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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/stuart-thompson/christ-is-life/
Now let's open our Bibles again in the Gospel of John, please, in first of all chapter 1. Chapter 1 of John and verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. Now turn to me, with me, to the second last chapter, John chapter 20.
John chapter 20 and verse 30. Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name.
And then I would like to come back to chapter 5, please. There are several verses here that we're going to refer to when we come to this portion, but just to read at this point. Verse 26, please. For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man.
Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth. They that have done good under the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation, or the resurrection of judgment.
And we look to God to bless what we've read of his word in John's gospel here, in the last portion of the conference, as we look at the truth of the gospel, but in the solemnity of it, for those that perhaps in our meeting this closing hour today that are still without Christ, not ready for God's eternity.
The gospel of John, as we were hearing earlier, is that of the four gospels which primarily has as its theme the means of establishing for the understanding of those that would read it, who Jesus of Nazareth is.
That he was the Son eternal of the Father. But in the three portions that we read, I want to emphasize these points. We have in John chapter 1, that he is life for creation. Life for creation. In the second last chapter, chapter 20, where we read, he is life for salvation.
Life for salvation. But in chapter 5, among other verses that we'll look at, as God gives help, in the conclusion, he is life for resurrection. So there are those three elements of the message of the gospel that we want to consider just now.
He is the source. He is life for creation, for salvation, and for, at the end of time's experience, resurrection. Wonderful thing, what John chapter 1 brings to our attention. That the person who then, John is going to, by the Spirit of God, unveil to us in the record that he will write, is one who is eternal.
In the beginning was the Word. So there was this occasion. There was, as it were, this point in the expanse of eternity which we cannot measure, which the Bible simply calls beginning, but it is the beginning of creation.
There was one who was. His being was. He existed at that point. He is an eternal one. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. Then it goes on to add, the same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him. So this one that is called the Word, who was in the beginning, and is a person with God, distinct from the God, and yet Himself identified as being God, is the one who made all things.
It says then in verse 3, all things were made by Him. He is a person now that has been identified with the creation of all things. Life for creation, then, as verse 4 says, in Him was life. There was then in His being the very resource, the potential, to make all things.
It tells us in Colossians chapter 1 that in Him were all things created. That is, in His very person all things were created. In heaven, in earth, visible, invisible. There is not one item in all of the mass, whether visible or invisible, the full measure of creation that didn't find its source in this person.
Hebrews chapter 1 adds as well that God by or through Him made the worlds, it says in this English Bible, and the word there for worlds is the idea of ages. By Him God made the ages. Every epoch, as it were, every era of time, with whatever purposes God had designed.
We've been hearing about Old Testament days, when the people of Israel moved according to what God had revealed to Him. There's all these different eras, and there's yet one to come, the eternal one, through which we're all destined.
By Him, through Him, all the ages were made. Now I can't take anything for granted. It's not wise, I think, for me to do that. As I look at our audience here today, those of us that are here, I could assume that every last one of us is settled, persuaded in the truth, the subject of creation.
That all things exist by not just intelligent design, which is true, but intentional design. That God in His Son, that the Son in Himself created all things with tremendous intention, with purpose. I can't just assume that's the case.
I can reflect on my past with the tremendous privilege that I countered a curse as a boy of being raised in a Christian home. You say you countered a curse. Well, that's maybe a kind of a strong word, but I sure didn't counter the privilege in my youth.
Why? Because it was a home that was so contrary to all the rest of the homes. The three boys that lived across the road, and a fourth went down a few more houses that I grew up with in their company, and we ran with.
Out of those four, only one of them was a God-fearing home. And at least two of the other three were homes that were very evidently, though I didn't understand it as a lad, but as I became a teenager, it became very evident, were atheistic evolutionists.
That's how they based their worldview, how they raised their kids, and it became quite evident by the time I was a teenager. And I'm not saying this just to be smart. Well, I'm not even saying it to be smart.
I'm just telling you the facts. I can remember one evening with my brother, who's five years older than me, and he wasn't a believer at that time either. I remember the two of us sitting side by side, and two of those boys sitting across the other side of a table in a restaurant with a mug of draft beer between us with the glasses, and we've been tipping them back for a while, and the subject turned to the source of origins, and my brother and I, as ungodly young rascals, were debating with those fellows as to where we came from.
Now, I wasn't too accurate in what I was saying, and I'm sure I said some things that wouldn't have stacked up with the Word of God, but I was sure in my mind that I did not come from a little bit of slime.
Where do you think you came from? One young woman was raised in a Christian home out on the island of Prince Edward Island, province of Ontario to the east. She had gone away, I think, into the province of Ontario to go to university.
Starting to get a contrary view presented to her very emphatically, she returned for the summer to her parents' home and employment for the summer. During the break, gospel meetings were on the island that summer, and she went with her parents dutifully to hear the preaching.
Thought she'd stay behind and talk to the preachers one evening, and she said to the two men, Do I have to believe, or if I believe in evolution, can I be saved? Many of us know the two men that were there.
One of them was Mr. Norman Crawford, who we've highly esteemed over the years. Many of us would kind of consider Norman the answer man. We always went to Norman with our questions. He always had an answer, and he was the one that related the story.
As this young woman said, Can I be saved if I believe in evolution? And dear Norman said, as he was kind of sucking air and pondering how he was going to give an answer, the other man just jumped right in there.
If you knew who he was, you could just see him doing this. He just jumped right in. He looked at that young woman, and he said emphatically, yet compassionately, If you don't believe where you came from, how can you believe where you're going?
And that's really, that sounds simplistic, but John's Gospel doesn't start making any apologetic approach, and well this and that will provide evidences. They existed then, and they exist today. If you're being raised in a home with faithful godly parents, but you're starting to doubt your origin, where you came from.
I'm not talking from your mom and dad. I'm talking about where mankind came from. Then, and if schools start to maybe inflect your mind with other suggestions, you better start asking questions, because if you totally imbibe and get your teeth into this idea that we are just here by happenstance, then that will not only affect your destiny, it will even affect the way you live in this world, and it will soon remove you of any sense of dignity and purpose in this life.
Where'd you come from? The Bible very clearly says all things were made by him. In him was life. There was a man then that came into this world, and he looked but a mere man, and moved amongst other men, but this one was the one who was from eternity, whose very existence was when all things began, and when they began, he was the source of it all.
All things were made by him. In him was life. Life for creation. So after John has written extensively and made a record about the life that that individual spent in this world, he sums it up at the close of chapter 21 as to why he has written.
He says there were a lot of other signs, other miraculous things that the Lord Jesus did, that were witnessed by his disciples, and he says, but they're not written here, but what I have written, these are written.
Why? That ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ. What does it mean to be the Christ? It is the one then, the name Christ in the New Testament, is the name that means the individual is anointed. What does that imply?
When someone was anointed, as the people of Israel would understand in the age gone by, he was a anointed, then to speak on the behalf of God. He was a priest. He was anointed to act between God and the people, to serve them on God's behalf, or he was the king to rule on God's account with the people.
They were anointed with purpose, but this is the one who is the Christ, as John says. You might believe that Jesus, the mere man amongst men, is the Christ of God. It's not that he was anointed by men.
He was anointed of God's in the realm of eternity, and he launched, as it were, into this world with a tremendous purpose. God sent him into this world, commissioned him, sent him. The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, the one who made all things, who made this world, who made the ages that this world is passing through, was sent by God, the Christ, anointed one, the Son of God, an eternal one.
Why? That believing he might have life through his name. Life for salvation. That's what the writer John says is the base. That's the bottom line why he says, I have read or written all that I have written, and you've been reading it.
You know, it just struck me simply as I was thinking a little about this in view of the potential of taking up this responsibility at the close of the conference. It's just a simple thought, but I wonder today, dear soul, if you've ever stopped to realize that God took up simple men that knew wonderful things to write them on paper for your very soul's sake.
These men that come to know the Lord Jesus, they observed him, they watched him, he won them. They knew him not only as a miracle worker, but they knew him as a Savior. They knew him as the one in whom their sins were forgiven, and they took up pen and guided by the Holy Spirit, wrote things on paper, just not for historical record's sake, to preserve the memory of this wonderful miracle worker.
No, they wrote it for you, for you, for me. Why? That you might believe. These things have been written that you might believe, because if you don't believe, you have no life. The implication is rather obvious, isn't it?
The inverse. If you don't believe, you don't have life through his name. If you don't have life through his name, what have you got? Ephesians chapter 2, rather, identifies it so emphatically with, you know, there's no wiggle room here, you're dead in your sins.
Dead in your sins, separated from God at this present time. The Lord Jesus said, if you don't believe that I am, if you don't believe that I am the Christ, the one, the anointed, commissioned one of God, sent to be the Savior, the eternal Son by whom all things were made, your very origin, if you don't believe, you'll die in your sins.
That's why this is written. That's why the whole record of the Bible, between two leather covers, or whatever kind of Bible you're holding on your lap, if you have one, the whole record is there for you to believe.
Life for salvation. Believing about Him, believing in Him, and having life through His name. That will go back to John 5. In closing minutes, there are a lot of things in John 5 that I've enjoyed of late, in a fresh way.
It says back in verse 21 of John 5, for as the Father raises up the dead and quickens or makes alive them, people, even so the Son quickens or makes alive whom He will. It struck me as interesting that as John records what the Lord Jesus was saying this day, that the Father raises the dead and makes people alive.
Now, just a very simple opposition. It's not referring to the same occasion, to the exact same event. If you're gonna raise somebody up from the dead, they're already alive. So to quicken them, to make alive, that's another occasion, that's another experience.
And then when you get to the second half of the verse, the Lord Jesus says about the Son Himself, doesn't say anything about raising up people, He just says, the Son will make alive those that He wills, those that He chooses.
The first thing the Lord Jesus is addressing, because He's addressing a living audience, like this today. It's an audience of people that can get up and walk around and are alive and busy in the activities of life.
He's not talking so much now about those that are dead in the grave. He's speaking to an audience that He's longing to reach for eternity's sake, for your soul's sake. He says, I give people life. Now, He'll deal with the issue of resurrection, the raising up, later on.
He's speaking in a manner that shows that He has every full capacity and equality with the Father. As the Father raises them up and quickens Him, so the Son quickens whom He will. Down at verse 24, a verse that, maybe there's a few souls in this little portion of the conference here today, of the audience.
Verse 24 is very precious to you. Perhaps there's one here today that could become your, as it were, foundation for eternity. The Lord Jesus says, Verily, verily, or truly, truly, I say unto you, that he that hears my word and believes Him, just drop the word on there, believes Him that sent me, what does it say, half everlasting life, shall not come into condemnation, shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life.
That's the foundation of what was recorded, what was written at the close of chapter 20. Believing in Him, you might have life through His name. Passed from death unto life. Passed from that place of being dead in your sins, to having life.
When I look back on my experience, I've related a little bit to you. I was raised in a Christian home, had a lot of privilege that I now appreciate, which I didn't appreciate in my youth. You know, I thought that this is a general statement.
There were a few exceptions, but I'm just telling it like it was. I thought the Christians were deadheads. Christians didn't have a clue what life was about. That was my opinion. There were a few of them that impressed me in some measure, but the most of them I thought, I don't want that life.
What kind of a life is this? God wake me up to my destiny for eternity, without a Savior. When I realized if I die as I am, I'm lost forever in eternity. That became my focus. That became the issue. It was no longer what the Christian life might be involved, it was where I was going to be in eternity.
And when that thought, as it were, had so gripped me that I wanted nothing but to be settled, to know my sins were forgiven. And when God, by His mercy, brought me to that point where I trusted Christ, where I found my self lost, going to hell, consciously recognizing that if God were to send me to hell, that would be His just response to me in my unbelief.
It was there that I realized, oh, Christ died for me. I was sitting in my bed, the home that I was raised in back in Sarnia, Ontario, in Canada. And in those minutes, I was in dark despair, facing eternity without Christ, and knowing because of my sin and my unbelief, I was lost forever.
And then, as I've already mentioned, realizing, well, Christ died for me. It wasn't visible, but it was the classic, as if the light came on. I just sat there for a moment and I thought, I'm saved. And what I did, I turned out the light over my bed, settled down into the bed, put my head on the pillow and went to sleep.
You couldn't have got me to go to sleep two minutes before for anything, because of the despair, the foreboding of eternity without Christ. I just put my head down the pillow and went to sleep. Got up the next day, went about my business and my employment.
I'm just telling you quickly, the job that I was working at that point in time, I worked for a civil engineering company as an inspector on a construction site. And it was the middle of winter, it was the month of January.
And in January in southwestern Ontario can be pretty yucky. It snows and it melts. And it was a job site with a lot of clay in the soil. And I'm telling you this because you walked across the job site and you picked up 10 pounds of clay on each boot.
And it was miserable. It was like that sometimes for weeks. And the day before, I was cussing clay on my boots because of how inconvenient it was. The day after God saved me, I had life in Christ. I don't know if I looked down at the boots or not.
I can just remember walking through the job site that day. It was a beautiful clear blue sky overhead. And I'm looking up like this, not really watching where I was walking, but I'm looking up like this and thinking, is it really possible that I'm going to heaven?
I had life. I was no longer dead in my sins. I had vital life, eternal life. I knew Christ as my Savior. My destiny, as I wondered about it in the midst of a muddy construction site, was settled. I had life.
He said, shall not come into condemnation. You have everlasting life. Passed from death to life. It's a new life. It's the new birth. It's a new destiny. Everything changes. Where you came from, now you are, you're not even questioning that because you know where you're going.
You're going to be in heaven. In Him is life. Life for creation, yes. Life only in Him. He says later on in this gospel, I am the way, the truth, the life. In Him is life. You want eternal life. You want to be sure that when you come to, I told the youth this last night, and it's coming to my mind forcefully.
Just now, you don't know where you're going to be tomorrow. A week ago, Friday, one of my companions that I ran the high school halls with and around the city and one mile from one city to another in our early university days in southwestern Ontario went into eternity in a moment, a week ago, Friday, and I had no hope for him.
What about you, dear soul? You have no certainty without Christ that you are going to be alive tomorrow. I have no certainty in Christ that I'll be alive tomorrow. But this much I do know, if I'm not alive tomorrow, I'll be with Christ.
Past from death unto life. But then he goes on to say, truly, truly, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.
Right then and there, as he spoke to his living audience, he said, if you hear my word and believe Him that sent me, you'll have everlasting life. Right here and now. That's the fact. You could be saved as you listen to God's word right now.
But now comes the rest of the story. The father raises and gives life. His son gives life to who he will. Oh, he comes short. He doesn't have anything to do with the question and the matter of resurrection.
No, now he's going to talk about it. Verse 26, for as the father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the son to have life in himself. That has nothing to do with the origin of the Lord Jesus. But it's the father's purpose that he is dispensed, as it were, into the very person of his son.
He is the repository of life for everything. Creation, salvation, and now he's going to tell us about the resurrection. From him comes the ability to affect everyone. He has given unto him also authority to execute judgment, because he is the son of man.
Not only is he the son of God, but he's the son of man. He's the one that moved amongst man as an absolute righteous man. And he has every authority to judge men in their sins. Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming.
He doesn't say now is. Now is the time of salvation that he spoke of previously. He says there is an hour coming in the which all that are in the graves. He can affect those that are dead in their sins today, and he's going to affect everybody that's dead in their graves in a coming day.
All that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth. They that have done good, they didn't earn this. Their life displayed what they had gained in verse 24. Death out of life. No condemnation.
Everlasting life. Those whose life have shown the reality of their salvation. Those that have done good, unto the resurrection of life. And they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation, of judgment.
Life for resurrection. The one who created all things, all things made in him by him. He has the very power inherent in his person that when he gives the word, there's not a dead body in a grave at any point in this world that will be able to resist his voice.
All that are in the graves shall hear and will come forth. When it says, they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation, the resurrection of judgment, what is it saying? Oh, they're just desperately wicked people.
No, there are actually three different words in our English Bible translated evil, and they have different emphasis, and this one emphasizes the idea of what was just plain trivial and worthless. So it wasn't necessarily that the person's life was evidently lived in deep immorality, debauchery, or just antagonism to the things of God.
No, it was a life that was lived with no eye for eternity. It was a life that was lived just ignoring the fact that they were one who was created in the likeness and the image of God. They are a created soul bound for eternity, and they didn't want to deal with it.
They just lived life with trivial things. Time is gone. There are a lot of trivial things in this world. There are a lot of things that I would still enjoy doing once in a while, and I do, but in view of eternity, they don't mean a thing.
There are things that I did in my unsaved days that I will still do today, but in my unbelieving days, I did those things to the exemption of the saving of my soul. I was a motocross racer. There's nothing wrong with a motorcycle.
It's an amoral thing. There's nothing sinful about a motorcycle, but I absorbed my life with it. If I had died spending my life that way, I would have been raised as one who did trivial pursuits under the resurrection of damnation.
Don't let your life slip away chasing things that you think are worth spending your days and hours at, and find your soul in eternity lost forever. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
He said, He that hears my word, believes Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, shall not come into condemnation. Hath everlasting life is passed from death unto life. If you come to Christ today, He'll save you, and know the joy of the one who has life for salvation.