Classic Christianity – Book of John P23 (12-03-18)
Welcome to Classic Christianity radio with Bob George. Bob George continues teaching from the book of John. From John 7, Bob encourages people to seek to do God’s will and to seek Christ first. Yet so many in the world today stay focused only on the natural things of the world and many still today argue about Jesus. Why do people fail to come to Christ for life today? What spiritual message did Jesus speak? What does he want people to know concerning himself? Do you come to Jesus for what he can do for you, such as healing, physical need of food or water, forgiveness, or do you come to Jesus because of who he is, eternal life, and to receive that life? Have you recognized that you are spiritually dead and in need of life, not physical life but spiritual life? Is this the time for you to come to have life in His name?
Jesus, the man from heaven, came to bring life to man. But man is born spiritually dead because of sin. The cause of death is sin. Jesus came to die to take care of the sin problem of all men by dying on the cross to pay the price of death for sin, which no man could pay. Having no sin of his own, having come from heaven, being God in the flesh, the Spirit of God in Him, he voluntarily laid down his life to become sin for us. Now that the sins of the world have already been taken away when he died con the cross, he was also raised from the dead, since sin has no hold on him, and offers life, His eternal life, a life with no beginning and no end, to be put into man so he may live spiritually.
When reading the book of John, one reads that even his own family, his physical brothers and sisters, did not believe in him. And we know he had physical brothers and sisters because the scriptures tell us plainly.
Matthew 13:55
55 “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?
Mark 6:3
3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
Why is that everyone was questioning Jesus? Even his own brothers and sisters did not believe in him. Starting in John 7:3 one reads about Jesus going to the feast of tabernacles, where for 7 days the Jewish people build shelters in September or October to celebrate the 40 years in the desert under the leadership of Moses. Jesus brothers scoffed at Jesus, urging him to go and make himself known, falsely claiming Jesus wanted to become famous.
John 7:3-5 (TLB)
3 and Jesus’ brothers urged him to go to Judea for the celebration.
“Go where more people can see your miracles!” they scoffed. 4 “You can’t be famous when you hide like this! If you’re so great, prove it to the world!” 5 For even his brothers didn’t believe in him.
As one reads further, Jesus replied that it was not the right time for him to go (that is to go and be killed by those plotting his death, John 7:1). Jesus did go, but secretly not publicly. While there secretly, people were arguing about who Jesus was and if he was coming. Some said he was a good man and others said he was a deceiver. So people were divided concerning him. Not until halfway through the celebration did Jesus start to speak.
It is noteworthy to ponder the answer Jesus gave to his brothers who urged him to go.
John 7:6-9
6 Jesus replied, “It is not the right time for me to go now. But you can go anytime and it will make no difference, 7 for the world can’t hate you; but it does hate me, because I accuse it of sin and evil. 8 You go on, and I’ll come later when it is the right time.” 9 So he remained in Galilee.
Bob George emphasized various passages where Jesus spoke about his time has not yet come. What time is Jesus talking about? Jesus is talking about his time to become savior of the world, his death to take away sin and his resurrection to give life to men.
John 7:6
6 Jesus replied, “It is not the right time for me to go now.
John 7:8
8 You go on, and I’ll come later[a] when it is the right time.”
John 7:30
30 Then the Jewish leaders sought to arrest him; but no hand was laid on him, for God’s time had not yet come.
Ponder again Jesus answer in John 7:7. Jesus accused the world of sin and evil and that is why the world hated Jesus. Why do you suppose Jesus exposed sin and evil? If people do not recognize their sinfullness, will they ever see their need for a savior? Recall also the character of Herod in a prior chapter of John. He saw Jesus as a threat to his authority and position. There are those who stubbornly refuse to believe and will only think in the natural ways of this world and give no thought to life after death.
When Jesus spoke at the Tabernacles Celebration in Judea, people were amazed at his teaching. Jesus explained the source of his teaching. He told them he was not teaching his own thoughts, but those of God who sent him. The man from heaven must have an important message. People should listen!
Bob George emphasized John 7:17-18.
John 7:17-18
17 If any of you really determines to do God’s will, then you will certainly know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own. 18 Anyone presenting his own ideas is looking for praise for himself, but anyone seeking to honor the one who sent him is a good and true person.
Why do you come to Jesus? Is it only because you saw him perform a miracle? Recall earlier when Jesus fed the 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish. The next day the people came to see him. In John 6:25-27, Jesus told them to look for spiritual food, eternal life, and not for food that spoils. Or did you come to Jesus for spiritual food? Recall earlier when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman about living water? Did she come to believe? Why was she willing to believe and the others were not? Consider also Enoch who walked with God and was no more for God had taken him! Enoch must have really wanted to do the will of God!
Jesus is the only life available to man. Yes, you can have your physical needs met, only to have to have them met again another day. If you are healed of cancer, but fail to come to Jesus for life, then that is all the life you will have, for you will still die eventually, even if from old age. But if you die spiritually, what have you gained? Nothing! The Spirit gives life and the flesh counts for nothing. So what was Jesus appeal to men?
John 6:27-29
27 But you shouldn’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. No, spend your energy seeking the eternal life that I, the Messiah, can give you. For God the Father has sent me for this very purpose.”
28 They replied, “What should we do to satisfy God?”
29 Jesus told them, “This is the will of God, that you believe in the one he has sent.”
People spend so much time focusing on natural things. Indeed, man being spiritually dead, that is all they can relate to. But Jesus spoke about things from heaven, where he came from. He knows full well the condition of man. And what was the one thing Jesus said was the will of God? To believe in the one who was sent? Why was he sent?
How can someone spiritually dead come to understand spiritual things? It must be revealed to him by the Spirit. But noticed what Jesus says so that the Spirit may be revealed to man. First of all, he urged men to seek eternal life, the only available life to man, that he alone can give. Seek to understand things in a different realm than just the natural. Consider also what Jesus said in John 7:17. If anyone determines to do God’s will, then you will know if his teaching is from God. So do you determine to know God’s will? Do you read God’s word so you can do God’s will?
Bob emphasized this change in heart when someone comes to believe in Jesus. This change in heart leads to action. That is the meaning of James when he writes that faith without works is dead. James is not negating faith but is identifying what real faith in Jesus will be produced in you and through you. We cannot manufacture love b y our own power that we never had. The Spirit of the living God so changes your heart and the Holy Spirit takes residence in you that you do the works pleasing to God. That is why Rahab the prostitute hid the spies for she feared God.
Bob said talk is cheap. Do you think that if you were president you would do this or that? You do not know what you would do until you are put in a position where you have to act. Would you be absorbed into the political climate and cave under pressure or influences of the world? Where is your faith? Is it in principles from the living God, who alone is holy? Would you stand firm with truth because you trust God to produce the work through you? Jesus does the real work in and through you. You say you love one another, but do you? It is so easy to say what we would do, but even as a believer, there are pressures in this world that when faced, we do not really know how we will act. Let us not kid ourselves but live by faith day to day.
People of the world start out under law, trying to obey the commandments, that says do not do this, but do this to be good. If someone under the law is honest with himself he will come to understand that his failure to do or not do things exposes his real problem, that there is something wrong with him. And when the law finishes its work then the person comes to realize how wretched and hopeless he is, that he indeed is spiritually dead, unable to carry the just requirements of the law. That was what the Samaritan woman at the well came to realize concerning herself, and she had heard about a coming Messiah. When he revealed himself to her, then she believed.
Bob George shared his own personal testimony, going to a Presbyterian church, not knowing anything spiritually, but going to church. He talks about how he tried to be a god husband, but then came to realize his shortcomings and failures revealed to him a deeper problem, a deeper need. He would ponder in his heart that there is something wrong with him. So too is everyone born in Adam, dead spiritually, until the Spirit reveals himself to man. But when will man see his need? When the time is right. When they are exhausted by the weight of the law they cannot obey? When they see they have a deep need that only God can meet. When they see an emptiness in their soul, a void that needs to be filled. And that something, or rather someone, missing is the Spirit of the living God.
Think about the offer of life Jesus spoke of.
John 6:40
40 For it is my Father’s will that everyone who sees his Son and believes on him should have eternal life—that I should raise him at the Last Day.”
If one reads John 6 again, think about all the spiritual truth Jesus spoke. Jesus referred to himself as the Bread of Life that whoever eats this bread shall have eternal life and that all who believe shall be taught of God. Indeed, anyone who believes in Jesus already has eternal life. The Bread is my flesh to redeem humanity. He is the Living Bread that came from Heaven. Jesus is using physical illustrations concerning bread to explain spiritual truth. As physical bread provides a physical need, spiritual bread provides a spiritual need. Come unto Jesus, the spiritual Bread, to have rest for your souls. And whoever eats this Bread, or drinks this living water, will not have to keep coming back for more! Now, Jesus is speaking spiritually here and sadly many have falsely come to believe that they have to keep coming to eat a physical wafer that God dwells in. That is not what Jesus is saying. Jesus does not dwell in a wafer made of human hands. Jesus has risen and is seated at the right hand of God. The work he came to do is finished.
Jesus knows our condition in sin already, and even knows what we need before we even ask. It is not about what language you speak, English or German or tongues, but the attitude in the heart. Prayer is an expression from your heart. Do you want to do God’s will, then come to Jesus for life, and stop trying to be made righteous by obeying laws that you were never able to keep. Do you acknowledge your wretched condition? Do you want new life, to let Christ produce in you and through you, to love God and your neighbor as yourself? You could never love God or your neighbor in your dead spiritual state. Bob made a point to say that God listens to the heart not the precise words one says. Have you ever had someone ask you, “How are you doing?” Was your answer an expression of what you are really experiencing? What you say with your mouth is not a direct reflection on what is on our heart. Just as God chose David to be king not by outward appearance, what man looks at, but the heart of David, who is referred to in scripture as a man after God’s own heart. Prayer is language of the heart. And to make his point more clear, think about those with Parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimer’s, or tongue cut out, but have come to believe in God. Are they lost in Jesus because they cannot speak? No. God listens to the attitude in the heart, the belief in Him.
All the Old Covenant was about showing the righteousness that is in Christ. The law is holy, righteous and good but man is not, being weakened by the sinful nature, being spiritually dead already in sin inherited in Adam. When Jesus walked the earth, he was living in the Old Covenant, teaching under it. He alone perfectly fulfilled its just requirements for us. The teachings of Jesus, such as the sermon on the mount, buried us under the law. If someone strikes you on the cheek, then show him your other cheek and other such teachings. Oh, and the ones Jesus spoke when he said if you look lustfully at a woman you have already committed adultery. He exposed the internal source of sin, sin in us, showing us our spiritually dead condition that we might seek Christ to redeem and save us.
But what do many men start out doing, or the keepers of the law. When one reads Jesus interaction with the law keepers, those spouting off the law of Moses in John 7:20-24, what did Jesus say in response to them? Not one of you keeps the law. Yet the law keeper says, but I am trying. They tell you to obey the law when they themselves cannot obey the law. And how blind they are. They can spot sin in others but are often blind to their own sin. When Jesus confronted the Jews who claimed Jesus was breaking the law by healing a man on the Sabbath, how did Jesus respond?
John 7:21-24
21-23 Jesus replied, “I worked on the Sabbath by healing a man, and you were surprised. But you work on the Sabbath, too, whenever you obey Moses’ law of circumcision (actually, however, this tradition of circumcision is older than the Mosaic law); for if the correct time for circumcising your children falls on the Sabbath, you go ahead and do it, as you should. So why should I be condemned for making a man completely well on the Sabbath? 24 Think this through and you will see that I am right.”
Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of men who try to become righteous by observing the law. The way of righteousness is to believe in the the one who is Holy who can make you Holy by giving you His very life to live in and through you. So then, it is His work, not yours, to be lived in and through you.
And what is our boast? In our ability to speak, our oratory or knowledge? No. What example do we have from the apostle Paul, whom God worked through to bring the gospel to the Gentiles?
1 Corinthians 2:2-6
2 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
God’s wisdom is revealed by the Spirit. Ponder again the meaning of Jesus words in John 7:18.
John 7:18
18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.
The Spirit spoke through Jesus. Jesus did not speak on his own. How then should we live? By the same Holy Spirit living in us! Whose honor did Jesus seek? Not his own but the will of His Father. How then should we live by the same Holy Spirit living in us?
We do not have to be persuasive of speech. Indeed, boast in your weakness that the power of God will rest on you. The message is a simple message. You are spiritually dead and in need of life, spiritual life, that only Jesus can give, the only life available to man. Recall Paul also resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Only Jesus Christ lasts for He is eternal life. We are in this world and will eventually leave this world, and unless Jesus tarries, we will all die physically. We shall all be raised, some to eternal life and others to eternal destruction because they failed to come to Christ for life. Who produces godly sorrow in you? Is that not what God produces in you so you can come to Christ? Who disciplines you so you can bear fruit that lasts? None of us are free from the pull of sin, disease, hardships or despair, but all purity is with Jesus. Jesus embeds spiritual truth in our hearts, to those who have believed the message concerning Jesus Christ, in regards to his death, burial, and resurrection. Proclaim Jesus Christ, God’s wisdom, not the wisdom of this world but from the wisdom revealed by the Spirit of God. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.
God knows what is going to happen, and we have some insight by what Jesus told us in His word in Revelation. So how many presidents have you lived under, seeing the waste and fraud and all manner of evil? The rulers of this age will come to nothing. Yes, God shares things with us so we can be prepared and have a hope and a future, no matter what the future holds down here. God holds the future and it ends in perfection and God’s glory.
1 John 5:12
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
1 Corinthians 2:6-9
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
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