. That's why I said He learned things. I don't doubt that at all but these divine insights that He has, this message that He has for the people of God, this message that He's proclaiming is divine revelation.
Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. You see, He is speaking the
Word of God to them directly from God. He is an agent of revelation to them.
He is an agent of revelation to the people. So, He says,
My teaching is not mine but Him who sent me. And then verse 17, He makes this very important statement.
He says, If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
I want you to really think on this statement. Because what
Jesus is saying here, and this is hugely important, please do not miss it. He's saying,
If your heart is to do God's will, then you will believe in Me.
Now you say, where do you get that? Look at it again. Look at it with me. If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching, what teaching?
His teaching. You'll know whether His teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority. Because if your will is to do
God's will, then you're going to discern who Jesus is. But if your will is opposed to God, which the
Pharisees was, you will not hear Jesus' message and you will not receive it. Intelligence and obedience.
Jesus is actually showing us obedience precedes intellect. If we think we have to know everything before we can obey, that's not what
God says. He says trust and obey. Now, we do have to have a body of knowledge to obey.
There has to be some intellectual knowledge, but it doesn't begin with I have to know everything before I can obey. If I had to know everything about God before I was obedient,
I would never be obedient and I would always have an excuse. But that's not the call of God.
The call of God is trust. Trust me, even when you don't understand. Trust me and obey, even when you don't all get it all.
And Jesus says here, if anyone's will is to do God's will, if you truly desire to be obedient, then the understanding will come.
But if you don't desire to be obedient, you're going to think
Jesus is speaking on his own authority. You're not going to receive the message of Christ. It begins with a disposition of the heart.
And we talked about this for a while, so I won't reiterate it again. The disposition of the heart, God actually opens our heart because what is our natural disposition of the heart?
Natural disposition of the heart is opposition to God. As it says, we are by nature children of wrath.
We are in our natural disposition at enmity with God. But Jesus says if anyone's will is to do
God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
Now Jesus goes in to dive in a little further into his, where his authority resides.
He says, the one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory. But the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, he's speaking of himself, and in him there's no falsehood.
So he says the one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no deceit, no falsehood.
Jesus did not come to seek his own earthly glory. Now, will Jesus receive glory?
Yes. When does Jesus receive glory? Well, He ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of the
Father, and in that sense, currently, is in a position of authority.
But there is coming a day, when the Bible says in Philippians chapter 2, that He will have every knee bow, and every tongue confess.
For what? To the glory of God the Father, right? Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess.
Jesus Christ will descend from heaven, Jesus Christ will lay His enemies to judgment, and Jesus Christ will be glorified.
But when He was on earth, He came not for glory, but He came in humility. This is demonstrated in His birth.
He was born in a humble method, through the virgin's womb, in a feeding trough.
Laid in a feeding trough. He grew up in obscurity, in a rural village. And yet, and yet, when
He comes on the scene, there's this idea, will He be glorified? What do we do with this man?
Jesus says, I have not come to seek my own glory. But whose glory?
I'm seeking the glory of Him who sent me. Seeking the glory of my Father. Jesus will receive glory, but in this point,
He's pointing to the fact, that that was not His purpose in His earthly ministry. In fact, what did
He say? He said, He came to serve. We see that later in John's gospel, when He ties a towel around His waist, and gets down on His knees, and washes the feet of those who followed
Him. One other important phrase here, that I don't think we should miss, is at the end of verse 18.
It says, in Him there is no falsehood. In Him there is no falsehood.
Remember last week, I said that there are some people who believe that Jesus lied, because He said,
I'm not going up to this feast, and then He went up to the feast. And a lot of people will say, well right there, Jesus told a lie.
And I said, that's not Jesus lying, that's Jesus explaining, that He's not going up now, He's not going up yet, but He was going up to the feast.
So, there was a temporary difference between the time they wanted Him to go, and the time He did go. But for anyone who might ask or question, as to whether or not what
I said was accurate, I want you to think of verse 18. He's talking about Himself, when
He says, in Him, notice again, follow the language. He says, the one who speaks on His own authority, that's
Him, or it's not Him, He says, seeks His own glory. But the one who seeks the glory of Him who sent Him is true.
And in Him, there is no falsehood. He's talking about Himself. He says, in Him, there is no falsehood.
So, Jesus tells the truth.
Jesus does not lie. And why this matters so much, is because I honestly think in our own day, we have so many folks who are
Christians, who struggle with the concept of assurance. And if you don't think that that's true, if you don't think assurance is one of the things people struggle with today, because maybe you don't personally struggle with it,
I just invite you to listen to the questions we receive every week on our show.
Almost weekly, we get questions from people who say, I'm struggling with the assurance of my salvation.
I'm struggling with how to know I'm saved. How do
I know that I know, that I know, that I know? And remember yesterday, again, I keep referencing
Dr. White. For those of you who are here, we had a great time. It was almost like having a personal dividing line. He was right here with us, and he was talking to us directly, and he was telling us some things, and he talked about the fact that in the
Roman Catholic Church, it's a sin to presume on your own salvation, to believe that you know that you are saved.
You don't know until the end. But the
Bible tells us we are to know that we have eternal life, not wonder, not sit in doubt, not sit wringing our hands all the time, wondering whether or not we are saved.
And so we go back to this idea, what's the number one way to help with our assurance?
It's this. This is the answer. First, you have to believe that Jesus did not lie to you when he made that promise.
You have to believe Jesus didn't lie to you when he made that promise. Because if you have doubt in your heart that Jesus is telling you the truth, then that's going to begin to affect your own assurance.
In fact, I truly believe one of the most well -known of Jesus' dialogues is in the upper room.
It's in John 14, and if you've ever been to a Christian funeral, you've heard it. Because in John 14,
Jesus says, Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms.
If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I'll come again and take you to myself.
That where I am, you may be also. You know the way to where I'm going. Thomas said, Lord, we don't know where you're going.
How can we know the way? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except by me.
You remember, right? I've done over 150 funerals.
I used to work at a funeral home. Not work there, but I worked alongside them as basically like a makeshift chaplain.
They would call me when they needed someone. And there were years, Mike and Andy, remember there were times I'd do two or three services a week because they had so many people who didn't have ministers but wanted a
Christian funeral. And I would go because it would give me the opportunity to preach the gospel. I wanted the opportunity to preach the gospel, so I would go and do that.
And I did it. I have preached that same text over 150 times because that's the same text
I use. It was always different families, so. But the part
I stress because oftentimes there's unbelievers there. That's why I went. I want to preach the gospel to unbelievers.
What did I say? I say, listen to the words of Jesus. He said, let not your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God, believe also in me. And that would be the call. Believe in God, believe also in me.
And then he says this, In my Father's house there are many rooms, and if it were not so,
I would have told you. You know what Jesus is saying there?
I'm not lying to you. I'm not giving you false hope.
I'm not giving you pie in the sky. I'm not telling you something that's not true.
This is what it means when it says, In him there is no deceit. Jesus says,
I am the way, what? The truth and the life.
You ever heard about the, do you know what the correspondence theory of truth is? You know what the correspondence theory of truth is?
Okay, I actually put this on the screen because I thought it might help. The correspondence theory of truth is this.
Truth is what corresponds to what is real or actual. That is the correspondence theory of truth.
There's all, if you look up, if you look up philosophical understandings of truth, you'll come into all kinds of different ways. But this is the one
I think is most accurate to scripture. Correspondence theory says truth is what corresponds to what is real or actual.
So if I said to you, Samuel, you are an eight foot tall black woman. Now if I said that, there are some people who would say, we have to believe that's true.
Because he believes it or I believe it. But there's a Greek word for that. It's baloney.
It's absolute baloney. Because it doesn't correspond to what's real. It doesn't correspond to what actually exists.
Samuel is not an eight foot tall black woman. And if you say that he is, you've engaged in falsehood.
You've engaged in deceit. No matter what you believe, because what you believe does not determine the truth.
What you believe does not create the truth. Truth is what corresponds to what actually exists.
Therefore, when Jesus says I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, he's saying
I correspond to what actually exists. And in me there is no deceit.
This is Jesus' point. I am telling you the truth, and there is no deceit. No deceit.
Now, he goes on. He says in him there is no deceit, or no falsehood.
Then he says this, verse 19. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law.
Why do you seek to kill me? Alright, three statements in that one sentence that I have to break down very quickly.
First of all, he says has not Moses given you the law? Why is Jesus now appealing to Moses? Because he is actually going to begin challenging them on their fidelity to Moses.
Because, remember, the whole reason they're trying to kill Jesus is because Jesus has, according to them, violated
God's law which came through Moses. And Jesus is about to show them that their whole understanding of this is wrong.
In fact, he tells them you don't keep the law. He says Moses gave you the law.
Has not Moses given you the law? And yet you don't keep the law. You don't keep the law.
Now, is that true for everyone? Yes, we're all sinners. None of us...
By the way, if you don't know this, you should know this, because when you share the gospel with people and you're telling them about sin, a lot of people today don't know what sin is.
If you talk to them about sin, people just... they think sin is, you know, maybe just a mistake or something like that.
No, sin is breaking God's law. Sin is lawlessness. That's what the
Bible defines as sin. In fact, our own confession, not ours, but the Reformed confessions say, sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.
That's the Reformation doctrine, and I would say the biblical doctrine of sin, want of conformity unto, meaning you're missing the mark.
That's where the word sin comes from, means to miss the mark. The law gave a standard. You didn't reach up to it.
But there's also the idea of trespass, going beyond what the law allows. That's the transgression of.
Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. It finds its foundation in the law of God.
That's what sin is. That's what sin is. And so Jesus is telling them, you have Moses.
And by the way, they thought Moses was the most important person in their religion outside of Abraham.
Abraham was the patriarch of their faith. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the fathers. He's going to mention in a minute.
Circumcision came through the fathers. He's talking about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But Moses, as I've said in the past, Moses was like Billy Graham and George Washington in one person.
He was the most important religious figure. He was the most important political figure all in one person.
And he says, you have Moses. Moses gave you the law, but none of you keeps the law.
And you've got to imagine the Pharisees are just seething at that moment. What do you mean I don't keep the law?
That's my whole thing. I keep the law. In fact, you remember the story
Jesus told of the two men who went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee. The other was a tax collector.
What did the Pharisee say? I thank thee, O God, that I am not like other men.
For I do this and that. I tithe, and I do this, and I keep the law.
That was the whole attitude. And Jesus is saying, no, you actually don't keep the law. One of the most dangerous things you can do as a preacher is to remind the self -righteous that they ain't really righteous.
Because boy, I tell you, that will light a fire that's hard to put out. And Jesus is saying, you have
Moses, but you don't keep the law. And I want to point something out to you. We could get into the specifics, or rather into the generalities of everybody's a sinner, everybody's not a law keeper, everybody in here's broken
God's law, and we know that's true. We could walk through the commandments and see that that's true. But Jesus is actually pointing to a very specific sin.
When Jesus says, has not, yet none of you keeps the law, He's actually referring to a specific sin, and it's the very next words out of His mouth.
He says, why do you seek to kill me? You understand, they had murderous rage and intent in their heart to kill
Him for an ungodly reason, and that's breaking the law. Their hatred, their murderous intent was the sin
Jesus was pointing out. That's why the very next words out of His mouth, He's saying, you, has not
Moses given you the law, you don't keep the law, why do you seek to kill me? Because in seeking to kill me, you are not obeying the law.
This is the reason for the question. And the crowd becomes incredulous.
And again, the crowd is mixed between the Jewish leaders and the Jewish people, but someone from the crowd, or the crowd in general, answers and says, you have a demon who is seeking to kill you.
Now, right away, just for a minute, what does it mean when it says, you have a demon?
I think in our modern parlance, our modern colloquial phrase, they're saying, you're crazy.
What are you crazy? Who's seeking to kill you? Nobody's even laying hands on you.
Nobody's touched you. You're saying people want to kill you. You have a demon. They're saying you're a liar.
The word, the underlying word for demon here, deceiver, deceitful one, they're saying, you're a liar, you're a crazy person, you're out of your mind.
You have a demon who is seeking to kill you. Now, I just want to show you something. In verse 25, it shows the hypocrisy of the crowd.
Because in verse 25, notice what it says. Some of the people of Jerusalem said, is not this the man whom they seek to kill?
They knew they wanted to kill him. So verse, going back up to verse 19, or verse 20 rather, when they said, you have a demon who is seeking to kill you, everybody knew who wanted
Jesus dead. It wasn't a secret. So this question is not only incredulous, it's dishonest.
The accusation, you have a demon, who's wanting to kill you, it's not rhetorical, it's dishonest.
They knew good and well who wanted Jesus dead. They knew it. But they're trying to make
Jesus... This is... I'm going to use another modern term. This is called gaslighting. And if you don't know what gaslighting is, gaslighting is when you're mistreating someone and then you make them believe that it's not really happening.
So like if a man's abusing his wife, but then he keeps telling her, she's imagining things.
This isn't really happening. You just are sensitive or overly meticulous or whatever.
That's a form of making her think she's crazy when she's not crazy. He's actually doing the thing that she thinks that he's doing, but he's mentally manipulating her.
And when these people say, who's trying to kill you? That's gaslighting because everybody knew who was trying to kill him. Everybody knew what was going on.
This wasn't a secret. But they wouldn't touch Jesus openly. We're going to see later, how do they get him?
Six months from now. Six months from now, when they finally get to the Feast of Passover, do they get
Jesus during the day? No. They capture him by night. Jesus even says,
I was with you every day in the temple and you said nothing! But you come at night.
Why? To demonstrate their evil intentions. And their hearts were wicked.
So the crowd says, you have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you? And Jesus now, and this is where I'm going to end.
I'm not going to get all the way to 31. Jesus now is going to challenge them and remind them the very reason why the people wanted to kill him is because of what happened back in Chapter 5.
You remember what happened back in Chapter 5? Jesus was at the pool of Bethesda. He comes to the pool of Bethesda.
He takes a man who is 30 years lame and Jesus gives him the ability to walk and the
Jewish leaders are not excited. Instead, what are they? They're angry. Why? Because Jesus did what? Healed on the
Sabbath. He healed him on the Sabbath. So Jesus is now going to point back to that. Read this with me and you'll see what
I'm saying. They said, you have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you? Jesus answered them. I did one work. It says, son, forgive me.
Mike saw this the other day when I was putting this in. Sometimes I miss those little superscripts when I'm copying and pasting this into the screen.
So forgive me if that confuses you. But he says, I did one work.
One work. And you all marvel at it. And you all marvel at it. The work he's talking about is healing that man at the pool.
And we know that because of what he goes on to say. Moses gave you circumcision. Not that it was from Moses, but from the fathers.
And you circumcised a man on the Sabbath. What is he talking about? Well, Moses commanded circumcision.
It didn't come from him. Of course, it comes all the way back in Genesis where God gives it to Abraham to give to his son.
And then it said, this is going to mark my people out. Circumcision is the mark of the old covenant. It's the mark of the
Abrahamic covenant. And this is going to mark the people. Jesus says,
Moses gave you circumcision. Though it's actually not from Moses, but it's from the fathers. And you circumcised a man on the
Sabbath. Now, why would they circumcise a man on the Sabbath? Well, the law demanded that a man be circumcised on the eighth day.
The Sabbath, of course, is the seventh day, which for us would be
Saturday. At that time would have been the seventh day. So let's say a man was born on a
Friday, using our timetable. If a man was born on a Friday, when would be the eighth day?
It would be the next Sabbath. Not the next day, not the Saturday after, but it would be eight days later, which would be a
Sabbath day. So now you've got a problem. Now you've got a problem. You've got to do the circumcision because the law requires that he be circumcised on the eighth day.
But you also have a law that says you don't do anything on that day because it's a day of rest.
Now you have a logical conundrum. What are we going to do? Well, the law demanded that the law of circumcision supersede the law of the
Sabbath, and therefore they were allowed. And the same thing happened with the priest. The priest still did sacrifices and things on the
Sabbath. They understood there were laws that allowed for the taking of action on the
Sabbath if the actions were necessary. And they would consider circumcision a necessary action.
This has to be done on the eighth day. So even if it lands on the Sabbath day, we're still going to take and do the circumcision because that law is necessary.
So, that in mind, look now at what Jesus says. Verse 23,
If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the
Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? Here's the argument
Jesus is making. You will cut the foreskin off the penis of a child on the
Sabbath because your law requires it. But you won't let me heal a man on the
Sabbath. Where's the logic in that?
Where's the logic in that? You'll, in one sense, do harm. Now I'm not saying harm in the sense of ultimate harm.
But cutting off the foreskin is an act of incision into flesh.
You will cut the flesh to follow your law. But you condemn me for healing the flesh in accordance with the love and mercy of God.
That is not logical. And so Jesus is challenging them and saying, you understand that there are times when the
Sabbath law is superseded by a need. Jesus will say this in other places. He says, if your ox falls into a ditch on the
Sabbath, are you going to wait until the next day? No, you're going to pull him out because that's necessary to do on that day.
How much more necessary is to take a man who's been 30 years lame and give him legs that can leap like a deer?
You should be glorifying God for his miracles. You should not be challenging me over your rotten understanding of the law of Moses.
So Jesus is challenging them. And then here's the key. And we'll end here. Verse 24.
Do not judge by appearances, but judge with righteous judgment or with right judgment.
Basically, that is a long way of saying, don't be a hypocrite.
Because those who are saying it's okay to circumcise on the Sabbath, but it's not okay to heal on the Sabbath, are being hypocritical.
And Jesus says, you need to not judge by externals. You need to not judge by appearances.
You need to not judge wrongly. But you need to judge with right judgment.
Let me end with this thought. A lot of people misuse
Matthew chapter 7. Matthew 7 .1. Judge not, lest ye be judged.
And how often is that used by people to say, Christians are never allowed to make any judgments.
We have to let everything go. But you understand that's not
Jesus' point in Matthew 7. Matthew 7 says, judge not, lest ye be judged.
For with the judgment that you give, you yourself will be judged.
So if you see a speck in your brother's eye, and you go to remove it without first removing the four by four that's sticking out of your forehead, understand that you're engaging in hypocrisy.
That's unrighteous judgment. That's what these men were doing. They were claiming
Jesus had broken the law. They were claiming Jesus deserved death for breaking the Sabbath. And Jesus says, you have a four by four sticking out of your head.
And it's called circumcision. And you don't even understand how big of a hypocrite you are.
The message of Jesus to these people was to try to help them to understand that they were not seeking the will of God in this.
There are a lot of people who believe they're doing God's will when they're doing the absolute opposite of God's will.
I mean, think about 9 -11. Those guys get on that plane. And they scream out,
Allahu Akbar. Praise Allah. As they fly a plane into a building because they think they're doing
God's will. They're not doing God's will. Neither were these Pharisees and Sadducees doing the will of God when they were challenging
Jesus. And Jesus says that. He said, if you were doing the will of God, you would be listening to me. But you're not.
But you're not. How dangerous it is for us to judge with wrong judgment.
May it be that God would teach us by His word to judge accurately, to judge truly, and to avoid judging hypocritically.
Because in doing so, we stand not with Jesus, but with His opponents.
You ever judged hypocritically? Do this. You find yourself at times in need of forgiveness for that?
Do this. This message is a good reminder to us that we should never forget the need to go to God often and ask
Him to judge our hearts, to give us insight into where we have erred and give us insight to where we need to repent.
See, the Pharisees weren't unique in being hypocrites. They were just really good at it.
May God be merciful to us and not let us be good at it as well. And so today
I encourage you, if you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and you've been engaging in hypocrisy, to recognize and turn from your sin and pray that God would give you the strength.
And if you're here and you're not a Christian and you've never believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, maybe you're not engaging in hypocrisy, maybe you know straightforward you don't believe in Jesus.
Remember what He said in this text. If you seek to do the will of God, you're going to believe in Him. Does God's will matter to you?
I pray that He would open your heart so that it would and that you would believe on His Son.
Let's pray. Father, I thank You for Your Word. Thank You for this opportunity to study together.
And I pray, Lord, that this message would be to all of us what we need for the day. Lord, let the
Word of God be our sustenance. Let it be our nutrients.
Let it nourish our souls. May we learn from You.
May we be blessed by You. And as we turn to the table, Lord, may we be reminded of what