Oh, I think we're returning to
the Bible. This is John chapter 8. John chapter 8. The focus of our attention this
morning will be verse 33. But I, and I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men to myself. Now, the Greek word
that's translated lifted up is found twenty times in the New
Testament. In every instance of this word,
except the three times, actually, well, I say twenty-five times,
it's found in the book of John, it means to be exalted. And in all of those cases, exalting
oneself is condemned. And there is a judgment pronounced
upon those who exalt themselves. Or, it turns it the other way
around, and both James and Peter say, humble yourselves in the
sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. That word is used in the sense
of exaltation. But here in the book of John,
It is used as another way to describe crucifixion. That's
the way our Lord used it. It says in verse 33, He said
this to show the kind of death He was going to die. And this
is also the way His hearers took it. In verse 34 we read, the
crowd spoke up, we have heard from the law that the Christ
will remain forever. How can you say the Son of Man
must be lifted up? So they understood he was talking
about dying on a cross. And it's somewhat ironic that
a word that was most commonly used to describe exaltation could
be used by our Lord, by the Holy Spirit when He inspired His apostles
to write it, could use that word to describe what is the most
shameful and humiliating death ever devised by men. If I, if I be lifted up, lifted
up on a cross, crucified, I will draw all men to me. to me, to myself. Now, Jesus
spoke these words sometime during what is commonly called Passion
Week. In verse 12, we read of his triumphal
entrance on a donkey. And on our calendar, we celebrate
that as Palm Sunday, because they took branches of palm trees.
And as he came in to Jerusalem on that Sunday, one week before
his resurrection, He came in on Sunday. They went ahead of
Him, and they were throwing down these palm leaves and saying,
Hosanna! Blessed is He that comes in the
name of the Lord. And they were, quite frankly,
acknowledging Him in all of this as if they were saying it. They
were acknowledging that He is the Messiah for whom they had
looked. And, uh, And of course, that
didn't sit well with the leaders of the day, neither the political
leaders nor the religious leaders. And they told the Lord Jesus
that he needed to quiet the people down. And he said, well, by the
end, he said the very stones themselves were quiet. So this is in that week that
began with our Lord riding into Jerusalem in what he called the
triumphal entrance. Now, there are two things. in
the Jewish calendar, which point directly to the Lord's suffering
on the fall, Passover, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Both of these, one occurs in the spring, that's Passover,
and the other one occurs in the fall, and that's the Day of Atonement.
Now, I've often wondered, why was our Lord's crucifixion associated
with Passover, rather than the Day of Atonement? I want to be
crucified sometime in October rather than sometime in the March,
beginning of April, somewhere in May. And because we generally
think of our Lord's suffering as an atonement, and indeed it
was, but God saw fit that Passover should be the feast most closely
associated of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
I've got a few reasons, and the Bible never tells us that these
are the reasons, but it's plausible. First of all, Passover celebrated
the deliverance of the Jews from captivity through the deceit
of their enemies. Likewise, the death of Christ
set forth to us, or is set forth to us, as the deliverance of
God's people from captivity through the law, through the deceit and
destruction of our spiritual enemies. If you look over at
Colossians chapter 2, now before, at times, I have told you that
the cross was not a battle. And it wasn't. The cross was
not a battle. Nonetheless, there was a victory. A victory that came without a
battle. And here's the reason why. It
was the kind of victory that was necessary, the kind of work
that was necessary to win the victory was not simply a demonstration
of talent. However, what our Lord did accomplish
the routing of the enemy. It says here in Colossians chapter
2, beginning in verse 13, when you were dead in your sins and
in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with
Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having
canceled the written code, which is regulation, that was against
us and should oppose us. He took it away, nailing it to
His cross, and having disarmed the powers and authorities, a
public spectacle of them triumphing over them by his power." Now,
the Jews were there in Egypt, and there was a code written
against them in Egypt. They could make bricks, and then
it got more severe. You'd have to make the bricks,
and they aren't going to supply the straw for you that they would
put in there as a binder. And so their labors just increased
all the more. Now, God could have, by a demonstration
of great power, simply come into Egypt, and with a whirlwind or
whatever, grabbed all the Jews and taken them all the way to
the land of Canaan and brought them to Egypt. That would have
been impressive. But God had something more in
mind, something different than a simple demonstration of His
raw power, rather a demonstration of His justice, both in the judgment
of Egypt and in the deliverance of His people. And He did it
by means of that symbolic ceremony of Passover, where they took
a lamb and they cut its throat, collected the blood, put the
blood on the cross piece, and the lintel of the door, and on
the door post. Precision, our Lord stretched out on the cross.
They didn't know it at the time, but that's the way of the Lord.
He makes pictures that people can't see until the full film
is already passed. And they go, oh, that's what
that means. But there was the picture of our Lord crucified,
as it were, on the door. And they were inside the house.
And those houses represented Christ and Him crucified. And
when God came through in judgment, when He passed through Egypt
in judgment, He passed over all the houses on which the blood
is found. And therefore, and of course,
what that blood the justice and judgment has already passed on
this house. And therefore, the Jews were
released from the powerful enemy, not displaced by a demonstration
of power, but by a demonstration of justice. And the one who had held them
captive said, get out. They weren't just set free. They
were expelled. That's the way the Lord works
now. He didn't just open the door
and say, well, leave it open. His people were delivered. Therefore,
it's suitable that Passover be the time when our delivery from
our enemies was accomplished not simply by some demonstrated
power, but by the satisfying of God's justice. And the blood
was put out there in Christ and Him crucified, represented by
those houses on which the blood was found. And everyone in the
house was spared. And we were in Christ when God
passed through the world in judgment, so to speak. when He comes before those in
Christ. He passed it over, didn't He? Why? Because a thousand years
ago, He already dealt with them in Christ. They are set free.
And Passover marks the time when
God made the twelve tribes of Israel into a single nation.
To be the cross Christ has made all of His people from every
kindred, tongue, five, and nation. And they lived there in Egypt
because they were all in one spot, and they were all treated
by outsiders pretty much as just one group. But they fought among
themselves. In fact, they continue to do
so. You can watch the other history. But on the day that God brought
them out, he made them into one nation. And he ratified that
work on Mount Sinai. and gave them a covenant that
would provide for all of them as one nation. And if you look
over in 1 Peter chapter 2, 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9, now Peter is addressing his letters
to God's elect. But you are a chosen people,
a royal priesthood, a holy people. nation, a people belonging to
God, that ye may declare the praises of him who called you
out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people,
but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received
mercy, but now you have received mercy. So far as the flow of
history is concerned, was not a people, was not a single
holy nation, yet Jesus Christ gave himself over. I know in
the real world, mind yourself, as far as joining all of God's
people from all ages and all ethnicities, joining them into
one body, that was a constant. This was said of the Jews also. You say they didn't act very
holy. Well, neither did we, did we?
We don't act very holy. Look over at St. Franklin's Chapel,
too. We don't act very holy in the sense of what most people
think holy means. People hear the word holy, and
they always think of that in terms of moral virtue. And there
are some contexts in which moral virtue is what's intended. But
more often, it simply means something set apart. Something set apart. And Jesus Christ sanctified or
set apart, made holy, the church, by His blood. And beginning in verse 14 of
2 Corinthians, chapter 6, he says, Do not be yoked together
with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and
wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light
have with darkness? What harmony is there between
Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in
common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between
a temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of a living
God. As God has said, I will live
with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and
they will be my people. Therefore, come out from them
and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean things, and
I will receive you. I will be a father to you, and
you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Keep
going. Since we have these precious
promises, we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves
from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness
out of reverence for God. Now, I sat under several messages
in my childhood. And it talked about, therefore,
come out from them and be separate. And they, our church, practiced
what was called normal separation, I think they called it. Because we were not only not
to associate with bad people, we didn't associate with people
that associated with bad people. Most of this aggregate is businesses.
Once in a while they'd take us out and we would take the kids
bowling for an hour. And they would make it a drive
all the way to Ashland, Kentucky because Ashland's in Boyd County
in Kentucky and Boyd County is a dry county. You couldn't buy
alcohol in Boyd County, Kentucky. They'd take us over to Bowling
Alley over there because you couldn't buy beer in that Bowling Alley.
all the bowling alleys in Huntington, West Virginia, where the church
was, you could buy a beer. So, that was what they thought
this meant. Come out for a moment. You know,
you don't go to the bowling alley where they got beer. Don't touch
the unclean thing. They thought the beer was the
unclean thing. That wasn't the unclean thing. What Paul was
talking about here is idols. That's the unclean thing. And
these Corinthians were being tempted to go and sit down at
these idol seats You know, so that, you know, for the food,
but also so as not to incur so much risk of feces. You know, it's one thing when
people in the streets show up to this church for a Sunday.
Another thing altogether is when they make a facial because they've
left the previous church. It's usually the same. Most folks don't mind you adding
a religion, just don't get near the one you already have. But
Paul was saying, come out from them, and he says, perfecting
holiness. In other words, bringing this
holiness that Christ accomplished on the cross, bringing it to
its goal, which is what? That we not be one with the world,
in how it approaches God. When you talk about the way we
work as Christians, the world looks at us as though
we're trying to be self-righteous. It doesn't happen anymore, but
when I was first here, they called on me. And I did it a couple of times.
When I came here, I didn't want to separate from anybody, you
know, just on the fact that, you know, I knew, you know, you
might never make a judgment about someone or what they said and
doing without seeing what they said and doing. And, but after
a couple of times, I realized that what they were doing and what
we're doing isn't the same type of thing. I knew it wouldn't be, but I
thought I would. They used to call me and say,
you want to be involved in this? I said, no. I really did. Because I knew what they were
going to say. And it's not about us being better than anybody. It's about God being worthy. Now, I happen to think she's
the best woman in the world. But there are other good women
in the world. But me being devoted to her doesn't...
I'm not trying to cast off on anybody else. She's worthy of
my complete devotion as a husband. And God is worthy of our complete
devotion to Him, and that we not worship any other God if
we claim to worship Him. And that's this holiness. Christ,
by His blood, God grabbed the people and said, you're mine.
So come you out from everybody else, from every other God, from
every other group that worships another God, even if they call
that God by the same name you use for your God. So we are not to be yanked. Christ has made us holy, and
therefore we are to act like that holy people. For just as
Passover liberated the Jews from bondage, and formed the various
tribes of Israel into a single holy nation, so did the death
of Christ liberate His people from their bondage, and He formed
them into a single holy nation. By His death, He disarmed our
enemies, saying he's in, the devil and
all he's doing. He said, well, how did he disarm
me? Well, what did the devil do?
He told me to leave you as a brethren. And how did you do that? With
the law. He brings accusation in the court
of our country. He brings accusation in the court
of heaven, set up by the blood of Jesus Christ. Thank you for that. And we have been set free. And
we have been brought together out of every kindred, tongue,
eye, and nature. Now, what was this lifting up
that our Lord spoke of back in John chapter 12? He said, I,
if I be lifted up, first and most obviously, it was a crucifixion. A crucifixion was invented by
the President but perfected by the Romans into a gruesome and
excruciating spectacle of death. It was gruesome, especially as
Christ experienced it, because they beat him nearly to death
before they crucified him. And he was so beaten that it
said he was scarcely recognizable as a human being. The pain involved
would be indescribable. In fact, A new word was invented
to describe its meaning, the word excruciating. The C-R-U-C in the middle of
that word comes from the crucify in there. And what it means is
the pain that comes out of the cross. And the nails in the wrist were
positioned so that the weight of the body hanging on them,
hence the nerve running through there. The only alternative was
to lift oneself up on your legs, which had been nailed through
the heel bone into the cross. And no matter where you put your
weight, on your hands or on your feet, you are in excruciating
pain. If you hung by your hands, you
couldn't breathe. But as time would go by and you
needed a breath, you would raise up on your legs so that you could
take in a breath. And this would go on, sometimes
two, three days it would take a person to die by crucifixion. Until finally, we lost him to
dehydration, to sheer exhaustion, and he could no longer raise
his head. a cooler way to kill a person. And it was meant to be a spectacle. Crucifixions were not carried
out in remote areas. They weren't done in private,
not on prison grounds. They were done right out in view
of everyone else. They demonstrated the person
was under a curse. The men were stripped naked before
they humiliate them. And they had the desire to kill. This is what our Lord may await
of you in the rest of your days. For the many things that I have
done. was an offering to God. In Hebrews
chapter 9, verse 14, we read, How much more then, will the
blood of Christ, which through the eternal Spirit offered Himself
unblemished to God, cleanse our consciousness? Here I want to share a word that
she, in an eternal spirit, offered to himself, under him, without
cause, to God. The cross was no doubt a demonstration
of the love of God. God commended his love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But death in and of itself is
not a demonstration of love. Death may be a means to demonstrate
it, but only when death is necessary for the welfare of the object
of one's love. So Christ, His death, was a demonstration
of love in this sense. And in His death, He took our
place, and He bore our death, because He bore our sin. And
inasmuch as He bore our sin and death, we won't. Bodies will
die, that's for sure, and we'll be glad of it once it happens.
We'll resist it until it does, but once it does, we'll be glad
of it. But we will never experience
the death of the soul. Because Jesus Christ has died
in our place, and he has experienced that. He poured out his soul
under death, says the Scripture. And therefore, our souls will
never be poured out under death. And that's why it was an act
of love. It did something good for us.
But it was essentially an act of sacrifice. That's the way
he fulfilled his love for his people. Now, four characteristics
of this litany. Christ being lifted up in each
hour. It looked like a demonstration of weakness. That's why it seems
just utterly ridiculous to the to the whole world when they
heard the gospel. Here's a bunch of people worshiping a guy who
got crucified. Rome scoffed at the idea. The
Jews scoffed at the idea. The Greeks said, that's stupid.
Really, that's foolishness. That's because they didn't understand
how that thing could get so drunk. And what great power it had.
He says, Now is the time for the judgment on this world. Now the prince of this world will be given up. and he is no longer in charge. He never was ultimately
in charge, but for our Lord is saying this, of what I'm going
to accomplish, he will lead me forward, and he will be put on
the road, and he will be on the road until the day that I pass
through the end of the life of Christ. This world, not meaning the earth,
but rather meaning the human system that prevailed on the
earth in that day, the system of the Gentile godlessness and
the system of Jewish self-righteousness and legalism. He said, it is
coming to an end and judgment is falling upon us. And the prince
of that world, the prince of the world of Gentile
godlessness and the prince of the world of Jewish legalism,
Remember, our Lord said to the Pharisees, whenever we make a
decision, you are of no father or mother. That was pretty surprising to them,
I imagine. It was probably surprising to everyone that was around listening.
They set themselves forward as a representative of God. And
he said, no, you're children of the devil. If you were children
of Abraham, you'd do the same kind of thing Abraham did. Because
Abraham rejoiced at the father's seeing my death. And he did see
it. If you want to kill me, you don't
act like Abraham. You're not Abraham's children.
You act like the devil. That means you're the devil's
children. That's devil. Have you noticed that everywhere
the gospel goes, the manifestations of the revelations are seen?
And interestingly enough, wherever Christians leave
off preaching the gospel, they start preaching it more honestly
and fairly. I hope that is in the next day
or two. I think I purchased the paper last night. I quit 335 yesterday. I started talking about how I
knew I hated it. And it was powerful. I'll tell
you another way it was powerful. Look back at John Chapter 3. Verse 14. Just as Moses lifted up the snake
in the desert, So the Son of Man jumped in and lifted up.
And everyone who believed in Him may have eternal life. Now, it is one kind of
power to bring judgment on the world and to put the Prince of
the world to rest. That's one kind of power. Look
what else power has. Do you remember the story how
the Jews and the blind hate God? Rumbled against the Lord, and
the Lord sent fiery serpents. I think what it meant was that
whatever snake it was, when it bit, it burned. You lift it up and you tell the
people, look and live. Look and live? That doesn't make
any sense. If you get bit by a snake, you
know, you're supposed to suck the little extras out. That's
what they told me in the horse shop. I've heard it a little
different now, but anyway. And you try to suck some venom
out. All these things you're supposed to do. Get an anti-venom
shot. Get all these dirty stuff. Here's what's been told them
to do. Look! Now, we realize that brass snake
didn't have any power at all. It was just a hunk of brass. But what it represented And therefore, God, in a symbolic
way, showed how that looking at His Son would relieve us of
the death that it was brought about by that serpent of long
ago. And that snake, representative
of the curse, and Christ was made to be a curse
for us and He was lifted up. And friends, you don't get eternal
life by looking to Christ the example. And He's a good example,
I mean, perfect example. You don't get eternal life by
looking to Christ as a good prophet, though He was a perfect prophet.
Eternal life comes by looking to Him lifted up as a sacrifice
for sin. Lifted on Christ. Paul said, I determined
to know nothing among you other than Christ and Him crucified.
Isn't it interesting, even though Paul said that he was an apostle
because he'd been witness of the resurrection because he'd
seen Christ. an important essential aspect
of the Apostle's message. Yet when Paul would describe
the sum and substance of the Gospel message, he puts it this
way. Christ and Him crucified. Christ lifted up on a cross. That is the central point of
everything we believe. Everything else we believe flows
out from that. It is revealing. Christ being
lifted up had a revealing power. Look at John chapter 8. Verse 28 of John 8. So Jesus said, when
you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that
I am the one I claim to be, and I do nothing on my own but speak
just what the Father has taught me." Now, you'll notice the words,
the one I claim to be, at least in my version of it, I didn't
tell you the brackets, didn't I? And what that means is they put
those words in there because they think that's what the Lord
meant, but there's really nothing in the Greek New Testament there.
With Ken James, we do the same kind of thing, it's just put
the words in italics, instead of using that little bracket.
Let's look at this in italics. That ad is crazy, man. He says,
when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that
I am. I am. Who is I? Moses said, who am I going to
tell them to fit me? He said, you tell them I am fit
me. I am what I am. Now, not everyone
he was talking to understood that. When he was lifted up,
they mocked him. And actually, on the day that
he was lifted up, so far as I know, there was only one who knew who
he was, who had revealed to him by that very act who he was,
and that was the thief on his right. Lord, remember me when you come
in the evening." Now, that word, Lord, it has a broad variety
of meanings, but I know this, that the Jews would not say the
name of their God. They would say it's Jehovah,
or something like that. But they didn't say it, for fear
of using the name in vain. want to refer to that name, they
would use the Hebrew word, and most often they would use the
word, Adonai, which means my Lord. And it's very plausible that
that's exactly what that means, is that we look to our Lord and
we recognize Him. And so, in a way, coming with the Jews,
we said, man, I am, and you come and do nothing. But Isaiah prophesied it here.
He's a wonderful person, a mighty God,
an everlasting Father. That's why, in the book of Joel,
it says, "...whosoever shall call upon the name of Jehovah
shall be saved." And that's why the apostles should go out and
say, "...whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall
be saved." And what they meant by that is, "...whosoever shall
call upon the name of Jesus Christ shall be saved." Why? Because
He is who I am. And you say, how does the cross,
how does Him being lifted up reveal that? It doesn't in any
kind of reasonable way. It does it miraculously because
it works in the heart to create life. Thirdly, it is transformational. He's missing out. Transformational
has become one of the bug words of our culture. I recently read
of one of the people who's gearing up for a presidential run here.
In a little while, he's being referred to as a transformational
candidate. It rendered the Old Covenant
obsolete and stated away and ratified the New Covenant. It
broke down the wall that separated Jews from Gentiles and formed
them into one body. And it divorced the worship of
God from our Christian faith. But it's got nothing to do with
it. Oh, there was even a song. I
walked today and I didn't do this yet. Well, one thing that
physically changed us is that we're over 200 million miles
away from that spot in the U.S. Maybe on Earth. Or as one of
my professors said, well, actually, you walked about nine feet above. It was powerful, it was revealing,
it was transformational, and it
was raw. All right, when I am lifted up
from here, I will draw all men to myself. up until that point, if you were
a kid, you probably didn't even know about the hospital. Actually, I don't know why you'd
want to know. That's more. There's nothing
about you that will disqualify you from finding
the truth. When you think about that, as we evolve, and
we might go all the way, and all kinds of people, no one who can understand is neither male nor female. That
matters. No matter how smart you are or
how brilliant you are. It doesn't matter how virtuously
you've lived or how strangely you've lived. Nothing about you disqualifies
you from coming to God in Christ. Now, you may refuse to. God may leave you in the hardness
of your heart, and you, from the hardness of your own heart,
you might refuse to. But it won't be that God disallows
you. He draws. And if God ever gives
you eyes to see Christ and lift it up, and to understand why
He would lift it up As so-called Calvinists in Belize
would do. Because I love you, and you're
the love of my life, and you are. Therefore, I call you family. you