Alright, let's take our Bibles
and turn to John chapter 5. I'm going to attempt to finish
this chapter this morning. And our lesson is going to be
here in verses 31 through the end of the chapter. And the subject is the testimony
of God. The testimony of God. Alright,
let's start reading here in verse 31, John chapter 5. If I bear
witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another
that beareth witness of me, and I know that the witness which
he witnesseth of me is true. You sent unto John, and he beareth
witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from
man, but these things I say that you might be saved." Now, he's
talking here to a group of men who were rabbis and master theologians. And he says, I'm going to tell
you something that you might be saved. Now, listen to what
he says. And he's talking here about John. I receive not the testimony from
man, but these things I say that you might be saved. And the message
of John was, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins
of the world. The message of Christ the Redeemer
and Substitute is what he preached. And he says in verse 35, He was
a burning and a shining light, and you were willing for a season
to rejoice in His light. But I have greater witness than
that of John, for the works which the Father hath given me to finish,
the same works that I do bear witness of me that the Father
hath sent me. And the Father himself which
hath sent me hath borne witness of me. You have neither heard
his voice at any time nor seen his shape, and you have not his
word abiding in you, for whom he hath sent him you believe
not. Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal
life, and they are they which testify of me. And you will not
come unto me that you might have life. I receive not honor from
men, but I know you that you have not the love of God in you.
I am come in my Father's name, and you receive me not. If another
shall come in his own name, him you will receive. How can you
believe which receive honor one of another, and seek not the
honor that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse
you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you,
even Moses, in whom you trust. For had you believed Moses, you
would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if you believe
not his writings, how shall you believe my words? Just try for
a minute to project yourself into this situation and what's
going on. When he speaks in the Gospels
of the Jews, when he just uses the term, the Jews said, or the
Jews accused him, or anything like that, when he's talking
about the Jews, he's talking about the council of the Sanhedrin. He's talking about the representatives
of the Jews. There was a council formed. called
the Council of the Sanhedrin. And these men, their position,
I forget how many there was in the council, quite a number of
them. They were all master theologians,
all doctors of the law. And they were made up of scribes
and Pharisees and, as I said, doctors of the law. And their
job was to settle all disputes as far as the Word of God. Any
controversies over the Word of God, you came to them, their
word was it. That was final. Whatever they
said, that's the way it was supposed to be. And also, it was their
job to look for the promised Messiah, the coming Messiah.
They would go if somebody said, here is Christ, or there is Christ,
or I think this man is the Messiah, they would go examine him and
see what was going on. And when John the Baptist came
on the scene, the first thing they did is counsel went out
and they wanted to know if he was the Messiah. And he said,
no, I'm not the Messiah. I'm just a voice. And just try
to put yourself here. Here's these master theologians,
these men that Peter and James and John all grew up looking
to as the authority of the church, as the teachers and instructors
of God. And here's these men and they're
questioning their Lord, they're questioning Christ. And they're
making accusations toward Christ. And there's multitudes of people
all around. It's not just the Council and
Christ, but there's just multitudes all around. And here was a man
who had laid here at this pool for 38 years. Why him? Probably because he'd been there
for 38 years. things that are indisputable. He would not take a man who'd
just been there that day, brought there that day, because everybody's
going to say, well, he said that was a miracle, but I've never
seen that guy there before, and somebody planted him there, you
know. This whole thing is a hoax. No, he took a man they all knew
beyond any shadow of a doubt. He'd been there 38 years. And
he healed this man. He didn't stick him in the pool.
He didn't put him in the water. He didn't do any of those things.
He took him by the hand, raised him up, told him, get his bed,
and walked. And he did. Been laying there
38 years. They couldn't deny it. But they
totally overlooked this miracle of God. They totally ignored
it altogether. Why? If I come in here this morning
and there was a man been laying here all them years and I took
him by the hand and raised him up, it would be hard for you
to ignore that, wouldn't it? But they ignored it and why they
ignored it was because what he taught, his very person and what
he taught was totally contrary to everything they believed.
And they wrote off these miracles as things done by Satan because
they didn't have any other explanation. You either had to receive Him
as a teacher sent from God, or a prophet sent from God, or the
Son of God, because nobody else could do these miracles. Nobody. So here they are, and they are
charging Him with this, and charging Him with that, and their anger
is growing, growing, because He told them that He was the
Son of God, making Himself equal with God. And their anger grew,
and they become even and more upset. And these were not a bunch
of ragtag rebels. These were the upper echelon
of Israel, all the Jewish leaders. And they brought some serious
charges against the Lord. These religious men were so convinced
that they were right in what they were doing and saying that
they ignored all the evidence that God had given to confirm
the message of Christ. And this is what I want you to
see here this morning. These miracles and things that
we read about in the Scripture, they're all given to confirm
the message of Christ. That's why they're given. And
you can learn from the miracle itself even demonstrates a sinner
coming to God. You want to know how a sinner
comes to God? Examine the miracles. Just go through. They're blind. They need eyes. They're paralyzed,
they're laying there, they're helpless, can't do anything for
themselves at the mercy of God, at the mercy of His grace. And
you can learn a lot just by looking at these miracles. But these
miracles were done to confirm the person and the message of
Christ. And these men wouldn't have it.
They wouldn't have it. And this same thing can be applied
to all those who are here today, and they weigh what they hear
by their traditions, by their ceremonies, by their customs,
and they've all adopted these things by what they've been told
and what's been handed down. Free will works religion is the
religion of our day. The Jewish religion was the religion
of that day. Catholicism was the religion
of the days in the 1500s and 1600s when it was in power. There's always a religion of
the day, but today it's free will works religion, will worship,
man-centered religion. That's what I'm talking about. It's their will above God's will.
Where is the preeminence? When they come and you tell them
that it's not of Him that willeth, and you read them right out of
the Bible, it's not of Him that willeth. Well, man has a will. Yes, he does. Now, where is his
will in relation to God? Free will works religion, takes
the will of man and elevates it above the will of God. You
see what I'm saying? That's what I'm talking about
when I say, we'll worship or works religion. It elevates my
thoughts above God's thoughts. He said, you thought I was altogether
such a one as yourself. That's what you thought. And
he said, my thoughts are not your thoughts. We want to put our destiny over
God's destiny. I want to put my honor over God's
honor. I want to put my authority over
God's authority. Sitting in this tabernacle of
clay on a pretended throne, acting as though the whole of the future
rested in our hands, isn't that what he's talking about over
there in 2 Thessalonians 2? Exalting and opposing himself
against all that's called God, and he as God sitteth in the
temple of God, professing himself to be God, he's talking about
free will works religion. A man sitting in his own body
on a pretended throne saying, everything I do determines my
future. Self-righteousness, self-centered,
self-elevated works religion. And knowing that religion and
being confident in that religion blinds men to the truth. They
won't hear the truth. They read it and won't... You
would think a blatant miracle, I mean, right out in front of
them would at least get their attention. It didn't even get
their attention. They just wrote it off. They
just wrote it off. Same way they do today. I read
you something right out of Scripture. I do to people all the time.
Read them something right out of the Bible. Here it is. Set
it down in front of them. Point it to them. Say, what's
this say? Right here. Read it to them. Well, it don't really
mean that. Then why did he say it? You see what I'm saying? And what they were saying to
him is, your message cannot be of God because it does not honor
or agree with what I reason and think and glory in. That's what
they were saying. And that's what's going on today.
And to these men the Lord makes five accusations which challenge
their authority to question him or any other messenger of God
as far as that goes. And he gives John as an example.
But let me give you these five things this morning and you can
go home and look at them. First of all, the works which
he came to accomplish. He told them, he said, my works,
what I'm doing bears witness of me. Everything that Christ
came to do was foretold in the Old Testament. And you'll notice
when you read through the Gospels and it says, he must do this
because it was written. That's what he's talking about.
He had to be born in Bethlehem. He had to go into Egypt. He had
to do all these things because this is how he was foretold in
the Scriptures. And the Scriptures say that he
came to accomplish a righteousness. He came to accomplish justification. He came to accomplish the work
which God sent him to do. And turn with me over to Romans. We're going to be going over
there in the message this morning, but I just want to read you a
few things. And here in Romans 10, verse
3, It says, For they being ignorant
of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God. Now that's what was going on.
Ignorant of God's righteousness. And so they would not submit
themselves unto this righteousness of God. Because Christ is the
end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. That's
what was taking place here. And then he came to accomplish
redemption, to satisfy the law of God concerning the penalty
of sin. That has to be accomplished.
God can't save a sinner apart from redemption. He has to be
redeemed. He owes a debt. The debt has to be settled. And
the law of God and the justice of God demand that the sinner
forfeit his life. That's what it demands. A forfeiture
of his life. It requires his eternal death. It requires that he suffer for
sin. It requires his separation from
God. But the suffering and death of
the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, satisfied the law. It satisfied
the demand. It paid everything that the law
demanded or required from the sinner. He satisfied. He satisfied. I can't satisfy
it because it requires an eternal death. I can't do that. And neither
could he as a man, but he was the God-man. As God, he cannot suffer. As
man, he cannot satisfy. But as the God-man, he can suffer
and satisfy. That's what he was doing. He
came to accomplish reconciliation. All things are of God, who hath
reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ. By way of substitution
and imputed righteousness, we stand before God holy, without
blame, no possibility of sin. And from the cradle to the cross,
the life of Christ and His death was one continuous accomplishment
of the will of God. And unbelief cannot and will
not let go of man-centered, man-honoring, man-accomplishing religion until
it's convinced of God that these things were accomplished and
accepted of God in Christ. That's when you're going to turn
loose. And I don't care what happens. I don't care if he raises
the dead. You're not going to believe until
you're convinced of God that these things are accomplished. They're done. They're done. Until you see them done. It's
like you're hanging over this precipice of eternity and you're
hanging on to this religion like a big rope. You're hanging on
to it. And you look up and there's a hand. When are you going to
let go of that rope? When you're convinced that hand
can pull you up. Until then, you ain't going to
let go of that rope. Man hangs on to religion. He's hanging
on because of eternity. He's hanging on because of sin.
He's hanging on because his conscience tells him he's guilty. And he's
not going to turn loose until he's convinced of God that that
hand will hold him up as long. He's not just going to let go
with one hand. He's going to turn loose. He's going to turn
loose. And then secondly, what's this?
They would not be satisfied with the witness of God's man. John
the Baptist was not just a witness, he was THE witness. He was THE
witness. In Malachi chapter 4, the very
last words God would speak for 400 years, he wasn't going to
say anything else. This was the conclusion of all
he had to say in the Old Testament. Now listen to this, for 400 years
he said, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before
the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall
turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart
of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth
with a curse. And then in Matthew 11, verse
9, our Lord said, What went you up for to see? Why did you go
out there in the wilderness? What did you go out there to
see? A reed shaking in the wind? A prophet? Yea, and I say unto
you more than a prophet, verse 10, for this is he of whom it
was written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which
shall prepare the way before thee. Verily I say unto you,
among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater
than John the Baptist. For all the prophets and the
law prophesied until John. All the prophets and the law. prophesied. They all talked about
this coming Redeemer. They all talked about this substitute. They all talked about the woman,
see, the Lamb of God, the substitute, the representative. They all
prophesied until John. Until John. And if you will receive
it, this is Elijah which was for to come. This is it. This is the promised one. No
more prophesying about him. This is him. Somebody said one
time, the Bible is a hymn book, and it talks about hymns. And
in all the Old Testament, it says, somebody is coming, somebody
is coming, somebody is coming. In the Gospels, it says, somebody
came. And in the epistles and throughout
the rest of the Bible, it says this, somebody is coming back.
But it is all about this somebody, this somebody. So his accomplishments,
all that he was accomplishing was not sufficient to satisfy
their needs. And then they soon left John's
witness. He was like a burning light to them, but it burned
out. They imprisoned him, and things were going on, and the
people were following Christ, so they let go of John. Thirdly,
he said the Father Himself bear witness of him. He bore witness
of him at his baptism. He says, they came up out of
the water and a voice was heard from heaven saying, this is my
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The Father spoke. He
said, you've never heard Him speak and you've never seen His
shape, but He spoke at my baptism. And He spoke in this miracle,
in this miracle that He just performed, God spoke. Nicodemus said, ìWe know that
thou art a teacher come from God, because no man can do these
miracles.î And then over in Acts chapter 2, Peter presses this
truth home to those who stood here and watched his miracles. And when he preached his message
to them, listen to what he said. He said, ìYou men of Israel,
hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved
of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God
did by Him in your midst, right in the midst of you, as ye yourselves
also know." You were there and you sent it. And this was God's
confirmation of His Son, God's witness of His Son. All of the
prophets were confirmed by these miracles. All of the apostles
were confirmed by these miracles. And you can read that over in
Hebrews chapter 2, 3 and 4, and you can just go through the Old
Testament and see it. In fact, it was said of the prophets
that anything they prophesied of, I mean in detail, everything
they prophesied, if it didn't come to pass, you take him out
and stone him. We wouldn't have so many preachers
today if that was still true, would we? Huh? I'd weed them
out real quick. Real quick. They didn't have
the message of God. And then fourthly, they would
not receive the message of Holy Scripture. The message of Scripture
is redemption through Christ. That's the message. The woman's
seed, the ark, Abel's lamb. To him, it says, give all the
prophets witness over in Acts chapter 10. that through his
name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins."
And he said to these learned men, these rabbis and these lawyers
in John 5.39, I just read it to you. He said, search the Scriptures. Search them. For in them you
think you have eternal life. You think by your dutiful searching
you somehow can produce a righteousness acceptable to God. to somehow
to find something in there that's going to conquer your temper
and conquer all these things, these weaknesses that you see
in yourself. You think in there you're going
to get eternal life. But they are they that testified
Me. And He said, in all your reading
and in all your searching, you won't come to Me that you might have life. You see the difference? These
men read their Bibles now. In fact, they transcribed the
Word of God. If you left out a period, they
could tell you, hey, there's a period that goes there. There's
a question mark that goes there. There's an and that goes there.
You left that out. They could tell you every jot
and tittle. They knew it by heart, but it didn't do them any good
because it didn't bring them to Christ. They saw everything in
the Word of God except Christ. Oh, what are they doing today?
What are they seeing in the Word of God today? They're seeing
future prophecies. They're seeing incarnate evil
coming. They're seeing the Antichrist.
They're seeing all these visions of things and wars and all these
things that are coming to pass. Everything except Christ. Everything
except Christ. Search the Scriptures, he said.
He said, I know you that the Word of God does not abide in
you. If it abided in you, he said,
you'd come to me. You'd come to me. You'd love
me. You wouldn't be at odds with me. And that's what he tells
him in John 5.38. And then fifthly, They would not receive, believe,
and enter into the writings of Moses. Now, I want you to just
listen to me for a minute. The first five books of the Bible
are called the Pentateuch. That's the books of Moses. Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. This is the account of the beginning
of all things. And this is the account of the
fundamentals and foundation principles of worship and who God is in
person. These are the first revelations
of God to men. This is the account of man and
how he fell and why and what happened when he did. And what's
necessary in order for him to come back into communion with
God. All the writings of Moses. You can't understand the gospel
and be ignorant of these five books. That's what I'm telling
you. And this world just totally ignores
the first five books of the Bible. Just totally ignores them. These
are the foundation principles. Here's what Christ is telling
them. If you heard Moses, you'd believe me. Because he was writing
about me. We've been studying the book
of Genesis and going through creation, and I've been showing
you some pictures and types and figures of Christ back there.
That's Moses. He wrote of Him. That's what
He's doing. You can't make any sense out
of the ark of Noah apart from Christ. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. The
confusion of languages over the building of the Tower of Babel.
That means nothing apart from the Gospel. You'll never figure
out what that's talking about. You go through these Old Testament
sacrifices and the priesthood and all these things. All these
things are foundation principles of how God must be approached,
how God is to be worshipped, His name, His glory, His person. And he said, if you believe Moses,
you're bringing me up on charges and using Moses to lend some
credibility to your charges. He said, you don't know Moses.
If you'd listen to Moses, you'd believe me because he wrote of
me. And this is what he's talking about. He's talking about these
foundation principles, all these things written of Moses. And
everything that God intended to do, he pictures in these five
books. He establishes a kingdom. He brings a people out of bondage. He calls a people out of the
world, separates them from the world, calls them the children
of Israel, my children. And in picture, he leads them
out of bondage and takes them through an impassable sea and
preserves them through a wilderness and leads them into a promised
inheritance. All of these things. These are
foundation principles. And Christ came, and without
a knowledge of this, how are you going to understand? That's
why they couldn't understand what He was doing. That's why
they didn't pay any attention to His works that He was accomplishing.
They were ignorant of this message that was set forth, these foundation
principles. Representation, substitution,
redemption, reconciliation, the offices of prophet, priest, and
king. He's the message of Moses. Not
legal self-righteousness and free willism. And he said, don't you think
that I'll accuse you to the Father? There's one that will accuse
you, even Moses, in whom you trust. If we miss redemption
in Christ, the law is nothing to us but a curse. That's all
that's left. And that's where they were at,
under the curse. Under the curse. For it is written,
Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things written in
the book of the law to do them. It is impossible to know anything
about the sin offering, substitution, blood sacrifice, redemption,
justification. Those are all just religious
terms and we are ignorant of what they mean. I'm telling you,
I grew up in religion. You can't pull the wool over
my eyes about religion. I know what it's all about. We
used to stand up and talk about being sanctified. I had no more
clue what sanctification was than a man in the moon. But that's
what everybody else did and that's what I did. Now, I thought by
what they did and how they said it, I understood something about
it, but I didn't. I didn't understand what this
Bible taught about it. And that's where this generation
is. They're ignorant of the Word of God. They're ignorant of the
testimony of God. They're ignorant of God's prophets
and their witness. And they're ignorant of these
foundation principles and the beginning and where man is. They don't know where he is.