This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. This is where the text of John
gets a little tense. Because this is where, as I've
been telling you all for months now, where we start seeing the
division of what we say we believe and what we actually will hold
to as faith, truth. They heard the words of Jesus
who said, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.
Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture said, out of his heart
will flow rivers of living water. When they heard Jesus say these
things, now remember the picture that we have here. Have the picture. The Feast of Booths where they
carry the golden pitcher of water from the Pool of Siloam and they
take it into the place of worship and the priests, they parade
it down the streets of Jerusalem and they make a much to do about
this. This living water that came from
the rocks in the wilderness that gave them sustenance to live
in the desert. It's symbolic, as we see in the
writing of Deuteronomy and the writing of Moses, of the Holy
Spirit's presence, of the Holy Spirit's provision, of the Holy
Spirit's power. So they made much to do about
this water, and seven days in a row they worshipped God for
His provision of the living water. And on this last day of the feast,
after or amidst or during, I believe it was during, I believe they'd
just poured the water. Jesus stands and says, if anyone's
thirsty, come to me and drink. We've looked at, over the last
few months, many people who claim to understand Christ, many people
who claim to even profess Christ, as we see a reoccurrence now
of Nicodemus, who is the object of the discourse of John 3. Many
people who claim to be spiritual, to know God, to know the Word
of God. And yet, what does Jesus tell
them? You do not know the Father because you do not know Me. You
do not have the Word of God in you because it speaks of Me.
And He refers to Moses more than not. And He says, Moses wrote of Me. Moses wrote of Jesus when Moses
wrote of the serpent in the wilderness. John 3. Moses wrote of Jesus
when Moses wrote of the manna." John 6. Moses wrote of Jesus
when Moses wrote of the water of provision. And see, for those
who have been born of the Spirit of God, they see that and they
go, wow. So we have a different tune.
We have a different perspective, if you will. We can hear the
music a little bit differently because we have the Spirit of
life. It doesn't mean that our flesh
doesn't fight us. It doesn't mean that the traditions
of our day or that the, quote, religion of our culture doesn't
fight against it. But friends, when we see John's
teaching here, when we see the teaching of Christ, it erases
all of those prerogatives. It takes them out and then we
see nothing but Christ. Some people would be overwhelmed
and excited about the imagery of the Old Testament, about the
perfection of God to orchestrate the exodus and the deliverance
of His chosen people, Israel, and how the symbols and signs
and shadows are just so amazing, and they should give us reason
for worship. But what happens a lot of times
is that people will come to that, they'll see the Christ, they'll
see the New Testament, and then they start to see the shadows
forming in the Old Testament, and then they dive back into
the Old, and they love the shadow more than the truth. They want
to see the picture rather than face-to-face the Lord. Friends,
we're no different than the Jews of that day in our flesh. We're
no different to be overwhelmed and enamored by the glories of
what God has done. Everybody wants to know who done
it on the murder show, or the mystery show, or the crime show. Everybody wants to know just
not who did it, but what's all the details? How did this work,
and this clue, and that clue, and this clue? So it's in our
nature to be nosy. It's in our nature to have all
the answers. It's in our nature to find a puzzle on a table and
want to put it together, or a crossword and want to fill it out. It's
in our nature to see a question and feel as though we are obligated
to find the answer. Beloved, we have the answer.
We have the solution. We have the fullness of all the
mysteries of God, and His name is Jesus Christ. So let us not
ever go back to the elementary doctrines of washings, you see
how Paul writes in Hebrews. It is not for the church to soak
in the glory of the image and the picture and the shadow of
Christ. It is for the church to soak
and bask in the glory of the fullness of Christ. Come to Me,
all who are thirsty, and drink. When they heard these words,
look at verse 40. Some people said, this is a proclamation. What did they say? really is
the prophet. Now we saw this language come
first in John chapter 1, where John the Baptist in his amazing
display of unkemptness, grossness, Out of orderliness, whatever. He didn't bathe or cut his hair
or brush his teeth. He ate things that a Jew shouldn't
eat. He lived places that a Jew shouldn't live. Why? Because
we know when we read the Gospel accounts, especially Luke, that
God removed him from the public so that he would not be adored
and worshipped. For it said all of Israel's eyes
were on this child to see what he might become. And John the
Baptist was a nothing. was a nobody of no significance
whatsoever. Did He have any imprint or a
footprint or a stain or a vapor in this world? He was nothing
but a mouth-house used by God to proclaim, Behold the glory
of God, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
Behold the coming of the Kingdom of God. Here is God with us. Here is Emmanuel. Here is the
Christ, Messiah. Here He is. And of course, John's
disciples were overwhelmed with frustration when many would come.
And then when Christ was revealed, they went to Christ. They said,
look, our people are going to Christ. And John says, the bridegroom
must get the bride. Some of the most frustrating
phrases. You have little bits of language
in your head. You have sound bites in your
head of things people have said to you that never leave. You
know, what is it? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 words, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7 words. So that's 16 words that have
been said to me over a period of 15 years that struck my nerve
and my heart. And some of you are thinking,
yeah, I remember when my wife said this, or my husband said this, or my son
said this, or my daughter said this, or I had this spat with
that woman at Walmart. I mean, don't go to Walmart then. I'm going to get you all to reform
on that one day. Anyway. But these are leaders, these
are spiritual leaders in my life, and one of them said to me many
years ago, do you know what? You'd be happier in a small or
traditionally minded church. This was in a church of several
thousand. I just kept coming back to Scripture. Why do we
do these things? What are we doing? What are we
trying to accomplish? This is ridiculous. Oh, you know,
you'd be happier in a smaller or more traditionally minded
church. Oh, I took such offense at that. I was blown away. Two ways. What am I going to
do with a little tiny church? They just, they all die out and
it's just you and your wife. Children leave. It's just, you
know, Not only on the mega church life, I didn't know anything
else. So it was an insult, you don't fit here. But it was true. It had nothing to do with the
size of the church, it had everything to do with the focus, with the
purpose, with the vision, with the teaching, with everything
that revolved around nothing glorious, but everything just
sort of cultural. And I'm not making an indictment
on that as a whole, but that's where it was when I was there.
The very fact that it was a thing showed that it wasn't the church.
The church is not somewhere you go. It is a people that you are
together. And that's the problem. that
we see here with Israel, with the Jews, with those of Jerusalem. I keep calling them the Jerusalemites.
I don't even know if that's right, but it works. Those people of
Judea, those people of Galilee who had all these mixed feelings
about Jesus, now He's disrupted this feast once again. And something
else that someone said to me in 2012, you and your people, are not of like faith and order." Someone said to me, you are not
of like faith and order. I'm like, you've got to be kidding
me. You will never find one person around here that's more Baptist
than I am. I'm so Baptist, my confession's
hundreds of years old. I'm so Baptist, I sleep immersed. You know, I'm just in a tub. I mean, you know, like vampires
go to coffins. I sleep in a badger tree. I'm just being funny. It's
a joke. You're not of like faith and
order. But as I look back on that, he was exactly right. Oh,
how true and glorious our God is to prevent us from being captured
by culture at the cost of truth. Those words cut like a knife
during their season, but looking back on them, they are sweet
reminders of the sovereignty of God to work in us, to prove
to us that even when our enemies speak, or even when those who
don't know the truth speak, or even when those who speak out
of ignorance, God will speak through them prophetically to
show us the truth sometimes. and how I hated those things,
oh, how I cherish them now. No, I do not want to be part
of a contemporary cultural church. No, I would much rather have
a true family of faith than to have thousands upon thousands
of active people doing everything but glorying in the Word of God. And yes, I am not of like faith,
nor am I of like order of most Baptists in our day. Praise the
Lord. But this prophet, they would
ask John the Baptist in John 1, are you the prophet? No. What does he say there in John
1? Who are you, they ask in John
1, this is just a review, 19. He confessed and did not deny
but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they ask him, what then,
are you Elijah? And he says, I am not. And they
say, are you the prophet? So some people here, hearing
Jesus speak and teach, they say, this really is the prophet. Now
here's the problem. Just as many of us today, without
the oversight of the Word of God in its holistic points, Sometimes
we can get overwhelmed with tiny little words and tiny little
phrases and not look at the whole picture. The same thing is true
for the Israelites of this day. They did not see the whole picture.
They remembered Moses in Deuteronomy 18 saying to them these words,
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me
from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen.
Just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day
of the assembly, when you said, Let me not hear again the voice
of my Lord God, or see this great fire any more, lest I die. And
the Lord said to me, They are right in what they have spoken.
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers,
and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to
them all that I have commanded him." Now, this is what's crazy.
The Jews never figured out who this was. John, are you the prophet? No,
I'm not. I'm not the Christ. Who are you? Are you Elijah? No, this prophet would come in
the spirit of Elijah. That means with the words of
God as Elijah did. If I come in the same spirit,
that means we've got the same attitude, same mind, same workings,
that type of thing. It's not about Elijah's spirit
in someone else, which the Jews really hung to that. Believe
it or not, the Jews of antiquity believed in reincarnation. Isn't
that crazy? How do you know that? We've got a bunch of writings.
We have a lot of rabbinic writings, and they talk about it a lot. Maybe he is the prophet. No,
he really is the prophet. But they could not see that the
prophet and the Christ were one and the same. Jesus Christ is
the prophet promised by Moses. Jesus is the one who they were
looking for. Jesus is the Messiah that they
were looking for. But they had figured it all out.
They had everything laid out. They said, oh, we know this,
and we know that, and we know this, and we've measured. We
are the leaders, and we know the Scripture. Jesus has already
indicted them and says, you do not know the Scripture. You are
worshiping Satan and you think it's the God of the Bible. Your
God that you worship in this temple is none other than Lucifer.
You see? Now I've been emphatic on that
several times over the last six to eight weeks. And the reason
is, is because many people think that Jews and Christians are
just a hair apart. We're as apart, we're as close
as a Muslim and a Christian is. or as Jehovah's Witness and a
Christian is, or as a Roman Catholic and a Christian is. We're as
close as a Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Catholic,
Muslim, Satanist, Jew. Will they worship the one
true God? No, they do not. Jesus said they do not and have
not worshipped God. They worshipped a caricature
using the text of Scripture which reveals that Jesus is the God
of heaven, and when He appeared, they still worshipped their own
caricature of a God they created in their own mind. Namely, a
God that if they followed to the T, they would appease, and
because He trusted them as His own, they were okay. But Jesus says that you don't
know God. Here's another word that He said,
the truth is not in you. Another word that He says is
that He will say, your father is Satan. God is not your father. You are the sons of Satan. Now,
you know, I'm sure my parents have said stuff like that to
me as a kid before. They didn't mean it. You know, you're sort
of acting like the devil there, buddy. Or maybe they did. Maybe when we say stuff like
that to our kids, but we go to our sons and say, you're acting
like your daddy, the devil. Maybe we really are talking about our
husbands, women, or vice versa. Who knows? But the point is here,
Jesus was being literal. Jesus was being very particular
in the fact that he wanted not only his audience, though they
could not see it because they were not regenerated, no matter how
much logic they had. They illogically refuse what
was illogically before them of their own teaching, that Jesus
is the prophet, who is the Messiah, who is the Christ. Same word,
by the way, Messiah, Christ. This really is the prophet. Some
of them agreed. Some people say, oh, they're so close. See, I
could entitle this message, Jesus Calls His Sheep, but He doesn't. Jesus Confuses the Goats, that
would be a better title. Jesus divides. He divides. He always divides. But He also always unifies. Jesus
unifies His people. We who have the Spirit of God
in us can be together. in unity. We can be together
in truth. We can be together in worship.
We can be together in doctrine. We can be together in understanding.
We can be together in forgiveness. We can be together in love and
service and needs. We can be together in evangelism.
We can be together. But friends, in the world that
we live in today, just like this time, there was very little to
do with Jesus and therefore there was very little unity at all. Jesus at best was an interesting
fellow. who spoke interesting things,
who stirred theological debates that got up under the skin of
these, as we would call today, Google theologians. What's the difference between
a Google theologian and a theologian? A theologian uses the Bible,
not other people's studies. But doctrine divides people.
And listen to these divisions. This is really the prophet, some
say. Verse 41, others said this is the Christ. Others would say this is the
Christ. Now let me tell you something. Nicodemus wasn't sure where he
was on either one of those, was he? So he played the safe road
and he said, we know that you're from God. You can be the prophet,
you can be the Christ, you can be an angel, you can be whatever
you want to do, we just know God sent you. Now that's amazing
that He, speaking as part of the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, these
same group who was among these people, He spoke on their behalf.
He says, We know that you are from God, for no one can do that
which you do except he be from God. And Jesus in His rebuke
says, You cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven unless you're born
anew. You keep talking, Nicodemus. You keep saying what you think
you know about anything. You can't see anything. You can
see nothing. Put that in the correct grammar. Unless the Spirit of God births
you anew. You see nothing. You see nothing. and you're looking at me and
you're confessing that I'm from heaven, but you are not trusting in Me
as Messiah, Christ, Prophet, King, Lord, and God. You cannot
see Me as those things, for My Father has not permitted you
to see these things. For the Spirit of God chooses
as He wishes where and when to blow through the teaching that
I will give you, Nicodemus, as Moses wrote, so shall I. This is the Christ. But then
there's a third division here. Look at the two divisions. The
prophet, some said he's the Christ, and some would then ask, is the
Christ that come from Galilee? So what is he dealing with here?
Some people would say, we know he's from God, and the Sanhedrin
had already confessed that, not publicly, but privately. So some
would say, he must be this prophet that Moses spoke of, but Moses
was speaking of Christ. They were right. So was their
right assertion salvific faith? No, not at all. And some would
say, oh no, this is the Christ. But is that confession a result
of their regeneration? Probably not. Be careful, beloved, to think
that just because someone says, this is the Christ, that they
are indeed born of God. Did not Judas Iscariot profess
and teach and preach the gospel of Christ? Did he not stand on
the corners of the streets and perform miracles by the power
and the authority of Christ? Yet he turned them over for just
a little silver. A lot of silver then. Now they're going to question,
was the Christ that come from Galilee? Because the issue here is that
Jesus was known as a Galilean. This has come up already several
times in this dialogue. How can He be the bread that
comes from? How can He say He came down from heaven? We know
this man's Father. We know that He comes from Galilee.
And Jesus even says, you know me, you know where I come from,
and I'm about to go a place that you cannot come. Remember, three
Sundays ago? So this division is threefold
in these first four or five verses here. Now they're refuting the
fact that Jesus could not be. Here's a confession over here
that He is the Christ, a confession over here that He is the Prophet,
and now there's this third party saying there's no way He's either,
because we know He's not the Christ, He's not supposed to
be from Galilee, He's supposed to be from the city of David,
Bethlehem. But was Jesus not born in Bethlehem?
See, we think that little tiny things like that are of non-significance
in Scripture, but it is the prophecy of the prophets for thousands
of years that Jesus Christ would be born the way He was born.
It is the fulfillment of prophecy that though He was indeed sort
of a refugee in Galilee, I'll use that term lightly. He was
born in the city of David. He was born from Bethlehem. But
he was not known as someone from Bethlehem, he was known as someone
from Galilee. And for a season he was even
in Egypt, because his life was in danger. But it was not his
time to die, for he was going to die at the next festival of
the Jews, the Passover, because he is the Passover lamb. And they would go on to say,
has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring
of David? Do you see this division? Do you see this division here? This teaching that Jesus did
divided people. Doctrine divides people. If I
say to you that God is sovereign over the will of men, and you
don't believe in that God, then we are divided. If I say to you
that God is sovereign in salvation and you don't believe in that
because you hold to a free libertarian will or a free agency of man
in the context that you can do anything you want in relation
to salvation, then we are divided. When Jesus says in John 6 that
there are some who cannot be saved because they have not been
given to Him by the Father, that is divisive. And let me tell
you something, church, Those things will cause division. The gospel in itself will cause
division. The teaching of Christ will cause
division. And here is the picture. These
were not a world of pagans he was talking to. These were the
creme de la creme of Israel. These were the devoted followers
of Moses. These were those who followed
the law to a T and did all that they were possibly able to do
within their flesh to fulfill everything that was commanded
of them. went to them and called them out and said that you have
not been able to believe because you have not been given to Me
by the Father." See how that... Now somebody
has argued with me just recently, last month or two, James, you
shouldn't say that because that's anti-evangelistic. to which they
use a transliterated English variant of a word, evangel, which
is gospel, which is Godspeak, which is good news, which is
inclusive of what Jesus teaches in John 6. If the gospel that
John 6 teaches is not evangelistic, then it's not gospel. It's not
good news at all. The proclamation to believe in
Christ is not the gospel. Believe in Jesus! I do, most
people say. Believe in the teaching of Jesus.
Okay, I do, most people say. No, no, no, no. Believe in this
teaching. Believe in this Jesus. Believe in this passage. Believe
in this doctrine. Believe in this truth. Believe in this good news. Why
is it good news? Because friends, if it were left
up to us, we would never believe. If I were to say, raise your
hand if you've got a reason to throw away your faith right now,
Probably every hand in the room would go up. Some of us who are
limber enough might even have our feet in the air. We all have a reason why this
life is hanging us around the neck to the point that we cannot
breathe. We all have a reason why there's
something with our bodies, or with our minds, or with our emotions,
or with our marriage, or with something that's going on in
our lives that we would just be better suited to walk away
from the struggle of the faith and hide. And we would. We would. We would do so if God
were not sovereign to keep us in. Because in the same place
that Jesus teaches that those who are not given cannot come,
He says, but those who are given will never be cast away. See,
that's the good news. And these people that Jesus are
talking to, they want to cast Jesus away because He is, what
is it, throwing shade on their religion. He's throwing shade
on their way of life. He's doing some things in this
teaching that causes the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Scribes
and the chief priests to what? Look bad. I mean, wouldn't it
be amazing if I were teaching and, you know, here we are coming
into, we're in our Finishing up, goodness, we're in our seventh
year gathering as a church. And wouldn't it be crazy if Christ
just flew over the curtain and said, James, what you've been
teaching on this and this and this and this for seven years
is just wrong? I mean, that would embarrass me for a minute. I
probably wouldn't have time to think about the embarrassment
if Jesus came flying over my head. I mean, think about that. Or worse, and I've been in these
situations, I've been in conferences, I've been in plenary sessions
before, where I've seen men stand up on stage and teach a doctrine,
and then somebody comes back up and says, that was heresy.
I'm sorry, sir, but what you just said is wrong. You're twisting
Scripture for your own devices, and it's wrong. Please, church,
dismiss what this man has said. And I'm going, I'm never teaching
here. I mean, that's embarrassing a
little bit. The very thing that Jesus taught in the positive
doctrinal way violated the very teaching and the understanding
of the teaching that the Pharisees had held to for centuries. He's supposed to be from David's
offspring. And Joseph is his daddy. My beloved,
Joseph is from the house of David, and so is Mary from the house
of David. So either way you shake it, Jesus is from the house of
David, through the lineage of Rahab and a few other incidentals
in there. It's not about bloodline, it's
about the sovereignty of God and His own genealogy. God established
what He wanted and who He wanted in the line of Jesus, and the
prophecy is true. So when people say, this is the
Christ, It doesn't necessarily mean that they trust in Him as
the Christ. Just to say we know He's God,
how many cults know that Jesus is God and will proclaim it?
How many people will say out of their mouth that Jesus is
the Lord and the God of heaven and earth? Many. Do you trust in Christ because
God has given you to Him and given you a mind to believe and
to see and to understand and comprehend with all the saints
the breadth and the height and the depth and the majesty and
the measure of the love of God through Christ for you? I pray that you do. But doctrine,
as we've seen here, divides. It says there, Has not Scripture
said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes
from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So then, verse 43,
there was division among the people over him. Friends, I think I've said it
enough today. It's normal to see division. But here's the beautiful thing
about the true saints. Though there may even sometimes
be division among us, there is always unity in the end. Always. We will come together
on the truth of Scripture and we will proclaim the true Christ. We will hold fast with a like
mind and like faith and like order as the believing ones who
are born of the Spirit of God. We see people visit with us every
now and then. And they sit down and they say, well, we're looking
for a church that believes in the sovereignty of God. We're
looking for a church that believes in the sovereign grace of the
Gospel. We're looking for a congregation that we can grow with. The most
important thing to us is the teaching of Scripture and the
intimacy of the saints under the banner of the Gospel. And
they never show back up, and then all of a sudden we find
out they've gone and joined a community church. What's wrong with the community
church? I'm nothing, I'm just using it as an example, but I don't know
of a community church in our area that preaches the sovereign
grace of God. Why? Because it doesn't draw
goats. It doesn't draw what? It doesn't
draw unbelievers. John 10, I can't get there fast
enough, But John 10 will say, Jesus says, the sheep know My
voice, they hear it, they obey it, they follow after it, they
come out, they eat, they're satisfied in Me. Just like He says, thirst
no more, come and be satisfied. Only the sheep have that thirst. Our culture, and this will be
like this until we get through John 12, by the way. There will
always be these applications until we get through John 12.
But our culture has come under the guise of the enemy, the temptation
of Satan, the twisting of Scripture, to think that if we can accommodate
someone's felt needs, if we can reach a lost world by bringing
them into the congregation in such a way that they can feel
comfortable, then we'll catch them for Jesus. Beloved, what
is the old cliche? Whatever you catch them with,
you keep them with. We don't have the net of comfort
where we just drag people out of the mires of the world and
we put them over here and safely on the landing dock of false
belief and false Christianity. Can you imagine that? Can you
see that picture? And tell them they're okay. And don't ever
offend them because we're supposed to be at peace. Listen, following
Christ is an offensive experience. Believing in Christ is offensive
to our own senses. It's offensive to our culture.
It's offensive. We should not be offensive, but
we are going to have these types of things in our lives. What are my children supposed
to do? What is my husband supposed to do? We can be friends and
we can be close and that's about as good as we're going to get
outside the instruction of Scripture. That's what's most important
because it is the Scripture that, what, prepares the church to
do the work of the ministry. You know what ministry is? Meeting the needs of our family. When it's not easy, when it's
not cheap, and when it's painful. And the list could go on and
on and on. That's what it means. When we pray for people's problems. See, wouldn't we much rather
have praise reports? Everybody stand up. Here's a
praise report. And we could find something to be happy about.
Even if it's, oh, they renewed my favorite show for another
year. I'm so thankful. And I'm joking. I guess you could be thankful
for that. Or maybe, you know, well, you know, I got a good
job. We should be thankful for that.
Well, this worked out. Well, that worked out. But what
is the praise report of the New Testament? In the midst of death,
hallelujah! They're coming for my children.
Praise be to God! Though I die, I live. Glory. You see? That's the praise
report. There's never a season of any
historical evidence whatsoever where strong, believing, true
church has ever lived in a place where they could just dance a
jig and hallelujah because life was grand. and everything could be glorious,
and you could have no problems in your life, but when the gospel
of grace seizes you, when God the Holy Spirit takes you without
your permission and brings you to life, and you believe, you
will be at odds, if nothing else, with your own flesh. Praise God. Because when the
battle is not able to be won, I have already become a victor.
For in the weakness that I have, God is strong, Christ is my strength."
Paul says, therefore, I will boast all the more about my weaknesses,
because in my weakness, He is strong. There's division. And some of them, mainly the
chief priests and the Sadducees, they wanted to arrest Him. But
no one laid hands on Him. No one laid hands on Him. Why?
It was not His time. See, sometimes people think,
well, this is how God is sovereign. He's keeping people. They're
like, I gotta go arrest Jesus, but I can't move. Help me. I can't talk now. That's not
how God works. See how God worked in this? Here
are the Pharisees, the Sadducees, here are the Jews, the leading
Jews, and they're standing here at the feast, and Jesus just
tears it apart. He tears it apart. And people
mock Him, and then people say, He is the prophet. And some people
say, He is the Christ. And others say, He can't be.
And now there's no worship. There wasn't any worship going
on anyway. So at least now the reality of the heart of those
people is being spoken with their mouths. So Jesus causes all of
this division, and everybody's thoughts and nuances of their
own assumptions begin to divide them. And the Pharisees and the
leaders there, what God does is He causes them to fear the
division amongst the people, and they're not stupid. You know,
you've seen videos of heroes jumping into mobs to save a person. Poor guy, he jumped in there
with 40 men beating on that guy and he got hurt real bad. What
did you expect? In the same sense, in the same
way, here is the Lord allowing these people to pay close attention
to their human limitations and their human fears. How fearful
would it be, though they knew for sure that this man had come
from God, if they laid hands on Him right there? Let me tell
you what would have happened with those who had said, He is
the Prophet, He is the Christ. They would have lost all credibility.
So their self-glory, their self-glory, prohibited them from coming and
putting hands on Jesus. That's why they wanted a mole.
That's why they wanted a snitch. That's why they wanted somebody
they could buy from the inside, so that they could work around
getting Jesus in the wilderness, away from public view. And they
could bring Him in at night when it was illegal, and have a trial.
He was found innocent, but then because of the cry of the people,
as you'll see soon, they condemned Him to death. So then the Jews
could say, well, Rome condemned Him. We didn't have anything
to do with it. We're just innocent little old
southerners. That's how God's sovereignty
works. And if He so needed to or chose
to, He could stop us where we were. How could God stop us from
moving? Stroke. Temporary paralysis. He can make
a king get on his knees and hands and take off all of his clothes
and walk around in a field and eat grass like a cow. Oh, that's just dementia. Sovereignty
of God. Doctrine divides people. Assumption
divides people. They were assuming. what each other were thinking.
And so it put them in division, not only with each other, but
with themselves. They couldn't do what they wanted to do because
God wouldn't permit it. It was not time for Christ to
die. It was not time for Him to be arrested. So God orchestrated
it this way here. We continue to see the officers
then came to the chief priests and Pharisees. Came to the chief
priests and Pharisees who said to them, Why did you not bring
Him? See, the officers were sent to
arrest Jesus, and they didn't. They're going, we're not doing
this. This is stupid. We're not doing
this. It's like when I was riding with
an officer in Hayward, California one time, and he was a drug enforcement
officer. And we're driving down a particular
block, and there's this guy sitting there, and you could see under
his t-shirt this big magazine sticking out. You can't even
say the word gun in California. It's a felony. And I said, you see that? He
goes, yeah. I said, do something. He says, you go do something. I'm like, what? He goes, if I
locked up everybody I saw with a gun, I'd probably be dead by
now. What are we going to do? It'd take 40 people to get that
guy. And who knows how many more are
standing around here. He said, you do something about it. That's
sort of what the officers are doing. We're not locking him up. in the midst
of all this. We're not putting our hands on
this man. Look at these people are praising him. They're calling him the
prophet. They're calling him the Christ. Now they're arguing against each
other. We're not doing this. Why did you not bring him? You
notice that that's usually the way it works, isn't it? We want to save face. We want
to be the good guy on both sides of the fence. We never want to
stand for the truth that we believe in. We never want to stand on
the principles that we know are true. So instead, we try to get
other people to go around and help us. That we always have
this scapegoat. Well, you know, we just told
him to go talk to them. There was always a scapegoat.
There was always a way out. The officers answered, no one. See, why is it that they didn't
put their hands on him? Here's the real reason. The officers
answered, no one ever spoke like this man. No one ever spoke like
this man. Now there's a lot of things at
play here. They're talking to the leaders
of the spiritual world of Israel. And they're saying, we've been
listening to y'all preach for a long time and ain't nobody
preach like this. Nobody's ever spoken this way.
Nobody's ever pointed to the true living water. Nobody's ever
said that out of you will flow rivers of living water. No one
has ever spoken this way. Now Jesus has not said this for
the first time here, but it's the first time publicly. In John
chapter four, we see him teach that to the woman from Sychar. No one has ever spoken like this
man. Now, think about this for a second. Here are all these
divisions. People concerned with the fact that Jesus may very
well be the prophet, may very well be the Christ, and then
they go to arrest Him, and they don't put their hands on Him
because they're overtaken by the truth that this man is teaching.
Whatever he's saying right now, however he's responding to them,
we can't touch this man. This man's anointed. In our culture,
that word means nothing. But the word Messiah, the transliteration
from the Greek, Christos, Christ, means the anointed and set-apart
One. He's anointed by God. Jesus says
it clearly, John 5, that which the Father is doing, I do. That
that the Father was saying, I now say. That that the Father, this,
what the Father's will is my will." Basically, as Jesus is
proclaiming that all that God has been doing and is, now ta-da,
here He is continuing, and it's me. I am God. Not I'm the Father,
I am the Son, but I am God, just the same. And I believe what happens here
is that emotion divides these people. Here are the Jews and
their officers, and now the emotional response to the teaching of Jesus
has divided them. The officers are no longer willing
to submit to the authority of the Jews because there's some
emotional response they have to the teaching of Jesus. There's
this kinship, there's this warmness, there's this feeling. Beloved,
we don't make decisions based on our feelings. Do you know
that's the number one sin of the saints in the world today?
We make decisions based on our feelings versus based on what is truthfully
taught to us in propositions of Scripture. The Scripture teaches
us that the heart of man is inherently and intrinsically wicked and
it cannot be trusted. Well, I just feel. What does
the Bible say? Well, I just think. What does
the Bible teach? Putting to death the flesh is
inclusive of knocking off our emotions, knocking off our feelings,
knocking off our thoughts, and putting them through the screen
and the filter of the strict teaching of the way and the truth
and the life who is Jesus Christ given to us through the Scripture. Now, in the rare occasion that
our feelings are qualified by Scripture, we still don't operate
on them. We operate through the Scripture. But the emotions of these officers
were divided against the teaching and instruction of their bosses. What about us? Where do we fall
in that today? What emotion and thought, or
you might think, what emotion? I'm not emotional. Are you fearful?
Are you doubtful? Are you hurt? Are you offended? Are you abused? The list goes on. So we think
of emotion as hysteria or anger. It's an emotion too, but what's
the root of all those things? Are you confused? How do we stop that? I wish I
knew. I had a very wise man tell me
one time that just like the dash on my vehicles, Some of you might
go, what dash? I don't look at a dash. I didn't
know there were lights on those things, but there's lights there. I'm
going to go blinking and buzzing, pay attention to them. But for
the most part, we pay no attention to those blank spaces on our
dash. We just drive, we're looking where we're going, every now
and then we glance in the rearview mirror. Sometimes we quench the steering wheel
a little bit tighter because we're frustrated with the idiots that shouldn't
have a driver's license as we speed past them so we can get
out of their way. We're not looking at the dash,
we're not focused on the dash, we're not looking at the place
where the warning lights aren't, but when they come on, bing,
bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, we go, what in the world? Oh, that
says change oil soon. We'll just keep driving. If it's
blinking, it says pull over now, engine disrupt, self-destruct,
eject the car, you know, fire in the back, whatever your car
might tell you. If it's urgent, we look at it,
we think, okay, that's an urgent, That's an urgent notification.
We'll stop and we'll deal with this. In the same way we don't live
our lives focused on the instruments of our mechanics, of our toaster, of our car, of
our television, or whatever else it might give us. You know, you
ever had your phone, your iPhone in the car? In the sunlight,
you get back in, you go to use it, and it's got a big exclamation
point. It says, overheated. Cool off before you can use the
phone. I'm like, really? What are you trying to save me
from? Burning my face? I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's
not. I don't ever think about that until it pops up. The same
thing is true for our emotions. When they come up, we look at
them and go, okay, let me take this warning light and let me
put it into the sense of Scripture that teaches me the truth. Oh,
it doesn't match. Then I ignore the warning light. And I'm going to tell you, you
take that little thing right there and you put it into seven
months of therapeutic counseling. And when the man got that across
to me, I stopped him and I said, don't say one more word. I shook his hand, I wrote him
a check, and I never looked back. I had the whole time been trying
to get my emotions under my command, my thoughts under my command,
my feelings under my command. That's impossible! No wonder
I'm so depressed and crazy! I'm trying to make my body and
flesh and soul do things that I do not have the authority and
the power to do. And then I'm upset with God because
He isn't doing what I want. I want these things gone. What I can do is trust in Christ. The Gospel, the good news, is
the good news in light of everything. The good news is always the good
news, no matter how bad every other bit of news is around us,
or no matter how bad the news that we give ourselves. Because
that's the majority of the war, beloved, is that we are seeing
the truth of Christ being taught this day. but we want to listen
to our own thoughts. But it can't possibly... There's no way that the Word
of God is stronger than this. He doesn't know how I feel. Yes,
He does. The Scripture says that Christ in every way has been
tempted, in every way, so that we not only have a high priest
who advocates for us because He died in our place and took
our sin on Himself and then gave us His righteousness after being,
what, risen from the dead. That is the good news. But we
have an advocate who has gone through every sense of temptation
that man will ever feel. And then Paul says, but none
of you have ever been tempted so far as to the shedding of
your blood. So that we have a high priest
that can sympathize with us. He's not just saying, oh now
calm down. Now before I had depression, I was a horrible counselor. Because
I had little patience with people in their warning lights. Would
you stop looking at the warning lights? We like to take the warning lights
out, keep them lit, wear them around our necklace. Frame them
and put them on the wall. Put one on this side of our head
and shoulders and be just like, look at my lights, look at my
lights, look at my lights, look at my lights. That's what we do. Why? Because we want somebody
to go, hey, I know how to put that out. Christ put it out. And it seems so silly to say
that being with the saints and being in the teaching of the
Word of God and praying together and being intimate together is the
only real answer to be able to what? Make it through this life. We're not talking about... When
people say overcome, we've got a misunderstanding of what that
means. In our culture, when people say, it's time to overcome, they're
lying. Because they're thinking we're
going to be rised up, we're going to be kings and queens on a mountain, and
everything's going to be good, we're going to look down on our problems,
and they're sailing around in the river of lava that took them and consumed
them. We're hovering about five inches over that lava and our
eyebrows are singeing. And then when we get together,
we smell like sulfur. And then we complain about that. I smell,
I'm so sorry. Oh, that's okay, I smell the
same way, honey. Christ is our joy. He is our God. He is our Savior,
beloved. And though there will be divisions
and wars, for the church, we are united in this truth. And
nothing can overcome the work of Christ with His people. Now you would think, as many
of you have experienced, that when people come to the knowledge
of there's something special about this gospel, this good
news of Jesus, there's something incredible about it, I'm captivated
by it, I'm overwhelmed by it, I'm not going to arrest this
man. No one's ever preached like this before. The Pharisees don't even give
encouragement, do they? Listen, unbelievers don't give
encouragement. They like to get nasty. Now the
saints can get nasty too, we can get nasty. We learn how to
wash off and love each other afterward. The officers were asked by the Pharisees,
have you also been deceived? Have you also been deceived?
Here you have now, we sent you in there to arrest him and now
you're converted. Now you're a Christ follower. Now you're
already thinking crazy stuff." That was the answer. And then
they ask, have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in
Him? Have any more of us, have any of the leaders believed?
Because why? Man, they were really upset about
the idea that people would come to believe in Christ. They're
really upset about the idea that someone would believe in the
sovereignty of God and salvation, that they would have to come
to a place where they'd have to lay down their traditions, lay
down their self-glory, lay down their assumptions, lay down their
emotions, and lay down their doctrine, and trust in Christ
alone. I'm not willing to give all this
up for Jesus. Well, the good thing is you don't
have to, because until God births you anew, you'll hold on to everything
but Jesus. And even then, we have a tendency
to want to snatch it up, don't we? Well, there's that junk I
dropped years ago. Let me get it. And it's not even
in our control. Sometimes we don't even go after
it. It's just like those warning lights. They just come on. No,
I just changed the oil. Why is the light shining? Maybe
they ripped me off at the oil place. Maybe my car's about to
blow up. I can't afford a new car. What
if it kills me? You know? Our spiritual lives
are in the same way. Have any other people believed?
Who else has believed in this gospel? Who else believed in
this Jesus? They wouldn't have called it the gospel at the time,
but we'll call it the gospel because that's what we call it.
Who else is believing in this Reformed stuff? Who else is believing
in this Baptist theology? Who else is believing in this
sovereign grace? Who else is believing in this
justification by faith alone, through Christ alone, for the
glory of God alone, etc., etc.? Who else is believing in the
finished work of Christ? Who else is believing in Calvinism? Who
else? Oh my goodness, we've got to
do something about these people. We've got to stop this stuff.
We've got to deal with these people. They're getting our people. The bridegroom gets the bride. The bridegroom gets the bride. That's where these people cannot
see. And there is not one person in
that crowd who will ever believe except God the Father calls them
to believe. And all that God calls us to
believe, there is nothing they can do, even hanging them on
a cross, that will cause them not to believe. And I don't know about you, but
the last time I checked, that wasn't on my list of burdens.
Thinking I'm going to die because I believe in Christ. That's a
possibility. but not as much here. Now we
may think we're going to die. We may feel like it'd be better
if we did die, like Paul. But it is better that we live
for the sake of each other than to die and be with Christ. That's
what Paul says. For your sake I shall stay. It's
far better for me that I go, but for you I shall remain. Who else has believed? In verse
49, Through the end, I'll read and make a few points, and this
will be the meat of our sermon for next week. It says, "...but
this crowd that does not know the law is accursed." And then Nicodemus comes, "...who
had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them..."
You know, they've asked who believed. Nicodemus says to them in response to their
attitude of the fact that they are not what? What is Jesus teaching
them? Let's listen again. I am the
bread of life that comes down from heaven. Eat of me and live.
I am the living water. Come to me and never thirst.
And out of your soul will come streams of living water. This
is what Jesus is teaching. And what do the Jews say? He's
not teaching them the law. So He's accursed. Nicodemus says,
Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and
learning what he does? You know what he's saying to
his own peers? You don't even know the law. You know what's
crazy? Jesus has already told them they
don't know the law. For the law is seen in Christ. See, that's the difference. That's
the difference. That's what John's Gospel has
really just been tearing apart for me is the comprehension and
more overly the intimacy that we have in the righteousness
of Christ. It's all we have to have and
all the other things that God does, all the maturing, all the
putting to death of our sin, all the growing of our faith,
all of the ebbs and flows of our life as we mature and grow.
And Lord knows we've had to exercise discipline in our congregation
several times recently. That's part of it. But even if we hadn't, no one
is secure because of how they live their lives or how they
adhere to the doing of the ministry, which is what the people hear.
Well, I'm an evangelist, so I'm okay. I share the gospel all
the time. Great. So did unbelievers in Jesus'
day. Of course a believer should be sharing the faith. But not all equally. Not all
in the same manner. Not all in the same frequency.
But as the Lord permits. But Nicodemus is saying, you
know, And I'm putting words in his mouth. Jesus is right. These people don't know the law.
Because they're going to condemn a man without ever even putting
him on trial to see if he is doing that which the law says
not to do. See, that's where church discipline
falls. And what do they say to him?
Now keep in mind that Jesus calls Nicodemus the teacher of all
Israel, so that means he had a very high status in that culture
as a teacher. And here he is talking to his
peers, and instead of saying, we're going to hear what you
have to say because you've brought a good point. So that we may
honor the Lord, our God, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it's God, let
us convene and meet about these things. Instead of saying that,
they turn to Nicodemus and they say, are you from Galilee? You see that? And then they say, search and
see that no prophet arises from Galilee. Well, what does that mean? Anybody who's from Galilee who
claims to be from God is to be stopped. And anybody else that supports
this man and his claims, they might as well be from Galilee
as well. And if you don't know much about Galilee, Galilee wasn't
necessarily looked nicely upon by those true
homegrown Jerusalemites. What in the world do we do with
that? So what? You've heard the teaching,
now what? Remember, the power of God unto
salvation is only through the finished work of Jesus Christ
given to you and causing you to be born again by the Holy
Spirit just because God mercifully saves you. There is no other means through
which you will be saved, and there is no thing, nothing in
our lives that can keep us in the love of God except Christ,
except faith in Christ. The division of these religious
people became evident. It was always there. But when
the truth came in and landed its plane in the middle of that
field, by implication, it made void every other assumption. And we'll deal with that more
next week. Believe on Christ, beloved, the Christ that we are
learning, the Christ that we should be teaching. And live. Let's pray. Thank you so much,
our Father. who is holy, who is mighty, who
is powerful to save. We thank You, Lord, for Your
teaching this morning. God, though these types of places
in Scripture can seem weak or empty, Lord, we know that they're
not. They cause us to go back and to think about everything
we've learned thus far in the text, and there's so much here
just in these things that I could topically deal with, Lord, but
You know what is best for Your church. So grow us in the hearing
of this Word today. that we might worship You, love
each other, and go into a world to teach the cross of Christ. Father, we pray for those who
are unable to be with us this morning, those who are traveling,
Father, those who are ill. Give them the measure of grace
that they need to feel secure in Christ, that their faith to
be strengthened in the Lord. Give them a longing to be with
the saints each and every week, that we may invest in each other's
lives, pray for one another, love each other, and be unified
in the truth of Christ. Father, we thank You for Your
grace saving us lest we be divided in our religion and in our traditions
and all of these things that we see in text this morning.
We praise You, Father, for giving us one mind and one spirit, one
baptism and one Lord and Savior, who is Jesus the Christ. And
it's in His name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.