Making Clean what was Not and making Whole what was broken
Several years ago, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks did a comedy skit called “The 2013 Year Old Man”. In the skit, Reiner interviews Brooks, who is the old gentleman who has lived for over 2000 years. At one point, Reiner asks the old man, “Did you always believe in the Lord?” Brooks replied: “No. We had a guy in our village named Harry, and for a time we worshiped him.” Reiner: “You worshiped a guy named Harry? Why?” Brooks: “Because he was big, and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands!” Reiner: “Did you have prayers?” Brooks: “Yes, would you like to hear one? ‘O Harry, please don’t be mean, and hurt us, or break us in two with your bare hands.’” Reiner: “So when did you start worshiping the Lord?” Brooks: “Well, one day a big thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Harry. We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, ‘There’s somthin’ bigger than Harry!’”
The last few weeks we have been looking at the Gospel of John and we have met a Jesus that is bigger than one can imagine.
I would call John’s view of Jesus as Cosmic – To big to contain with words – Jesus is the very God that Created the Universe –
We get insight into this in the prologue – John has let us in on his secret in the prologue – we know who Jesus really is, and we get to see His interaction with others that have no clue but start to get a glimpse of His glory.
In last week’s story we saw Jesus in Samaria – He didn’t have to go through Samaria geographically but he had to for other reasons.
We see the woman at the well believe and man Samaritans turn to Christ.
Jesus stays with them for two days – these people that were once unclean to the Jews have been made clean by the Gospel.
BACKGROUNDS-
We see at the end of John chapter 4 that Jesus returns to His hometown of Galilee and they receive Him because they have heard of the great things that He has done In Jerusalem.
The Receive Him because He has worked Miracles – Here is the irony of the whole thing – Jesus is accepted by the Samaritans by Just HIS TEACHINGS but the Galileans are convinced only because of His Miracles.
Who has the more mature and full faith, those that are convinced by the teaching of Christ or by just miracles?
Which one will have faith that really connects the heart, and mind.
There is much Irony to this.
Jesus is constantly turning things upside down on their head.
In the final portion of John 4 we witness Jesus healing a Nobleman’s Son – John informs us that this is the 2nd Sign or Miracle of Jesus and he does this at Cana of Galilee where he turned the water to wine.
A nobleman comes to Jesus to have Jesus heal his son. Jesus tells the man to go home and his son will be healed.
The passage says specifically in John 4
John 4: 49
Jesus said to him, "Go ; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.
This is a key phrase for the rest of John’s Gospel-
THE WORD OF JESUS – this man believed the word of Jesus –
As we go through this gospel we are going to have to grapel with this idea of what Jesus says, Will we do what Jesus says?
The man finds out that his son was healed the very hour that Jesus told him his son would be healed.
After this second sign in Cana of Galilee Jesus returns to Jerusalem in the South.
He is there for a feast of the Jews.
Just as there are Seven miracles in John’s account there are seven feast in John’s gospel.
John chapters 5-10 will focus on each feast that Jesus attends of the Seven.
Most people think that this feast is Pentecost and Pentecost would be one of the three feasts that required a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Pentecost is the Highest Sabbath day of the year. The Sabbath fell on Saturday or the Seventh day of the week.
Pentecost fell on the seventh week after Passover
Pentecost was called Shavout or literally – The feast of Sevens – the Feast of weeks.
Now imagine that this time is the most holy time of the Jews as far as the Sabbath is observed.
This is the passage that we are going to focus on this morning and that is John 5: 1-24
John 5: 1-4
1 After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. 3 In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters ; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water ; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]
Let us set this story in its geographical setting – the Sheep gate is where the sheep were brought into the Temple for slaughter.
This was the first gate built by Zerubbabel and Nehemiah when they first rebuilt the Temple. This gate was close to the Temple so that the sheep could easily get to the Temple.
This pool was where the sheep would be washed as they were about to go into the Temple.
There was a legend that an Angel of the Lord would stir the water and the first one to get in the water would be healed by God.
Many sick would line this pool underneath these porticos for shade to go into the water to get healed.
John 5: 5-7
5 A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, "Do you wish to get well ?" 7 The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me."
1) Get into the action-
This man was lame for 38 years – now this number is significant. If you remember Israel was in the wilderness for 38 years. We think of the wilderness wanderings as 40 years but the actual wilderness wandering was 38 years.
Israel spend 2 years at Sinai and then spent 38 years in the wilderness. As this story unfolds we will see more and more of the plight of Israel in this man’s story.
Deuteronomy 2 tells us that it was 38 years of wandering
Israel spend 38 years in the wilderness captive to sin and disobedience. They were literally locked up in sin and needed liberation.
Jesus is coming to liberate this man from his bondage.
This man was just as Israel was and found himself in a miserable situation that felt like he would never get out of. He was locked in a rut of doing things the same way all the time.
Jesus comes to offer a new way of living – Something different, something special, something radically different than before.
The man’s response was not very spectacular – he basically said that he could not get into the pool unless someone helped him. He is totally helpless and has been in this state for 38 years.
Just as the woman at the well last week had five husbands and those five husbands would make one think of the 5 idols that Samaritans had worshipped at one time and had muddled their Jewish faith- This man represents the Jewish people and their time of disobedience.
The Jews in the time of Jesus were still in bondage and in a spiritual sense they were locked up in sin just as their ancestors were in the 38 years of wilderness wandering.
The Samaritan woman had 5 historical husbands and this man was literally sick for 38 years but they also stood as representatives of their people and the current spiritual conditions of both Samaria and Judea –they both were in need of Christ to lead them out of their ignorance and their bondage to sin.
Jesus = a new way of living – a radical call of liberation and new living.
When I see this man’s response to Jesus – I think of a man I met at Riverside Christian Academy - the man was Robert Reed and he came to speak to the kids at RCA.
Robert had Cerebral Palsy and was severely disabled – he could barely speak and was severely limited in his motor skills.
But this guy had gone to Abilene University and earned a degree in Latin- He then graduated and moved to Portugal to be a missionary –He lead in one year 70 people to Christ by sitting in the park and when people would come and talk to him he would share Jesus.
He was determined that his disability would not get in the way of sharing Jesus with others.
I was so inspired when I saw this guy, I think about how I complain about the simplest things in life but he some many people cope with things every day that I could never imagine.
We as Christians in a way are sitting on the side of the pool like this guy.
I will tell you how I thought for years and sometimes think this way now.
I thought that I would wait on God to show me where I needed to go, what Church I would need to go to or what grand scheme that He had for me.
I would just study my Bible, learn from it, maybe be a missionary.
I was totally missing the point. God is calling you to get involved just where you are.
Let me speak candidly to you for a minute. This is something that begins at this pulpit with me and at the door of my home. It also is on you too. This is on all of us.
There is not one of us here that could not get involved a little more with the work of this Church. We need to go home and pray that God will allow us to be more active in this church.
If you think that you could serve the church in some capacity we need you to step up to the plate. If you can help with Wednesday night and our kids please help.
We need people teaching our young people in our classes. The same people tend to constantly teach the classes, we need helpers, we need teachers.
I have heard people say that if I teach a class I will not learn and I will miss out on my classes. Let me tell you something – the best way to learn the Scripture is to teach. You will grow more from teaching than from ever sitting in a class.
We lost a precious sister last week in Christ – I look at her and I want my daughters to grow up to be like her. I want them to be godly like that.
Folks that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. People like Miss Eleanor are not easily made. It takes formation by Scripture and study and the life of the Church. She did things behind the scenes like order flowers for anyone that needed them. We need folks that will step up and get involved like that.
For the future of our children, for the future of our church, for the future of the lost in this community – if you can be here on Wednesday with your children please come, if you can teach a class please teach, if you can just help us find ways to make this church better please share.
Don’t sit there like this guy did and wait.
Basically Jesus had to coerce this guy to get healed. Don’t do that to Christ and His Church.
Some of the earliest Christian sermons have been preserved through the ages and St. Augustine and others saw in this passage great symbolism.
They saw this man as an example of how one is saved. They see that Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed- He has to want to get of his situation.
God calls us and we must respond that call. The next part that is interesting is that the man is healed but the words Jesus speaks to him are significant. –
He says – RISE- if you are an early Christian – what would you think of if you heard the word RISE – we would automatically think resurrection.
They taught in the early days of the church that this passage could be seen as an exemplar for man’s condition. WE are called by God to be healed from our sin and if we respond in Faith we will Rise again in the Resurrection from the dead.
John 5:8
8 Jesus said to him, "Get up, pick up your pallet and walk."
2) Jesus can make clean what was unclean.
Jesus heals this man that has been sick for 38 years in one command. That quick, Jesus overturns the situation in one fell swoop.
We’ve already seen Jesus take what has been turned upside down and turn it back right side up. Jesus makes the Samaritans clean who were once unclean.
Now He is bringing His power to bean on this man that was sick.
Jesus is restoring things back to their rightful place.
Jesus throughout the Gospels is displaying this theme of taking what man has claimed to be unclean and making it unclean.
In Matthew’s Gospel it is really demonstrated:
1) Matthew 8:3 – the Leper- Jesus touches the Leper and this would make a Jew unclean – but it is Jesus that makes this man whole instead of this man making Jesus unclean
2) Matthew 8:7 – Jesus offers to go to a home of a Roman soldier – this was off limits for a Jew –
3) Matthew 8: 28-34 – Jesus heals a demon possessed man among the tombs and the demons are cast into the swine – all three images of unclean – Tombs were off limits, demons were unclean spirits, and swine were un-kosher as they come for a diet of a Jew – Jesus transforms the situation casts out the demons into the swine and destroy the unclean animals.
4) Matthew 9: 18-26 – A woman with an issue of Blood – she is ceremonially unclean and touches Jesus but she is healed, Jesus touches a dead body that would make one unclean for a week but Jesus brings her to life
Jesus puts it back together and makes whole what was broken – Jesus transforms and makes clean
Max Lucado tells this story:
“Over a hundred years ago, a group of fishermen were relaxing in a Scottish seaside inn. One of the men gestured widely and his arm struck the serving maid’s tea tray, sending the teapot flying into the whitewashed wall. The innkeeper surveyed the damage and sighed,
“The whole wall will have to be repainted.”
“Perhaps not,” offered a stranger.
“Let me work with it.” Having nothing to lose, the proprietor consented. The man pulled pencils, brushes, and pigment out of an art box...
In time, an image began to emerge: a stag with a great rack of antlers. The man inscribed his signature at the bottom, paid for his meal, and left.
His name: Sir Edwin Landseer, the famous painter of wildlife.”
Lucado concludes: “In his hands, a mistake became a masterpiece. God’s hands do the same, over and over. He draws together the disjointed blotches in our life and renders them an expression of his love.”
In the hands of Jesus things that looked bad can be made good – In today’s story we will witness how Jesus can make things new and whole again.
Let us never think that Jesus could not use us in His kingdom – He can take any situation and make it whole again.
John 5:9-19
9 Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk. Now it was the Sabbath on that day. 10 So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet." 11 But he answered them, "He who made me well was the one who said to me, 'Pick up your pallet and walk.'" 12 They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Pick up your pallet and walk '?" 13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "Behold, you have become well ; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you." 15 The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But He answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." 18 For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. 19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing ; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner
This is a long passage and it seems very difficult to sift out but I want to focus on a few things we need to take from this today.
We have already noticed that Jesus can make things whole that were broken, he can bring life
We have also noticed that Jesus wants us to get into the game – to get going – to seek Him – the get off of the side of the pool so to speak.
He also wants this man to quit sinning and lead a life of devotion.
Now we see a time of controversy-
The Sabbath was a time of rest – Jesus healing and this man carrying his mat would both be seen as breaking the Sabbath.
The irony is that the man doesn’t even know who healed him but Jesus is the one that heals him.
Jesus then throws gasoline on the fire by basically making Himself equal with the Father – In other words Jesus is claiming to be God.
Jesus makes an extraordinary point that we need to slow down and really grasp and it is two fold.
First of all Jesus cannot break the Sabbath because He is God. God doesn’t rest on the Sabbath- Babies are born on the Sabbath every day in Israel. The Jews during the time of Jesus saw this as evidence that God was still working on the Sabbath.
Also, God had to be at work on the Sabbath holding the universe together. If God took a break then the universe would stop functioning. Jesus is equal with God so he must work on the Sabbath because God works on the Sabbath.
Fascinating answer and one that could have easily got him killed.
The second part of Jesus answer goes back to the prologue.
In the prologue we are reminded that:
John 1:18
18 No one has seen God at any time ; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
Jesus in John 5:19 says that the Son cannot do anything unless He sees the Father doing it.
No one had seen God but Jesus came to reveal God – In Jesus we see God in the flesh – the very power of God that created the world was there among these people.
This man didn’t even know who had healed him.
John 5: 24
24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
The last verse in this episode of this man ends with this passage of comfort.
We can now in the present tense pass out of death into life.
We can have life in Christ now a true life. Just as this man was saved from the bondage of his illness we can be pulled from the bondage of sin.
We can be prepared for death because we know that Jesus has come to give us true life.
This life in Christ begins now.
We don’t have to worry about falling into Judgment but we can look forward to life in Christ – those that are without Christ have only the judgment of God to look forward to.
Speaking of life:
Jim Valvano was head coach of the N.C. basketball team. He rose to fame when his team started winning championships. Everybody liked him. He was always cracking jokes & had a winning way of dealing with people.
But in 1991 Valvano learned that he had inoperable bone cancer. During Christmas time, 1992, he said, "It’s difficult to be thankful this Christmas because I’m not sure I’ll be here next Christmas." And he wasn’t. He died in 1993. "But," he said, "this Christmas I’m getting down on my knees & thanking God for every day of the 46 years of my life."
Jim Valvano understood how precious life is.
I would like to propose to you that there is a life that is more precious than all.
Christ came to show that he can make things whole again – He can bring us from death to life,
He asks us to get off the side of the pool and get going – to accept the grace and new life that He has to offer.
Just as this man was asked, we ask do you want to be healed, or more importantly do you want to be saved? Do you want to be saved from your sin?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The Woman at the Well AM Sermon 1.23.11
The Woman at the Well
Have you ever been so thirsty that you thought you would die if you didn’t get a drink. Many of you have worked on a hot summer day and you just thought you would not make it if you didn’t get something cool to drink. I remember one summer I had a job roofing houses and I would go straight from work to football workouts at night. I would be so dehydrated that I would drink two 32 ounce Gatorades just to quench my thirst.
I remember one day at football practice it was exceptionally hot. When I played coaches still thought you were soft if you drank too much water. We would get one or if we were lucky two water breaks at practice. We had one low place on our practice field that always held a perpetual mud hole with stagnant nasty water.
I had a cousin that was few fries short of a happy meal. He was a great high school football player but he was just not all there. On that hot day he had had enough of the heat and was cotton mouthed. He was so desperate that he bent down and started to lap water up out of that mudhole.
Now that is thirsty.
This morning we are going to meet a lady that was really thirsty but she was a different type of thirsty. Her soul was thirsty and she didn’t even know it. She was lacking what Jesus had to offer. She needed the waters of eternal life that Jesus could pour out without measure.
We have seen this theme of Jesus being able to provide more than enough and in this story we will see no less.
As we pick back up in our study of the Gospel of John we witness Jesus leaving Judea where he has just cleansed the Temple and met with Nicodemus.
Jesus is now traveling back to his hometown in Galilee.
John 4: 1-6
1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4 And He had to pass through Samaria. 5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
1) Geography of this passage
Jesus is now going back to Galilee.
In verse 4 we read that He HAS to pass through Samaria. This is interesting because typically the Jews would not travel through Samaria.
If you were to look at the geography of Palestine it would be like saying you were going to travel from Alabama to Kentucky. Everyone would know that you would have to travel through TN to get there. In the same way Samaria was between Judea and Galilee. Judea was in the South and Galilee was in the North and Samaria was sandwiched by the two.
Usually Jews would travel East of Samaria and go up the Jordan Valley. They would take the long way around to get there. It would be like us traveling through GA, SC, and NC to get to Kentucky. It was a much longer trip, so why would they avoid Samaria?
2) Samaritans
This history between the Jews and the Samaritans is very controversial.
In Jesus time the Samaritans were seen to be unclean. Little is known about how they came to be but most believe that they were left behind in the Land after the Assyrian deportation of the Northern Tribes. They were forced to intermarry with the Syrians and to the Jews they became corrupt and corrupted Judaism. They had corrupted the bloodline of the 12 Tribes of Israel as well as corrupting their faith.
In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah the Jews that returned home from Babylonian exile run into trouble with these people.
IN the time of Jesus a Jew would become unclean by touching a Samaritan
The Samaritans have a version of the Old Testament called the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is much like the Hebrew Pentateuch with some differences.
They built their own temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed that their temple was the true temple and that the one in Jerusalem was false.
In the time of Jesus there were probably around 1 million Samaritans.
Today there are around 700 Samaritans left in the world and they still worship on Mount Gerizim.
The Jews hated the Samaritans and the Samaritans felt the same toward the Jews. Violence between the two races was common and it could be dangerous for a Jew to travel through Samaria or for a Samaritan to travel through Jewish territory.
3) Jacob’s Well – verse 6 – the True Bridegroom
This well is not mentioned specifically in the OT but was well attested to by tradition.
The significance of a well would not be lost on a first century reader from a Jewish background.
A well symbolized to Jews the finding of a wife for many of the OT patriarchs.
Isaac, Jacob, and Moses all met their future wives at a well. It is interesting that this woman that Jesus meets will be the poster child for bad marriages but now she meets the true bridegroom.
Jesus is the bridegroom that comes to find believes. Jesus will call his true Followers that will be His bride and He will be the husband that God has always wanted to be to His people.
The OT is full of images that portray God as the husband to Israel. Now the true Bridegroom has arrived at Jacob’s Well.
4) 6th Hour- Jesus is weary – He is tired on His journey and this journey has brought Him through an arid environment and it is noon- the heat of the day.
John 4: 7-9
7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink." 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman ?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
It is remarkable that Jesus is talking to this woman in the first place.
There are two reasons that we should find this remarkable- 1st of all because she is a hated Samaritan and 2nd she is a woman.
It was socially unacceptable for a Jewish man to talk to a woman in public that is not his wife or family member. To talk to a complete stranger in public is unheard of.
John 4: 10-12
10 Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." 11 She said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep ; where then do You get that living water? 12 "You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle ?"
1) If you knew the gift of God and Who says to you,
Jesus is telling her, if you just knew Who I really I Am this conversation would be much different.
This is the theme of the Gospel of John – we know as the reader who Jesus really is but as this story unfolds more and more people come to grips with who Jesus really is.
This goes back to the Prologue to the gospel in John 1:10
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
Jesus is the very creator of the world in Flesh- Jesus helped shape and make this world but his own creations did not know who he is. This is part of the great irony of John’s Gospel – Here is God in flesh and many people miss the boat.
Jesus also told the woman if you knew the GIFT Of God- this goes back to the prologue verse 14 where it says that the Word was full of grace and truth.
The word for Grace in the original reading is literally Fullness of Gift – Jesus is God’s gift to the world- Grace literally means Gift - Jesus is the Gift of God that equals Grace in our lives.
We will see in this story that the Samaritan woman will come into contact with this grace and this gift from God as she continues to talk to Jesus.
2) LIVING WATER – She asks for Living Water and this like many things in John’s Gospel has two meanings.
Last week we witnessed how Jesus used Puns in His talk with Nicodemus using Anothen meaning of above or again.
He also used Pneuma – which could mean Spirit or wind.
In this passage the same thing takes place.
The Samaritan water misunderstands what Jesus is saying.
To Jews and Samaritans Living water literally meant running water. The only types of water you would want to drink would be cistern water or running water.
Running water was much preferred to Well water. This woman literally thinks that Jesus must have some access to water that is living and running. This would be her most natural reaction to Jesus’ question about running water.
Later on Jesus clarifies what He means about Living water – this is not running water that will be good to drink but something much deeper.
John 7: 38-39
38 "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.' " 39 But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive ; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Jesus is speaking of the renewal by the Holy Spirit – The Holy Spirit will from our innermost being transform us and make us new.
This is a spiritual birth that is signified and attached to water.
The earliest Christians took this so literal that they would only baptize in Living water or running water. They felt that this best signified the cleansing act of the Holy Spirit as running water springing up and making us new people from the Inside out.
In the OT the innermost being was considered the place where God wanted to renew you and place His divine wisdom inside of you. When Jesus talks about water welling up in our innermost being He is quoting from this rich textual tradition in the OT.
John 4: 13-18
13 Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again ; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." 15 The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw." 16 He said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here." 17 The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have correctly said, 'I have no husband '; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband ; this you have said truly."
Jesus gets more specific about this Living water that He has to offer. He lets her in on the secret that He has eternal life to offer her.
Before He can give her this life he must first deal with the sin that vexes her.
This sin that vexes her is symbolic of the very sin that has made the entire Samaritan nation guilty before God.
The Samaritans had worshipped false gods. They had committed adultery with other gods against Jehovah.
According to 2 Kings 17, five different Kings had moved into the area of Samaria and these people intermarried with the Samaritans.
These five kings also brought in 5 idols that the Samaritans worshipped. These idols were each individually called Baal.
Baal originally meant – Husband.
Samaria had committed adultery before God and had been married to five false gods. Just as this woman had been married five times.
I believe much is at work in this passage and Jesus is calling not only this woman to repentance but the Samaritan nation to repentance also.
John 4: 19-24
19 The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 "You worship what you do not know ; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth ; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
The woman tries to diver the attention from her personal life. Jesus turns up stones that she doesn’t want turned up. She is embarrassed of her personal life but Jesus charges on.
I think it is fascinating that we see two aspects of Christ’s character that reflect God.
1) Jesus cares about this woman – she is sinful, by our standards today she is really messed up, she has probably been shunned by her town and is an outcast. She is at well at a time of the day that she should not be there. She came when no one else would be there.
2) Jesus cares to tell her the truth.
The truth that heals and not a lie that kills. He tells the truth to her. She needs to change and reorder her life before she can start to understand the eternal life that Jesus has to offer.
She diverts the matter by trying to debate about where true worship should take place. She says Mount Gerizim but Jesus tells her it is in Jerusalem.
Jesus alludes to her ignorance and in the OT idolatry is called ignorant worship.
The Samaritans are ignorant and from Judah –the Jews will come the Messiah.
Jesus speaks of a time when the location will not matter.
The risen Resurrected body of Jesus will be the New Temple. Men can unite and worship that risen body anywhere in the world.
To worship in Spirit shows the spiritual nature of that type of worship through the Holy Spirit.
To worship in truth is a contrast to the ignorant worship of the Samaritans. They did not worship properly and had added things that God had not approved.
There will come a day- Jesus calls it an hour that all this will change.
This hour that Jesus speaks of culminates on the cross- Christ’s humiliation on the cross will culminate in glorification. The cross will lead to the resurrection.
At that moment when Christ died – that hour the veil in the Temple was torn into.
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that it was at the ninth our that the Temple veil was torn. The Holy Place was opened forever and God would have fellowship with man. No longer would the Temple in Jerusalem be necessary but would be replaced by a worship that has access to Heaven directly by the blood of Christ.
We worship before the throne of God.
Conclusion:
We can look at this woman and see a wreck of a life.
She has personal sin issues
She is ignorant of her own faith – she worships in ignorance.
Jesus comes to turn her around and give her a chance.
This woman is much like us, we are sinful, we are turned upside down, we need help, our lives can sometimes be a wreck just like this woman. But Jesus doesn’t look down His nose at her.
He shouldn’t even be talking to her but He does because He loves- He knows the Gift that He has to give even if we don’t.
In 1996, a young marine corporal named Joey Mora was standing on a platform of an aircraft carrier patrolling the Iranian Sea. Incredibly, he fell overboard. His absence was not known for 36 hours. A search and rescue mission began, but was given up after another 24 hours. No one could survive in the sea without even a lifejacket after 60 hours. His parents were notified that he was "missing and presumed dead."
The rest of the story is one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" events. Scriptwriters would pass it up as "not believable." Four Pakistani fishermen found Joey Mora about 72 hours after he had fallen from the aircraft carrier. He was treading water in his sleep, clinging to a makeshift floatation device made from his trousers -- a skill learned in most military survival training. He was delirious when they pulled him into their fishing boat. His tongue was dry and cracked and his throat parched.
Just about two years later, as he spoke with Stone Philips of NBC Dateline, he recounted an unbelievable story of will to live and survival. Who would not give up? He said it was God who kept him struggling to survive. His discovery by the fishermen makes searching for a needle in a haystack a piece of cake. The most excruciating thing of all? Joey said that the one thought that took over his body and pounded in his brain was "Water!"
Do you crave Eternal Life like a parched person needing water?
Do you desire to know Christ in a way that defies all explanation and do you hunger and thirst for Righteousness?
Do you see a world spun upside down and cry deep from within your soul wanting more for you and your family?
Do you want the life that Jesus has always wanted to give you?
A young student went to his spiritual teacher and asked the question, "Master, how can I truly find God?" The teacher asked the student to accompany him to the river, which ran by the village and invited him to go into the water. When they got to the middle of the stream, the teacher said, "Please immerse yourself in the water." The student did as he was instructed, whereupon the teacher put his hands on the young man’s head and held him under the water. Presently the student began to struggle.
The master held him under still. A moment passed and the student was thrashing and beating the water and air with his arms. Still, the master held him under the water. Finally, the student was released and shot up from the water, lungs aching and gasping for air. The teacher waited for a few moments and then said, "When you desire God as truly as you desired to breathe the air you just breathed -- then you shall find God."
Thirst is one of the most powerful spiritual symbols in all of scripture. As dehydration draws the whole of our physical being to a longing for water, so a spiritual void will draw our spirits into a search for deeper meaning for our lives.
The Psalmist expressed it this way, "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." Psalm 42:1
I want to propose to all of you this morning, to me and to each one of you individually- This is how we have to feel about God.
We should crave knowledge and experience with Him so bad that nothing would come in the way.
Not hurt feelings, not bitterness, not a job, not disappointments in this life – Nothing would take away that hunger, that thirst for the LIVING water that Jesus has to provide.
In John 7: 37 Jesus stood up at one of the feasts of the Jews and cried out, "On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink."
If you thirst this morning for Christ- If you need Him we ask you to come forward and respond to this call on your life as we stand as we stand and sing.
Have you ever been so thirsty that you thought you would die if you didn’t get a drink. Many of you have worked on a hot summer day and you just thought you would not make it if you didn’t get something cool to drink. I remember one summer I had a job roofing houses and I would go straight from work to football workouts at night. I would be so dehydrated that I would drink two 32 ounce Gatorades just to quench my thirst.
I remember one day at football practice it was exceptionally hot. When I played coaches still thought you were soft if you drank too much water. We would get one or if we were lucky two water breaks at practice. We had one low place on our practice field that always held a perpetual mud hole with stagnant nasty water.
I had a cousin that was few fries short of a happy meal. He was a great high school football player but he was just not all there. On that hot day he had had enough of the heat and was cotton mouthed. He was so desperate that he bent down and started to lap water up out of that mudhole.
Now that is thirsty.
This morning we are going to meet a lady that was really thirsty but she was a different type of thirsty. Her soul was thirsty and she didn’t even know it. She was lacking what Jesus had to offer. She needed the waters of eternal life that Jesus could pour out without measure.
We have seen this theme of Jesus being able to provide more than enough and in this story we will see no less.
As we pick back up in our study of the Gospel of John we witness Jesus leaving Judea where he has just cleansed the Temple and met with Nicodemus.
Jesus is now traveling back to his hometown in Galilee.
John 4: 1-6
1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4 And He had to pass through Samaria. 5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
1) Geography of this passage
Jesus is now going back to Galilee.
In verse 4 we read that He HAS to pass through Samaria. This is interesting because typically the Jews would not travel through Samaria.
If you were to look at the geography of Palestine it would be like saying you were going to travel from Alabama to Kentucky. Everyone would know that you would have to travel through TN to get there. In the same way Samaria was between Judea and Galilee. Judea was in the South and Galilee was in the North and Samaria was sandwiched by the two.
Usually Jews would travel East of Samaria and go up the Jordan Valley. They would take the long way around to get there. It would be like us traveling through GA, SC, and NC to get to Kentucky. It was a much longer trip, so why would they avoid Samaria?
2) Samaritans
This history between the Jews and the Samaritans is very controversial.
In Jesus time the Samaritans were seen to be unclean. Little is known about how they came to be but most believe that they were left behind in the Land after the Assyrian deportation of the Northern Tribes. They were forced to intermarry with the Syrians and to the Jews they became corrupt and corrupted Judaism. They had corrupted the bloodline of the 12 Tribes of Israel as well as corrupting their faith.
In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah the Jews that returned home from Babylonian exile run into trouble with these people.
IN the time of Jesus a Jew would become unclean by touching a Samaritan
The Samaritans have a version of the Old Testament called the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is much like the Hebrew Pentateuch with some differences.
They built their own temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed that their temple was the true temple and that the one in Jerusalem was false.
In the time of Jesus there were probably around 1 million Samaritans.
Today there are around 700 Samaritans left in the world and they still worship on Mount Gerizim.
The Jews hated the Samaritans and the Samaritans felt the same toward the Jews. Violence between the two races was common and it could be dangerous for a Jew to travel through Samaria or for a Samaritan to travel through Jewish territory.
3) Jacob’s Well – verse 6 – the True Bridegroom
This well is not mentioned specifically in the OT but was well attested to by tradition.
The significance of a well would not be lost on a first century reader from a Jewish background.
A well symbolized to Jews the finding of a wife for many of the OT patriarchs.
Isaac, Jacob, and Moses all met their future wives at a well. It is interesting that this woman that Jesus meets will be the poster child for bad marriages but now she meets the true bridegroom.
Jesus is the bridegroom that comes to find believes. Jesus will call his true Followers that will be His bride and He will be the husband that God has always wanted to be to His people.
The OT is full of images that portray God as the husband to Israel. Now the true Bridegroom has arrived at Jacob’s Well.
4) 6th Hour- Jesus is weary – He is tired on His journey and this journey has brought Him through an arid environment and it is noon- the heat of the day.
John 4: 7-9
7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink." 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman ?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
It is remarkable that Jesus is talking to this woman in the first place.
There are two reasons that we should find this remarkable- 1st of all because she is a hated Samaritan and 2nd she is a woman.
It was socially unacceptable for a Jewish man to talk to a woman in public that is not his wife or family member. To talk to a complete stranger in public is unheard of.
John 4: 10-12
10 Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." 11 She said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep ; where then do You get that living water? 12 "You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle ?"
1) If you knew the gift of God and Who says to you,
Jesus is telling her, if you just knew Who I really I Am this conversation would be much different.
This is the theme of the Gospel of John – we know as the reader who Jesus really is but as this story unfolds more and more people come to grips with who Jesus really is.
This goes back to the Prologue to the gospel in John 1:10
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
Jesus is the very creator of the world in Flesh- Jesus helped shape and make this world but his own creations did not know who he is. This is part of the great irony of John’s Gospel – Here is God in flesh and many people miss the boat.
Jesus also told the woman if you knew the GIFT Of God- this goes back to the prologue verse 14 where it says that the Word was full of grace and truth.
The word for Grace in the original reading is literally Fullness of Gift – Jesus is God’s gift to the world- Grace literally means Gift - Jesus is the Gift of God that equals Grace in our lives.
We will see in this story that the Samaritan woman will come into contact with this grace and this gift from God as she continues to talk to Jesus.
2) LIVING WATER – She asks for Living Water and this like many things in John’s Gospel has two meanings.
Last week we witnessed how Jesus used Puns in His talk with Nicodemus using Anothen meaning of above or again.
He also used Pneuma – which could mean Spirit or wind.
In this passage the same thing takes place.
The Samaritan water misunderstands what Jesus is saying.
To Jews and Samaritans Living water literally meant running water. The only types of water you would want to drink would be cistern water or running water.
Running water was much preferred to Well water. This woman literally thinks that Jesus must have some access to water that is living and running. This would be her most natural reaction to Jesus’ question about running water.
Later on Jesus clarifies what He means about Living water – this is not running water that will be good to drink but something much deeper.
John 7: 38-39
38 "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.' " 39 But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive ; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Jesus is speaking of the renewal by the Holy Spirit – The Holy Spirit will from our innermost being transform us and make us new.
This is a spiritual birth that is signified and attached to water.
The earliest Christians took this so literal that they would only baptize in Living water or running water. They felt that this best signified the cleansing act of the Holy Spirit as running water springing up and making us new people from the Inside out.
In the OT the innermost being was considered the place where God wanted to renew you and place His divine wisdom inside of you. When Jesus talks about water welling up in our innermost being He is quoting from this rich textual tradition in the OT.
John 4: 13-18
13 Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again ; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." 15 The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw." 16 He said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here." 17 The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have correctly said, 'I have no husband '; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband ; this you have said truly."
Jesus gets more specific about this Living water that He has to offer. He lets her in on the secret that He has eternal life to offer her.
Before He can give her this life he must first deal with the sin that vexes her.
This sin that vexes her is symbolic of the very sin that has made the entire Samaritan nation guilty before God.
The Samaritans had worshipped false gods. They had committed adultery with other gods against Jehovah.
According to 2 Kings 17, five different Kings had moved into the area of Samaria and these people intermarried with the Samaritans.
These five kings also brought in 5 idols that the Samaritans worshipped. These idols were each individually called Baal.
Baal originally meant – Husband.
Samaria had committed adultery before God and had been married to five false gods. Just as this woman had been married five times.
I believe much is at work in this passage and Jesus is calling not only this woman to repentance but the Samaritan nation to repentance also.
John 4: 19-24
19 The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 "You worship what you do not know ; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth ; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
The woman tries to diver the attention from her personal life. Jesus turns up stones that she doesn’t want turned up. She is embarrassed of her personal life but Jesus charges on.
I think it is fascinating that we see two aspects of Christ’s character that reflect God.
1) Jesus cares about this woman – she is sinful, by our standards today she is really messed up, she has probably been shunned by her town and is an outcast. She is at well at a time of the day that she should not be there. She came when no one else would be there.
2) Jesus cares to tell her the truth.
The truth that heals and not a lie that kills. He tells the truth to her. She needs to change and reorder her life before she can start to understand the eternal life that Jesus has to offer.
She diverts the matter by trying to debate about where true worship should take place. She says Mount Gerizim but Jesus tells her it is in Jerusalem.
Jesus alludes to her ignorance and in the OT idolatry is called ignorant worship.
The Samaritans are ignorant and from Judah –the Jews will come the Messiah.
Jesus speaks of a time when the location will not matter.
The risen Resurrected body of Jesus will be the New Temple. Men can unite and worship that risen body anywhere in the world.
To worship in Spirit shows the spiritual nature of that type of worship through the Holy Spirit.
To worship in truth is a contrast to the ignorant worship of the Samaritans. They did not worship properly and had added things that God had not approved.
There will come a day- Jesus calls it an hour that all this will change.
This hour that Jesus speaks of culminates on the cross- Christ’s humiliation on the cross will culminate in glorification. The cross will lead to the resurrection.
At that moment when Christ died – that hour the veil in the Temple was torn into.
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that it was at the ninth our that the Temple veil was torn. The Holy Place was opened forever and God would have fellowship with man. No longer would the Temple in Jerusalem be necessary but would be replaced by a worship that has access to Heaven directly by the blood of Christ.
We worship before the throne of God.
Conclusion:
We can look at this woman and see a wreck of a life.
She has personal sin issues
She is ignorant of her own faith – she worships in ignorance.
Jesus comes to turn her around and give her a chance.
This woman is much like us, we are sinful, we are turned upside down, we need help, our lives can sometimes be a wreck just like this woman. But Jesus doesn’t look down His nose at her.
He shouldn’t even be talking to her but He does because He loves- He knows the Gift that He has to give even if we don’t.
In 1996, a young marine corporal named Joey Mora was standing on a platform of an aircraft carrier patrolling the Iranian Sea. Incredibly, he fell overboard. His absence was not known for 36 hours. A search and rescue mission began, but was given up after another 24 hours. No one could survive in the sea without even a lifejacket after 60 hours. His parents were notified that he was "missing and presumed dead."
The rest of the story is one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" events. Scriptwriters would pass it up as "not believable." Four Pakistani fishermen found Joey Mora about 72 hours after he had fallen from the aircraft carrier. He was treading water in his sleep, clinging to a makeshift floatation device made from his trousers -- a skill learned in most military survival training. He was delirious when they pulled him into their fishing boat. His tongue was dry and cracked and his throat parched.
Just about two years later, as he spoke with Stone Philips of NBC Dateline, he recounted an unbelievable story of will to live and survival. Who would not give up? He said it was God who kept him struggling to survive. His discovery by the fishermen makes searching for a needle in a haystack a piece of cake. The most excruciating thing of all? Joey said that the one thought that took over his body and pounded in his brain was "Water!"
Do you crave Eternal Life like a parched person needing water?
Do you desire to know Christ in a way that defies all explanation and do you hunger and thirst for Righteousness?
Do you see a world spun upside down and cry deep from within your soul wanting more for you and your family?
Do you want the life that Jesus has always wanted to give you?
A young student went to his spiritual teacher and asked the question, "Master, how can I truly find God?" The teacher asked the student to accompany him to the river, which ran by the village and invited him to go into the water. When they got to the middle of the stream, the teacher said, "Please immerse yourself in the water." The student did as he was instructed, whereupon the teacher put his hands on the young man’s head and held him under the water. Presently the student began to struggle.
The master held him under still. A moment passed and the student was thrashing and beating the water and air with his arms. Still, the master held him under the water. Finally, the student was released and shot up from the water, lungs aching and gasping for air. The teacher waited for a few moments and then said, "When you desire God as truly as you desired to breathe the air you just breathed -- then you shall find God."
Thirst is one of the most powerful spiritual symbols in all of scripture. As dehydration draws the whole of our physical being to a longing for water, so a spiritual void will draw our spirits into a search for deeper meaning for our lives.
The Psalmist expressed it this way, "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." Psalm 42:1
I want to propose to all of you this morning, to me and to each one of you individually- This is how we have to feel about God.
We should crave knowledge and experience with Him so bad that nothing would come in the way.
Not hurt feelings, not bitterness, not a job, not disappointments in this life – Nothing would take away that hunger, that thirst for the LIVING water that Jesus has to provide.
In John 7: 37 Jesus stood up at one of the feasts of the Jews and cried out, "On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink."
If you thirst this morning for Christ- If you need Him we ask you to come forward and respond to this call on your life as we stand as we stand and sing.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Born of Above AM Sermon 1.16.11
Events in your life sometimes bring back memories and things that you had forgotten about. When Anna Grace was born this past year it brought back memories of the births of Carlin and Emory. I remember the first time around I was a basket case and was so nervous. I remember Carlin’s thick head of hair and Emory’s almost strawberry blond hair.
There are experiences that I will never forgot. In my limited cultural experience, I had never seen a real live nun. Our children were born in a Catholic hospital in Birmingham and I remember waking up in the middle of the night and there was a nun in my room looking at our new baby. I thought I was in some type of medieval movie for a minute.
I remember waking up with a box of donuts laying on top of me from my preacher. I remember the family and friends were there to celebrate the birth.
What makes those events so special? It is all about the birth of new life. The birth of a child into a family of love where that new child will share in that birth.
Today we are going to talk about birth but not natural birth.
To understand why this idea of spiritual birth is important we need to consider language used today in many Christian circles today. Many times we ask people if they have been saved.
We hear many sermons about salvation and that is an important idea. The term Saved or Salvation has taken on a life of its own in the 20th and 21st century. Jesus used the word SAVED in the sense that we use it today but he used it very rarely.
The terms that Jesus used more than any were the Kingdom of God – that refers to God’s sovereign rule over all and the other term is LIFE – Sometimes just LIFE and sometimes ETERNAL LIFE.
John’s Gospel is sometimes called the Gospel of LIFE because Jesus talks so much about LIFE. We need to understand that when we talk about Salvation that the term LIFE in John’s gospel means the same thing.
So talking about New LIFE or even Rebirth would be the same as being saved in John’s Gospel.
Last week we saw where Jesus used water for His first miracle.
This was water for ritual purity – the precursor to John’s baptism. John did not invent baptism but it was something the Jews did before.
Water and the concept of spiritual purity will run through John’s Gospel-
In John’s Gospel we will be introduced to John who is known as John the Immerser
Christ will be baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist and His baptism will be connected to the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.
We will even witness Christ and His disciples baptizing along with John the Baptist as one can witness at the end of John chapter 3
As we lead into John 3 we will look at a transition that helps make sense of John 3:
John 2:23-25 – Transition that leads to Chapter 3
23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. 24 But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, 25 and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.
Episteuon – John uses this word for belief throughout his gospel –
The people believed in Him because of the signs that He was doing, but He (Jesus) did not believe in them.
Why did Jesus not put his trust in man because He knows what is lacking in human nature.
Man – Antropos – used three times in the next few verses
Remember that in the original there were not chapter divisions, we pick up on this repeated theme of Antropos or Man in Chapter 3
John 3: 1-2
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews ; 2 this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher ; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."
Here we meet a Man – Anthropos- he was like those mentioned in John 2:23-25 in that he believes in the signs that Jesus did.
Human nature fixates on the supernatural. People miss out on what Jesus is preparing us for what we are going to receive.
John wants to introduce us to a gift that is beyond what man can accomplish – A gift from God – Power to become His children
John 1:12-12
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God
Stage one – We must Receive Him
Stage two – We must believe in His Name
But is that enough? – Can we as human make ourselves children of God?
God has given us the right to become children of God but this work is EXUSIA which is better translated as POWER –
God gives us power to become children of God.
We are purely creatures of God – we are fleshly beings and God is pure spirit – we have the nature of humanity but we are not children of God.
We can receive Him, we can believe Him in our own human faculties- we don’t have the capacity to make myself a child of God.
We are creatures- we are called to be children, but we are creatures- To become children it means we must receive a supernatural grace.
John is presenting Nicodemus as an example of this. Nicodemus has received Jesus, he is believing enough to come to Him at night.
THE THIRD STAGE IS THE IDEA OF SUPERNATURAL GRACE THAT COMES FROM ABOVE
The THIRD STAGE IS THE KEY- John 3 is about this stage three- Jesus brings out this idea of the 3rd stage in John 3:3 with His response to Nicodemus:
John 3:3
3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."
There is belief that is natural and there is faith that is supernatural. Jesus will want to show Nicodemus that these signs lead to something. Not earthly things that we can do in the flesh, but Nicodemus needs something that is from above.
Nicodemus doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.
In coaching we always say that you can deal with parents or administration that just don’t know. You can talk to them and educate them in your sport and the roll of the parent.
The Dangerous ones are the ones that don’t know that they don’t know and you never get through to them the roll of a coach and a roll of a parent.
Nicodemus is in this situation in that he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know – He has no idea what Jesus is talking about because he is purely thinking about things from a natural human perspective.
Jesus in John’s Gospel uses PUNS, and this is found in the statement that one must be born from ABOVE – Not again – BUT ABOVE – ANOTHEN is the word.
Puns are something used in many stories and great literature and Jesus will employ these puns all through the Gospel of John.
An example of a modern day pun is the following:
“I used to be a watchmaker. It was a great job because I made my own hours.”
Jesus uses a word play – Unless you are born ANOTHEN you cannot SEE the Kingdom of Heaven. For a Jew not to be able to see the Kingdom is a big deal.
ANOTHEN is a GREEK word that has two meanings – One is temporal or in time which means born again, One is spatial which means that it Is born from above.
TEMPORAL USE – TIME – Born AGAIN
SPATIAL – where it comes from – location of this birth – Born of ABOVE
One could take Jesus as either meaning born again or born of above. This is the beauty of this passage and it will make much more sense to you when you understand what is going on in this discussion.
Nicodemus takes the wrong meaning by asking the question he does.
You will find in this passage that it seems that Nicodemus is confused and he is rightfully so confused.
John 3: 4
4 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?"
Nicodemus’ question seems to show that he is still locked into his own natural understanding of what is going on.
Nicodemus sees Jesus usage of ANOTHEN as meaning being Born Again whereas Jesus means it BORN OF ABOVE
As a matter of fact in the rest of John’s Gospel where Jesus uses this word ANOTHEN He is translated as FROM ABOVE – John 3:31 and John 19:11, 23
Jesus answer to him is telling,
John 3: 5
5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Jesus combines two ideas together in this verse of being born of water and Spirit. The earliest Christians saw this as a direct reference to baptism.
Some ministers today say that this verse cannot mean baptism because it would give baptism too high a place in the work of one becoming a child of God.
Some say that Jesus’ reference to water in this passage refers to the idea of natural birth- Literally the water breaking in pregnancy. And then the Spirit part of this verse refers to the renewal by the Holy Spirit in a person’s salvation.
There are two problems with this view and they are the following:
1) There was no such understanding in the ancient world of a woman’s water breaking in childbirth – they didn’t even have that type of language. This is projected a modern term onto an ancient text and is a big blunder in Biblical studies.
2) In the original language of this passage there is one preposition that goes for both water and spirit. In the Greek they are glued together and cannot be separated. In the grammar of Jesus water and Spirit birth happen together.
My personal belief is that this passage is talking about baptism. My reasons are because it most naturally fits the context. Nicodemus and the Pharisees have rejected John’s baptism and they need as much as anyone.
This passage is bracketed by baptism passages- the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and then the baptism of John and Jesus are discussed in the end of this chapter. This passage is surrounded by baptism.
Also, Jesus baptism connected the Holy Spirit with Baptism when the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of the Dove.
Also, Acts – during the first Gospel Sermon to open the doors to the Church that Christ would establish through His apostles the idea of Baptism and the Holy Spirit are connected in Acts 2:38. The only reason you would not want this verse to not talk about baptism would be because you have a theological problem with baptism having such a high place in the new birth.
Jesus picks up with more Puns in the next section of verses:
John 3: 6-8
6 "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 "Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' 8 "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going ; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."
What is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit- the flesh is the anthropos – It is man and fleshly nature – the Spirit is the Heavenly aspect
FLESH- ANTROPOS – MAN – JESUS KNOWS WHAT IS IN MAN
Pneuma also means wind and is the same word for Spirit.
Jesus is giving another word Play here in John 3 – the Word for Spirit in Greek and the word for wind are the same words, you could interpret Pneuma as Wind or Spirit.
PNEUMA – WIND OR SPIRIT – SAME THING
Just like Anothen could be interpreted as Above or Again.
Jesus begins the sentence with one use of PNEUMA (as the Spirit) and ends the sentence with the other use of PNEUMA meaning WIND.
Until we realize these word plays going on in this passage we sometimes look down on Nicodemus but when we realize how tough Jesus teaching is here we give Nicodemus a little slack.
Jesus drives home his point to Nicodemus about the weakness of the flesh –
John 3: 9-13
9 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can these things be?" 10 Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things ? 11 "Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. 12 "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things ? 13 "No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven : the Son of Man.
Jesus is giving a statement of fact – You are a ruler of the Jews, you are a Pharisee, you are a scholar but you still can’t figure this out.
Jesus is letting us know that no matter how many natural things we have going for us it doesn’t guarantee spiritual blessing.
Nicodemus had every earthly, natural advantage, but spiritual renewal is the work of God. It will take God’s illumination of Nicodemus for him to understand. It will take God’s work of renewal by the Spirit to open Nicodemus’ eyes.
Jesus is making His point that He is talking about Heavenly things and not earthly things.
Jesus is bringing something that has been present in the Scripture since the beginning. This is found in Genesis-
Adam had the breath of divine life breathed into him at the beginning of the Creation story – Adam had divine life, or supernatural grace.
Adam was more than the noblest of creatures but was one that had the life of God, and had received the grace of Divine adoption.
God tells Adam that if he eats of the forbidden fruit that you will surely Die, Die – in Hebrew double meaning – really strong – literally die the death.
The Serpent contradicts God and tells Adam and Eve that they will not die if they eat the fruit. It seems at first Satan is telling the truth because they don’t drop dead when the eat the fruit.
The Life that God gives Adam is more, this is the Divine life that Adam loses, he dies a spiritual death at this point.
Human nature is intact, we are still creatures but we lose the Divine Grace of sonship with God- God’s family.
The soul had possessed the Holy Spirit, the Divine Life, the Life of Divine Adoption, and all of this was lost in Adam’s sin.
Many of you have seen the movie the Sixth Sense – the little boy named Cole can see dead people. Cole meets a counselor named Malcolm and he tells him in a chilling part of the movie, I SEE DEAD PEOPLE
In John’s Gospel, Jesus walks around and sees dead people. He sees people that don’t even know that they are dead. Nicodemus doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that he is truly dead, and only has natural life. He has lost the blessing and grace of Divine sonship.
Part of the reason God removed the tree of life for one particular reason. If man were able to eat from the tree of life and keep from dying a fleshly, mortal death, there would be not need to be reconciled to God.
Knowing that we are spiritually dead without Christ and the idea that we will die a physical death means that we need to make things right. If we enter into eternity unreconciled to God’s family we will die the worst death of all and that is eternal separation from God.
DEATH- many times we misunderstand the Biblical meaning of death. Death is not just the decay and the ending of our physical body, but death literally means separation.
The first death that we experience is the separation of our bodies from our souls. That is physical death.
In 1846 former president John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke. Although he returned to Congress the following year, his health was clearly failing. Daniel Webster described his last meeting with Adams: "Someone, a friend of his, came in and made particular inquiry of his health. Adams answered, 'I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement; battered by the winds and broken in upon by the storms, and from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.'"
Just as John Quincy Adams understood, the landlords of our bodies does not intent to repair but this is as good as it gets. Our bodies are breaking down and decaying, we are all going to die a physical death unless we are here when Christ returns.
To illustrate the terrible nature of death let me share with you a bit of history that happened not far from here.
The battle of Franklin Tennessee was one of the bloodiest battles in American History.
One place that epitomizes the carnage of this battle is the Carnton Plantation.
The Carnton plantation was built by the Mayor of Nashville Randall McGavock and the plantation stayed in the McGavock family.
Beginning at 4 p.m. on November 30, 1864, the Carnton plantation was witness to one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Civil War.
Everything the McGavock family ever knew was forever changed. The Confederate Army of Tennessee furiously assaulted the Federal army entrenched along the southern edge of Franklin.
The resulting battle, believed to be the bloodiest five hours of the Civil War, involved a massive frontal assault larger than Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.
The majority of the combat occurred in the dark and at close quarters. The Battle of Franklin lasted barely five hours and led to some 9,500 soldiers being killed, wounded, captured, or counted as missing.
To put that into perspective – Franklin, TN at that time had a population of 2,600 people.
Nearly 7,000 of that number were Confederate troops.
The citizens of Franklin went into their cellars that evening to wait out the fighting and what they saw the next morning shocked them. It was carnage and death beyond belief.
Historians say that it took the citizens of Franklin decades to recover from the death and destruction that haunted their imagination.
Carnton served as the largest field hospital in the area for hundreds of wounded and dying Confederate soldiers.
The name of the plantation proved to be prophetic because the plantation was named for a city in Ireland and the name means ‘city of death’.
After the war the McGavock family had all the bodies of the soldiers exhumed that had been buried in a mass grave. They had the soldiers re-buried with honors in a military graveyard.
This graveyard became the largest privately owned military graveyard in our nation’s history.
An interesting fact about the average confederate soldier is that they put their names inside the uniform on average of seven times. They were terrified about dying and no one knowing who they are.
You see there is something about us that understands the death is not final. There is a part of us that longs for eternity.
Those soldiers feared death just like we do. Death is affront to God’s good creation. Death is not natural.
We see an advanced medical science that has developed to help keep us from dying. Plastic surgeons make a lot of money in trying to make people look young. We don’t like the coming of death.
As a matter of fact we find people in our society fascinated with death as weird or strange. This current vampire craze is strange to many of us. Many of us that are middle aged and older find this current fascination with vampires and this cult that has grown up around the Twilight phenomenon as very odd.
Christ Trampled down death by death.
Our sinfulness is so serious that we have to die and be born anew. We have to be born of above.
ANSWER To our dilemma and Nicodemus’ predicament.
John 3: 14-16
14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Jesus is recalling a story from Numbers 21 when serpents bit the Israelites because of murmuring and they were dying in mass numbers. Moses was instructed to put a golden serpent on a standard and anyone that looked upon the serpent would live.
The interesting thing about that standard is that it was shaped like a cross.
The image is for us to understand- we have been bitten by the serpent – this serpent is Satan and the death we die is spiritual death.
We are to look to the cross and see Christ lifted up for us. He will be lifted up on the cross, he will be lifted up out of the tomb, and He will be lifted up to Heaven.
Paul tells us that he is crucified with Christ – it is no longer our life but Christ.
Sin is so serious that we must die and be reborn in Christ.
Baptism is a beautiful image of how that works.
We have faith, but just natural faith cannot do it.
We must die to self, God wants to put our old man to death through repentance and when we submit to God- when we come to him with the empty hand of faith God gives us what we cannot do and that is grace.
The work of Jesus on the cross saves us- look to Jesus, put the old man to death, bury that old man in baptism, just as Christ went into the tomb we go into the tomb of water, and through the Spirit we are raised and given new supernatural life.
There are experiences that I will never forgot. In my limited cultural experience, I had never seen a real live nun. Our children were born in a Catholic hospital in Birmingham and I remember waking up in the middle of the night and there was a nun in my room looking at our new baby. I thought I was in some type of medieval movie for a minute.
I remember waking up with a box of donuts laying on top of me from my preacher. I remember the family and friends were there to celebrate the birth.
What makes those events so special? It is all about the birth of new life. The birth of a child into a family of love where that new child will share in that birth.
Today we are going to talk about birth but not natural birth.
To understand why this idea of spiritual birth is important we need to consider language used today in many Christian circles today. Many times we ask people if they have been saved.
We hear many sermons about salvation and that is an important idea. The term Saved or Salvation has taken on a life of its own in the 20th and 21st century. Jesus used the word SAVED in the sense that we use it today but he used it very rarely.
The terms that Jesus used more than any were the Kingdom of God – that refers to God’s sovereign rule over all and the other term is LIFE – Sometimes just LIFE and sometimes ETERNAL LIFE.
John’s Gospel is sometimes called the Gospel of LIFE because Jesus talks so much about LIFE. We need to understand that when we talk about Salvation that the term LIFE in John’s gospel means the same thing.
So talking about New LIFE or even Rebirth would be the same as being saved in John’s Gospel.
Last week we saw where Jesus used water for His first miracle.
This was water for ritual purity – the precursor to John’s baptism. John did not invent baptism but it was something the Jews did before.
Water and the concept of spiritual purity will run through John’s Gospel-
In John’s Gospel we will be introduced to John who is known as John the Immerser
Christ will be baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist and His baptism will be connected to the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.
We will even witness Christ and His disciples baptizing along with John the Baptist as one can witness at the end of John chapter 3
As we lead into John 3 we will look at a transition that helps make sense of John 3:
John 2:23-25 – Transition that leads to Chapter 3
23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. 24 But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, 25 and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.
Episteuon – John uses this word for belief throughout his gospel –
The people believed in Him because of the signs that He was doing, but He (Jesus) did not believe in them.
Why did Jesus not put his trust in man because He knows what is lacking in human nature.
Man – Antropos – used three times in the next few verses
Remember that in the original there were not chapter divisions, we pick up on this repeated theme of Antropos or Man in Chapter 3
John 3: 1-2
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews ; 2 this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher ; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."
Here we meet a Man – Anthropos- he was like those mentioned in John 2:23-25 in that he believes in the signs that Jesus did.
Human nature fixates on the supernatural. People miss out on what Jesus is preparing us for what we are going to receive.
John wants to introduce us to a gift that is beyond what man can accomplish – A gift from God – Power to become His children
John 1:12-12
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God
Stage one – We must Receive Him
Stage two – We must believe in His Name
But is that enough? – Can we as human make ourselves children of God?
God has given us the right to become children of God but this work is EXUSIA which is better translated as POWER –
God gives us power to become children of God.
We are purely creatures of God – we are fleshly beings and God is pure spirit – we have the nature of humanity but we are not children of God.
We can receive Him, we can believe Him in our own human faculties- we don’t have the capacity to make myself a child of God.
We are creatures- we are called to be children, but we are creatures- To become children it means we must receive a supernatural grace.
John is presenting Nicodemus as an example of this. Nicodemus has received Jesus, he is believing enough to come to Him at night.
THE THIRD STAGE IS THE IDEA OF SUPERNATURAL GRACE THAT COMES FROM ABOVE
The THIRD STAGE IS THE KEY- John 3 is about this stage three- Jesus brings out this idea of the 3rd stage in John 3:3 with His response to Nicodemus:
John 3:3
3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."
There is belief that is natural and there is faith that is supernatural. Jesus will want to show Nicodemus that these signs lead to something. Not earthly things that we can do in the flesh, but Nicodemus needs something that is from above.
Nicodemus doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.
In coaching we always say that you can deal with parents or administration that just don’t know. You can talk to them and educate them in your sport and the roll of the parent.
The Dangerous ones are the ones that don’t know that they don’t know and you never get through to them the roll of a coach and a roll of a parent.
Nicodemus is in this situation in that he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know – He has no idea what Jesus is talking about because he is purely thinking about things from a natural human perspective.
Jesus in John’s Gospel uses PUNS, and this is found in the statement that one must be born from ABOVE – Not again – BUT ABOVE – ANOTHEN is the word.
Puns are something used in many stories and great literature and Jesus will employ these puns all through the Gospel of John.
An example of a modern day pun is the following:
“I used to be a watchmaker. It was a great job because I made my own hours.”
Jesus uses a word play – Unless you are born ANOTHEN you cannot SEE the Kingdom of Heaven. For a Jew not to be able to see the Kingdom is a big deal.
ANOTHEN is a GREEK word that has two meanings – One is temporal or in time which means born again, One is spatial which means that it Is born from above.
TEMPORAL USE – TIME – Born AGAIN
SPATIAL – where it comes from – location of this birth – Born of ABOVE
One could take Jesus as either meaning born again or born of above. This is the beauty of this passage and it will make much more sense to you when you understand what is going on in this discussion.
Nicodemus takes the wrong meaning by asking the question he does.
You will find in this passage that it seems that Nicodemus is confused and he is rightfully so confused.
John 3: 4
4 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?"
Nicodemus’ question seems to show that he is still locked into his own natural understanding of what is going on.
Nicodemus sees Jesus usage of ANOTHEN as meaning being Born Again whereas Jesus means it BORN OF ABOVE
As a matter of fact in the rest of John’s Gospel where Jesus uses this word ANOTHEN He is translated as FROM ABOVE – John 3:31 and John 19:11, 23
Jesus answer to him is telling,
John 3: 5
5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Jesus combines two ideas together in this verse of being born of water and Spirit. The earliest Christians saw this as a direct reference to baptism.
Some ministers today say that this verse cannot mean baptism because it would give baptism too high a place in the work of one becoming a child of God.
Some say that Jesus’ reference to water in this passage refers to the idea of natural birth- Literally the water breaking in pregnancy. And then the Spirit part of this verse refers to the renewal by the Holy Spirit in a person’s salvation.
There are two problems with this view and they are the following:
1) There was no such understanding in the ancient world of a woman’s water breaking in childbirth – they didn’t even have that type of language. This is projected a modern term onto an ancient text and is a big blunder in Biblical studies.
2) In the original language of this passage there is one preposition that goes for both water and spirit. In the Greek they are glued together and cannot be separated. In the grammar of Jesus water and Spirit birth happen together.
My personal belief is that this passage is talking about baptism. My reasons are because it most naturally fits the context. Nicodemus and the Pharisees have rejected John’s baptism and they need as much as anyone.
This passage is bracketed by baptism passages- the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and then the baptism of John and Jesus are discussed in the end of this chapter. This passage is surrounded by baptism.
Also, Jesus baptism connected the Holy Spirit with Baptism when the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of the Dove.
Also, Acts – during the first Gospel Sermon to open the doors to the Church that Christ would establish through His apostles the idea of Baptism and the Holy Spirit are connected in Acts 2:38. The only reason you would not want this verse to not talk about baptism would be because you have a theological problem with baptism having such a high place in the new birth.
Jesus picks up with more Puns in the next section of verses:
John 3: 6-8
6 "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 "Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' 8 "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going ; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."
What is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit- the flesh is the anthropos – It is man and fleshly nature – the Spirit is the Heavenly aspect
FLESH- ANTROPOS – MAN – JESUS KNOWS WHAT IS IN MAN
Pneuma also means wind and is the same word for Spirit.
Jesus is giving another word Play here in John 3 – the Word for Spirit in Greek and the word for wind are the same words, you could interpret Pneuma as Wind or Spirit.
PNEUMA – WIND OR SPIRIT – SAME THING
Just like Anothen could be interpreted as Above or Again.
Jesus begins the sentence with one use of PNEUMA (as the Spirit) and ends the sentence with the other use of PNEUMA meaning WIND.
Until we realize these word plays going on in this passage we sometimes look down on Nicodemus but when we realize how tough Jesus teaching is here we give Nicodemus a little slack.
Jesus drives home his point to Nicodemus about the weakness of the flesh –
John 3: 9-13
9 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can these things be?" 10 Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things ? 11 "Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. 12 "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things ? 13 "No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven : the Son of Man.
Jesus is giving a statement of fact – You are a ruler of the Jews, you are a Pharisee, you are a scholar but you still can’t figure this out.
Jesus is letting us know that no matter how many natural things we have going for us it doesn’t guarantee spiritual blessing.
Nicodemus had every earthly, natural advantage, but spiritual renewal is the work of God. It will take God’s illumination of Nicodemus for him to understand. It will take God’s work of renewal by the Spirit to open Nicodemus’ eyes.
Jesus is making His point that He is talking about Heavenly things and not earthly things.
Jesus is bringing something that has been present in the Scripture since the beginning. This is found in Genesis-
Adam had the breath of divine life breathed into him at the beginning of the Creation story – Adam had divine life, or supernatural grace.
Adam was more than the noblest of creatures but was one that had the life of God, and had received the grace of Divine adoption.
God tells Adam that if he eats of the forbidden fruit that you will surely Die, Die – in Hebrew double meaning – really strong – literally die the death.
The Serpent contradicts God and tells Adam and Eve that they will not die if they eat the fruit. It seems at first Satan is telling the truth because they don’t drop dead when the eat the fruit.
The Life that God gives Adam is more, this is the Divine life that Adam loses, he dies a spiritual death at this point.
Human nature is intact, we are still creatures but we lose the Divine Grace of sonship with God- God’s family.
The soul had possessed the Holy Spirit, the Divine Life, the Life of Divine Adoption, and all of this was lost in Adam’s sin.
Many of you have seen the movie the Sixth Sense – the little boy named Cole can see dead people. Cole meets a counselor named Malcolm and he tells him in a chilling part of the movie, I SEE DEAD PEOPLE
In John’s Gospel, Jesus walks around and sees dead people. He sees people that don’t even know that they are dead. Nicodemus doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that he is truly dead, and only has natural life. He has lost the blessing and grace of Divine sonship.
Part of the reason God removed the tree of life for one particular reason. If man were able to eat from the tree of life and keep from dying a fleshly, mortal death, there would be not need to be reconciled to God.
Knowing that we are spiritually dead without Christ and the idea that we will die a physical death means that we need to make things right. If we enter into eternity unreconciled to God’s family we will die the worst death of all and that is eternal separation from God.
DEATH- many times we misunderstand the Biblical meaning of death. Death is not just the decay and the ending of our physical body, but death literally means separation.
The first death that we experience is the separation of our bodies from our souls. That is physical death.
In 1846 former president John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke. Although he returned to Congress the following year, his health was clearly failing. Daniel Webster described his last meeting with Adams: "Someone, a friend of his, came in and made particular inquiry of his health. Adams answered, 'I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement; battered by the winds and broken in upon by the storms, and from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.'"
Just as John Quincy Adams understood, the landlords of our bodies does not intent to repair but this is as good as it gets. Our bodies are breaking down and decaying, we are all going to die a physical death unless we are here when Christ returns.
To illustrate the terrible nature of death let me share with you a bit of history that happened not far from here.
The battle of Franklin Tennessee was one of the bloodiest battles in American History.
One place that epitomizes the carnage of this battle is the Carnton Plantation.
The Carnton plantation was built by the Mayor of Nashville Randall McGavock and the plantation stayed in the McGavock family.
Beginning at 4 p.m. on November 30, 1864, the Carnton plantation was witness to one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Civil War.
Everything the McGavock family ever knew was forever changed. The Confederate Army of Tennessee furiously assaulted the Federal army entrenched along the southern edge of Franklin.
The resulting battle, believed to be the bloodiest five hours of the Civil War, involved a massive frontal assault larger than Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.
The majority of the combat occurred in the dark and at close quarters. The Battle of Franklin lasted barely five hours and led to some 9,500 soldiers being killed, wounded, captured, or counted as missing.
To put that into perspective – Franklin, TN at that time had a population of 2,600 people.
Nearly 7,000 of that number were Confederate troops.
The citizens of Franklin went into their cellars that evening to wait out the fighting and what they saw the next morning shocked them. It was carnage and death beyond belief.
Historians say that it took the citizens of Franklin decades to recover from the death and destruction that haunted their imagination.
Carnton served as the largest field hospital in the area for hundreds of wounded and dying Confederate soldiers.
The name of the plantation proved to be prophetic because the plantation was named for a city in Ireland and the name means ‘city of death’.
After the war the McGavock family had all the bodies of the soldiers exhumed that had been buried in a mass grave. They had the soldiers re-buried with honors in a military graveyard.
This graveyard became the largest privately owned military graveyard in our nation’s history.
An interesting fact about the average confederate soldier is that they put their names inside the uniform on average of seven times. They were terrified about dying and no one knowing who they are.
You see there is something about us that understands the death is not final. There is a part of us that longs for eternity.
Those soldiers feared death just like we do. Death is affront to God’s good creation. Death is not natural.
We see an advanced medical science that has developed to help keep us from dying. Plastic surgeons make a lot of money in trying to make people look young. We don’t like the coming of death.
As a matter of fact we find people in our society fascinated with death as weird or strange. This current vampire craze is strange to many of us. Many of us that are middle aged and older find this current fascination with vampires and this cult that has grown up around the Twilight phenomenon as very odd.
Christ Trampled down death by death.
Our sinfulness is so serious that we have to die and be born anew. We have to be born of above.
ANSWER To our dilemma and Nicodemus’ predicament.
John 3: 14-16
14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Jesus is recalling a story from Numbers 21 when serpents bit the Israelites because of murmuring and they were dying in mass numbers. Moses was instructed to put a golden serpent on a standard and anyone that looked upon the serpent would live.
The interesting thing about that standard is that it was shaped like a cross.
The image is for us to understand- we have been bitten by the serpent – this serpent is Satan and the death we die is spiritual death.
We are to look to the cross and see Christ lifted up for us. He will be lifted up on the cross, he will be lifted up out of the tomb, and He will be lifted up to Heaven.
Paul tells us that he is crucified with Christ – it is no longer our life but Christ.
Sin is so serious that we must die and be reborn in Christ.
Baptism is a beautiful image of how that works.
We have faith, but just natural faith cannot do it.
We must die to self, God wants to put our old man to death through repentance and when we submit to God- when we come to him with the empty hand of faith God gives us what we cannot do and that is grace.
The work of Jesus on the cross saves us- look to Jesus, put the old man to death, bury that old man in baptism, just as Christ went into the tomb we go into the tomb of water, and through the Spirit we are raised and given new supernatural life.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Do As He Says AM Sermon 1.9.11
Do as He Says
This past week was our first week back in school and it is a week that many teachers dread because you have to get back into the groove of teaching and the harder part is getting kids back into the groove of learning.
I am never amazed when you cover something in class for three days straight and you get to a review day with your students and they act like they never have heard the stuff before.
The same could be said even of Sunday school sometimes. Sometimes we think kids may really understand Bible stories and we may be shocked to learn that kids really don’t understand the fine details of a story.
One such story illustrates this point.
A Sunday school teacher was speaking to a group of four-year-olds about Jesus, Joseph and Mary. After the lesson the kids were to draw a picture depicting their favorite part of the story. The teacher shared the pictures the children drew with the entire class. She got pictures of the Baby Jesus in the manger with animals, she got pictures of the three wise men and the like. Then she got to a picture from little Jimmy, a picture of an airplane with four people on it. She called Jimmy up to explain his picture. She told Jimmy that she could see Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus, obviously in their 'flight' to Egypt. She didn't understand why there was another man on the plane. Jimmy quickly explained, 'That's Pontius, the pilot.'
I hope today this sermon makes more sense to you than the story did to that kid Sunday school.
Intro:
Last week we saw that John starts his gospel with “In the Beginning” – It tells us that he is tying his gospel to the Creation account.
John 1 and Genesis 1- John is making a connection with the Creation story and Genesis.
Let us take our minds back to the Creation story and think of the images:
God Spoke – The WORD
In Genesis God separated the darkness from the Light
In Beginning , Light, Darkness, God, the Word, Life – All words that are shared between John 1 and Genesis 1
In Genesis 1 we see the Spirit of God hovering over the watery chaos and in John’s Gospel we see the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of Jesus baptism in the form of a dove.
We will see something interesting in John’s gospel –
John only records Seven Miracles in his account. The number seven is significant in that there were seven days of Creation. John also shows Jesus celebrate 7 feasts of the Jews. We see the number seven repeated in John’s Gospel because he is tying his gospel back to the Creation story.
John refers to the miracles that Jesus performs as SIGNS-
What the other three gospels called as miracles, John calls Signs
You can divide John into two halves – the first half chapter 1-12 and it is the book of Signs
Chapter 13-21 is called the Book of Glory – where Jesus manifests His Glory
John’s miracle stories were to show that fixating with the supernatural is a wrong approach. Signs point beyond themselves to something else.
For example, you can drive south on 431 to Huntsville. The first time you see a sign that says Huntsville it would be foolish to stop at the sign and say, Well I am here! No, the sign tells us to go further. John is doing the same with Jesus miracles. Go beyond the miracles to the greater truth which is Jesus Himself.
John wants us to see the signs and miracles in this book as something pointing to the THE TRUTH – Jesus – Don’t get caught up in the miracle itself but the power and truth behind the miracle.
SETTING THE STAGE
This morning we are going to look at a miracle that Jesus performs in Cana of Galilee in John 2
AS JOHN LEADS TO THIS MIRACLE – we see a ticking off of days just like Genesis
John 1 - Verse 29, 35, 43 – The Next Day – Just like Genesis 1
On day one we see the testimony of John the Baptist
Verse 29 Day two – Jesus is baptized
Verse 35 day three
Verse 43 day four – Day three and four the disciples are called culminating with Nathaniel’s calling
John 2:1 on the third day – three days later – when you add up the days you have seven days.
John is telling by his chronology that Jesus will perform His first miracle on day SEVEN
This goes right with the theme that he has stuck with so far in His Gospel – Remember that God created the world in SEVEN days. Something new is starting in Jesus on day SEVEN – Jesus will work this miracle after seven days into His ministry
Weddings were, and are, a big deal in the Jewish culture. There is a certain protocol that was to be followed. If the bride were a virgin, the wedding occurred on Wednesday. If the was bride a widow, the wedding came on Thursday.
The wedding ceremony would take place late in the evening after a time of feasting. The father of the bride would take his daughter on his arm, and with the wedding party in tow, would parade through the streets of the village so that everyone could come out and congratulate the bride. Finally the wedding party would arrive at the home of the groom. The wedding actually took place in the front door of the grooms house. It was no short ceremony….no the festivities lasted for days. It was a time of great celebration.
After the wedding ceremony the bride and groom walked through the streets accompanied by flaming torches. Their attendants walked with them keeping a canopy over their heads. The wedding party always took the longest route through the village so that as many people as possible could wish them well.
There was no such thing as a honeymoon! No, the couple kept open house for a week. They were treated like royalty. They dressed in fancy clothes and many times actually wore crowns on their heads. Whatever desire they spoke for…they received. Their word was law!
The grooms family was expected to provide all the refreshments for this week of festivities.
The wedding feast at Cana is only recorded in John’s Gospel
Jesus goes to a wedding – something is being told to us. Something will change.
Water to Wine -
John 2: 1-11
1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there ; 2 and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, "They have no wine." 4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come." 5 His mother said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it." 6 Now there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each. 7 Jesus said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water." So they filled them up to the brim. 8 And He said to them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter." So they took it to him. 9 When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew ), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, 10 and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." 11 This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.
1) MARRIAGE IMAGE - It is important that Jesus picked a marriage supper to work His first miracle – we see this idea of marriage run all through the Bible
In the OT we see that Israel was God’s bride and in the NT we see that the Church is the bride of Christ.
This feast is an in-between time where we are getting a glimpse of what is to come. A feast of plenty is what God has in store.
Isaiah the prophet foretold a time when the Messiah would come and put things right.
Isaiah 25:6-9
6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. for the LORD has spoken. 9 It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
This time IN Cana is a now but not yet period of human history. Much like how we live.
We live in the time after the resurrection of Christ but still awaiting his coming Glory to be revealed.
In this story we see a wedding feast and a glorious miracle as a type of foretaste to what is to come.
This same author, John, will write about a marriage supper later in the bible in the Book of Revelation:
The idea of Jesus performing His first miracle at a wedding also looks forward to another time when He will return and we will dine with Christ at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Revelation 19: 7-9
7 "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready." 8 It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean ; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. 9 Then he said to me, "Write, 'Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' " And he said to me, "These are true words of God."
Our ultimate hope is the marriage supper of the Lamb when we will dine with Christ in the New Heavens, the New Jerusalem, in our new resurrected bodies.
Jesus picks a wedding to work His first miracle as an Advanced sign of when great feasting and drinking will come in His Kingdom – In the Now he has Given us His Lord’s Supper to anticipate that time to come.
When we partake of the Cup and Bread, and Commune with the risen Christ let us remember that and look forward to that consummation.
2) Wine is an important metaphor for messianic times.
Joel and Amos the prophets foretold of a time when the mountains would drip with wine and the hills would flow with wine. The people living in the time of Jesus saw the time of the Messiah as a time that would be a time of feasting.
This image would not be lost on Jesus disciples when He turns water to wine. This image would burn deep into their minds.
The story tells us that there were six water pots that Jesus instructed them to fill to the brim. These each held 20 gallons each for a total of 120 gallons.
This is not just a miracle of Quality – Normally water would fall as rain and grapes would grow and then those grapes would be converted to wine – now it happens at an instant.
This is also a miracle of Quantity – God gives generously – 120 gallons worth – much more than enough.
This was a lot of water to be changed to wine. This was a Bigger miracle than we may imagine.
The water pots were made of stone because they were used for ritual purity. Stone was a clean container for ritual purity in Judaism.
In Rabbinic tradition 6 water pots of this size were adequate to make a large multitude of people ritually pure.
They ran out of wine and this would not have been proper.
Suddenly the host discovers that they are running out of wine. They had more guest than they anticipated. It would have been improper for the culture of this time to not have wine. Jews did not get drunk at these celebrations—drunkenness was considered a disgrace. But the host could have actually been sued for a breach of hospitality to his guest.
The Jewish rabbis had a saying, ‘Without wine there is no joy.”
Jesus miracle by turning water to wine signifies many things.
The wine would harken back to the Messianic expectations but more importantly what John told us in the preamble – GRACE UPON GRACE – the Law of Moses dealt with limited resources in trying to make people ritually clean but Jesus brought more than we could ever need. Superabundance of GRACE UPON GRACE –
Not only did Jesus turn water to wine but He turned water to good wine to very good wine. To wine that was either of very low alcohol content or no alcohol content. This was the good tasting stuff and in super abundant amounts.
Jesus left no doubt that he brought superabundance.
3) The idea of Mary Jesus mother being at this feast is important.
Jesus calls Mary in this story WOMAN – this is important – woman is a strange thing to call someone.
We see the term woman become very important in the Genesis account.
The Term Woman is very important in this passage and Jesus was not at all being disrespectful to His Mother.
Genesis 2: 21-24
21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept ; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. 23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh ; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man." 24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife ; and they shall become one flesh.
This passage shows setting of the story of the creation of the Woman in the Creation account.
Eve would come from the side of Adam, it would be from the side of Adam that would come the Woman.
Later in John’s Gospel we will see the Christ’s side is pierced on the Cross, when Jesus side is pierced we witness blood and water pour forth.
From the side of Jesus will come forth the birth of His bride the Church – the church will be washed in water and covered in His blood.
Just as the bride Eve came from Adam’s side, we are to draw close to the side of Jesus and remember the blood that was spilled for us.
There is only one other place in John’s Gospel where we find Mary the Mother of Jesus and that is at his cross. We see here with John the Disciple, John the one that Jesus loved.
Jesus once again calls Mary WOMAN in John 19:26 when He was on the cross.
John 19: 26-27
26 When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold, your son !" 27 Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother !" From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.
Why would John continue to hammer home the point of calling Mary – WOMAN – if you take your mind back to the creation you will realize that Eve, as the first born was disobedient, she did not fight against the Serpent in the Garden but gave in and was mislead.
The first woman was deceived and sinned.
Genesis 3:15
15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed ; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."
In the prophecy made to Eve by God shows that God will put back together the disobedience of Eve through the seed of a woman. This seed of the woman that would crush the head of the serpent would be Christ.
We see that Jesus was born of a virgin. He was literally the seed of a woman since he had no earthly father and was conceived in the womb of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now Mary would be that woman that would be a part of God’s great plan to put things right.
In Mary we can learn several lessons:
1) By saying Yes To God, she accepted her own salvation – She did the opposite of the first woman, this woman was obedient to God and in here obedience, made salvation possible to herself but also to us.
When the Angel Gabriel appeared to her she was ready to do God’s work and was willing.
A model of the attitude that we should have to God’s work on us. – Saying Yes and allowing God to do in our live what He wants to do
We need to be willing to put our whole heart into our faith and allow for the possibility of hurt and jubilation
In Luke 1: 38 we see Mary’s attitude on display as an example for all of us.
Luke 1:38
And Mary said, "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord ; may it be done to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.
How many of us would do right by saying to God –I am your slave Lord- do unto me as you like!
2) She understood the power of Christ and what He could do
One of my favorite parts of this story in John 2 is the fact that even after Jesus responds to Mary by basically saying that they have nothing to do with the problem at hand, she still turns to the servants at the feast and says - DO AS HE SAYS
THAT IS A GREAT FAITH THAT SEEMS SIMPLE BUT IS EXTRAORDINARY- DO AS HE SAYS
How many of us have that type of attitude that says that we should do as Christ says.
That really sums up the work of the Church in that we are teach one another and others – Do as Christ says
Conclusion:
As you can tell this morning this story of the wedding feast in Cana is a multilayered story.
There is so much to sink your teeth into in this story that you can get lost in the details and distracted. This morning the key for us is to understand that this same Christ Jesus that changed this water to wine, who took empty water containers and filled them with the finest wine of all wants to fill us up with His Grace.
WHO ARE WE IN THIS STORY?
1) Are we the ones concerned about not having enough wine, are we worried about little things that don’t really matter.
Imagine here is the person that created water, that created the grape itself, here is the Creator of the Universe – Here He is at the table and feasting with these people and they have no idea.
So many people live today in a haze. They live life like nothing really matters but the task at hand – day to day life and nothing else really matters.
They don’t live called and as God’s children – a different type of person, these people are oblivious and look not different than the world around them.
2) We could be the apostles, they see the signs and have faith. They are hot right now but we will see later in the Gospel that they will have weak faith.
They will abandon Jesus at the very time that he needs them, when He is going to the cross.
They will have a faith that is up and down and hot and cold. I can see myself in their lives. I see my inconsistencies, I see how that at times I am hot and then I get cold when life starts to happen and distract.
This faith is a faith that needs to mature and the good news is that the disciples matured in their faith and were able to carry the gospel to the world.
3) The final person that we see thrust into this story that is the epitome of the faith that we need is Mary.
The Mother of Jesus has the strongest faith of all – Do AS HE SAYS-
She will be with Him all the way – She will go with him all the way to the cross and as Simeon had prophesied, she will have a sword pierce her heart.
Will we be willing to do AS HE SAYS!
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Beginnings - the Gospel of John AM Sermon 1/2/11
At this time of the year we always crave something new. We make New Years Resolutions that range from eating right and exercising to career improvements.
This year I would like to look at the Gospel of John in depth in a series of sermons.
John is a Gospel about New Beginnings.
As a matter of fact John’s main theme that runs all throughout the Gospel is New Creation – God is kicking off a new project in Jesus Christ.
A world that is destroyed and damaged by sin is now being put back together by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
God is working to put back together what has been torn asunder for His GLORY!
This morning I want to introduce you to this gospel and look at the preamble to this book that lays out the theme of this book.
Some Bible Scholars have called this section of John’s Gospel the Overture of his Gospel.
Now overture is not a word that I use in everyday conversation but I do remember a fine arts class that I had to take in college at UAB.
My advisor put a few football players in Music Appreciation and I quickly realized that my instructor took music as serious as we took football.
She was a good teacher and she demanded that we listen to snipets of famous operas and these small snipets were called overtures.
The word overture comes from a French word that means ‘opening’ or introduction. In the 1700’s it became very popular to add an instrumental intro to a great opera.
That is how I and my best friend navigated Musical appreciation and that was by memorizing what the overture to each opera sounded like and from that we were able to know which opera it was that we were listening too.
I would propose the John the Apostle invites us to do the same with his gospel.
He wants us to listen to his overture – to hear how his gospel begins.
Listening and taking it in deep is the method of Bible study that we should strive for.
This idea of listening to God’s word and instruction goes back to the very foundation of Israel.
One of the most important prayers of Israel is the Shema and the word Shema is the Hebrew word for Listen.
The prayer is found in Deuteronomy 6
Deuteronomy 6: 4-7
4 "Hear, O Israel ! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one ! 5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 "These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 " You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
The very prayer starts off with Hear- now when you break this word down for Hear to its original meaning for its original audience, we will learn that it means to hear intelligently.
Shema- To listen carefully, intelligently, to listen so that you put these words into practice.
Listen to what God is calling us to do.
This morning let us listen to the majestic preamble to John’s Gospel.
Remember that it is written by John later in his life as he reflects back on Jesus and what he means to the world. Imagine the gray headed, grizzled wisdom of an apostle of Jesus that was the apostle that Jesus loved telling us about Christ.
John 1: 1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 6 There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light. 9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testified about Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.' " 16 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. 17 For the Law was given through Moses ; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time ; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
There are SEVEN big themes in this preamble that we need to consider this morning.
1) Jesus is God –
John cuts to the chase and says literally that Jesus is Jehovah God. Jesus has not beginning or no end.
John uses the word LOGOS for WORD - IN the beginning was the LOGOS. To the Jews and the Greeks of the 1st century this word LOGOS meant specifically the wisdom of the Creator of the Universe.
Jesus is the very wisdom of God in the flesh. Jesus is God incarnate in flesh. God has literally became man or as some Eastern Orthodox scholars call Jesus - HE IS THE GOD-MAN
2) LIGHT
Jesus came to show and enlighten the path for Israel – Jesus is the LIGHT to shine the path that God had chosen for His people
From verse 4-9 of this preamble to John’s Gospel the word Light is used 6 times. One of the most important points of John’s Gospel – some call this the Gospel of Light –
This idea of light being connected to the Messiah was very popular in the day of Jesus – the Qumran community spoke of the sons of Light.
The light –
5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it
I think back to an experience when I was a kid to illustrate this point. I worked for an elderly couple growing up that owned a farm that had really gotten to be too much for them to handle.
One time Mr. Hardin wanted me to clean out his old barn. The barn had not been used in over 10 years and there were still left over building materials for the old house that was built before World War II as a bed and breakfast.
Some of this stuff had not seen the light of day for years.
I remember prying open the door to this barn and when I did Sunlight came streaming into this barn.
Mice and all kinds of vermin scrambled when I opened the door, this was the darkest, snakiest and nastiest place I had ever been.
The sunlight was my ally, there was no way that I would have waded into the snaky barn without seeing where I was going.
The sun was my guide and illuminated my path.
This is what John tells us about Jesus – His teaching, His life sheds light in dark places.
We will all have to go through those dark places in our lives, such as death, the far country of sin, or a time of just despair- Jesus will light that path if we let Him.
3) VOICE of GOD
Jesus is the very voice of God – John will remind us in his gospel that those that hear the voice of Jesus hear the voice of God.
Theme – 10 Words – Decalogue - Deca – Logos – literally TEN WORDS – this theme will come back in the Gospel of John and type of connection
Jesus words will become the NEW LAW for all man – even greater or superseding the original 10 commandments.
In John’s Gospel we will read 10 times that Jesus says something – the Deca Logos – What Jesus is God’s Word.
Human Divine encounter has always in the Bible centered around God speaking to people in a language they could understand.
God wants to verbally communicate His truth to us. He wants to teach us about His wisdom and share it with us.
4) Presence of God- TEMPLE
God dwelt among us in Jesus – The language of the John 1:14 states literally that the WORD or LOGOS became flesh and dwelt among us – the word there for dwelt is TABERNACLED or TEMPLED –
SKENO – To temple or tabernacle – literally
Man had built the tabernacle to give God a place to reveal His glory to man but now this work is all God’s. He has now tabernacled among His people.
Just as God’s had been present in his earthly Temple in the Holy of Holies, now He is present in His SON JESUS – Jesus is the very presence of God.
5) Children of God
The coming of Jesus means that we can be saved - God wants to call us back to His family.
God wants us to understand the nuptial or family connection with Him – he invites us back into His family with the coming of Jesus.
The Bible tells us that the Church is the Bride of Christ – God wants to literally marry us and become one with us just as a husband and wife are to become one.
God wants us to be back in His family.
6) JESUS REVEALS GOD’S GLORY
One term that permeates the OT idea of God’s presence in His temple is the idea of Glory. In John’s preamble he tells us that Jesus is the glory of God.
Jesus reveals God’s glory to us. When God would come and take residence in the Temple of Israel, it was said that God’s shekinah or God’s Glory had been revealed to the people.
Before God’s glory had been something to stand away from or flee from, but now we can approach that glory and here is the unbelievable part and that is we can share in God’s glory.
To the Israelites this Shekinah or Doxa was on Mount Sinai in the form of the cloud the engulfed the Mountain it was in the form of the cloud and pillar of fire the lead them and finally it came to rest between the Cherubim in the Holy of Holies over the Ark of the Covenant.
What John is telling us is extraordinary – The very Glory or Presence of God is now in the form of a man named Jesus.
It is amazing How John attaches two Temple concepts in 1:14- Jesus DWELT (TEMPLED) and we beheld his GLORY (DOXA).
Further connecting this idea of God’s presence in Jesus is found in the Birth narrative of Jesus.
In 1:14 we read that the Word or Logos tabernacled among us and God’s glory was revealed.
Luke 1:35
35 The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.
The word used here for Overshadow is the same word for God’s overshadowing Jesus in His Transfiguration but is also used to describe the Glory of God filling the Temple of Israel.
The angel is telling Mary that the Glory of God will come upon her- she would bear in her womb the very presence of God in human form.
She will bear the God-Man
The Greek word here used is the DOXA
This is the root word that we get for the word Doxology - Literally this song that has been sung for ages by the Church means Glorious Words.
This word refers to the presence of God and the Heavenly realm. Whenever Heaven would invade earth it was said that God’s glory was revealed.
In Jesus Heaven has invaded Earth and eventually through His resurrection the presence of God will remain upon this earth in His Church.
7) God wants to give us GRACE UPON GRACE in Jesus Christ –
This is superabundance in Christ – God wants to give us more than we need our could imagine.
Grace upon Grace means that Christ is sufficient for all things.
Jesus sacrifice for our sin is more than we could ever need – God wants to heap up his abundant blessings upon us.
I would like to focus in on this for a moment because sometimes it is misunderstood as to what John means by grace upon grace.
This term, GRACE, is a very nebulous term used among Christians. We throw this term around a lot but never really nail down its meaning in the context of the New Testament.
GRACE IS USED 156 TIMES IN THE NT AND IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TERMS THAT SETS CHRISTIANITY APART FROM ALL OTHER RELIGIONS.
The Greek Word CHARIS literally means – Gift - it is the same root word for Charisma or Charismatic.
This stems from the idea of spiritual gifts – Charisma.
But the most basic usage of this term in the NT is the idea of God’s unmerited Favor through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
Gods Riches at Christ’s Expense is one way to understand it.
What we get but we really don’t deserve. We deserve eternal damnation and separation from God but what we get is God’s lavish gifts of love and salvation through Jesus.
John wants to rub our noses in this idea and is letting us know that this will be a key in understanding his gospel.
I want to take a minute to look at how this grace operates practically in our lives and why it is important to understand.
To illustrate this I want to tell a story real quick.
There were two Jewish Rabbis that predated Jesus by a few decades and they were two of the most important teachers in the Inter-testament period (Between Malachi and Matthew).
One very conservative scholar was named Rabbi Shammai and the more liberal scholar was named Hillel. They were contemporary with one another and had separate Rabbinical schools.
A story is told about a pagan that went to Rabbi Shammai and that pagan told Shammai that he would convert to Judaism if he could tell him everything that he needed to know about Judaism in the time one could stand on one leg.
Shammai thought about it for a while and told the young man that that was impossible.
The young pagan was not deterred and went to see the competing scholar Hillel. He asked Hillel the same question. Hillel thought about the question for a second and told him something revolutionary.
Hillel said, - WHATEVER OFFENDS YOU, DO NOT DO THAT TO YOUR BROTHER OR YOUR NEIGHBOR – THAT IS THE WHOLE LAW, THE REST IS JUST INTERPRETATION
TO SUM UP THE ENTIRE LAW OF MOSES TO HILLEL WAS TO LOVE OTHERS.
Later on, a few decades after this incident with the pagan we see someone come to Jesus and ask a question.
In Matthew 22 we read the story of a Rabbi or teacher of the Law coming to Jesus and asking Him, How do I achieve salvation?
He asks Jesus what is the greatest commandment in the Law of Moses but his underlying question is basically – what is the most important law that I have to obey to be saved.
This is an age old question and is a very human response. There is an underlying problem in this man’s question and that is the human idea that we want a list of requirements. What is the least that I have to do to get to Heaven.
Give me a punch list so that I am in control of our destiny. This man to comes to Jesus wants to control his own destiny. Tell me Jesus what are the requirements for salvation.
In the Garden of Eden a revolution took place when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. They wanted AUTONOMY – meaning that they wanted to put the man in the center. Man becomes his own ruler and God is kicked upstairs.
Jesus came to bring about a Copernican Revolution. If you remember Nicolas Copernicus was the scientist that told the Medieval world that the Sun was the center of the Solar System and not Earth.
Jesus came to bring about another revolution to remind us that it is God that is at the center and not man.
This is evidenced by Jesus answer to this man about how one is to be saved,
Matthew 22: 37-40
37 And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' 38 "This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' 40 "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
Now this seems simple – Just go out and love God with all our being and then love our neighbor.
It seems simple to you really think about what Jesus is saying, How many of us can say we love our neighbor all the time?
How many of us can say that we have put God first in every aspect of our life? We come to a conclusion that what Jesus is saying is next to impossible. What seems simple is very difficult.
Jesus also says something very disturbing in Matthew 5. In the passage in Matthew 22 we see a Pharisee or Scribe that is a great teacher in the Law. These folks were very righteous. They spend their entire life trying to please God by living perfect.
Jesus says something about the Scribes and Pharisees that should be disturbing to us. In modern America we have a hard time getting people to come to Church or read their Bible but these people that Jesus encountered, the Scribes and Pharisees lived every aspect of their life to please God.
Matthew 5:20
20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus makes it clear that our righteousness must super exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees. The word for Surpass is much stronger than the translation gives it credit for – this word really means Super Abundance.
Our Righteousness must be super abundantly more than the Scribes and Pharisees if we want to enter the Kingdom of God.
Well if that was the end of the story I would tell you to shut the doors to this building, go home, live life for yourself, and shut this church down because it is hopeless.
Here is where the teaching of Grace upon Grace enters – here is where faith begins.
Biblical Faith is something like this – realizing your limitations. When you have realized your limitation you then reach your hand to God in faith and admit to Him that you are not capable- you cannot on your own merit super- abound in righteousness.
The attitude of what is the least amount I could do to achieve salvation has no place in Christianity.
The attitude that we have before God is this – We are hopeless without God’s help – we love God and are so thankful for His Grace that we reach out to God in faith to receive that gift of Grace –
The revolution has occurred –we are not the center – God is at the center- it is all about God – He has the power to save – He has the grace to give – Grace upon Grace-
He just doesn’t want to give us enough to Grace to get in the door of Heaven but wants to give us a Super abundance of Grace – Grace Upon Grace.
To close out this morning I want to share a passage from Romans 8 that ties all of this together.
Romans 8: 28-32
28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren ; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called ; and these whom He called, He also justified ; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things ? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things ?
Do you notice who is at the Center of this passage for Paul. Who is doing all of the work? It is God – God is the one who elects, it is God who justifies, it is God that glorifies us, and it is God that wants to pour out his gifts upon us.
Paul tells us that God did not spare His own Son to save us. He Delivered over Jesus to the Jews and Romans to crucify Him so that he can save us.
Do you think that God is serious about giving us His gifts?
The word for Freely Give – at the end of this passage is the same Greek word for GRACE -
God wants to Freely Give us Gifts – This is what Grace is about.
This is the entire Scope of John’s Gospel – God wants to give us His grace through Jesus.
If you are here this morning and you have not accepted this grace you are in dangerous territory. God has given His son to open up the Grace of Heaven for you.
He asks for you to admit that you cannot do it on your own and you are not the center of the universe – it is all about God’s glory.
We may have people here that have become Christians but are not living in the reality that God wants to pour His grace into your life.
God wants to give you superabundance of His grace to transform you but you must put God at the center for this to happen.
You have to realize that you live for His Glory.
There was a phrase used by the Apostolic Church and was brought back during the Protestant Reformation and it is a Latin Phrase-
Soli Deo Gloria - For God’s Glory Alone – that is how we are to see our lives and very salvation.
This year I would like to look at the Gospel of John in depth in a series of sermons.
John is a Gospel about New Beginnings.
As a matter of fact John’s main theme that runs all throughout the Gospel is New Creation – God is kicking off a new project in Jesus Christ.
A world that is destroyed and damaged by sin is now being put back together by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
God is working to put back together what has been torn asunder for His GLORY!
This morning I want to introduce you to this gospel and look at the preamble to this book that lays out the theme of this book.
Some Bible Scholars have called this section of John’s Gospel the Overture of his Gospel.
Now overture is not a word that I use in everyday conversation but I do remember a fine arts class that I had to take in college at UAB.
My advisor put a few football players in Music Appreciation and I quickly realized that my instructor took music as serious as we took football.
She was a good teacher and she demanded that we listen to snipets of famous operas and these small snipets were called overtures.
The word overture comes from a French word that means ‘opening’ or introduction. In the 1700’s it became very popular to add an instrumental intro to a great opera.
That is how I and my best friend navigated Musical appreciation and that was by memorizing what the overture to each opera sounded like and from that we were able to know which opera it was that we were listening too.
I would propose the John the Apostle invites us to do the same with his gospel.
He wants us to listen to his overture – to hear how his gospel begins.
Listening and taking it in deep is the method of Bible study that we should strive for.
This idea of listening to God’s word and instruction goes back to the very foundation of Israel.
One of the most important prayers of Israel is the Shema and the word Shema is the Hebrew word for Listen.
The prayer is found in Deuteronomy 6
Deuteronomy 6: 4-7
4 "Hear, O Israel ! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one ! 5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 "These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 " You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
The very prayer starts off with Hear- now when you break this word down for Hear to its original meaning for its original audience, we will learn that it means to hear intelligently.
Shema- To listen carefully, intelligently, to listen so that you put these words into practice.
Listen to what God is calling us to do.
This morning let us listen to the majestic preamble to John’s Gospel.
Remember that it is written by John later in his life as he reflects back on Jesus and what he means to the world. Imagine the gray headed, grizzled wisdom of an apostle of Jesus that was the apostle that Jesus loved telling us about Christ.
John 1: 1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 6 There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light. 9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testified about Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.' " 16 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. 17 For the Law was given through Moses ; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time ; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
There are SEVEN big themes in this preamble that we need to consider this morning.
1) Jesus is God –
John cuts to the chase and says literally that Jesus is Jehovah God. Jesus has not beginning or no end.
John uses the word LOGOS for WORD - IN the beginning was the LOGOS. To the Jews and the Greeks of the 1st century this word LOGOS meant specifically the wisdom of the Creator of the Universe.
Jesus is the very wisdom of God in the flesh. Jesus is God incarnate in flesh. God has literally became man or as some Eastern Orthodox scholars call Jesus - HE IS THE GOD-MAN
2) LIGHT
Jesus came to show and enlighten the path for Israel – Jesus is the LIGHT to shine the path that God had chosen for His people
From verse 4-9 of this preamble to John’s Gospel the word Light is used 6 times. One of the most important points of John’s Gospel – some call this the Gospel of Light –
This idea of light being connected to the Messiah was very popular in the day of Jesus – the Qumran community spoke of the sons of Light.
The light –
5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it
I think back to an experience when I was a kid to illustrate this point. I worked for an elderly couple growing up that owned a farm that had really gotten to be too much for them to handle.
One time Mr. Hardin wanted me to clean out his old barn. The barn had not been used in over 10 years and there were still left over building materials for the old house that was built before World War II as a bed and breakfast.
Some of this stuff had not seen the light of day for years.
I remember prying open the door to this barn and when I did Sunlight came streaming into this barn.
Mice and all kinds of vermin scrambled when I opened the door, this was the darkest, snakiest and nastiest place I had ever been.
The sunlight was my ally, there was no way that I would have waded into the snaky barn without seeing where I was going.
The sun was my guide and illuminated my path.
This is what John tells us about Jesus – His teaching, His life sheds light in dark places.
We will all have to go through those dark places in our lives, such as death, the far country of sin, or a time of just despair- Jesus will light that path if we let Him.
3) VOICE of GOD
Jesus is the very voice of God – John will remind us in his gospel that those that hear the voice of Jesus hear the voice of God.
Theme – 10 Words – Decalogue - Deca – Logos – literally TEN WORDS – this theme will come back in the Gospel of John and type of connection
Jesus words will become the NEW LAW for all man – even greater or superseding the original 10 commandments.
In John’s Gospel we will read 10 times that Jesus says something – the Deca Logos – What Jesus is God’s Word.
Human Divine encounter has always in the Bible centered around God speaking to people in a language they could understand.
God wants to verbally communicate His truth to us. He wants to teach us about His wisdom and share it with us.
4) Presence of God- TEMPLE
God dwelt among us in Jesus – The language of the John 1:14 states literally that the WORD or LOGOS became flesh and dwelt among us – the word there for dwelt is TABERNACLED or TEMPLED –
SKENO – To temple or tabernacle – literally
Man had built the tabernacle to give God a place to reveal His glory to man but now this work is all God’s. He has now tabernacled among His people.
Just as God’s had been present in his earthly Temple in the Holy of Holies, now He is present in His SON JESUS – Jesus is the very presence of God.
5) Children of God
The coming of Jesus means that we can be saved - God wants to call us back to His family.
God wants us to understand the nuptial or family connection with Him – he invites us back into His family with the coming of Jesus.
The Bible tells us that the Church is the Bride of Christ – God wants to literally marry us and become one with us just as a husband and wife are to become one.
God wants us to be back in His family.
6) JESUS REVEALS GOD’S GLORY
One term that permeates the OT idea of God’s presence in His temple is the idea of Glory. In John’s preamble he tells us that Jesus is the glory of God.
Jesus reveals God’s glory to us. When God would come and take residence in the Temple of Israel, it was said that God’s shekinah or God’s Glory had been revealed to the people.
Before God’s glory had been something to stand away from or flee from, but now we can approach that glory and here is the unbelievable part and that is we can share in God’s glory.
To the Israelites this Shekinah or Doxa was on Mount Sinai in the form of the cloud the engulfed the Mountain it was in the form of the cloud and pillar of fire the lead them and finally it came to rest between the Cherubim in the Holy of Holies over the Ark of the Covenant.
What John is telling us is extraordinary – The very Glory or Presence of God is now in the form of a man named Jesus.
It is amazing How John attaches two Temple concepts in 1:14- Jesus DWELT (TEMPLED) and we beheld his GLORY (DOXA).
Further connecting this idea of God’s presence in Jesus is found in the Birth narrative of Jesus.
In 1:14 we read that the Word or Logos tabernacled among us and God’s glory was revealed.
Luke 1:35
35 The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.
The word used here for Overshadow is the same word for God’s overshadowing Jesus in His Transfiguration but is also used to describe the Glory of God filling the Temple of Israel.
The angel is telling Mary that the Glory of God will come upon her- she would bear in her womb the very presence of God in human form.
She will bear the God-Man
The Greek word here used is the DOXA
This is the root word that we get for the word Doxology - Literally this song that has been sung for ages by the Church means Glorious Words.
This word refers to the presence of God and the Heavenly realm. Whenever Heaven would invade earth it was said that God’s glory was revealed.
In Jesus Heaven has invaded Earth and eventually through His resurrection the presence of God will remain upon this earth in His Church.
7) God wants to give us GRACE UPON GRACE in Jesus Christ –
This is superabundance in Christ – God wants to give us more than we need our could imagine.
Grace upon Grace means that Christ is sufficient for all things.
Jesus sacrifice for our sin is more than we could ever need – God wants to heap up his abundant blessings upon us.
I would like to focus in on this for a moment because sometimes it is misunderstood as to what John means by grace upon grace.
This term, GRACE, is a very nebulous term used among Christians. We throw this term around a lot but never really nail down its meaning in the context of the New Testament.
GRACE IS USED 156 TIMES IN THE NT AND IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TERMS THAT SETS CHRISTIANITY APART FROM ALL OTHER RELIGIONS.
The Greek Word CHARIS literally means – Gift - it is the same root word for Charisma or Charismatic.
This stems from the idea of spiritual gifts – Charisma.
But the most basic usage of this term in the NT is the idea of God’s unmerited Favor through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
Gods Riches at Christ’s Expense is one way to understand it.
What we get but we really don’t deserve. We deserve eternal damnation and separation from God but what we get is God’s lavish gifts of love and salvation through Jesus.
John wants to rub our noses in this idea and is letting us know that this will be a key in understanding his gospel.
I want to take a minute to look at how this grace operates practically in our lives and why it is important to understand.
To illustrate this I want to tell a story real quick.
There were two Jewish Rabbis that predated Jesus by a few decades and they were two of the most important teachers in the Inter-testament period (Between Malachi and Matthew).
One very conservative scholar was named Rabbi Shammai and the more liberal scholar was named Hillel. They were contemporary with one another and had separate Rabbinical schools.
A story is told about a pagan that went to Rabbi Shammai and that pagan told Shammai that he would convert to Judaism if he could tell him everything that he needed to know about Judaism in the time one could stand on one leg.
Shammai thought about it for a while and told the young man that that was impossible.
The young pagan was not deterred and went to see the competing scholar Hillel. He asked Hillel the same question. Hillel thought about the question for a second and told him something revolutionary.
Hillel said, - WHATEVER OFFENDS YOU, DO NOT DO THAT TO YOUR BROTHER OR YOUR NEIGHBOR – THAT IS THE WHOLE LAW, THE REST IS JUST INTERPRETATION
TO SUM UP THE ENTIRE LAW OF MOSES TO HILLEL WAS TO LOVE OTHERS.
Later on, a few decades after this incident with the pagan we see someone come to Jesus and ask a question.
In Matthew 22 we read the story of a Rabbi or teacher of the Law coming to Jesus and asking Him, How do I achieve salvation?
He asks Jesus what is the greatest commandment in the Law of Moses but his underlying question is basically – what is the most important law that I have to obey to be saved.
This is an age old question and is a very human response. There is an underlying problem in this man’s question and that is the human idea that we want a list of requirements. What is the least that I have to do to get to Heaven.
Give me a punch list so that I am in control of our destiny. This man to comes to Jesus wants to control his own destiny. Tell me Jesus what are the requirements for salvation.
In the Garden of Eden a revolution took place when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. They wanted AUTONOMY – meaning that they wanted to put the man in the center. Man becomes his own ruler and God is kicked upstairs.
Jesus came to bring about a Copernican Revolution. If you remember Nicolas Copernicus was the scientist that told the Medieval world that the Sun was the center of the Solar System and not Earth.
Jesus came to bring about another revolution to remind us that it is God that is at the center and not man.
This is evidenced by Jesus answer to this man about how one is to be saved,
Matthew 22: 37-40
37 And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' 38 "This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' 40 "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
Now this seems simple – Just go out and love God with all our being and then love our neighbor.
It seems simple to you really think about what Jesus is saying, How many of us can say we love our neighbor all the time?
How many of us can say that we have put God first in every aspect of our life? We come to a conclusion that what Jesus is saying is next to impossible. What seems simple is very difficult.
Jesus also says something very disturbing in Matthew 5. In the passage in Matthew 22 we see a Pharisee or Scribe that is a great teacher in the Law. These folks were very righteous. They spend their entire life trying to please God by living perfect.
Jesus says something about the Scribes and Pharisees that should be disturbing to us. In modern America we have a hard time getting people to come to Church or read their Bible but these people that Jesus encountered, the Scribes and Pharisees lived every aspect of their life to please God.
Matthew 5:20
20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus makes it clear that our righteousness must super exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees. The word for Surpass is much stronger than the translation gives it credit for – this word really means Super Abundance.
Our Righteousness must be super abundantly more than the Scribes and Pharisees if we want to enter the Kingdom of God.
Well if that was the end of the story I would tell you to shut the doors to this building, go home, live life for yourself, and shut this church down because it is hopeless.
Here is where the teaching of Grace upon Grace enters – here is where faith begins.
Biblical Faith is something like this – realizing your limitations. When you have realized your limitation you then reach your hand to God in faith and admit to Him that you are not capable- you cannot on your own merit super- abound in righteousness.
The attitude of what is the least amount I could do to achieve salvation has no place in Christianity.
The attitude that we have before God is this – We are hopeless without God’s help – we love God and are so thankful for His Grace that we reach out to God in faith to receive that gift of Grace –
The revolution has occurred –we are not the center – God is at the center- it is all about God – He has the power to save – He has the grace to give – Grace upon Grace-
He just doesn’t want to give us enough to Grace to get in the door of Heaven but wants to give us a Super abundance of Grace – Grace Upon Grace.
To close out this morning I want to share a passage from Romans 8 that ties all of this together.
Romans 8: 28-32
28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren ; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called ; and these whom He called, He also justified ; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things ? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things ?
Do you notice who is at the Center of this passage for Paul. Who is doing all of the work? It is God – God is the one who elects, it is God who justifies, it is God that glorifies us, and it is God that wants to pour out his gifts upon us.
Paul tells us that God did not spare His own Son to save us. He Delivered over Jesus to the Jews and Romans to crucify Him so that he can save us.
Do you think that God is serious about giving us His gifts?
The word for Freely Give – at the end of this passage is the same Greek word for GRACE -
God wants to Freely Give us Gifts – This is what Grace is about.
This is the entire Scope of John’s Gospel – God wants to give us His grace through Jesus.
If you are here this morning and you have not accepted this grace you are in dangerous territory. God has given His son to open up the Grace of Heaven for you.
He asks for you to admit that you cannot do it on your own and you are not the center of the universe – it is all about God’s glory.
We may have people here that have become Christians but are not living in the reality that God wants to pour His grace into your life.
God wants to give you superabundance of His grace to transform you but you must put God at the center for this to happen.
You have to realize that you live for His Glory.
There was a phrase used by the Apostolic Church and was brought back during the Protestant Reformation and it is a Latin Phrase-
Soli Deo Gloria - For God’s Glory Alone – that is how we are to see our lives and very salvation.
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