Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Jesus Christ P8 (10-20-20)
Synopsis
Growing in grace is growing to understand all that God has freely given you, to know the inheritance you have in Christ Jesus, and to learn to rest in Him. It is maturing in your knowledge of the grace of God that has been extended to you in Christ Jesus. It is maturing as you hit life’s problems, trials and tribulations. We have an option to either walk by faith in Jesus who said “I am the way, the truth and the life”, or to go out and try to solve them on our own.
As we learned yesterday, God is the great I Am. But knowing that God is our creator God, what does that practically mean to you and me today? Jesus explained what that meant when He identified Himself as the I Am and illustrated with additional I Am statements, amplifying in physical terms that you and I can relate to. We know what bread and water means to our physical existence. We experience light and darkness whenever day turns to night, and see the contrast as we lay our head on a pillow at night. And the older you get, we all know what physical death is when we go to a funeral service or a gravesite to bury a loved one.
Currently, we are very much alive to the physical world we live in but are dead to God. So what Jesus was explaining to us was our need of spiritual life, that He came to give us, in terms of what we do understand and can relate to, that which we are alive to. He came to explain to us what we are missing in our lives, and are dead to, in hopes that we would want that life, not just any life, a temporary life we now have, alive to this world but dead to God, but eternal life, knowing God and His Son Jesus Christ.
So we ponder over these I Am statements that Jesus said concerning Himself as it relates to you and me. He identified Himself as the bread of life (John 6:25-59), the living water (John 4:1-26, John 7:37-41, Revelation 21:6), the light of the world (John 3:1-21, John 8:12, John 9:1-12), the good Shepherd (John 10:1-21, Psalm 23), the way (John 10:1-21, Acts 4:12), the truth (John 1:1-18, John 4:1-26, John 8:31-47, John 17:13-19), the life (John 1:1-18, John 14:5-14. John 3:31-36, John 5:21-26) and the resurrection (John 11:17-37). So read these passages, and as you do, ask the Spirit of God to reveal to you, not a natural meaning, but the intended spiritual meaning He wants you to grasp and know that you might have life in His name and experience that abundant life He promised.
I am the bread of life.
John 6:35
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
I am the living water.
John 7:38
38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
Revelation 21:6
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.
I am the light of the world.
John 8:12
12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
I am the good Shepherd.
John 10:11
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
I am the resurrection.
John 11:25-26
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus was speaking to us of our condition of spiritual death and our need of new life, spiritual life or eternal life. He spoke out of a heart of deep love for us, seeing our hopeless state, being dead in our trespasses and sins, and our great need of life, God’s life, the only spiritual life available to man. So God sent Jesus into this world to redeem a world lost in darkness, in sin and death, by shedding his blood on a cross, without which there is no forgiveness of sins. He did this in order to be raised from the dead, so that He can give His life to those who are willing to put their faith in Him.
What spiritual death is is mankind without the Spirit of God living in him. When Adam, the first created being on earth, decided to choose for himself what is right and wrong, good and evil, there was a consequence to that, as God had warned, that the day you do that you shall surely die. Adam did and he died. He did not immediately die physically but he did die spiritually that day. The Spirit of God left him.
To this day every man born in Adam has been born without the Spirit of God living in him. Mankind has been fallen, along with all creation, with all sorts of sickness, thorns and thistles, pain and eventual death, both physical death and continual spiritual death, an eternal separation from God if he remains in that state. God so loved the world that a solution was provided in Jesus Christ to solve that problem of mankind.
That solution was provided by God Himself, the only one who has spiritual life in Himself, the one who is the way, the truth and the life. He is the only one who has spiritual bread and living water from heaven. He is the only one who is the good Shepherd who can lay down His life for the sheep. He is the one who is the source of living water that never runs out, that wells up to eternal life. He is the only one who is the light of the world, the one who sheds light on man’s sinful condition so he can see his condition of death and be willing to come to Him for spiritual life. He is the only one who is the truth. There is no other truth. He is the truth so man can walk in the way he was originally designed, with the Spirit of God living in Him. He is the provision for all man’s needs to live and move and have his being, to be set free from bondage to sin and decay and to walk freely in the new way of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Transcript
We grow when we say, “Lord, this is your battle, not mine.” Therefore, turn to Him to solve the problems, to take care of the problems, instead of trying to do them on your own. It is the same type of thing that says, “if an enemy comes up and slaps you on the cheek, turn the other one.” Everything inside of us is totally contrary to that. What we want to do is if someone hits you on the cheek is to take their head off. He says, “No, let me handle that.”
Romans 12:9
19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[Deuteronomy 32:35] says the Lord.
If we ever get that in our feeble minds, that would save ourselves from a multitude of problems. It is not our responsibility. He is our defender. He is our sword. He is our protector and we are not. So He is the bread of life. He is totally sufficient. When we come to Him, we have everything that we need in Christ Jesus.
Folks, stop seeking something else. It is a repudiation of faith. If you are in Christ, you have found. Now get to know your inheritance, not seeking something else, but getting to know what you already have. You have already been given everything you need for life and for godliness. He did not say He left anything out. He has given you everything you need. If you have already been given everything you need for life and godliness, how much sense does it mean to be seeking something else. Now you spend the rest of your life discovering what your inheritance is in Christ Jesus. That is what it means to grow in grace and to walk by faith.
He not only gave us our bread, He gave us our light.
John 8:12
12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
There you go again with this area of life.
John 20:31
31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Light, my friends, is what enables you to see in darkness. Light is the opposite of darkness. You would not know what darkness is if you have not seen light. You would not know what light is if you did not have darkness. That is a contrast. That is the condition of the world. The world is either in darkness, lost, or in light, found.
There is no place in the scripture where light and darkness is anything else except lost and saved. Light and darkness is never represented as being saved but being a little out of fellowship. I am sorry that is taught, but that is not in the bible. Light and darkness is always lost and saved. If you are in the light, as 1 John says, as He, Jesus, is in the light, then the consequence of being in the light is that you and Jesus, the one who is the light, have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son keeps on continuing His work cleansing you of all unrighteousness. That is His work that is ongoing, and is continual as a result of you being in the light. It has nothing to do with our asking or begging, but it is His work that He does continually to those who are in the light.
1 John 1:7
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
As a child of God, in Him, the light, you have redemption, the forgiveness of sin.
Ephesians 1:7
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
You do not get redemption over and over again. You do not get redeemed and unredeemed and neither do you get forgiven and unforgiven over and over again. If you are in the light there is a consequence to being in the light. You have redemption. You have forgiveness. You do not get forgiven. You are forgiven. You have His righteousness. You do not get righteousness. You already have His righteousness. He set you apart. You do not get holy or holier. You are already holy. You have already been set apart as a child of God. You do not get more justified or try to get more justified. If you are in the light, you are justified. It has already been taken care of. You do not work to be glorified. You have already been glorified, if you are in the light. If you are in darkness, none of those things are true.
Light and darkness is an absolute presentation of lost and saved. To a lost, dark world, Jesus came and said, ̴I am the light of the world”, of the entire world. Jesus did not say, “I am a little flashlight.” “I am the total light of the world.” If you are the light of the world, that means there is no other light. He is talking about being the spiritual life. He is the only spiritual life. He did not say He was one of those lights, not one of those thousand points, but He said He is the light of the world.
John 8:12
12 Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
He said to never walk in darkness, and so we have to believe Christ or not. Back to 1 John.
1 John 1:7
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
When you are in the light, His blood continually lives in you to cleanse you of every sin imaginable. If you are in the light as He is in the light, what did He say? He says you will never walk in darkness. That alleviates that hair-brained idea that we are in the light, then we get over into darkness, then we confess our sin and get back into the light. Jesus said that if you are in the light, you will never ever walk in darkness, and will have the light of life.
Are you in Christ? Then you are in the light. Whose light? His light. Is He ever going to leave you? No. Then how could light ever leave you? No. If light followed you into darkness, and He is the light of the world, then it would cease to be dark. We have to understand that. If you are in darkness, you are lost. If you are in the light, you are saved. He is the light of the world, the only means of salvation.
John 10:9
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.
Not only did Jesus say I am the I am, identifying Himself as God, He said He is the bread of life. And we just talked about him being the light of the world. We now have our daily sustenance, our bread and living water. We have light that frees us from the bondage of darkness. We have food that frees us from the bondage of hunger and thirst. Now, we are talking about freedom of movement.
Folks, of course, there He is talking about the work of a shepherd. There are some phenomenal works that have been done on the 23rd psalm, describing a shepherd. There is an excellent book out there explaining the work of a shepherd and how they work with sheep. Jesus identified Himself as the good shepherd. The shepherd would guard the gate. If there was a sheep pen out there, he was the one who guarded the gate. The gate was relatively narrow. It is my understanding that the shepherd at night would lay down across that opening. In other words, they do not have gates like we do that you can swing and lock up. The shepherd then became the gate. For a sheep to get out of the gate, he would have to climb over the shepherd. Of course, he did not allow that to occur. It also talks about the fact that my sheep hear my voice.
John 10:27
27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
It is interesting to observe shepherds and their sheep. I remember when I was over in Israel, you would see outside of Jerusalem the sheepherders come in with hundreds of sheep. They would all be in together. You might have ten shepherds out there with all their sheep, hundreds of sheep. Are they branded? How are they going to find theirs from all of these? They are all intermixed in there. Then all of a sudden, you would hear the shepherd getting ready to move, and he would then make a specific, guttural sound, and all those sheep that belonged to him would prick up their ears and get up and follow him right out of there. The sound of his voice caused their reaction.
So, the Shepherd, when He is talking about being the gate, He is saying that no one is going to enter except through Me, and that means no one is coming in to get out and you are not going to get out. I am going to be in front of the gate. It is a phenomenal passage of eternal security God has given us as well. I go out and not lose one. You are not going to climb over me and no one is going to climb in. It means security. When I get up and we go out into the fields, then I am right out there with you. And my rod and my staff are going to comfort you. He is the protector and keeper of your salvation.
Psalm 23:1-6
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
John 10:11
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
There is another characteristic, that in many instances, a shepherd would lose his own life for the sake of his sheep. He would take risks in order to save his sheep. Jesus is saying that He is that good Shepherd. As the good Shepherd, He did not say He was a good shepherd, but the good Shepherd. As the good shepherd, He is going to do something for you. He is going to lay down His life for the sheep. The only reason that a shepherd would ever give up his own life for his sheep would be love for his sheep, wouldn’t it? That is what Jesus is saying to us. “I love you and I am going to lay down my life for you.”
John 3:16
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
In John 14:6, He also makes another claim.
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
This is a marvelous claim that we talk about quite often in our teaching, where Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
It is always interesting to me that He does not use “a” but just “the”s. He does not say “I am a way”, “I am a truth“, “I am a life”, or “No one comes to a Father except through me.” He says, “I am the way”, “I am the truth“, “I am the life” and “No one comes to the Father except through me.”. There is only one Father, there is only one way, there is only one truth, there is only one life and that is Jesus Christ our Lord.
There is no other way to God except through Him./
Acts 4:12
12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
He is the way. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing
When He says, “I am the life.” When He says “I am the resurrection and the life” then someone asks, “Is there any other way to come to life? Can a corpse come to life through Buddha or religion, or belonging to a church. The evangelical would say, “No. No. There is no life apart from His life.” If anyone claimed there was spiritual life, eternal life, that is given any other way except through His Son, who is the only possessor of that life, would we not say that is heretical, absolutely heretical, and rightfully so.
But when we get to the middle. Those are the book ends. When we get to this thing called the truth, is it strange how we compromise. We will come up and say, “Yes, God is truth, yet all truth is God’s truth. A little psychology is truth. A little of this is truth. After all we have to compromise and get together in the name of love. ” Jesus says, “No. I did not come to bring peace”, although He is the prince of peace. He says, “I came to bring a sword. I did not come to compromise with the truth. I came to bring you Truth.” But there is something about that truth that is inerrant in and of itself. It is indicative of itself. That is, that truth divides.
Matthew 10:34-36
34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn“‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’[Micah 7:6]
Whenever you lay down a line of truth, you are going to people on one side of it and people on the other side of it. It is going to divide. Truth in its division, and not compliance to, is going to cause not peace but the very opposite of that.
So when Jesus talked about being the truth, what He means is there was a line that is drawn, and on one side of the line where the light is, where the bread is, that is where the gate is, that is where the good shepherd is, on that side of the line is where truth is and anything that is not over here means that it belongs over there. It is not one of those things, where someone says, “Let us take a little truth over from darkness and bring it into the light and see how it goes.” It does not work that way, folks, if He is the truth. If He is a truth then that would be okay. If He is a truth then He would have to be a way and a light. But if He is the truth, then what Jesus said is the only thing we know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true. I do not know Truth apart from what Christ communicated through His word. I don ’ t even know what truth would be apart from that. As a matter of fact, no one else did either. That is why Pilate asked, “What is truth?” He did not know and neither did we.
John 18:38
38 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.
It is the same thing in the garden of Eden. Is that not what God said in the garden of Eden?
Genesis 2:16-17
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
You do not know good and evil. You do not know Truth. You cannot determine it. You are a created being. The creator, your maker, can only tell you what Truth is. You cannot determine it on your own. Everything else you have freedom to do, but do not try to do that one. So man has ignored everything and has said “No, God. You do not know what you are talking about and I do.” There is no blending. If you have pure milk and you have pure chocolate and you blend them together, you have got chocolate milk. You have lost the purity of the milk. You have lost the purity of the chocolate. You now have a hybrid breed of something called chocolate milk.
You try to comingle law with its severity and grace with its mercy and you come up with something called Galatianism. It is not Christianity at all. It robbed the law of its wrath. It robbed grace of its mercy and you have got a hybrid breed of something called modern day Christianity. You cannot commingle. You cannot mix truth and error. You cannot mix oil and water. You cannot mix law and grace. If Jesus is the truth, then do not try to comingle psychology and philosophy and religious jargon into the revealed word of God identified by Jesus Himself as the truth.
The Lord Jesus Christ identified Himself as the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. How do you have a relationship with the Father? Through the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, revealed to us by the Holy Spirit of God, that Trinity in action.
Now, not only did Jesus in that verse refer to Himself as being the truth and life but He amplifies that life once again in the 11th chapter of John, beginning in verse 25.
John 11:25
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Of course, if you need a resurrection, it is because someone is dead. I do not know why you need resurrected if you were already alive. He is obviously not talking about physical life there because how could you believe in Him and live if you were physically dead? I do not know if you noticed that or not, but that is very difficult for a corpse to do. But if you are spiritually dead, and what that means is simply that you are dead to what was alive. What was alive in man as he was created and as Jesus was born, was the life of God living in man. So when Adam sinned, and the life of God departed from Adam’s human spirit, his human spirit, that delineated him from the animal kingdom, was dead to what left him, God, who is life. But very much alive to where he remained, and that was to the world. So it is not that man’s human spirit is dead inasmuch as it is malfunctioning or cannot function. That is not true. Otherwise he would be an animal. So his human spirit has spiritual characteristics that are characteristic of man delineated of course from that of the animal kingdom. But what his spirit is dead to is to what left him and that was life. So when God’s life left man, his spirit was left dead to what left him, life, and left alive to where he remained and that is to the world. Otherwise, he would be an animal.
So when he is talking about, “I am resurrection and the life”, then he is talking about the fact that I am here to offer life to the dead, to the spiritually dead.
John 10:10
10 I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
John 20:31
31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
So Christ is the bearer of the good news, and that is, “I came to give you life. I am the resurrection. I am the life.”
Again, he did not say He was a resurrection. And He did not say He is a life. He is the resurrection. There is only one resurrection that is going to give you life and that is mine.
John 11:25-27
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
Well, I ask you the question. Do you believe that? Because how could you say, “Yes, I believe that, that whosoever believes in me will never die, and to realize that losing your salvation would mean dying again would it not? In other words the life of God would depart from you, leaving you dead again. But Jesus said, “I will never leave you or forsake you and whoever believes in me shall never die.” So how can you do that when he said you would never die? He is talking about spiritually. Do you believe this?
Do you realize, folks, there are millions of people proclaiming to be Christian, and again probably are, but have been taught they can lose what God says you can never lose and are taught that you can walk away from God who says you can never walk away. You see, one again, with Jesus as the gate. A sheep gets in there and says, “I do not like this place. I am going to go.” Who is he going to have to crawl over to get out of that place? Jesus. Is Jesus going to let him out? No. He will whack him on the head and put him back in where he belongs. You do not walk away from Him and He does not walk away from you. When you are in Christ, you are in Him forever. A person says, “Well, what if someone wants to leave?” Come on, why would you want to? No one I know would want to leave Jesus. Leave religion? Yes. Leave legalism? Yes. Leave an organization? Yes. Leave Jesus? Come on? Not if you have ever known Him. That would be like saying, “I do not like my arm. I am going to get rid of it.”
If you have come to know Christ and have truly come to know Him, your life, why would you ever want to get rid of your life? Jesus is that resurrection. Jesus is your life. When you believe in Him, though you were dead, yet shall you live and whosoever lives and believes in Him will never die.
As a child of God, a person who has responded to the person who is the bread of life, the one who is living water, so you will never thirst or hunger again, responding to the one who is light, the only solution to darkness, the one who is the gate, the absolute guarantee of your certainty as a child of God, as a sheep, as the good shepherd who will lay his life down for you, the one who demonstrated his love in that while yet sinners he died for you, the one who said he is the way, the truth and the life and the resurrection. Now it is saying, “I am in you and now you are in me.” In other words, he is now going to give an illustration of the vine and the branch. “I am the vine and you are the branches.”
John 15:5
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
You can see Jesus looking at a grapevine and explaining this to his disciples. “Do you see how branches come out of there, guys? I am the source of life in that branch.”
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