The Five Fold Testimony of Jesus Christ: Part 3

Reasons People Do Not Come to Christ

We're online again, so let me start with some questions. Question number one is this, what keeps people from believing in Jesus Christ? What keeps people from believing in Jesus Christ? Second question I would like to ask, why would anyone desire to have his or her sins forgiven and to have eternal life as a free gift of God's grace through Christ so that they do not come into judgment?

Why would anyone not desire to have his or her sins forgiven and have eternal life as a free gift of God's love and grace through Jesus Christ and so that they do not come into ultimate eternal judgment?

Well, by asking these questions, let me give some reasons. Many reasons, but two are really paramount, but one is critical. For example, many Muslims reject Jesus Christ because they have misconceptions about who Jesus is and what he claimed.

That's exactly what this chapter is referring to. Muslims and the same misconceptions amongst the Jehovah Witnesses, among the Mormons, among thousands of cults that have wrong views of God and Christ.

Others reject Jesus Christ because they have been wounded by professing Christians or by a church. I've talked to many, and I'm sure you have. And when we went to the Pride Parade to witness the Pride LGBTQ movement out a month or two ago, there were many that I spoke to said that they had just been literally turned off from God and who God is and from the truth and from church because someone within the church deeply wounded them.

A preacher, a minister, a priest possibly abused them, causing them to conclude that Jesus Christ and Christianity is a crutch and really a sham. Perhaps their parents professed to be a Christian yet were abusive.

I've heard this so many times and time again. Did not live out the faith at home or supposedly was a hypocrite. So they're turned away from the truth of who God is. So they say these things. I will not turn to Christ.

I will not come to Christ because of the hypocrites.

The hypocrites.

Or the parents, they say, were overly strict and tried to force them into believing in Christ, forcing it upon them. Others go to college and their faith is undermined and you have atheistic professors influencing them against the scriptures, against the Bible.

Now, let me say this, beloved. We can multiply many, many more reasons why people do not come to Jesus Christ and these excuses of what people say. And I say excuses because really a lot of people look for excuses to turn away from God.

And I also know this. There are many times when these things happen. It causes them to search the scriptures and go toward God. But let me also insert this and give a footnote on this at the beginning of the message here.

Now, even when there's some of these reasons, some of these reasons I have just listed could be facts and reasons and supposedly might have happened and may be true why people don't come to Jesus Christ.

Many, many people, again, use these reasons for excuses to stay away from Christ or not come to Christ. And they become clerks. They clerk their own sin and cast the blame on supposed Christianity. And we know that that's not right.

That's the reasons according to them. Now, I'm not to say that they're not true, but they are looking for excuses to look down at the truth, look down at Christianity and so forth. Yet, again, that is according to each one of their stories and I know you've heard them as well as I have.

Yet, the Bible, the Bible itself, the word of the living God gives us two clear reasons and I want to put a third in here too, but two clear reasons why people do not come to Jesus Christ.

Let me give you these two reasons.

Deception and Unbelief in John 5

Number one, first of all, I believe would be deception. People are deceived. This is Satan's master tactic. This is his master strategy is to deceive. People are deceived and by the way, as we well know, the false teachers deceive and they will deceive themselves and still deceiving.

Jesus called them blind leaders of the blind and Jesus said they'll both fall into the ditch. So we have deception. That's the first one and I believe there is another one. I believe that's very important for us to understand this and we see this really in our text and this is a big one.

It's called unbelief. A hard heart of unbelief. You have deception on one end and unbelief on the other and these are the two main reasons why literally millions and millions people are perishing right now because they are deceived, being deceived and also it's a hard heart of unbelief that keeps them from coming to the Lord Jesus Christ to faith in Christ and repenting of their sin.

Now, of course, it goes without saying that those are terrible sins and we know that it's a sin but what would really be the backbone of those sins which I've listed? Deception and a hard heart of unbelief.

I really believe that the root sin of all those sins and those two sins I briefly mentioned, deception and unbelief is the sin of pride. The sin of pride. The sin of pride and self-righteousness is no doubt because they are deceived and that they're blind and that they choose not to come to Jesus Christ because they're dead in their sins and their trespasses and this is why the sin of unbelief prevails.

It is because of the pride within them, the pride of life as John speaks of in John 2. Well, as we saw in John 3, let me read this, back it up a couple of chapters and this goes right hand in glove of what is being spoken here.

John 3, verse 18 to 21, Jesus Christ himself speaks of the reasons why people love the truth, I'm sorry, they love the evil in which they do and do not have a love for the truth and it's this, verse 18, he who believes in him is not condemned but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Now listen carefully to what the Lord says and this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. There's a love for the darkness, there's a love for that rather than the love for the truth and the light.

Verse 20, for everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed that he who does come to, he comes, does the truth, comes to the light that his deeds may be clearly seen and that they have been done in God, wrought in God.

Now that's the Lord Jesus Christ himself. People love their sin because they love darkness and this is the world in which we live,.

A fallen world,.

Dead and trespasses in their sins. People reject Jesus Christ, they love their sin,.

They hate heaven.

And they're exposed by the word of God, by the truth and the light. The light shines upon them, it exposes them and they do everything they can to cloak and hide themselves with fig leaves. Now, in our text, in John 5, Jesus directly confronts these religious leaders, these religious Jewish self-righteous Pharisees who were opposing him, who hated him for the claims he made, who were unwilling to come to him for eternal life.

This is what the text tells us. Verse 44 says,.

How can you believe.

Who receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes.

From the only God?

That's the question. How can you believe? Now, I don't know if you noticed this. In that question, the Greek verb points to man's inability.

To believe.

He's not only not willing, he's not only not willing to come to Christ, he's unable to come to Christ and believe within his own power. We must honestly think of this great truth,.

The inability.

And this is a lot of people really think that they have their own, and yes, there is a will that we have. We're not robots, we're not automatons in that sense.

We do have a will,.

But our will is bent to sin. Our will is not to seek God. We are unable to even come to God, but it's the Father himself that draws us, and it is by God's spirit that anyone, if he comes to grace, and the Lord Jesus Christ, it is ultimately by God himself that seeks us out, and it's not us that seeks God.

God is the seeker. Now, there is an inability, and we are in bondage to sin. Yeah, we have a so-called free will, but we have a free will to sin. We only have a nature that is bent to do what is only wrong, and not what is ultimately right.

Jesus just gave them adequate witness, testimony to back up his claim, to be equal with God the Father, so they didn't lack evidence. They had ample evidence here, as Jesus told them, this is who he is, and because he told them this, in verse 17, my Father has been working until now, and I have been working.

Therefore, the Jews sought all the more.

To kill him,.

Because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his Father, making him self-equal with God. And this is why they sought all the more.

To kill him.

Now, they had ample evidence. I want you to think of this. Not only did they have ample evidence, they were zealous students, so-called theologians, of the scripture, the Torah,.

The law,.

And the prophets, the writings of the Old Testament, all the prophets, all the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and all that was spoke of him, prophesied of him, throughout the entirety of the Word of God.

What was their problem? What was their problem? What kept them from believing in Jesus Christ? Why did they eventually murder him, and put him to death on a cruel cross, the Savior of the world, for whom the Father had sent?

Again, the capital error of sin, of all sin,.

I believe,.

According to the scripture, is the hardness of their heart, and the sin of unbelief. That root sin of unbelief,.

No doubt,.

Was the pride of life, the pride of outward self-righteousness. This is why they were self-deceived. The pride of life, the sin of pride, the sin of pride, the outward self-righteousness, as opposed to seeking the inward reality with God to keep you and I from believing in Jesus Christ if we go down that path.

Now, no doubt, the sin of pride is the root of all sins, and I want you to think of this. This is the sin that turned an archangel into a devil. This is where sin began, was in heaven. It did not begin on earth.

It began in the heart of an archangel that willfully came against, rebelled against God. What sent him to turn against God was his own pride, his pride. Pride makes us think that we know what's best for us.

Pride makes us think that we know the way is better. It makes us think what is best for us so that we rebel against God and we rebel against God's way, my way, as the song goes. That would be the song of the damned and lost into hell.

I did it my way. I did it my way.

Pride deceives us into thinking that we can be good enough.

To get to heaven.

Pride causes us to put up a good outward front of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is basically another name for play acting. Outward show. How can I perform outwardly? How can I do all these good things? How can I be better?

How can I think of myself? I think of myself very great. I look at myself in the mirror. I go to church. I want people to think good of me. And all together, we're all hooked on ourselves. Ourself, ourself.

And this is why Jesus said, if we're to follow him, we are to deny ourselves, take up our cross,.

And follow him.

The first thing, self-denial. Jesus says you must deny yourself. Now, the self is the problem. Pride causes us to put up a good outward front, a good show, and impress others while we hide ourselves with fig leaves, our own self-righteousness,.

Our own religion,.

And cover ourselves with religion.

And hide the way that we really are.

Before God and our hearts. But you know God knows our hearts. God knows our hearts. Spiritual pride, deception, actually lead to unbelief. That leads us to unbelief and there's unwillingness to come to God.

Now, so Jesus confronts their pride. Jesus confronts their pride. This is the one that is meek and lowly. This is the one that is meekness himself,.

Incarnate.

Now, in John 41 and 42, we will be seeing this later on, but he says this.

He says,.

I do not receive honor from men,.

But I know you,.

That you do not have the love of God in you. Notice that.

In you.

He knows their hearts. Jesus Christ is the searcher of our hearts. He knows who we are. He knows us inside and out, everything about us. So their pride led them, the religious Jews, into a misunderstanding of the Bible.

That's my first point here. This pride leads them to a misunderstanding of the truth of the Bible. They were self-deceived because of their self-righteous pride. Verse 37 and 38 says this.

He says,.

But you do not have his word abiding in you, because whom he sent, him you do not believe. You do not have his word abiding in you.

Abiding in you.

Now, think of this. Jesus begins in our passage here by saying that God has sent him and that God bears witness to him. And then Jesus tells these pharisaical Pharisees that they never heard the voice of God in the first place, nor seen God, nor did they have the word of God dwelling in them,.

Abiding in them.

The word of God was not their love. Even though they searched the scriptures, they did not have a love. Notice that in verse 42.

He says,.

You do not have the love of God in you. So if they did not have the love of God in them or inside of their hearts, they had no love for the scripture itself. Now, this leads us to the next verse. And it's interesting because Jesus says,.

You search the scriptures. You search the scriptures. For in them you think you have eternal life. Notice that. They searched the scriptures. This should be a searching thing to every one of us because we can search the scriptures and not let the Holy Spirit search us.

And don't let the scriptures search our own hearts. Let the word of God search us. And then he says this,. And in them you think you're deceived. That's how we know there's deception here. He said, You think you have eternal life.

And these are they which testify of me. Now, let me stop right there. Jesus never minced any words here. He pointed and he pointed out directly right to their hearts. He puts his finger right on their hearts.

He unloads and unpacks the truth right in their hard hearts. He says that they've never really heard the voice of God. You really do not know his form.

You really don't.

You don't have the word of God abiding within you. You do not have the love of God in you. Now, again, keep this in mind. In the context of what he's saying, he's talking about people that supposedly were experts of the truth.

They were experts of the Bible. They were experts of the Old Testament, just like Nicodemus. Very religious Pharisees, very religious Jews here, that God had given his word to the Jewish people, the covenant and the promises and the law and all that he gives them.

It was a point of pride that kept them in their state as they are. And they, here, here comes the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, Messiah of the living God, speaking to them. Jesus Christ being God incarnate, God in flesh,.

Deity,.

Christ has come. The second person of the Trinity comes. He's incarnate, tabernacles among them. And here he is speaking to these religious Jews, these Pharisees that thought they knew everything,.

The pride.

John 3 .34 says this, For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure.

Verse 35,.

The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands. John 1 .1, In the beginning was the Word,.

The Logos,.

And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Here is God in flesh. Jesus is the Word of God, whom the Pharisees don't hear. They don't hear what he's really saying. Even though Jesus speaks to them the truth, they're totally deaf, they're mute to what Christ is telling them.

The irony is that the Pharisees.

Are literally hearing him speak,.

Jesus Christ speak to them, but they don't have ears to hear what he's truly saying. They do not have the ears,.

Inner ears,.

To hear the truth, to perceive.

This is the way people are today.

So many people hear sermon after sermon, and I call them sermon-proof Christians. They really don't have a great appreciation.

For the Word of the living God.

Because they don't have inner ears to hear what God is saying. They can continue to hear sermon after sermon, and I've seen it so often, and it's so searching to myself as well,.

But it's like.

They hear their strongest preaching and sermons on judgment and repentance and even hell, and people still continue to go in their self-willed way.

And not come to Christ and repent.

How is it? How is it that they can do that? Well, this is what happens here. You know, the irony again is that they're hearing Christ speak, but they don't really have ears to hear what he's really saying.

And the idea is that, and we will come up at the end of this chapter, is that the Pharisees have been true, the followers of Moses and his writings.

In the Torah,.

The Pentateuch,.

They would have recognized Jesus.

For who he was.

If they truly believed in what Moses said. It's true as well that the Pharisees, these theologians of that day, would often miss the very heart of God himself, and it could be easy to know a lot about the Bible, but not to have the Bible changing your heart,.

Your heart. They had a lot of head knowledge,.

And this is a warning. This is such a soul-searching thing for each and every one of us here today, right?

We can have a lot of head knowledge,.

But no heart knowledge. We may hear it,.

And we may time and time again hear this truth, but really, do we truly know what it's saying? So, it makes me think of James the Apostle. James the Apostle prays in James 1 .22 that we would be doers of the word, and just not hearers.

Hearers only.

See, it's more than just hearing it. Now, we do know that faith comes by hearing,.

And hearing by the word of God, and we're going to look at this,.

But it's not just enough to just so-called hear. We must have ears to hear inward, but faith must be activated. You see what I'm saying? That's what the scripture says. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.

So, when we truly do listen to God's word, that faith is activated by God's sovereign grace, as then obedience will result in that. Now, we're going to look at that. Now, let's consider for a moment that the Confrontation, which inspired this entire speech, which the Lord Jesus has been given, it began with Jesus healing a man, as we saw.

He was an invalid for 38 years, and Jesus heals him on the Sabbath, which the Pharisees had considered a violation of the law, and because of such a restricted view that they had, what it meant to follow the Sabbath, and, of course, we know that their view of the Sabbath was erroneous, and they accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath.

Jesus says that they had never seen God's form. In other words, what Jesus is saying is they really don't know who God is. They're blind. They're blind leaders of the blind, and this is exactly what he tells them.

Now, they're actually looking at Jesus, I should say, hearing Jesus, who's God on earth, God in flesh, God himself, Emmanuel, and they really don't see him as he is. They do not believe his claims, so they are not willing to come to him.

So, for who he is, they don't hear him, and they are blind to the truth. They are deaf to the truth,.

And let me add here,.

They're dead. They're like the walking dead, and again, verse 38, that you do not have his word abiding in you. Listen to that. The word of God is not abiding in you, he says, because whom he sent, him you do not believe.

They do not believe.

Why? Why?

Because their hearts were hardened. They had a hard heart of unbelief, and it was all because of their stubborn pride, and sad to say as I minister to you this word, there are literally millions and billions of people in hell, and hell continues to expand because of this.

God does not, and there is a teaching out there that teaches that God ordains people to hell. That is not a biblical doctrine, beloved. Now, to eternal life, yes, he does, and Spurgeon put it this way.

He said that salvation is all of God, but damnation is all of man. That is a very biblical saying, what Spurgeon mentions, and you can go to the word of God, because you see this in Ephesians 1, that God ordains.

This speaks of the doctrine of election. Let me read just a little bit to you, because this is so critical. Paul, the apostle, says, Blessed be the God and Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing and the heavenly places in Christ.

Notice what he says. Just as he chose us, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined, that word predestined means he's marked out, he marked us out in the Greek, to us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made us accepted in the beloved.

In him we have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to the good pleasure, which he purposed in himself.

Notice he said he had made known to us. We did not figure this out. And it is through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, but God the father has elected us in Jesus Christ. There's nothing there in the scriptures that speaks that God ordains people to eternal hell.

That damnation comes because man has unwillingly, unwillingly desired,.

Choose not,.

Chooses not to come to Jesus Christ. Now, we have a lot here in the text. I want to just briefly mention this to you. The first testimony that we've seen, and you can add this. Some say that this is not necessarily one of the witnesses, but I believe it is Jesus himself bears witness of himself.

But Christ says in verse 31, I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. He's not, in other words, valid. He said, he's not saying that he is the truth when we know that he's the truth. What he's saying is there must be, he's keeping the law perfectly and he upholds the law.

There must be out of the mouths of two or three witnesses, others to verify everything that he says. So he said, there's another who bears witness of me. And I know that the witness, which he witnesses of me is true.

And he speaks, of course, of the father. And then there's another witness that we see. It's the second testimony is John the Baptist. We looked at that in verse 33 to verse 35. Then there's another testimony, the third testimony was the works of Jesus.

And we see that in verse 36, in which we saw last Lord's day, but I have a greater witness than John's for the works which the father has given me to finish, the very works that I do, bear witness of me that the father has sent me.

Now, then we come, of course, in verse 37 and 38, the testimony of the father, the witness of the father, in which he's already mentioned, that the father in verse 37, the father himself who sent me has testified of me.

And you have never heard his voice at any time nor seen his form. So you have one witness upon another witness. Jesus gives more than two or three. There's some say a four-fold witness, but you could say it's a five-fold if you see that Jesus himself is the witness.

The Scriptures Testify of Christ

Now, we have another testimony here. And I think this is a very important one. This is our focus for today. Verse 39, Jesus says, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify me.

These are they which testify me.

What is that witness?

The witness of the scriptures. The witness of the scriptures itself. In theory, the religious leaders in Jesus' day supposedly loved and valued the scriptures, but they really didn't love the word of God because he said the love of God is not in them.

And if they say that they love the scriptures, it's because their motive was completely wrong. They really had a love for themselves, didn't they? And don't you see people like that today? They really caught up in themselves.

They really caught up in their own knowledge, their spiritual pride. We need to be cautious of this in the circles of Christianity, and we need to also search our own hearts that we're not caught up in the spiritual pride.

They hear used in the sense of the Old Testament, Jesus speaks of the scriptures, he's referring to the law and the prophets. They studied and memorized, they thought upon them continually and meditated upon the scriptures and tragically missed the whole point of what the scriptures are all about.

And who's that?

The Lord Jesus Christ. The Messiah. Their own Messiah. Who Christ is. Isn't it glorious to know that everything that is said from Genesis to Revelation is all about Jesus Christ? You take Christ out, you take Christ out, as J .C. Ryle says, you have a very dark book, a very dark book.

Jesus Christ.

Himself.

Is the grand subject of the entire Bible. He is everything. And Spurgeon said,.

I love Spurgeon,.

He said,.

You could take me to a scripture,.

And he said,.

It may even seem like it has nothing to do with Christ,.

He says,.

But every scripture,.

He said,.

I can guarantee you, I can take you to Calvary some way. Now it may take you here and there, but it will take you to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the whole reason he's the subject of the entire Bible.

The written word speaks of the living word. Now look with me in this one verse, we're going to really focus on verse 39.

He says,.

You search the scripture. You search. Is there anything wrong with searching the scripture?

No, by no means.

But their motive is wrong. We need to check our hearts.

We need to allow the Holy Spirit, as Paul says, to examine yourselves to see if you're in the faith. What kind of heart do you have? Do you have a heart that loves God? Do you have a heart that truly loves the scriptures?

And not for yourself, but for what the scriptures are about Jesus Christ. Most prefer this translation, you search the scriptures, they're indicative. The verb implies a diligent scrutiny and observation and investigating the scriptures to find eternal life.

John MacArthur in his commentary says this, that gives us observation.

He says,.

However, Jesus points out that with all their fastidious effort, they miserably failed.

In their understanding.

Of the true way to eternal life.

Through the Son of God.

They misunderstood. They had miserable failings in the true way of eternal life, which is found in the Son of the living God,.

Jesus Christ.

They failed to see that. Their motive was again wrong. Their motive was spurious. They did not have a heart to love God because Jesus says in verse 42,.

He says,.

But I know you that you do not have the love of God in you. Isn't it wonderful? When we're born again and regenerated in the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God sheds the love of God, literally sheds it upon our hearts, makes us a new creation.

Then takes out the hard heart, the stony heart, and he puts in a heart of flesh. And the heart of flesh,.

He writes his laws.

And you know,.

I like to look at it like this.

It's as if he does a heart transformation, a surgery internally by the power of the Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, and writing his words upon our hearts, it's like he gives us new desires.

He gives us new affections. So when there's a change that takes place in our life, we don't do the things we used to do, right? We do things different,.

Like we have a bent to love God.

And to fear God and to love him and to love others. That's the motive. Our motives change, our bent, our desires change, our affections change. We have now holy affections, not unholy affections. Even though we war against the flesh and our mind in Romans 7, and that battle continues, rages until the day we're glorified.

But I'm telling you, folks,.

In our innermost being,.

Being born again of the Spirit of God, God himself takes up residence in the Trinity and the person of the Holy Spirit. Christ abides within us. God is our Father, and we're part of the family of God.

Everything is new. Old things have passed away. All things have become new.

D .L. Mooney said,.

When this happened to him in his life, he said he went outside and he said everything took on a different meaning. He understood the clouds, he says, or the dust of his feet. The sun he put in the sky to turn its course, as we read in Psalm 19.

And he understood the meaning of the sun and the meaning of the clouds and the meaning of everything and breath and life.