Spirit and Truth

Transcript

Several years ago, I did a series called Grace and Truth. It was actually about 12 or 14 years ago now, which is amazing because I've been stealing from it for years. But it was about that long ago. And I was looking recently at the stuff that I had done back then. And I realized a couple of things, one that I'd skipped over a few things that were really, I thought, pretty interesting. So I wanted to go back and take another look at them. That's actually where the whole thing about the nobleman's son came a couple weeks ago, because I had never really looked at that story before. And secondly, there's a series of discourses that the Lord Jesus Christ gives after events take place. And when I did the series on Grace and Truth, it was mostly about how people interacted with Jesus and how they were changed by their interactions with Jesus. That's how stories like the baptism of John the Baptist came from, or the woman of Samaria, and all of those that were done a long time ago. But I'd never really looked at the things that Jesus had said after some of these events take place. And so I thought, well, it'd be nice to go back and look and see what sort of message he's conveying. As you know, in John's gospel, all the language is spiritual. So Jesus says things in John's gospel that you don't hear in other places, things like, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part in me. This is a very hard thing for somebody that doesn't recognize the spiritual implications. He also said things like, I am the true vine, or I am the good shepherd, or I am the bread of life. These sort of metaphorical statements, in actual fact, aren't actually metaphorical, and I'll explain to you why. Because the word, the spirit word, actually comes before the physical creation. That's why John 1 starts off by saying, in the beginning was the word. The word had to be said in order for the physical creation to come. So the word is preeminent over the physical creation. So when Jesus says, I'm the true vine, Jesus, as a vine in God's plan and purpose, existed before an actual vine was ever created. So that's why he says, I am the true vine. Same thing with calling himself the bread of life. He was actually the bread of life in God's plan and purpose long before bread ever came into existence. So we see in nature and in all these different places all these incredible examples of the word of God, and it's actually the word that has first. So one of the things that Jesus is emphasizing in John's gospel is that what these things represent are more important than what they actually are. That's why he makes a lot of these comments. So I thought it'd be interesting to go and start looking at some of these discourses and actually also reviewing some of the things that we've looked at before and hopefully finding some new things as well. The reason why, you'll notice it says class one, troubling the water, starting in John five. The reason why it starts in John five is that's when the public discourses begin. Prior to that, virtually everything is private. So for instance, the wedding in Cana is a private wedding. Jesus doesn't really say that much at the wedding in Cana rather than to his mother, but some of the other events like the woman of Samaria, that's just with the Samaritans. He doesn't start his public discourses

until after the healing of the impotent man in John five, which we're gonna look at this morning. We're probably not gonna get to the discourses this morning, we just don't have enough time because there's so many interesting things about this story in John five. But that's why we're starting in John five because that's really in the Gospel of John when Jesus' public ministry begins.

Except for one interesting difference, and that's in John chapter two. So if you'll turn over to John chapter two,

he has one public event that takes place, and it's very interesting when we consider it in relation to the discourses that he gives later on. And we're gonna start in, I'll put it up here, John chapter two, verse 13. And notice what it says. Is that up there? Yeah, look at it. And the Jews' Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves and the changers of money sitting. And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple and the sheep and the oxen and poured out them that sold doves, saying, take these things, hence make not my father's house a house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. Then answered the Jews and said unto him, what signs showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Well, that's really interesting, because that's the one thing the Jews remember, right? Jesus is gonna give very long

and intense discourses, speeches, public speeches. He does it in John five after the healing of the impotent man. He does it in John six after the feeding of the 5,000. He does it in John seven during the Feast of Tabernacles. He does it in John eight after the incident with the adulterous woman. He does it in John 10 after the giving sight to the man born blind, and he does it in John 11 after the raising of Lazarus. That's all these speeches, these public speeches that they give, and when they go to condemn him, the only thing that they can remember is what he says in John chapter two at the very beginning. This is really the only thing he says publicly before John five, and that's the only thing that they remember, which raises the question. We've got these discourses where he is speaking to the Jews. Remember the expression the Jews in John's gospel is those who are antagonistic towards Jesus. We could get into the nuts and bolts of it. That's basically what they represent. Those who are antagonistic towards Jesus. They actually represent something more that I'll get to in just a minute when we consider what we just learned about the nobleman, but that's the essence of it. So after all these, now I lost my place. That's all right, after all these speeches, they don't hear any of it. Now they hear it, but they don't remember any of it. They don't know what he was talking about. They don't get it. So then who are the speeches for? Because that's who he's speaking to. Right, think of the phoenix of the 5,000. The first thing he says to them is you didn't, you're not looking for them because of the miracles. You're looking for them because you were fed, which when we get to that, we'll look at what that all means. But he's talking to the Jews. He's talking to the doubters. So who's he actually speaking to? Well, it's just another example of when somebody is speaking to one person, but he's really talking to somebody else, right? He's speaking to the Jews, but it's not really for the Jews. We know it's not for the Jews because the Jews didn't hear anything they had to say. Again, the only thing they ever heard that they could remember was tear down this temple and they'll rebuild it in three days. So then who was he speaking to? Well, I believe he gives us the answer to that in John chapter four. In John chapter four, he's talking to the Samaritan woman. And this is what he says to her. And again, this is a private discourse. He says, ye worship what ye know not what. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh and now is when true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So Jesus says to the Samaritan woman that God is seeking those who worship him in spirit and in truth. That's what these discourses are really all about is to separate the wheat from the chaff.

There were so many that heard what he had to say and didn't, or heard him speaking and didn't hear what he had to say. And yet there's always those that remnant that actually hear it, right? At one point in John's gospel, that number comes all the way down to 12, right? After he talks about eating my flesh and drinking my blood, everybody goes away except the 12. But there's always a remnant. And there's always, or oftentimes in scripture, these examples where somebody is speaking to someone but he's speaking for somebody else. I'll give you a couple examples. The first is in Isaiah. I think it's out of five or seven. It's when Isaiah goes to Ahaz and brings his son's shear jesed. Remember that story? And he says to Ahaz, ask for a sign. And Ahaz says, oh, I'm not gonna ask for a sign, right? And so Isaiah says to Ahaz, I'm gonna give you a sign. A virgin shall conceive. And he goes through the whole explanation of what's all his name is gonna be, Emmanuel and all that kind of stuff. Now he's saying it to Ahaz. But Ahaz has no connection to what he's saying. People have tried to twist things about what happens later and say, oh, that's the virgin that conceived because Ahaz goes and has a woman who is a virgin. Well, that's actually not the way a virgin conceiving works is that you are now no longer a virgin. A virgin is a virgin conceiving, right? So it wasn't actually for Ahaz at all, even though he was saying it to Ahaz. Who it was for was Shia Jessab because Shia Jessab is representative. The name Shia Jessab means a remnant shall return. That's who's hearing the words of Isaiah. Those are the ones that can understand what it meant that a virgin would conceive. So he's speaking to one, but he's actually talking to somebody else. Does that make sense? And you see this repeatedly. I'll give you the other example, which is John the Baptist. In John chapter one,

John the Baptist is actually speaking to the Pharisees who had come to see him when he says, behold the limb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now he's speaking to them, but they have no idea what he's talking about and they don't even care what he's talking about. John is actually at that point, and we don't have time to look at this morning, making a confession to Jesus that he now understands what Jesus represents because Jesus was the one coming towards him. So even though he's speaking to the Pharisees, he's really talking to Jesus. And this happens throughout scripture. And this is exactly what's happening in Jesus's discourses is he's talking to the Jews, but he's talking so that you and I can hear what he has to say. So that message of spirit and truth can be heard by that remnant, that small collection of people that actually understand what the truth is all about. You'll notice he says here to the Samaritan woman, you worship what ye know not what we worship for salvation is of the Jews, which is a really interesting thing. We're not gonna look at the Samaritan woman, but the interesting thing about it is where Jesus is saying this is at a place called Sychar. Sychar is actually Shechem. It's the same place. It just now has a different name in the time of Jesus. Shechem is the place of decision. Shechem is the place where Joshua spoke to the people at the end of his life. And he said, you need to make a decision. It was at Shechem, because that's what Shechem's all about. And he says, but for me and mine, you can worship who you want, but for me and my house we shall worship the Lord, and the Lord must be served in sincerity and truth. So Joshua at Shechem says, you must serve the Lord in sincerity and truth. And Jesus at the same place says to the Samaritan woman, you must worship in spirit and in truth. So what's the connection between sincerity and spirit? What is sincerity all about? Well, sincerity is about giving everything. Sincerity is about complete, completely turning over. That's what sincerity is. And so Joshua was saying to the other people in Israel, you can serve who you want, but if you're gonna worship, if you're gonna serve God in sincerity, it's gotta be complete service. That's what's sincere. It's gotta be sincere. You've gotta mean it. That's just as true today for us as it was for them back then. Our service to God has to be sincere. This is not a part-time job. This is not a side hobby. This is literally our calling. This is what we're called to do. That's what sincerity is all about. But you have to have truth. If you don't have truth, it doesn't really matter how sincere you are. And that's why he's saying it to the Samaritan woman, because the interesting thing about the Samaritans is they were sincere. If you look at 2 Kings, it's out of 17 or 18. I can't remember which one it is. I think it's 17, where it talks about the establishment of the Samaritan. It says they developed this religion, right? This religion in which they had all the other gods that they worship and the God of Israel. That's the five husbands and the one who's not your husband. They have the multiple religions and then the one religion in which it's just one God. You really can't marry those together. So they have this mix-up that Jesus says right here. You don't know what you worship. But then it says that they worship that way from one generation to the next generation to the next generation. They were dedicated to what they worshiped. They just didn't know truth. And if you don't know truth, you can be sincere. But if you don't know truth, you're never gonna hear the spirit. The only way to worship in spirit and truth is to have truth. And they didn't have truth. And so what Jesus does is he stays there for two days and he explains the truth to them. He explains what by the grace of God you and I have come to understand. And of course, then the Samaritan say to the woman, we don't believe just because of what you said now, but we have heard them. And we know that this is the savior of the world. So they are transformed. They are changed by hearing truth. Now they can worship in spirit and truth. The interesting flip side to that is the Jews. Because the Jews, as Jesus said, had the truth. They had the word. They understood what the word said. They didn't have any sincerity. And we're gonna see that in all of these discourses that we go along, right? Because the miracles are gonna happen and the people are still not gonna believe, right? Remember when he says to the nobleman, he says, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. And he saw the signs and wonders and he did believe. And starting in John five with the impotent man in the discourses that come afterwards, you have all these people that see the signs and wonders and yet still refuse to believe. No sincerity. They had the truth. They had no sincerity. And so obviously, Jesus is calling out those who can worship in sincerity or can serve in sincerity and truth, truth therefore worship in spirit and in truth. And of course, we wanna be one of those people. Here's the verse that Joshua speaks in 24. Now therefore. So with that in mind, let's take a look at John chapter five and the healing. Any questions or comments before we move on to John chapter five?

Yeah, yeah. Sincerity in spirit, are they interchangeable in that? They're not interchangeable in this extent. In order to worship in spirit and truth, you have to be sincere, but you have to have truth. Sure. To serve in sincerity and truth, Joshua, of course, is speaking to the Jews, but the Samaritans had the sincerity, but they didn't have the truth, therefore they couldn't worship in spirit. That's a great connection to Joshua. So that's, yeah, that's the connection. Sure, anything else? All right, John chapter five.

There it is right there. In John chapter five, one and two starts off saying this. After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is a Jerusalem by the sheep market of Poole, which is called in the Hebrew tongue, Bethesda having five porches. Now there is so much just in those two verses that we're gonna take a look at because it is packed with fascinating information, but you notice I yell it out very first, it says after this. So in other words, it's very specific what John the writer is telling us to remember as we come to John five. And after this is the healing of the nobleman or the nobleman's son. That's what takes place immediately before. That's what John the writer is referencing when he says after this. And so what it's telling us is, I want you to remember what you just learned from the nobleman and the nobleman's son as you consider what's about to happen. Now for those that weren't here a couple weeks ago, we talked about this a couple weeks ago. The key to understanding the story of the nobleman's son is to recognize who the nobleman was, right? He was that politician, right? Looking for that quid pro quo. His understanding was that life was transactional. And everything is transactional except love. Love is the one thing that's not transactional. And so as he's going through what he's going through, he's there, I'm not gonna retell the story because it'll take too long, but he's there because of his love for his son, right? Because his son is dying. And Jesus offers him the life of his son without any transaction because Jesus doesn't get anything from him. That's why the man was going through a panic attack because his life was transactional because he's a nobleman, which means he's a politician. And there was no gain for Jesus because that's not what grace is about. God offers grace not as a transaction. He offers grace or kindness simply as an offer. And we're gonna see that again and again in parts of this story. And that's what the nobleman had to deal with, but the nobleman had something that allowed him to grab hold of that sincerity and that was his love for his son. And so remember when his son is healed, he says to the servants, exactly when? Because if it's not exact, I'm not gonna believe it. And it was exact, seventh hour of the day before. And he had no choice but to believe it because of why he was there. Because love is not transactional. You don't love your kids because you expect to get something back from them when you retire. It is, by the way, nice if you do. But that's not the expectation, right? So what this is saying to us is remember that as you look what happens with the impotent man and what goes on afterwards. In other words, it's gonna be different. It's not gonna be the same. And he wants you to understand, the writer, John, wants you to understand what those differences are. Now before we get to some of the specifics, I want you to consider this picture up there of the Pool of Bethesda. So with five porches. So this picture is, I made sure I looked it up to make it look right. This is an artistic rendition of what they discovered archeologically in Jerusalem where the pool is. Oh, Jason said, good, he can speak to it firsthand. It is amazing when you see the pictures, right? When you see the archeological pictures and it looks like just a hole with a whole bunch of stuff around it. And then they come up with something like this and you go, how did you ever see that from that? But they have that ability to do that. They're able to reconstruct. We look at, you know, they show the ancient ruins of Laodicea or whatever and you go, how could you ever picture a city from that? It just looks like a whole bunch of cement or a whole bunch of bricks. But they're able to redevelop. And this is what they redevelop. Now, it says five porches. If you look at that, if you count it, it almost looks like seven, right? But it's really five. What it really is is it's the four sides to the pool and then the one porch running through the middle. That's the fifth porch. So keep that in mind as we consider some of the things that we're talking about. Because the text says specifically that it's five porches. So when you look at this picture and you look at where the fifth porch is,

this is what you have. You have two bodies of water with dry path in between. That ought to make you think of something. And I think it's important that we see what that something is. Two bodies of water on two sides and dry land in between. Bethesda means House of Mercy or House of Kindness or House of Grace. It has all those different connotations. The question is, which connotation is it in this story? And it shows two pools of water with a path running through. What does that make you think of? Any ideas? The Red Sea, exactly. The parting of the Red Sea. Why not the parting of the Jordan? Because the parting of the Jordan, one water goes back and the other water empties out. Parting of the Jordan is about life and death. It's about renewal of life. This is the parting of the Red Sea. It's there in picture right before you. Two pools of water, dry land in between. Why is that important to remember? That's important to remember because we're gonna be coming back to the children in the Exodus and what takes place. But specifically, it's because you're being told, and Jesus would have understood this, you're being told this pool represents the parting of the waters of the Red Sea. So it's saying to you, go back and consider what that means. And so consider what it does mean. And it's found in Exodus chapter,

chapter what? Chapter 14. So this is what takes place at the parting of the Red Sea and what you need to remember about the parting of the Red Sea. First of all, it says this, and start in verse 10. And when Pharaoh drew nigh and the children of Israel lifted up their eyes and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them, and they were sore afraid. And the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord, and they said unto Moses, Because there was no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt with us to carry us forth out of Egypt? So their response, after everything that had taken place in Egypt with Moses, all those miracles, all those plagues, everything that had happened, they got them out of Egypt. And they come to the Red Sea, and they feel trapped. And the first thing they do is say, why did you ever take us out of Egypt? And they cried to the Lord. What did they cry to the Lord? You say, well, it doesn't say. They must have cried, help us. But Moses is the representative of God. He's the one that did all the miracles in Egypt. That's not what they cried to the Lord. What they cried to the Lord is exactly what it says here, that they said to Moses, same thing. They didn't speak, they were afraid, no doubt about that. But their response to their fear was, why did you do this to us? That's their response. That's their response to Moses. That's their response to God. That's why God says, what are they crying to me for? If they were crying for help, God wouldn't have said it. But in this case, he says, what are they crying to me for? Haven't I just taken them out of Egypt? Haven't you just taken them out of Egypt? Tell them to move, tell them to go. And then Moses parts the Red Sea, and this is what it says. And Moses said unto the people, fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show unto you today. For the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them again no more forever. So he says to them, stand still. In other words, this is not an act of mercy, this is not an act in which you are responsible to do anything, except stand still and see what happens. You know, the Jews could never do that. They always struggle with that same thing that the noblemen struggle with, which is what's the transaction? If I get something, what do you get? They're always waiting for that other shoe to fall. Throughout their history, even to this day, it's always transactional. It's always, when am I gonna pay the price for the things that I've done? Now that might sound foolish, and yet we all struggle with that same thing. At least I do. I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall. When am I gonna pay the price for everything that God has done for me, and then my incredible disobedience because of it? And the lesson in scripture again and again and again to the faithful is, there is no price to pay. Now you have to understand what that means. That's what grace is. Grace is a two-part process. The kindness of God, not transactional, love giving, and the human response to it, and the human response to it comes from your realization that I'm never really going to pay the price because Jesus has already paid for it. That, in my opinion, is why Jacob was wrestling with the angel. He was expecting to pay the price by having stolen his birthright and having stolen the blessing and all of that. And the answer was, there's no price to pay. It's already been paid for. That's why you need a redeemer. That's why Job comes to the realization that despite however righteous he is, he can never stand before God because God is righteous and he was not. What I need is somebody to go stand there for me. That's Christ. And so here, Moses says, stand still. There's nothing for you to do. There's no price to pay. There's no piece of works to do. You stand still and see what happens. And they stood still and the waters parted and they walked across on dry land and came out the other side. That's the salvation of God. That's the pool of Bethesda. That's everything that's being represented by the fact that it says, notice it says, in the Hebrew tongue, Bethesda. What difference does that make? It's telling us that so that we will recognize that what Bethesda represents goes all the way back as the Hebrew language does. It goes all the way back. It's not something new. And when Jesus speaks to them after the impotent man, he says, I do what I see my father doing. That's what I do. What he does, that's what I'm doing. And that's exactly what takes place with the healing of the impotent man. He's doing something that he already saw that the father does. So we'll come to that in just a second. Any questions or comments about that? Okay. And after this, there was a feast of the Jews. Why does it say a feast of the Jews? What does that mean? Well, a feast of the Jews means

it's not a correctly practiced feast of God. In Deuteronomy and other places, they're told specifically what these feasts were all about. And the Jews did something else. So in time and time and time again in John's Gospel, even the final Passover is referred to as a feast of the Jews because they weren't practicing it properly. So it's always called in John's Gospel a feast of the Jews. The feast of Tabernacles in John seven is called a feast of the Jews. Each of the Passover's are called feasts of the Jews because the Jews were practicing it one way and it was supposed to be practiced another way. So that's why it starts off by calling it a feast of the Jews. And it says, oh, oh, yes. And it says this, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. So why does Jesus go to Jerusalem? Well, because it's a feast. Right? That's not really what that's telling us. What that's telling us is this. Same as we talked a couple weeks ago about how, remember how we talked about the nobleman? And after he gets what he wants, it says he goes down. And we pointed out that that going down was moving away from Jesus. That's where he had all of his doubts and fears come in because he was moving away from God. He was going down. Jesus is going up. Jesus is going up to Jerusalem. When you go up to Jerusalem, you go up to worship the Lord. That's what going up to Jerusalem is all about. So in other words, there's gonna be a feast of the Jews, whatever that feast is, and we're gonna consider that in a minute. But whatever that feast is, they weren't gonna practice it correctly, but Jesus was. Because Jesus knows what the feast represents. And so Jesus is gonna do at the feast exactly what is called for, for the feast. Does that make sense? That's why he's going up to Jerusalem. Yes, they're gonna keep it their way. He's gonna keep it his way. And his way is God's way. And therefore, we would expect to see in the feast some sort of representation of one of the feasts. In other words, we ought to be able to figure out which feast it is by knowing what Jesus does. That make sense? So let's consider the three feasts. Before we consider the three, there's three feasts that send you to Jerusalem, right? Is Passover, which is also known as what? Feast of Unleavened Bread, correct. There's Pentecost, which is also known as anyone?

Shakut? Nope. Feast of Pentecost is also known as the Feast of Weeks. Right, because it's seven weeks. And then there's the Feast of Tabernacles, which is also known as Feast of Booths. Is there another name? Shakut, correct. That's another name. There's another name? The Feast of In-gathering, right? Because everybody's gathered in at the harvest. So those are the three feasts. This is not some other feast. Like I read some commentary that said, oh, this is Purim. It's not Purim. How do you know it's not Purim? Because Jesus is going to Jerusalem specifically. And the only three feasts specifically sent you to Jerusalem, that's Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Those are the three feasts that sent you to Jerusalem. So it's got to be one of those three feasts. So which one is it? Well, what we're going to do is we're going to turn to the spiritual representation of those feasts by going to Deuteronomy and looking at each of the feasts very quickly. We'll try to do it quickly because we're already running out of time. You know what? We'll just continue until we're done. Right? What difference does it make, really? Yeah, thank you, Butch. Butch says it's okay. Passover. Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover on to the Lord thy God. For in the month of Abib, the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. I love that expression, by night. In other words, they were still in the darkness when he brings them out of Egypt. Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the Passover on to the Lord thy God of the flock and the herd and the place which the Lord shall choose to place his name there. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction. For the God came forth out of the land of Egypt in haste that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life. So that is the Deuteronomy expression of what the Feast of Passover is all about. Is that what takes place with Jesus and the impotent man? No. Now, a lot of people say it's Passover or a lot of commentators say it's Passover because they're counting the Passover's and say, well, you can still fit one more. But it's not the Feast of Passover. What Jesus does to the impotent man is he heals them.

Not because the impotent man asks for healing. He doesn't. He doesn't even answer the question when Jesus says, do you want to be healed? Not because, in other words, it's not an act of mercy. It's not an act of repentance. It's none of those things. It's not even a sacrifice. It's just a healing. Passover is all about sacrifice. Now, when you look at it, it says, at the sheep market, that understandably might make you think of the Passover because the sheep market was where the sheep came in that you could buy a sheep so that it would be sacrificed. But that's not why it mentions the sheep market. The reason it mentions the sheep market is because it's connected to the pool. And what you have at the pool is the sheep. That too is at the pool. That's why it mentions the sheep market because you have a whole bunch of sheep, lost sheep, impotent folk at the pool. A whole bunch, a whole multitude of lost sheep. And that's what you're supposed to see. That's why it mentions the sheep market. It's not about the Passover because it doesn't fit the Passover. The acts that Jesus performs, which you know are gonna be reflective of the feast that takes place, is not what takes place with the impotent man. So it's not the Passover. Now we'll look at the third one because I'm skipping the second because I believe it's the second. Third one is the Feast of Tabernacles. And thou shalt observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days after thou has gathered in the corn and thy wand. Has everything been gathered in at John 5? Of course not. He's just starting his public ministry. And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou and thy son and thy daughter and thy manservant and thy maidservant and the Levite and the stranger and the followers and the widow that are within thy gates. That's an interesting expression. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the Lord thy God and the place where the will choose because the Lord thy God shall bless thee and all thine increase and all the works of thy hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Is this the Feast of Tabernacles? No. How do we know? Well, first of all, it says, because thou shalt bless thee and all thine increase, he really hasn't had any increase. A lot more increase to come. There's the feeding of the 5,000, there's an increase. There's the whole ministry that he has in front of him, starting in John 5, and none of it has taken place. Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Ink Gathering, is bringing everybody in when the work is done. It's the harvest feast. John 5 is clearly not a harvest feast. Makes sense? So it's not the Feast of Tabernacles. It's Pentecost. And here's why. Seven weeks shall thou number on thee, beginning to the number of seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. In other words, the work is now beginning. Jesus has already had his wedding in Cana, he's already spoken to Nicodemus, he's already spoken to the Samaritans. The work has already begun, but it's a long way from finished. That's just what the Feast of Weeks represents. And thou shalt keep the feast unto the Lord thy God, and this is what it's called. A tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee. A freewill offering to God in the way that God has blessed you. Now usually you think about that as food, right? But how had the Lord blessed the Lord, how had God blessed the Lord Jesus Christ? He gave him the power of the Holy Spirit. He gave him the ability to heal. And what Jesus is gonna do is he's gonna perform a healing that he's going to say, this is what my Father does, I see him do, that's why I'm doing it. That's just what this freewill offering is all about. This is a freewill offering of Jesus to heal the impotent man. Because the impotent man didn't call him, right? He just went there. And he went there and he healed one man. Okay, and it says, and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou and thy son and thy daughter and his and on and on and on which are among you in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose. So there's the difference between in gathering. In gathering, you're all in the same house.

Feast of Tabernacles, you're gathering anything and everybody in, right? Because you're still gathering. So it's not just in your house. God shall choose his place, his name there, that's Jerusalem, and thou shalt remember that thou was a bondsman in Egypt and thou shalt observe to do these statutes. So the feast that's taking place in John five is the Feast of Tabernacles. And the one person that is going to do the proper Feast of Tabernacles is the Lord Jesus Christ by the healing of the impotent man. Comments, questions before we move on? I already talked about that. Okay, now we get to the interesting part although I have to go a little bit to get that explanation because it says in verse three of John chapter five, in these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, a blind halt withered, there's your sheep, waiting for the moving of the waters. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water. Whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. Now we're gonna talk about what this moving of the waters is about in just a minute. Do I even have a minute? Okay. But here's the problem I always had. And I'll tell you, when I talked about this before with grace and truth, I called it superstition because it just sounds, I mean it absolutely sounds like superstition. This idea that the water gets troubled, right? And all of a sudden somebody can get into the pool first and get healed and then everybody else doesn't get healed. Sounds like superstition to me. But I'm gonna tell you it's not superstition. I'm not gonna explain yet why. But I will say this about it. It's not written as superstition. You guys know I spent a long time in the Gospel of John. It would have taken nothing for John to say for it was supposed that an angel went down at a certain season into the pool. He doesn't say that. I know other manuscripts say it's not there at all but it's here so I just, you know what I mean? It's in my Bible I deal with it because that's what we do. But it's not written as superstition at all. It's written for an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water. Whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. Now he's made whole, he's not saved. He's whatever this person supposedly had, he didn't have it anymore. Now think of the instant man, he'd been there for 38 years.

For 38 years he's been there and probably many other people, they're almost as long. And they're all there because they believe that this water is being troubled. And they believe that somebody has gone down into the water and come out healed. Of course we know people go to Fatima even to this day. They believe, I think it's pray before a statue, I can't remember specifically what it is. But these people are right there. This man is there for 38 years. And in his confession to Jesus or in his competitions, there's no issue in his mind at all that this really takes place. He believes it takes place, he just believes he can't get there. Which we'll look at, it looks like we're gonna look at it next week. But, and there is superstition involved in this and that is how the people perceive what's going on. But I'm gonna talk, next week I'm gonna hopefully be able to explain to you why.

The troubling of the waters is not superstition. This was actually happening. Because it happened again and again and again. It happened in the wilderness. Because what does the troubling of the waters represent? It represents God's presence in the water. Notice they say an angel comes down. They don't say a devil comes down, they don't say, they say an angel comes down and troubles the water at a certain time. It represents the presence, the manifestation of the actual presence of God in that water. And in the Exodus, time and time and time, the actual physical manifestation of God was there. And even though it was there, and even though they knew God existed, they still didn't have faith. Why not? And Jesus, as he comes to his public ministry, here in John five, what's he gonna do? Trouble the waters. That's exactly what he does. He is the physical manifestation of the presence of God. And they refuse to believe him. That's the difference between John four and the nobleman and John five moving on. And we'll get more into that next week.

Transcript

So, good evening, everybody. Thank you again. It's nice to be with everybody. I put myself in a bit of a pickle on this past Sunday, because my plan was to finish up the story of the healing of the impotent man, and then tonight to just pick up from there on what Jesus says in his public discourse because of it. Unfortunately, I didn't finish the

healing of the impotent man on Sunday. I would have finished. It was Butchie, actually, that's only I had to stop. Otherwise, I would have finished. What basically is going on or I've been working on, I started actually a couple of weeks before, and I recognize that some people aren't with us on Sunday that are with us on Wednesdays, and there's some people who are with us on Sundays that aren't with us on Wednesdays. Did I say that backwards? Some people are with us on Wednesday, but not on Sunday, and some people are with us on Sunday and not on Wednesday. Yes, that's right. So, if I'm going to talk on the same subjects, they sort of need to stand on their own by not finishing the story of the impotent man or the healing of the impotent man. I'm going to have to finish that on Sunday. So, I'm just going to move right on to what Jesus says in his public discourses

and try to do as little backstory as possible or lecaps as we like to call it in Stoughton. But to give you a brief lecap, basically two Sundays ago for an exhortation, they talked about the healing of the nobleman's son. And the reason why that was important to the series that we're talking about in the Sunday School is because in the Sunday School, we're talking about the public discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John. And they start in John chapter five. Prior to John chapter five, all the things that Jesus did is private, you know, the wedding at Canaan and the meeting with the Samaritans and his conversation with Nicodemus and all of that. It's all private except for one brief moment in John chapter two, where Jesus goes to the temple during Passover. And, you know, they ask him why he does the things that he does or he has one statement where he says tear down this temple and I'll rebuild it in three days. As we pointed out on Sunday, that's the one thing the Jews remember of all the things that Jesus says in all of his discourses. That's the one thing they can bring back at his trial because everything else that he says, and he has a lot of public discourses in the Gospel of John to the Jews, to those doubters. That's the only thing that they can remember. So the question that we asked was, well, then who is he speaking to, even though he's talking to the Jews, who's he really speaking to in these multiple discourses? There's one in chapter five, there's one in chapter six, there's one in chapter seven, there's one in chapter eight, there's one in chapter ten, there's one in chapter eleven or eleven or twelve. Actually, I think it's chapter twelve. Well, he's talking to the revenants, he's talking to the believers, and he's trying to get them to understand how to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. That's what we pointed out on Sunday about what he says to the Samaritan woman, that you must worship in spirit and truth, and that the Father is seeking those that do that. And so Jesus is teaching his disciples and his believers, such as ourselves, the true representation of his relationship specifically with his Father in a lot of these discourses, certainly in the first big one, the one that he has in John chapter five after the healing of the impotent man. The nobleman story is interesting because at the end of John four, because Jesus says to the nobleman, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. And of course, then he sees the signs and wonders, and he does believe. And what happens starting in John five is Jesus starts meeting with the public, and he starts doing these same signs and wonders like the healing of the impotent man, and they see the signs and wonders, and yet they don't believe. They continue to not believe. And part of the reason they don't believe is because of the way that he speaks, because he's revealing to them that their perspective towards his Father is incorrect. And so that's what we're going to talk about this evening. One of the things that we pointed out on Sunday that those of you that are with us will remember, those of you that aren't, it's just a little recap, is the fact that there's a feast mentioned at the beginning of John chapter five. It's called the Feast of the Jews, but it's one of the three main feasts. And the question is, which one of the feasts was it? And what we tried to show, and hopefully we show it successfully, is the feast that takes place in John chapter five is the Feast of Pentecost. Now, it has to be one of the main feasts because it says that Jesus went up to Jerusalem. So Jesus went to the feast, even though it was a feast of the Jews, meaning that they weren't worshipping God properly in the feast, Jesus was going to worship properly in that feast. And so when you look at the story of the impotent man and what Jesus does, it should fit one of the feasts. And so we looked at the three main feasts, and when we looked at them, it was easy to tell that the one feast that it mirrors is the Feast of Tabernacles. That's where Deuteronomy 16, 9, and 10 comes from. Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee. Begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. Well, that's exactly what Jesus is doing in John chapter five. Like I say, this is his first public event in the Gospel of John. So he's just putting the sickle to the corn. He's just starting his process of harvesting, which is, of course, what Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks represents. Thou shalt keep the Feast of Weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a free will offering of thy hand. Again, that's exactly what Jesus does to the impotent man. He doesn't go to the impotent man because the impotent man is asking to be healed. He just goes to him. It's a free will offering. In fact, he asks the man if he wants to be healed, and the man doesn't even the Lord at the Feast of Tabernacles, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God. And we're going to talk a bit this evening about how he gives it unto the Lord thy God. In other words, he does what he sees his father doing. And what he sees his father doing is these free will offerings of his love and kindness, of his grace, if you will. The example that we used on Sunday was the parting of the Red Sea. At the parting of the Red Sea, which mirrors the pool of Bethesda, where the impotent man's healing takes place, at the parting of the Red Sea, Moses says, for the words of the Lord, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. In other words, it's not about something you can do. You stand still, and I'm going to do this for you. And that's exactly what he does. He parks the Red Sea, and they walk across on dry land, not because of anything that they had done. They even say that he takes them out of Egypt in the night. In other words, they were still in darkness. So that's what Jesus sees the father doing, and so that's what he does. That's the whole purpose of the healing of this impotent man, is to reflect the father. As it says, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee. And Jesus, of course, was given the power to heal. And as we consider his discourse, we'll see that he's given so much more than just the power to heal, because the father loves the son. So that's what we talked about on Sunday, for those of you that weren't with us. And we get to the point where we were going to talk about the troubling of the waters. We'll cover that on Sunday, if you want to join us then. And we didn't actually talk about the healing itself that takes place. We'll also cover that on Sunday. I want to pick up this evening right at the end of the healing, when Jesus says this, when Jesus says, take up thy bed and walk. And of course, that's the instruction that he gives to the impotent man that gets the impotent man in trouble, or gets Jesus in trouble with the Jews, because it happened on the Sabbath day. And so in verse 16, it says, Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath day. So why were the Jews so obsessed with keeping the Sabbath day?

Keeping the Sabbath was the big act of righteousness that the community could do, they believed, to bring about redemption, basically to get into God's good graces. The one thing they could do is they could keep the Sabbath day. In other words, you could do nothing on the Sabbath day. In fact, it kind of made me think of Nazi Germany, when people were watching their neighbors to try to catch them, maybe hiding the Jews or something like that. In Jerusalem, there were these people going around, specifically the Pharisees and others, who were just watching to see if anybody does anything they're not supposed to do on the Sabbath day. Because if you do it on the Sabbath day, then God's not going to be happy with us. And then his salvation is not going to come, his redemption is not going to come. They were vigilant about keeping the Sabbath day. They dedicated it as a community, because the community had to keep the Sabbath day in order for God's mercy and God's redemption and God's love and God's grace and God's approval would come. Of course, there's an obvious counter-argument to that idea of, well, you can't do healing on the Sabbath day. That is the fact that, obviously, because of the fact that the healing took place, God was happy with the healing. Otherwise, he would not have allowed the healing to happen. So you have this sort of catch-22, where you're not supposed to do anything on the Sabbath, according to the Jews, and yet Jesus is performing a miracle on the Sabbath. Now think about that on the way the Jews would look at it. All of a sudden, along comes this guy, he's doing something like this on the Sabbath day. For generation after generation, we've been striving as a community to perfect the Sabbath by not doing these things on the Sabbath day. And then what? All of a sudden, when one guy comes along and does what they call these things, in John chapter 5 verse 16, now we're supposed to throw out the law of the Sabbath? And the answer, of course, is yes, that's exactly correct. But they're not ready to do that. And we'll talk in a minute why they weren't ready to accept this miracle on the Sabbath day. But notice what they do instead of calling it a miracle, they're calling it a sign. They say, because he had done these things on the Sabbath day, they kind of lower it down to just some sort of something that took place. I mean, he gave strength. He healed a man who had been impotent for 38 years. For 38 years, the man had been lying by that fool, impotent. And Jesus comes along and heals him in a moment in time. And their reference to it is that he had done these things on the Sabbath day. But notice it talks about how they persecuted Jesus because of it. And they sought to slay him or to kill him because of it. And that seems to me to be a really strong reaction to what Jesus was doing, almost like an over the top kind of reaction that he performs a miracle, these things on the Sabbath day.

And yet, is it because they're so dedicated to the Sabbath day that they'd rather kill somebody than let something like this happen? I think there's more to it than that. In fact, I know there's more to it than that. Yes, they were angry because he was breaking the Sabbath and they're trying desperately to keep the Sabbath. But this goes back to the very nature of where they're coming from. And the very nature of it is this. Jesus speaking to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. This is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. And you might ask, what's the relationship between this issue of keeping the Sabbath and John chapter 3 verse 19 and the reality about human nature and the reality about those that turn down the light? And the connection is this. Again, if they had just been angry, if they'd just been upset, if they'd just said, you can't do that, then it would be fine. But when you want to kill somebody for it, that gets into a very, very much deeper reality about what you're doing and what your motivation really is. Remember, God looks at the intent of the heart, right? And what the universal commitment to keeping the law, what it does is it really covers up the true intent of the heart. We don't have to face the light if we can all agree that the light is darkness and the darkness is light. Remember what John Perks talked about a couple of weeks ago when he pointed out that politician that was talking about Christian strength and presenting the light as darkness when we know it's darkness and we know the light, as John was pointing out, is in weakness. The light is putting your trust in your father instead of your own strength. That's what this commitment to law really does. And you can see it by their reaction because their reaction is so far over the top because the last thing they want to do is be exposed to the light. Now, they might not know that on a conscious level, but there are certain things that they do know on a conscious level that they know they don't want to have to face because that's what Jesus does when Jesus responds to them. Jesus responds to them and his response is going to force them to face their own reality or to try to kill them in order to not to. And Jesus responds first and foremost is this. He says, my father worketh the two and I work. So Jesus says, the whole law of the Sabbath was that you do no work on the Sabbath day. That's the way they saw the Sabbath. You don't do any work on the Sabbath day. That's what we were commanded to do. So you do nothing, basically. And there are people watching to make sure that everybody's doing nothing on the Sabbath day. And the reason for that is because God rested on the Sabbath on the seventh day. That's the supposed reason. But what Jesus says is, I've been watching my father for 33 years. He doesn't rest. He never takes a day off. And if he never takes a day off, how can I take a day off? Because I'm always about my father's business. So he says, my father works hitherto. He doesn't stop. God is not not around on the Sabbath day. His work is not being not done on the Sabbath day. And so Jesus says, if he's working, I'm working. And of course, they taught that keeping the Sabbath is what honors God. To do nothing on the Sabbath day is what honors God because they want to honor God so that God will accept who they are. And Jesus says, that's ridiculous. My father never stops working, so I don't stop working. And the Jews' response, right, was this. Therefore, the Jews sought more to kill him because not only had he broken the Sabbath, but he said also that God was his father making himself equal with God. So let me tell you, the whole reason I started to look at this series was this verse, because I couldn't understand this verse. And that's an interesting fact that I couldn't understand this verse. How was saying that God was his father making himself equal with God? I thought about it and I thought it took me a long time. And the reason it took me a long time is because I was having a hard time seeing it from the Jews' perspective. And the reason I was having a hard time seeing it from the Jews' perspective is because I don't have that perspective anymore. And you don't have that perspective anymore.

And so you have to actually stop and really think about it to remind yourself of what that perspective is. And so what is that perspective? Put yourself in their hands, in their perspective, in their thinking. What they're doing and keeping in the law, it's not about God. The God that they see is the God that's expressed in the parable of the talents. The God that they see is that austere man who reaps where he does not sow. That's the God that they recognize. That's the God that they saw. And so it wasn't about that, about God. What it was about was how they were going to be perceived by God. That's what their perspective was. How is what I'm doing or not doing going to be perceived by God? It was all about them. And any law-abiding Jew or any self-law-obsessed

Christian, Christadelphian, whatever, this is something that they all know and we know. It's absolutely true that God can see your heart. He knows who you really are. But that's why you hide in the darkness. That's why you can't stand the light. Because stop doing that. Because you know they know, sorry, because God knows who you are. So you don't want to go into the light because you want to be exposed. And so what you do is you keep law. And if you keep law, then you say, as long as God sees me keeping law, then maybe I will be acceptable to God and I'll never have to be exposed to the light. That's what keeping law is all about. It's a perspective of how God is going to see you. They were law-abiding Jews. They understood their own personal nature, but they never want to show that nature. And so you hide it by the works and you say, if I keep the Sabbath and if we keep the Sabbath, then maybe we can be acceptable to God and we'll never have to change and we'll never have to face the light. We'll never have to come out of the darkness because I'm going to call the darkness light and I'm going to show God my dedication by keeping the Sabbath. And that's what he will accept. There's two problems with that. The first is that God looks at the intents of the heart. He doesn't look at what we do. The second problem is this. Why do you want to stay in the darkness? And the reason you want to stay in the darkness is because you like the darkness. That guy that you created through sin, you like that guy. I like that guy. For this guy, for me, that guy is that wise, smart Alec, always has something sharp to say. That guy, I know he's wicked. I know every I trust him. I like that guy. That's why I never really want to give that guy away because I can trust him. He's got me on his side. That's not what Jesus does. But when Jesus says, God is my father, this is the way they would see it. They would say, you are by saying, God is your father, making yourself as if you have the righteousness of God. You are making yourself equal with God. That's just what they said. You're making yourself equal with God. And every law-abiding Jew knows that every person is an evil, terrible sinner. So you have no right to make yourself equal with God by calling God your father. And Jesus' response is, you don't know God. You have no idea who God is because you never see that God. The God you see is the master, just like in the story of the talents. It's a relationship of a master and a servant. It's not a relationship of the father with the son, or just the relationship of a father. And so Jesus is going to emphasize again and again and again that God is a father. He comes right back in the very next verse, and he says this. He says, verily, verily. In other words, this is absolutely true. I say unto you, the son can do nothing of himself. You think I'm making myself equal with God? I can't do anything. But this is what I do. What I see the father do, for whatsoever he doeth, those things the son likewise does. In other words, I watch the father, and I see what he does. I don't get obsessed with my relationship to the father. My relationship to the father is based upon him, not upon me. Of course, he wasn't a wicked sinner, but they didn't know that. But that's not his response because he says, I can do nothing. He's another human like everybody else. But what I see my father doing, that's what I do. And that's what any loyal son does, is he sees what his father does and he copies it. And that's just what Jesus did. That's the whole story of the impotent man, is he sees what the father's doing and that's what he does. In fact, that's part of the story of the nobleman, right? When we talked about the nobleman and we said the nobleman was a politician, he was a quid pro quo kind of God. But he had one thing that wasn't quid pro quo, and that was his love for his son. And so that's what Jesus is talking about. All I really do is I watch the father. And what I see him doing, that's what I do. So consider the Exodus. We talked about it. He sees the father part the Red Sea, even though they were still sinners. Even though they were still disobedient, he still did. And again and again and again, the grace of God is seen again and again and again without any sort of quid pro quo, no payback. There is no payback. So that's exactly what he does with the impotent man. And by the way, that's why we're never told whether the impotent man changes, because the whole point of the healing of the impotent man is there is no payback. That was the same point as the healing of the nobleman. There's no payback to the nobleman. Jesus gets nothing out of it. That's what Jesus sees the father doing. A true relationship with God is based upon who God is, not based upon who we are in relation to him. That's what they didn't understand. It's a father and son relationship and not a master-servant relationship. And so what Jesus does is he goes on and he says this,

And showeth him all things that he himself doeth, and he will show him greater works than these that ye may marvel. I want to consider just for a few minutes this incredible statement where Jesus says the father loves the son. Remember again the nobleman, the politician, the man whose entire setup was you take care of me and I take care of you. And yet his relationship with son was not like that. He went from Capernaum to Cana because of his love for his son. He lowered himself before some itinerant preacher because of his love for his son. His love for his son was everything. Now consider the father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was he is the Almighty. He is the perfect God.

He you know all things are before him. All things are possible with him and

everything is founded. Everything is founded in scripture on the father's love for the son. It's everything in scripture. Look what he says. Look what Jesus says in John chapter 17. He says he's talking of course he's in the midst of his prayer with his disciples and he says father I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me. For thou loved me before the foundation of the world. Before anything was created the father loved the son. Everything is founded upon the father's love for the son and everything is possible because of the father's love for the son. Let's consider some of the things in that relationship. Consider what happens at the birth. Before the birth even before the conception the angel comes to Mary and he says he shall be great talking about the child that she will bear and he shall be called the son of the highest and the Lord shall give onto him the throne of his father David. Now consider what he's saying there. It's amazing. He said he's going to give the throne of his father David but he will be called the son of the highest. In other words people will know that he's the son of David and he's the descendant of David. They'll know that he's going to be given that throne but they will come to know that he's much much more than that. That he's the son of the highest. That he is the literal son of God and I want to consider a place where that comes out in the most remarkable spot you could possibly think of and that's at the cross. At the cross you had this man the centurion and the others that were with him who were just observers. They had a job to do but they're not even involved in the situation beyond doing their job and notice what it says. Now on the servant the centurion and they were with him watching Jesus. This is the moment of crucifixion. This is the moment of his death. This is what from a worldly perspective is the lowest moment anyone has ever had to endure. This sinless man dying on the cross. We can feel the pain and yet the centurion sees it and sees everything that goes on. The darkness. The earthquake. Everything. The response of everyone that watches and he says it says uh and Jesus saw the I'm sorry now when the centurion and they that with him watching Jesus saw the earthquake and those things that were done they feared greatly saying truly

this is the son of God. What an incredible reaction to what they were saying. They said this is the son of God and the angel told Mary that is exactly what they're going to call him. The son of the highest. They could see the almighty. They could see the earthquake. It's mentioned and they said this is this this is the son of God and that's just what Jesus is. He's the son of God. Notice what it said in that verse we just considered a minute ago when we said in the father love of the son and show him all things unto himself and he will show him greater works than these the he may marvel and Jesus goes on in this chapter to say you're going to see even greater things than the healing of the impotent man. Look what he look what he says in the next few verses in verse 21. Now again he's talking to the Jews but the people that are supposed to hear it is you and I. We're the ones that are supposed to understand what he's saying because they certainly didn't they didn't even remember it when they were asked. In verse 21 he says for the this is right after he says the father loves the son therefore for as the father raises up the dead and quicketh them even so the son quickeneth whom he will. So the father loves the son before the foundation of the world and the father gives him the power to raise the dead. Now yes there were other people that had that power but he gives them the power to do it and and and he has more than in verse 22 it says for the father judgeeth no man but hath committed all judgment onto the son. God the father does that with no one else no one else is given all judgment onto the son. Jesus is going to judge everything and the father is not going to sit there and dissect it and say well you did this good you didn't do that right no no no he gives it all to him that's how much he loves his son how much he trusts his son. In verse 23 he says that all men should honor the son even as they honor the father there's no separation even though he can say of myself I can do nothing there's no separation between the honor of the father of the son because of the love of the father for the son. In verse 24 he says verily verily saying unto you he that heareth my words and I believe on him that sent me have everlasting life and shall not commit to condemnation but is passed from death on to life he gives him the power of life itself the power of eternal life you make the decisions who receives eternal life the father gives that to the son. I mean this is quite a business Jesus has taken on and taking on his father's business and yet it is the love of the father for the son that

drove everything that he did that drove him to the sinless life that he lived that leads him even to this day in his father's in his father's heaven guiding even when he comes back all things are his because from the very foundation of the world the father loved the son and gave all things on to him notice what it says later on in the chapter he says I am coming in my father's name if you receive me not if another another shall come on in his own name him you will receive but he how can ye believe which receive honor one of another and seek not honor that comes from God alone notice where it's coming from it's coming from God that was everything Jesus was telling me I watched the father and I do what the father does and he has given me all things and I do exactly what he wants done because of who the father is that's why I do it and my motivation my father's love it was there from the very foundation before the world began and it drove everything and he took it all in and was a perfect obedience of the father and so where does that put us brothers and sisters as

servants of the son it puts us in a situation in which it is all about the relationship between the father and the son it's not about our sinfulness yes we're sinners yes we have to face just like paul did oh wretched man that I am who can save me we have to go into the light we have to face the light and we have faced the light and we continue to face the light each time we fall short but each time we fall short and each time we get down upon ourselves for what we did and we want to turn back into darkness because it's right there calling to us it's right there it's good over here you don't have to stand in the light each time we do that we have to turn back to the relationship between the father and the son that's what you and I are called to we're not called to all the things that the world is called to we're called to be witnesses and as best as we can reflections of the relationship between the father and the son and its whole foundation lies in the love of the father for the son all things can be done because of the love of the father for the son and our faith and our lives are founded upon the love of the father for the son this is my beloved son and whom I am well pleased

Transcript

we are finally going to leave the impotent man behind and uh move on to John chapter 6 in the feeding of the 5,000 I'll explain uh shortly why I put parentheses around uh the

5000 um just a just a couple things to remember as we're moving forward one of the things I want you to remember when we as we talk about the feeding of the 5,000 in John 6 because we're not going to cover these verses specifically is remember that after Jesus says unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part of me that everybody turns away but the 12 the only people left by the end of John chapter 6 John chapter 6 is a really long chapter uh we're not going to look at everything I'm hoping we can get uh through it through all of it today I've got a lot of uh things to bring up but keep in mind the fact that by the time you get to the end of John chapter 6 the only people that are left are the 12 everybody else has has uh abandoned um

Jesus at that point um we we've got some ongoing themes that we're that we're considering you know the whole theme about about uh spirit and Truth the fact that you can't Worship in spirit Spirit and truth without sincerity you need to have sincerity that's what Joshua emphasized and so without sincerity you can't you can't follow the spirit and so we pointed out about the Jews remember we talked last time about the Jews that the Jews didn't have sincerity because they wanted to cover up what was in their heart that's why they saw God as a Taskmaster because if you have a Taskmaster then all you have to do is do the tasks and if you do the tasks then the Taskmaster is happy but God is not a Taskmaster God is a father and so when Jesus calls God his father they are petrified and they're Furious they want to kill him

because if we have that kind of relationship with our father then what's in here is going to get exposed now we know that God looks at the heart we understand that but when you're not worshiping in spirit and truth that's not the point the point is if I do this then the Taskmaster is going to be happy and if it's not a Taskmaster then we have to look at my heart and I don't want you to see what's in my heart because my heart my heart is evil

in fact this is what Jesus says at the end at the end of uh John SE or at the beginning of John 7 after what happens in John 6 as they're going to the Feast of Tabernacles remember it says his Brethren didn't believe on him we we'll get into that later because the Brethren certainly knew who he was they just didn't think he was doing things correctly um but this is what Jesus says um to his Brethren he says the world cannot hate you but me it hateth because I testify it that the works thereof are evil that's just what Jesus was doing he was exposing this what he talks to Nicodemus about in chapter three he was exposing that the inner thoughts of every man is

evil so that has to come out if that doesn't come out if you want to keep keep that hidden then you can't worship the god in sincerity and in spirit and in truth it has to come out that's what Paul talks about in Romans 7 a Wretched Man that I I am it has to come out that's what we do at at baptism we make that confession that we have no control over this sinful man that's inside of us and everybody understands uh that there's a sinful man uh inside of us uh a couple other thingses that we're following we're talking about how how it builds up um who Jesus meets who he interacts with continues to expand and expand and expand it started out in a very small place in John chapter 1 with John the Baptist and expands out a little bit more with Nicodemus expands out a little bit more with the Samaritans expands out a little bit more with the Jews the Jews in Jerusalem who we pointed out had a form of godliness but denying the power thereof that's that represents them wonderfully because remember they did have a form of godliness they were they were law abiding or law obsessed

Jews that's they they they kept the law because they believed in God but they didn't understand understand or or they refused to face what God really was but they were a law abiding Jews they were

dedicated but their dedication made them want to kill Jesus so the dedication was outward but it doesn't create the transformation that takes place with spirit with spirit and truth and now we're going to expand even further because now we're going to we're going to meet a multitude and this multitude is not about keeping the law remember at the end of John 6 at least at least at that point in time that multitude that rejects Jesus they're not trying to kill him but they still reject him and so what's the difference between the L abiding Jews that want to kill him and reject right and they reject the remember the the lers rejected the miracle right they have a form of godliness but denying the power thereof Jesus said healed the impotent man but that became not important the only thing that was important was he did it on the Sabbath day and so the Taskmaster is not going to be happy

so they they they deny the miracle they they deny the power thereof these people literally come to Jesus because of the Miracles but the Miracles don't offer to them a sign don't offer to them uh what is this all about what does this mean it offers to them an opportunity and that's what the world does it takes whatever they can to make it an opportunity for them and we'll take a look at that opportunity this morning but you can see it's continuing to expand and expand and expand further out and further out uh it goes so let's um you know what I didn't I left quickly this morning and I didn't bring my Bible of all things to forget on a Sunday morning you forget your Bible I

mean everything is going to be on the slides anyway but turn to John chapter 6 and we'll start our consideration of the feeding I I I wanted to call it just the feeding instead of the feeding parenthesis uh of the 5,000 and we'll get into why but I just thought the feeding sounded too much like uh Stephen King novel so I didn't think that was the best thing to call it but this is how it starts

out after these things Jesus Went Over the Sea of Galilee which is the Sea of tiberias and a great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles we said it was the Miracles that they were following him for which he did on them that were diseased and so it starts out by saying after these things well of course those things are everything that takes place in John five everything we looked at for the last three or four uh classes uh the healing of the impotent man the the the uh confrontation with the Jews and so we talked about the fact that there's continuity this thing is building and building and building we certainly would expect continuity but even the words itself there don't forget this is there's continuity going on here there's things that are happening remember the beginning of John 5 it said after this specifically talking about the nobleman so that's always building upon it and of course it says after these things Jesus in other words Jesus is the one in charge of what's going on I know that's not surprising to us either but it's not like Jesus is just you know there and these things are happening he is literally controlling what's what's going on he can see these expanding things obviously and he knows what's go he knows specifically what going on so when we get to the feeding of the 5000 Jesus knows exactly what he's going to do why he's going to do it so so Jesus is in charge and it says after these things Jesus Went Over the Sea of Galilee which is the Sea of

tiberias now why does it tell us that the SE of Galilee is called the Sea of tiberias it doesn't from from a standpoint of where Jesus is at this moment it offers us no new information right if this thing just said after these things Jesus Went Over the Sea of Galilee we would know exactly where Jesus was and exactly what he was doing and yet it adds in this piece which is the Sea of tiberias and this is the only one of of of well three places where tiberias is mentioned but only twice is the Sea of liberus

mentioned so what is being added by putting this in that is that which is called the Sea of sea of tiberias anybody have an idea of what's being added here why it mentions that it's also called The Sea of tiberious nobody else mentions it the only other time it's mentioned here is in John chapter 21 by the way remember when Jesus meets the disciples after he's been raised from the dead and he's going to have a meal with them and then he's going to send them out to preach right and and in the record in John 21 it says he met them by the Sea of tiberias so why is it mentioned why do they give us why does he give us basically two C's why does he give us two C's any

ideas going to be important to remember as we go through

yep I

don't I like

that compar to Luke 5 right when he said um they came to see the Mir done in Luke 5:1 it says they came to hear the word of God and so they're coming for a different intention and there instead of the SE thanks instead of the Sea of Galilee it says the lake of ganar correct which I don't know maybe there's something in that which is a third name right it actually has three names it's generally referred to as the Sea of Galilee but it's also called The Sea of tiberias here and then in uh Luke 5:1 it's called the lake of garet

here's why thank you for that here's why it's called the Sea of tiberias you got two Seas the Sea of Galilee the Sea of Tiberia same place but two different names one name is Hebrew the other name is

Greek what you're going to have with a feeding of 5000 is you're going to have a multitude you're going to have a sea of people that's what a multitude is it's a sea of people that's what sea represents it represents a multitude and that multitude is going to have Jews and is going to have Gentiles there's two groups of people in the multitude that we're going to look at there's Jews and there's Gentiles that's why it tells us it's the Sea of Galilee which is the Sea of tiberias in other words this is going to be uh Jewish event and a gent and a gentile event well actually in the end it actually just turns out to be a faithful event we'll talk we'll talk about that but that's why it tells us there's two C's and that's going to play a point later on when we look at something else where we deal with something that has two different things so that's why it mentions that it's the Sea of tiberias because you have both Jews and Gentiles in the sea or the multitude that's about to come towards them uh on the mount on the hill and a great multitude followed him notice it doesn't say a great multitude of Jews it just says a great multitude that's because there's more than just Jews in this multitude and we'll explain why surely because they saw his miracles which he did on them that that were diseased in other words they came because of the Miracles they saw the Miracles and they said this is something right and so and so they come towards uh this multitude comes towards Jesus now notice what it says in the next verse that's coming up yes very good and Jesus went up onto a mountain and there he sat with his disciples and the passor over a feast of the Jews was nigh we'll talk about why it's the Passover what's the importance of the Passover but notice here a here's a picture generally speaking of what people believe where where it took place uh that word Mount can also mean Hill I don't think Jesus at this point when all the way up to the top left Mountain there whether this is is the place or not he obviously went up to the top of the hill I don't think he made 5,000 people Trek all the way up to a mountain uh the top of the highest mountain what he did is he went up in the top of the hill but notice this notice what it says there he sat with his

disciples the only thing that's going to take place is the multitude coming and the feeding of the mult and the feeding of the multitude and what all that represents and yet it says he went up to the hill and sat with his disciples this whole story of the feeding of the 5000 is not about the feeding of the 5000 we actually talked about this before remember he gives discourse after discourse and nobody's listening except the redeemed except the faithful he's talking to the multitude or or in this case the next day he's talking to the group that's there that represents the multitude but they're not hearing what he has to say and he's saying things like unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part of me we know exactly what that means they considered it hard hearing why because they weren't worship they weren't serving in sincerity therefore they couldn't see the spiritual application of them to them he was talking about cannibalism if he's talking about cannibalism that is really a hard teacher but of course that's not what he's talking about and remember what happens at the very end of the chapter what happens the last things that happens at the chapter well the second to last thing the last thing is he mentions that one of the 12 is a devil but the last thing that happens as far as the as far as everything is concerned is Peter saying to them where shall we go

you have the words of eternal life it's about the disciples that's what the whole story is really about it's really not the feeding of the 5,000 it's really the feeding of the 12 or the feeding of the

144,000 because the feeding of the 5,000 is just a meal that's what Jesus literally says to them you just you just got coming to me because you got fed you're not coming to me because of the sign because of what it means that you were fed you're seeing opport unity in the fact that I have the ability to do this that's what he means when he says that so it's really about the 12 this whole story right from the beginning is really about the 12 so keep that in mind as as we move

forward uh and they were told that this uh event took place at the time of the Passover right because the Passover was nigh and their way up right up in the north and this takes place at the time of the Passover did did we look at that map did I show a map in the previous one I did sorry about that just quickly you can see they don't really know specifically where where it took place they believe it took place in the place that they showed but notice the map there they have the feeding of the 5,000 on this map down to the right that's the Sea of Galilee uh bethor is up top Capernaum a little bit to the left ganess it's over there thank you very much uh tiberias is a city or a town as well as the SE of Tiberius and so that's sort of the the layout of uh where things take take

place and again it mentions that uh they're up there but the Passover is not so why do they mention why does it mention that it's a Passover what's the purpose of this when it comes to the fact that it's a Passover and the reason is

this because the Passover and this is again a repeating theme that we we run into again and again and

again the Passover is about passing over judgment that's what the Passover is about right the original Passover that takes place in Egypt God is going to pass judgment on the Egyptians but he's going to pass over judgment on the Jews right on those that put the door on the lentil post right well let's look at it this is what it says in Exodus 12: 12- 13 it says this and this is important to understand what's being emphasized

here it says for I will pass through the land of Egypt this night and I will Smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt both men and beasts and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment I am the Lord he is going to execute judgment on Jesus he has the right to do it he is the god he is the Creator and sustainer of all things and he's going to pass judgment on Egypt and everything that Egypt represents that night right he's going to kill the fir he's going to kill the first born but he but it's not about

smiting it's about judgment you say well what's the difference the difference is this what's your motivation for putting the blood on the lentil are you putting the blood on the lentil to P have judgment passed over are you putting the blood on the lentil so that you don't get

Smit right there's there two possibilities so look what it

says and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are when I see the blood I will pass over you and the plague shall shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt I will pass over you when I see the blood now we know what the blood is right the blood is from a lamb of the first year without blemish or without spot we know the blood is Christ's sacrifice that's that we can worship in spirit and Truth we can see it right but if you put that blood on the

door what this is saying notice it says notice it says shall be a token be for you a token it's not a token from you it's a token for

you and what's the token represent well the token is the same thing as a sign it's a miracle and a miracle takes place because they don't die right but it's also a token and I'm not changing the meaning of the word it's all part of what the word means it's a pledge that's what a token is it's a pledge and God is making a pledge to the people that if you put that blood on the lentil I will not pass judgment on

you now why did the Jews who we know rejected God

why did the Jews put the blood on the

lentil because they didn't want to die that's why they put the blood on the ltil they want to get Smit I don't get me wrong I I would do the same right well if you put this blood on I'm going to kill all the firstborn but I'm I won't kill you if you put the blood on that's not what this says but that's what they did but that's not what this says what this says what the law is teach teaching is if you if you kill that lamb and you put that blood on there it's all about the blood right I will pass over judgment upon you if you believe in Jesus if you believe that that lamb and that blood represents your

sins that's what it means then I will pass over judgment it's not about passing over smiting yes they're they're saving themselves from getting killed but that's not that's not what the motivation is supposed to be it's the same with the sacrifice of Christ the sacrifice of Christ is not supposed to be payment for our

sins it is what that sacrifice represents that's why we we eat of the Bread and Wine every single every single day to remember that God has passed over judgment upon us through

Christ see the difference one is about what God has done and what God is doing and who the God is about and the other thing is about protecting my

hide and that's the difference remember we talked about that last week with the Jews all they're really trying to do is protect their protect their High they're not looking at the father to recognize what the father really represents and again and again and again for the faithful this is what the father represents one who passes over judgment a god of love a God of kindness a god of Mercy a god of

faithfulness so once again it's right there it's right there in the law and notice it says uh upon the houses where you are that's another repeated theme again and again and again and it is this there's nothing for you to do other than let this happen just like stand still and and see the salvation of the Lord with Moses at the at the party of the Red Sea right you don't have to do anything you just stay in your house you got to put the blood on you got to believe in you got to believe in the in the sacrificial

lamb all you have to do is stay in your house and you will not be judged so who's going to see that if this is what part of what's going on with the feeding of the 5,000 who's going to see it but the faithful the others aren't going to see it they're going to see the miracle and say this guy should be king we're going to take this guy and make him King whether he wants to be whether whether he wants to be king or not and then we'll talk about who also has that feeling as well any questions or anything else as we as we continue all

right I I have this picture this is some artistic rendition of the feeding of the 5,000 I have this picture on my uh computer at work on my um on my screen saver I have a whole list of of uh Bible pictures on I think I've mentioned it before of Bible pictures on my screen saver when I when I have a moment of time where I I want to let my mind wander I'll pop up one of these pictures and I like I like I truthfully I like this picture um it's not a good representation of the feeding of 5,000 for a number of different reasons but I do like I do like the picture at least everybody's sitting down right uh and it's on the side of a hill which is where the feeding of the 5,000 takes um not a lot of grass and every in every account it always talks about the fact that there's a lot of grass there you know green grass there's not a lot of grass there but the the reason why I want to point this picture is if you look close and maybe I have too much spare time I don't know but if you look close there's multiple multiple people passing out Bread and Wine there's people up here on Upp left yeah let me hop up for one second sorry Phil this is uh this is Jesus up here by the way you can see the guy in white up there he's passing out the bread and the fish you got people passing here you got people passing here people passing here if you count them it's about about 30 or 40 people just in this scene alone and if you really have time at work and and you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing you also know that that's about 200 people uh in this picture it's a it's a rough estimate because there's a lot of small heads but it's about 200 people so if you are actually feeding the 5,000 which of course is just the men right so you have the women and the children so you're probably closer to 10,000 you need this scene taking place about 40 times over uh in order for this to be true and like I say you've got about 15 or 20 people uh passing passing the bread and the and the fish but it's very very specific both that it's always grass and etc etc and that it's the 12 that pass and it's the 12 that clean up it's not everybody else is told to do

what everybody else is told to sit down that ring a bell we just saw it in Exodus we saw it at the part of the red see this is going to happen there's nothing for you to

do that's what salvation

is Right stand still and behold the salvation of the Lord and you're going to have it happen again right here with the feeding of the 5,000 all they do is sit down and they're fed now whether or not they recognize what they're being fed for that's that's a different deal but when they sit down and they're fed they don't they don't serve they don't clean up they are being fed willingly without any that's what the sacrifice of Christ is that's what we recognize about the sacrifice of Christ it's not about us it wasn't something yes we were Sinners but there wasn't something for us to do or something for anybody to do for that for that to take place Jesus was in charge of being crucified him and his him and his

father I know it's being picky that there's no grass in the picture but I I do actually like the picture it says now it says this

when Jesus then lifted up his eyes and saw the great multitude come onto him he saith unto Philip When shall we buy bread that these may eat and this he said to prove him for he himself knew what he would do again he's in charge of everything that's taking place and so it we pointed out he sits down with the 12 it's about it's about the disciples but the first thing that happens right away is Jesus sees this multitude coming towards and just so you know we're going to stay in John's gospel if you have ideas from other gospels that's perfectly fine but what we're trying to follow is how John repesents what's going on with the feeding of the 5,000 what he's presenting it's still just as true but he's being very specific about what he presents and how we know in other Gospels it says that they come to Jesus and said what are we going to do about this in this case it is Jesus seeing the people coming and he turns to philli and and he says how are we going to feed how are we going to what what does he say specifically whence shall we buy bread that these may eat so so first question is why does he go to

Phillip right well Philip is one of the disciples right but why does he go to philli well he goes to philli because if you look back at the map the closest town to where they are is Beth seder and that's where Philip's from so if anybody would know where to buy bread from it would be Phillip but Philip says

we we don't have enough money we we couldn't have enough money to buy enough bread to feed this many people there's no way we could do it and of course the answer is that's correct there's no way you can do it because this is not oh Jesus is going to physically feed feed them for

sure but he's going to feed them through a miracle through a

sign that teaches the lesson of what the bread represents when he gets into his discourse It's All About The Bread and it's all about one other thing and we'll talk about that as well but why does he say it to Phillip he says to prove him he says it to Philip to prove him in other words Phillip have you gotten the message yet do you know what this is all about yet notice he's saying it to the disciple have you got the message yet do you know what's going on here do you know what this all is and Philip doesn't know what it all is so Philip as one of the disciples has to learn learn what this is all

about right and what is this all about everlasting life because you have the words of eternal life that's what this feeding of the 5000 is all about we'll look at it a little bit more that these May because he knew what he was going to do he knew what was going on he knew what the multitude represented he knew what he was going to do he knew the message he was going to teach he knew he was who he was going to teach it to

Jesus is controlling the entire event by the way the feeding of 5,000 people when we talk about this the disciples you know many of you know I ran functions for years and years and years that's a big event a lot of 5,000 people or 10,000 or whatever you want to call it doesn't matter it's a lot of people and and for 12 people to pass out bread to to 5,000 people that's a pretty big event this is a really big event and of course it's a big event as well because a miracle takes place and everybody sees the miracle everybody knows there's not a chance that anybody has enough Fe food to feed all of us and yet they all get fed for as much as they want to eat everybody sees it everybody so this is a big event with 12 guys one guy serving you know you you would for 5,000 people you'd need about 50 chefs one guy

one of his disciples said unto him there is a lad here which hath five barley Loaves and two small fishes but what are they among so many and Jesus said make the men sit down there it is again and there was much grass in the place so the men sat down you think that's an important point of course it is it's a free will offering that's what the sacrifice of Christ

is in the number about 5,000 so the first question I ask when I see this is is where do the lad come from he's just sort of there right with Five Loaves and two fishes by the way I don't have the answer to that question I have a suggestion and I'm going to present it to you simply as a suggestion I have no backing for this this is what I like to refer to as a Harry Whitaker suggestion if you've ever read Harry Harry loves to make love to make suggestions where you kind of sometimes you go that's incredible I would have never seen that and sometimes you'll go I'm not so sure about that one

I'm going to give you one of those I love Harry I love reading his writings this is who I think the lad is again it is just my own romanticized opinion of who the lad is I think the lad is the nobleman's son he was either sent by the nobleman or he came himself to bring a free will offering to the guy that had saved his life we're not far we don't have the map anymore but we're not far from Capernaum the nobleman has never repaid but but as we point out it wasn't never about repayment but he's never done anything this Jesus has never seen the son that we know of and I think that's who the lad is again it's just a suggestion because I don't have a better one but it would be a beautiful thing if Jesus now saw the child that he raised from the dead and now the lad is there and he's brought a meal probably he's thinking or the the nobleman's thinking for Jesus and whoever his disciples he's not planning to feed 5,000 people with Five Loaves and two fishes

but I think that's who the lad is just again just my

suggestion and he has Five Loaves and two fishes why why is that what he has he has Five Loaves and two fishes well that's first of all that's seven items if if my math is correct I believe that's seven seven is the number of spiritual completeness there is going to be a spiritually complete event that takes takes place at the feeding of the 5000 and that spiritual event is the disciples recognizing that it's really all about eternal life and that eternal life is only possible through the bread of life which is the Lord Jesus Christ that's a message they have to learn and they learn it in this event so this is a spiritually complete message that's why it's seven seven items why is it Five Loaves and we'll talk about why it's barley in just a minute because that's even more interesting but why is it Five Loaves well in in difference to my my dear brother David who does not believe that five is the number of Grace five is the number of Grace this is going to be an act of Grace upon the 12 now why do I say it's an act of Grace upon the 12 because it's an act of kindness upon 5,000 plus right this is he's feeding them for free $5,000 you know what that would cost at like a function to have five even if all you were serving was bread and fish it' cost about

$400,000 by my math having done functions and events and I'm not offering a

salad about $400,000 this is free but it's but but it's an event uh of Grace for the 12 because remember what Grace is Grace is the kindness of God and the effect of that kindness upon the believer that's the transformation that we're all seeking Grace is transformation

and this is going to be an act of Grace upon the 12 it's an act of kindness upon 5,000 but it's an act of Grace upon the 12 and of course it's bread because in the discourse that Jesus gives It's All About The Bread he is the bread he is the

feeding so why is it two fish before we talk about why it's barley why is it two fish any ideas given what we've already talked about why there's two fish

CU I didn't know why there was two fish until I thought about the fact that there was two separate multitudes the two fish represents the Jews and the Gentiles that's what the two fish are he's going to feed both with both the fish he's going to feed the two fish now how do we know that that's that's what that represents here's how we know what that represents because when you get to the end of the feeding and they C they collect 12 baskets of remnants there's no fish there's only bread now why would that be that there would be no

fish because in the body of Christ is neither Jew nor Greek there's neither Bond nor free there's neither male nor female We Are All One in Christ Jesus that's what this represents there's no remnant of f there's remnants of bread because the word of God isn't gone right there's plenty bread left over even after the feeding of the 5,000 there's 12 baskets of bread left over but there's no fish because the fish don't exist

anymore because when we partake of this bread in in wine on a Sunday morning there's no fish there's no there's no Jews there's no Gentiles are all one so the fish are gone so that's what the fish represents why is it barley this is really

interesting in Leviticus 23:10 does that pop up it did it says

this when you get into the land Moses uh the Lord is speaking he when you get into the land and you and you have your your you're established it says you shall bring a sheath of the first fruits of your Harvest onto the priest and he shall save the sheath before the Lord to be accepted for you on the tomorrow after the Sabbath a priest shall wave it Leviticus 23: 10 and 11 what time we got 1010 oh we got plenty of time I'm not presiding today

what's going on here the first fruits that are waved is the barley that's the first fruits it's barley every first day of the week once you get established in the land every first day of the week in the morning you're going to wave The Barley loaf as a recognition that you know what the barley represents

now what happens on the first day of the week early in the

morning there's really only one event

chrises Jesus is raised from the dead exactly correct that's why it's a barley loaf because this whole thing is about Resurrection that's what it's all about Resurrection onto eternal life that's what all this is about that's what the feeding represents that's who's there that's who believes that's what this is about this is all about Resurrection that's why it's a barley loaf because Jesus is raised from the dead because this isn't about in the in the case of of this feeding of the 5,000 this isn't about the Passover as far as the Passover being the sacrifice being killed the blood is already on the lentil this is about resurrection and when we come here on a Sunday morning we remember the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and then we remember his resurrection and all this represents the new life that we're offered that's what this is about thank you uh

Chris and Jesus Took the Loaves and when he had given thanks he distributed to the disciples and the disciples to them that were set down and likewise of the fishes as much as they would what is it that he does with the what is it that he doesn't do with the loaves here

and Jesus Took the Loaves and when he had given thanks what doesn't he do he don't break them right every Sunday morning we read it again and again and again he takes the he he took the bread and he break it why because it represents his death right the flesh being broken that's what it represents the bread's not broken here because this doesn't represent death this represents Resurrection so the bread's not broken now was the bread obviously broken of course it was I mean I mean you got 12 baskets of fragments of bread you don't get 12 baskets of frag of full breads this is 12 baskets of fragments but the specifically John doesn't break the bread because this is not about sacrifice this is about

Resurrection the entire discourse that Jesus talks about after this is all about Resurrection it's all about everlasting life that's the message that's being taught to the disciples I've got to go quickly but take just take a look at some of them really fast they says this is how much this is about resurrection and how much this is about eternal life look at how many verses in Jesus's discourse verse 27 he's talking to the to to uh the people now the multitude labor not for the meat which perisheth but that meat which endureth unto everlasting life they were all about to meet the perishes they were all about what they could get out of out of this miracle which we'll talk about in just a second verse 35 I am the bread of life he that cometh after me shall never hunger verse 39 all of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day Resurrection verse 40 everyone which seeth the son and believeth on him may have everlasting life and I will raise him up on the last day Resurrection verse 47 verily verily I say unto you that he that believeth on me hath everlasting life verse 48 I am the bread of life verse 50 this is the bread which came down from heaven that a man eat thereof and not die verse 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven If any man eat of this blad he shall live forever verse 54 whoo eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath Everlast has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day verse 50 you think it's you think he's uh pushing a point verse 58 this is the bread which came down from heaven not as your fathers did eat mana and are dead he that eateth this bread shall live

forever verse 6 68 Peter's response then Simon Peter answered Lord to whom shall we go you have the words of eternal life it's teaching the lesson of Resurrection teaching the lesson of everlasting life and they still need to learn it and I'll show you why we going to have to go really fast now and Jesus Took the lo oh I already said that oh oh la picked up again and he tells them to sit down uh and it is the disciples that serve and it is disciples that clean up because it's all about the disciples and then it goes on and says

this then those men when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did said this is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world those men who are those men that saw this miracle and recognized that this represents Moses that these people were still multitude you know there there are still many many Jews there right and it says those men that recognized that this miracle was a reflection of Moses in the wilderness why is it a reflection of Moses in the wilderness because Moses gave him the Mana did Moses really give him the Mana no God didn't Jesus says that in the discourse but in their mind this is a reflection of that Prophet because that Prophet was going to be like Moses right and Moses gave us bread in the wilderness and this guy gave us bread on the bread on the hill and it says those men that saw this who are those

men I got to go quickly so I'm not going to wait for an answer you're going to say 5,000 that's incorrect but it's close you're very close it's not 5,000 it's

5,012 about 5,000 and 12 that's the men that saw this miracle and recognized it's the 12 as well and that's really important understand for what takes place right after that that it's not just the 5,000 that see it it's the 5,000 and the 12 they all saw it they all saw the miracle they all recognized that this is just like what Moses did in the wilderness this must be the prophet that's going to come that's going to be about that's going to be like Moses they all saw it including the including the 12 and look what

happens this is what it says in Deuteronomy om this is the this is the prophet the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee and thy Brethren like unto me like unto Moses unto him ye shall

hearken who is that speaking to unto him you shall hearken it's got to be speaking to somebody and now the prophet has come that's like unto Moses and

5,012 people hear it how many of them hearkened onto it it's got to be speaking to somebody it is the Prophet this is how you know it's also including the 12 because the 5,000 didn't hearken they didn't hear it they reject Jesus only the 12 listen that's exactly who this verse is speaking to but it's

5,12 that recognize that he's that Prophet so look what

happens when Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by Force to make him a king he departed onto a mountain himself

alone so when it says when Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force who's he talking about and I always thought he was talking about the 5,000 right because when you look at some of the other accounts he rushes the disciples into the boat we're not looking at the other accounts we're looking at this what does he do he leaves all

5,000 and 12 and goes onto a mountain alone remember he comes up to the Mount at the beginning with the 12 sits down with the 12 and now he goes up to the mountain the picture's gone up to the top of that other mountain right and he goes alone he leaves the 12 behind because the 12 are part of the 5,2 that want to take him by force and drive him to Jerusalem and force him to be king because there's an incredible opportunity here and a amazing event has taken place everybody has seen it and everybody went what could we do with this including the

12 the 12 were just as overwhelmed as everybody else and that that that multitude that sea of people in like a wave like the stirring up of the waters a wave we can do so much with this and if he's not willing to do it we're going to force him to do it because this is exactly what we

need and when Jesus recognized that that was their response he goes up to the mountain alone and leaves all 5,000 and all 12 by

themselves because he has no intention not because he's going to go to the mountain but because there's still a message to be Tau and that message is still going to be for the 12 he leaves them alone and then this happens

and when the even was now come it's night right it's night we've looked at night a few times and now we're talking about the 12 getting in the boat and it's evening time they're in the darkness that's what it's telling us and it says it twice his disciples went down onto the sea and entered into a ship and went over the sea toward Capernaum and it was now

dark they're in the darkness this is what's going on

Jesus leaves them all

alone and now the twel are just like the noblemen now they've got something to deal with themselves because they have been just as duplicitous in the idea of forcing Jesus to Jerusalem as everybody else and now they're by themselves and now they have to think about what that represents they have abandoned Jesus or at least his purpose by now saying we should take this guy by the way the the 5,000 could have never pulled off grabbing him and dragging him to Jerusalem without the help of the 12 because there would be no organization to do it they need the

12 and the TW got swept up in that multitude swept up in that roaring sea we're going to take him to Jerusalem we're going to make him King and they got caught up in it and now they're by themselves in a boat by themselves and now they have something to to deal with and that is the Judgment of

Christ now that we've left him and he's left us and we're

alone how are we going to deal with this what does this say about us what's going to happen and this is what

happens and the Sea arose by reason of a great wind that

blew right there is the stirring up of the waters we've seen it before we've seen it again the waters get all stirred up they're all stirred up these people are petrified these 12 are petrified they don't know where they stand anymore the sea is churning everything is falling apart all around

them so when they had rode about five and 20 furlongs they see Jesus walking on the sea doesn't say a ghost and a spirit I know that's what it talks about now this is John they see Jesus walking and drawing nine onto them and they were

afraid why if they saw

Jesus why were they

afraid because they didn't know what Jesus was

coming they didn't know if the Jesus that was coming was going to pass judgment on them by having abandoned him with the multitude and what

happens but he said unto them it is I Be not Afraid in other words you got got nothing to fear you know who I am they're caught up in their fears because they have sinned just like we all get caught up in our fears when we sin and here comes Jesus and the and the waves are roaring and everything's a messing he's just walking calmly along the water that's the Jesus that we believe in who in those times when we're dealing with our fears when we're petrified because of our sin if you don't know that feeling you are the most blessed human being in the world because we all know

it Jesus says you got nothing to be afraid of I'm not here to judge your sins I'm here to save your life and look what it says then they

willingly received him into the ship of course they did they willingly received him you know who I am and that's just what we have to do in those times when we're inter Waters well we don't know if God's about to drop that other shoe we have to willingly Let Jesus into our ship willingly receive Jesus that incredible forgiveness that we received because of his sacrifice and it says and immediately the ship was at was at the land with they went that's just what happens to us brothers and

sisters when we Let Jesus into our ship when the the Waters of trouble because of our own

sin Jesus will take us to the other side and the other side is everlasting life we receive everlasting

life because God Is Passing Over judgment upon us because we believe in Jesus we know there's nothing else we know that's all there is and here are the disciples and they learning this message and Jesus speaks to the to the to the multitude the next day and it's all about eternal life it's all about letting go of your own sins and putting your faith in the father and at the end of it when everybody else abandons him because it's too

hard the 12 says where do we go you have the words of eternal life that's just what we're saying where do we go we have no place else to go

and so it's not the feeding of the

5,000 it's the feeding of the 12 or the 144,000 it's the feeding of you and I because we're the ones that are going to hear the message because we seek in sincerity to worship the father in spirit and Truth

Transcript

my uh plan was to move on to John 7 but we're not going to do that um there was just too much that was important for us to know or to to consider I guess is the best way to put it in in uh John 6 after um they get to the land remember last week we left off at the point where um Jesus gets in the boat and says that they willingly uh them in the boat and then they get to and then they get to the land I want to pick up there in just a moment but um just as we consider um what happens afterwards of course you know that Jesus starts a whole conversation with the people that had been uh with him at the feeding of the 5000 they find him in in capernum and he starts a whole conversation with them about the bread of life and about about everlasting life or about eternal life and as we consider these things um keep in mind a couple of things one um Jesus is talking to them but the lesson is for the disciples this entire story of the feeding is all about uh Jesus teaching the disciples or teaching us really same thing you can say he's doing it for the 12 or for the 144,000 which of course is the symbolic number of of the redeemed which by the grace of God includes includes us so he's speaking he he he's communicating with them even though he's speaking to these uh to these others and it's it's remarkable to see see how he how he moves the conversation so that they're getting the information they need to get even though he's talking to these others who are not really uh paying attention as we pointed out in a previous class uh in this class especially though I'd like to keep in mind um that the things that that Jesus is telling the disciples here about everlasting life is going to be brand new to them it's it's not brand new to us because we've been hearing it you know some of you since you were you know young babies uh for for the rest of us the the the true message for for a very long time but this is this is the first time they're going to hear this incredibly important concept that all these things come through Christ that the whole opportunity of everlasting life comes only through him this is going to be for them I I'm quite sure uh a brand new concept and so he has to get them to the point of understanding and he does an incredible job of using this uh this analogy of bread and what they would understand about bread which of course is the Mana he uses that to bring about the understanding that he is the bread of life so keep so if you would keep that in mind as we consider these things because it's easy for us to just go well of course you know we we know that well they didn't know it and Jesus Jesus has to has to teach them that and of course in the process of teaching that he is bringing them around to being what it means to be in Christ so any any questions or comments about anything we've covered before before we onward and never upward went the mighty was it

5,000 okay so this is where we want to pick up um this is this is at the point you know Jesus has been coming towards them they're afraid we pointed out based upon what John is saying in his gospel uh following the words that they are afraid because they've made a mistake they they they were being pulled in by that wave uh that happened at the feeding of the 5000 where they wanted to take him by force and make him King and of course he would have been a great King right not just not just would he have been uh you know been able to get rid of the Romans and all that kind of stuff but this was a religious you know a spiritually in-depth man he would have been you know much like David only only greater so you can understand the temptation of saying you know yeah we should make him King right now what a what an incredible Kingdom uh we would have with this man as king of course the 5,000 are would agree with you and they say yeah a man with this power I mean this man took five loaves of bread and a couple fishes and he fed 5,000 people I mean that's that's that's an amazing uh Power to have and what a great power that would be uh in a place of authority absolutely true however that's not what Christ is doing and of course that's all going to come out um in this in this uh conversation that he has and it says um it of course he says don't be afraid it is I basically saying to him you know who I am you have nothing to be afraid of which is which is what they needed to be told needed to say remember something about about that by the and it is this remember the other accounts it says Jesus almost walks by the boat right and then they kind of stop him and he get he gets in the boat Jesus doesn't have to get in the boat Jesus doesn't need the boat he's he's he's walking across uh the Sea of Galilee you know he doesn't need the boat we need him to get into the boat if he doesn't get in the boat then we're not in the boat with him so he gets in the boat for the disciples we said this was all about the disciples otherwise he could have easily just continued walking across the Sea of Galilee we need Jesus in the boat because if Jesus doesn't get in the boat the boat never makes it never makes it AC cross right and then of course when Jesus gets in the boat right it says and immediately the ship was at the land with they went so as soon as Jesus gets in the boat they're there

so what does that tell us well it tells it tells us this you're not going to get there without Jesus right they were in the middle of the sea rowing and Rowing and Rowing and not going anywhere you can't get there you can't get to the other side without

Jesus but with Jesus you're already at the other side with Jesus you're already there because he has the power of everlasting life

and if you believe in him and you are in the boat with him you are already there that's why that's why he's told not don't worry about the trials and tribulations that's all the process of working things through but if if you get out of the boat or you kick Jesus out of the boat you ain't never going to get there but if he's in your boat our boat then you're already there and of course where is there where were where are they going

physically where were they

going they were going to

Capernaum and anybody know what the name of Capernaum is it's not hard to figure out it's right it's right there the name of Capernaum is a place of comfort that's literally what the name of now we know Capernaum represents many things in in the gospels because you know the fact that Jesus was staying there but that's literally what the name is so they were trying to get get to the place of comfort and couldn't get there and then Jesus reassures him of where salvation comes from it comes only from him right because they were they were in the

darkness and Jesus brought them into the light and when you're with Jesus you're you're at the place of comfort peace I give unto you my peace I give to you not do the world giveth I giveth unto you and so they come to they immediately get to the place of comfort so so keep in mind also that's where that's where the disciples are as the discussions start with with the people from from the feeding of the 5000 they are in a place they are in a place of comfort or as we had referred to it in in earlier classes they are in a place of sincerity this is what it says

next and this is a this this is a really interesting verse what what happens in this

verse uh when the people I can see it it's just I can't see it when the people therefore saw

that Jesus was not there so what are they talking about these are uh the people that were at the feeding of the 5,000 and remember what happens with the 5,000 uh at the end the disciples get in the boat and they go away and the people see that they that Jesus doesn't get in the boat and then again the other accounts tell us that Jesus dismisses the people but the people don't know where Jesus went and you know they don't know where Jesus went because of what it says in this verse now we know that Jesus went by himself we know that Jesus left everybody else behind because everybody else wanted to take him and make him a king by force so he leaves them

behind but it says when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there neither his disciples they also took shipping and came to Capernaum now that's an interesting expression they also took shipping and came to to Capernaum in other words they saw the disciples gone they saw that Jesus were gone they they actually saw that the disciples got in the boat headed towards Capernaum they don't know where Jesus is and it says then they took shipping and went to capernum now we're told that there were some other ships there that came after Jesus had started the feeding of the 5000 but remember this is 5,000 people now unless you know two you know Carnival cruise lines pulled up uh by the feeding of the 5,000 I can assure you that 5,000 people didn't take a boat across to Capernaum so it must have been just a selection of people probably those who were the most adamant you know the sort of the Ring leaders if you will

um of those who wanted to take Jesus by force to Jerusalem and also by the way they need the disciples to do that right because the disciples are going to give you the organization you have to have to coordinate something of that they you they've already got the relationship with Jesus they've they've already been selected they need the disciples to be part of this but of course they go looking for Jesus and and and at that point what they're looking for is to take him by force and make and make him King so it must have been a selection of the people I don't think 5,000 people get into a boat that as we know it's not even 5,000 people it's 5,000 people plus women and kids so you're talking what I don't know what difference it makes but you're talking 10,000 people maybe getting in a boat that might take three cruise lines I don't know how many that would take and they come to Capernaum seeking for

Jesus so they want to get a hold of Jesus because it's time to make this man put this man in charge and when now and when they had found him on the other side of the

sea they said unto him

Rabbi when comest

thou now is there anything that strikes you as strange in that question any thoughts about what strikes you as strange in the question they said you know when did you get

here what's odd about that

question any ideas

they were in the boat he wasn't right it's a think about it it's it's it's the wrong

question right so they see the disciples get in the boat and take it towards Capernaum Jesus goes in a different direction and then they get in the boat and they get to Capernaum and Jesus is

there the right question is not when did you get here how did you get here right that's the right question how how did you get here you weren't in the boat there's no way that you ran around you know around the the the the Cape of the Sea of Galilee and got here at this point how did you get there get here and yet that's not the question they asked and that's also by the way not the question that they asked at the feeding of the 5,000 right because the question at the feeding of the 5,000 was not what an opportunity this is to take somebody with this kind of a power make them queen king the question is how is it possible to feed 5,000 people with Five Loaves and two fishes and once you ask that question you're asking from his perspective how is this possible that this could happen that's the questions that the disciples would have asked that's the question that we would have asked they don't want to ask that question they don't want to know how he fed the 5,000 that's not important to them how he did it what's important to them is that he could do it that was the thing we talked about that was opportunity excuse me he had he was providing opportunity as far as they were

concerned so not only do they not ask it at the 5,000 here is the obvious question once again how did you get here and if I you if I asked you the question how did you get here then I have to deal with the consequences and believe me the answer that they would be looking for is not well I walked across acoss I walked across the sea that's how I got here that is literally the the right answer at least for half of it anyway right that's how I got here but that would set up a whole different mindset in their mind and they don't want to go there and so they say when did when did you get here and of course Jesus doesn't even bother to answer their question because he understands the nature of the question and he says

this barely verily I say unto you you seek me and not because you saw the Miracles but because you did eat the Loaves and were filled now we have to understand what that what that means excuse

me because they saw the miracle right everybody understood he had everybody 5,000 plus plus 12 all understood that he had just fed all these people with Five Loaves and two fishes so they saw the miracle and yet Jesus says it isn't because of the miracle it's because you you eat and got filled and what Jesus is saying to them is you didn't recognize the sign right the sign is that this man has the power of God and if this man has the power of God this is a man we ought to listen to that's not what they saw or that's not what they experienced they yes they understood that it was a miracle but that Miracle provided a chance an opportunity for them to get what they wanted that's what they got right what they they got was a full

belly and if this guy can provide a full

belly then we can have whatever whatever we

want see the difference so he's saying to them it's not because of the miracle because you didn't stop and consider it you didn't stop and consider what this miracle means and now he is through them going to explain to the disciples exactly what this miracle means and of course we pointed out from the very beginning Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it so he's going to point out to them exactly what it was so that's what it means when it says you didn't do it because of the Miracles not because they didn't recognize it was a miracle because they didn't look at the miracle and consider what it meant so then he says labor not for the meat which per oh notice one before I get there though notice one thing else just to to repeat from a previous point and uh not because you saw the Miracles but because you did eat the Loaves and were filled notice the fish are gone he doesn't mention the fish we talked about that before so once again the fish are gone the fish are now the 12 disciples which are those who are combined or will be the 144,000 those that are the Jews and the Gentiles so he doesn't even mention the fish labor not for the meat which perisheth but for that meat which endureth onto everlasting life so Jesus says to them don't look just for what you can get out of it

today look for what that means

forever what just happened to you is a miracle that is an expression of the fact that you can have everlasting life so don't look at the immediate look at what what what the big picture is and notice where they go because where they go reiterates the fact that they're looking at the immediate he says which the son of man notice he calls himself the son of man meaning just another individual like you and I that's what he represents Humanity shall give onto you for him hath God the Father

sealed in other words this is a done deal it is sealed the father has sealed in his son everlasting

life it's there you can't touch it you can't break it you can't change it it is sealed by the father right that seal is just like you know we've talked many times about the Seal of a king's marker a king's Ring that's what this is once it's sealed it's done and it's been done since before the foundation of the world we talked about that before too it was done before the first words were spoken and in the beginning God said it was already sealed that this was going to be done through the Sun and of course that's important to recognize because we want it to be about whether or not we're obedient today or tomorrow or the next day or you know we're along that line everlasting life is already sealed in the p and it's the son who's saying it that it's already a done

deal they say unto him what shall we do that we might work the works of God so there is that we were talking about that with the Jews right there is this sort of thing what is it that we should do right that's what the Jews were doing by keeping the Sabbath right this is something that we can do in order to please the Taskmaster in order to work the works of God we don't do anything on the Sabbath day that's the works that we can do so that we don't have to expose who we really are and so once again now you have these other Jews and and Gentiles although although here it's probably mostly just Jews at this point remember it can't be 5,000 because 5,000 people didn't take a ship but it's a contingency of those people and that all they can what must we do that's what the Jews have been saying for now 4,000 years if we can just do therefore we can therefore we can get what must we do to do the works of God in know they say God not the father because they don't want to again we pointed this out they don't want to address the fact that he is a father he's An Almighty he's a power he's not a loving he's not a loving father and so Jesus isn't going to isn't going to bite on that right Jesus says this is the works of God you want to know what to do for God that you believe in him in whom he has s here's what you do you believe in me not keep the Sabbath not you know any of the other laws and regulations and all you believe in me because it's all been sealed in me now who's he talking to what he's talking to these people yes he's talking to those people are they going to pay any attention to anything has to say No in fact he's going to get even more and more controversial in this conversation to the point where he's literally going to say to them unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part of me but they're not going to listen and they're not going to listen because they don't want to look at it from that perspective BEC that's what he says in John that's what it says the beginning of John right the light sh came in the world and the Darkness comprehended it not that's what it says in John 3 here's the condemnation of the world that the light shined and the Darkness preferred the uh the people preferred the darkness because their deeds were evil that's what we have to understand about ourselves that we are in that same that same situation except unless we turn into the light we turn we turn to Jesus and so Jesus says you want to know what to do believe in

me they said therefore unto

him what sign show us thou then that we might see and believe thee what Dost thou Works our fathers did eat Mana in the desert as it is written he gave them bread from Heaven to eat so notice they go to the feeding the the feeding in the

wilderness and and before you say to yourself it's ridiculous that they would be asking for a sign when he had just fed them the day before with five Lo 5,000 with Five Loaves and two fishes how bigger sign do you want than that or if they had the had the had the guts really to ask the question how did you get here right what's there's a sign cuz there's no way he could have gotten there physically there has to be has to be a miracle involved in him getting there at that time and yet they asked for the sign now the reason they asked for the sign they re I don't they're not denying the miracle that he had just fed them and they're not forgetting but there's a difference between what they got yesterday and what the what the children of the wilderness SC and it's this the children in the wilderness were fed every single day right every day the Mana was there all the way through the entire 40 years the Mana was always there every morning they went out and there it was on the ground waiting for them so they saying listen if this was like like the Wilderness you would and remember he said to them you want to be filled all that's all you want you fill us up with food every single day okay maybe now maybe now we'll listen maybe now we'll buy in in that's what they're asking

for and they go right to the Mana and Jesus is going to is going to uh jump all over it and notice they say um our fathers de eat man in the wilderness as it says he uh he gave them bread from Heaven to eat well who's the he well of course Jesus is going to answer that question he says verily verily I say unto you Moses gave you not that bread from heaven so they're saying it says he gave us bread and they're talking about Moses Moses gave us bread every day if you if you know if you're going to be like Moses then give us bread every day and we'll be all set right and he says Moses didn't give you that

bread the father gave you that bread it say the

father but my

father so he's talking about the same individual he says but my father give you the true bread

from

heaven so you see the Mana you're talking about you're saying give us the Mana and we'll understand and he's saying the Mana is just a representation of what I am because the Mana was physical

right it came from heaven in that God gave it to him but it didn't come down from heaven right when they went out in the morning it wasn't it wasn't like rain it wasn't they you know overnight it rained bread onto the ground ground the man was just there on the ground and he says my father give us the bread that comes down from heaven this is the spiritual bread that you only really have to eat

once and you're fed for eternal life how much better is this bread that you only have to eat it once as opposed to that bread that you had to eat every single day and by the way and he's going to go on and say by the way they're all dead

they ate the Mana every single day and now they're dead this bread that comes down from heaven this bread feeds you onto eternal life this is so much better bread than that bread and that bread was a representation of this not the other way around remember we talked earlier about these these symbolisms that he uses in John's gospel like the True Vine and the Good Shepherd and the true bread

Jesus is the bread of life before bread itself is ever created so the bread that's created is representative yes it's real bread but it's

representative of the bread of life we eat bread all the time we eat bread on Sunday morning as a remembrance not by the way as a

repetition of the sacrifice of Christ it's a remembrance of Christ I say not as a repetition because there are churches that will teach you that that bread becomes the death becomes the body of Christ no no no no no just once but you have to eat of that bread

once which means you have to put on Christ you have to willingly allow him into your boat and once you do that you can be fed onto eternal life if you're both still in the same boat so continue on I don't want to I can't see the clock

10:00 uh for the bread of God is that which cometh down from Heaven There It Is which giveth life unto the

world then said they unto him Lord Evermore give us this bread it's like beautiful that's great that's the same thing the the Samaritan woman right said about the water he says the water I give you you'll never you'll never thirst she's like great give me that water I said great Evermore give us this bread give give us this bread give us this bread from from now on for and forever you know he does not in the way not in the way of the

manner he doesn't give he he doesn't he doesn't die every single

day but he does give you the bread forever

more we have it by the grace of God Forever More in our hearts we have the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ that's what the bread represents right so he does does give it ever more just not the way they're talking about they're talking about waking up every morning and finding the

bread that's not the bread that he's

offering uh he that cometh unto me I he says I am the bread of life he that cometh unto me shall never hunger and he that believeth on me shall never

thirst now notice it says cometh onto me it said there that they came to Jesus but they didn't come with sincerity right for for all the people that come to

Jesus who come who come sometimes not even knowing that they carry that sincerity think of Nicodemus Nicodemus didn't come thinking he was going to get changed he came thinking you know let's have a conversation and see if we can't work out some parameters here between what you're doing and what we do but he came to Jesus and he came to Jesus by night he's in the

darkness but he came to Jesus because he was sent by the father he came to Jesus and he was willing to listen to what Jesus had to say couldn't understand it how can these things be he

says but he listened and remember he starts off by saying you can't do these things unless God be with you so he's got the sincerity he just doesn't have the truth and it takes him three and a half years or however long it was to get it but he got it same thing with the Samaritan woman Samaritan woman comes to the well she doesn't even know Jesus is going to be there and yet she's ready to hear the message because she had sincerity the Samaritans themselves were sincere in their worship they just didn't have truth these people came looking for Jesus they didn't have the sincerity because it wasn't about how he had fed them it was about what it offered to them make sense same thing with the we talked about the nobleman the nobleman carried sincerity in his heart because he was there because of the love of his son even though he was a quidd proquo guy and he in his world you didn't do anything for me unless I did something for you he carried the love of his son what quid proo doesn't work he had the sincerity and so when he saw the signs and wonders he believed and that's what's going to that's what's going on with the disciples but not with them so he says to them notice he says he that cometh to

me shall never hunger that's how you're fed he that believes on me shall never thirst that's how you drink

but I say unto you that ye also have seen me and believe not all that the father hath given me shall come to me and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out that's part of what they learned in the boat and this is the Father's will which hath sent me that all which he hath given me shall I lose nothing but should raise him up again at the last day so there's everlasting life there's the resurrection remember the Sadducees didn't even believe in the resurrection there is a resurrection but those that come to

Jesus will be raised up in the last day doesn't say those that believe and me and are good every single day for the rest of their lives not that we're not trying to be that that's not the

motivation that's that's the works that I work to do to get to get there no no those that come to me and when we come to Jesus all we want to do is serve the Lord that's what that's what faith is really all

about the Jews then the

Jews the Jews then mbed at him the Jews well that's different he hasn't referred to these people as the Jews before right the Jews were those people down in in in Judea who who refused to listen to Jesus and who who were who were antagonistic to him that wanted to kill him remember those are the Jews down in Judea and now he refers to these people as the Jews John does the writer John does because look what happens they stop murmuring right they stop listening and they stop murmuring up to then they're at least listening to what he has to say they don't understand it and it's not answering what not giving them what they want but at least they're listening now they're not going to listen anymore now they start murmuring among themselves

because he said I am the bread which came down from heaven they said is not this Jesus the son of Joseph whose father and mother we know how is it then that he saith I came down from heaven now and how many times in the gospels do we see this now they start building up the argument that lays aside the Miracles lays aside the truth and just and just validates what I want to believe and so John the writer refers to them okay now they're the Jews now they stopped listening and they did know it's it's fascinating that they say isn't you know you're in Capernaum right and there's this group of people and they say we know J Joseph is his father this the kid from from Nazareth right Joseph is his father Mary's his mother he's got he's got brothers and sisters we know who this is how could he say he came from

heaven now they're laying aside the argument that he's making about the father and they're saying okay let's see what we can come up with to put up a put up a put up a

wall Jesus they answered murm not among yourselves in other words now you now you're going to start working up you know arguments among yourselves he said murmur up among yourselves if if the father doesn't doesn't call you to me you ain't

coming right you're not you're not coming unless the father sends you so if the father didn't send you if you want to start building up a wall

don't even worry about it because because you're not called anyway because those who are called will come to me because the father has sealed it and I will never lose them save for the one which of course is what he ends up saying to his disciples save for the one that had to be lost in order for for the events to take place in verse 51 he says

this I am the living bread which came down from heaven again the living bread if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever more and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the father give for the life of the world same thing that John was talking about John the Baptist was talking about when he says Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world that's what John learned in John chapter one that's really the message that's learned over and over and over again and now he's teaching that message to the disciples he's teaching them that there's only one bread that there's only one way to be fed and yet that feeding is on to everlasting

life and you have to partake of that bread nobody cometh to the father but by me nobody not not Abraham not Isaac not Moses not anybody comes to the father without Christ they all have to learn that he's the bread of life and they do learn it again and again and again we pointed out in other classes where Abraham learned it where Isaac learned it where Jacob learned it they all you all have to learn that you can't do it but it is already done for you even in the Old Testament before it actually happened it's already sealed Christ is already there in the plan and purpose of God he's already being revealed to Abraham Isaac and Jacob that one person that is going to be able the the the the opposite of of Adam In the Flesh and that through him all things are possible through Christ and he's he's he's teaching this to the disciples as he's speaking to those who aren't even paying attention who are already putting up

uh opposite arguments just like just like debate remember debate class in high school where it wasn't about it wasn't about what was true it was about winning the argument and so all you did when somebody was talking we still do it now don't we we still do it it's still it's still it's still a regular practice somebody puts up an argument I'm not listen to your argument what I'm going to do is Mark down okay I got to count it to that doesn't matter whether you're correct I that's that's what they're doing meanwhile we we're not even told what the disciples are thinking because we know what the disciples are thinking because we understand what he's saying because we're in the same place as them the only difference is they're hearing it for the first time we're hearing it again and again and again every Sunday morning we hear it at least we we we should hear it every Sunday

morning verse 57 and

58 as the living father hath sent me I live by the father so he that eateth me even He Shall Live By Me In other words if this is what feeds you then this is how you

live and he says I live by the father we see that right right from the age of 12 I must be about my father's business he lives by the will of the father and if we live by the will of Christ then we are fed by Christ and we are in him that is the bread that we are eating day by day the sacrifice the Resurrection The Words the truth all of it that is what our feeding is that is what our life is this is the bread which came down from heaven not as your fathers did eat Mana right the Mana did not come down from heaven it was from the Father in heaven but it didn't come down from heaven it was just there and they ate it and they are dead and they are dead they're not like Abraham Isaac and Jacob who are who are

asleep those that ate the most of those anyway that ate the man in the wilderness they're dead de e a d dead he that eateth of this bread shall live forever that that idea of of everlasting life or eternal life is again and again and again repeated ever uh everlasting life in in this diet tribe that Jesus this discourse that Jesus has says five times sorry David five times because this is an act of Grace because this bread is being offered to you without pay the people that ate the Five Loaves and the two fishes they paid nothing for it the noble the healing of the noble son he paid nothing for it the impotent man he paid nothing for it this is a free will offering Grace comes when you recognize it's a free will offering and you accept that offering that's what Grace is everlasting life in this di in this discourse it's offered free of charge do you believe it does it change

you oh that's the end okay so the end of course is Jesus turns to his disciples remember his disciples are in the boat in the darkness because they were listening to the 5,000 and Jesus says to them what are you going to do and Peter says where shall we go Lord you have the words of eternal life in fact you know what Peter is only partially correct they still have more to learn he does have the words of eternal life

he also is eternal life he has the keys the power to eternal life but the lesson Jesus wants them to

understand is that he has that he is the only way to eternal life the boat doesn't make it to the other side without Jesus in the boat you can't get there unless you eat the bread of

Christ unless you put on Christ and unless that's the food that feeds you now as we know we still need to eat physical food and as we know sometimes we

forget but it's already sealed the father has already established that this is the way to get there and if you are in Christ you are already

there that's the hope that we carry each and every day

Chris a verse comes to mind that to support your your your ideas you're advancing the time the disciples tried to uh they came with food to uh bring to Jesus and uh and he essentially said you know I'm not hungry and oh yeah you know my my sustenance is to do the will of God right he says I have food that you know not of here he's teaching him exactly what that food is that's that's a great point because that's literally what he's doing right now in John chapter 6 is he's what he said they didn't have in John chapter 4 I have food that you know not of now he's telling them what that food is make sense thank you Chris thank you for that

Transcript

So we're going to move this morning on to John chapter 7. We're just going to make a couple of points about John chapter 6 and the feeding of the 5,000 or maybe better name the feeding of the 12. As we pointed out, it was really about educating the 12, most specifically about the relationship between the father and the son. That idea of feeding is encapsulated, and what feeding Jesus was giving is encapsulated in what he says to the crowd when they find him in Capernaum. And what he says is this. He says, labor not for meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you, for him hath God the Father sealed. And of course, he says it to the people that find him, but it's really a message for the 12, or really a message, as we pointed out, for the 144 ,000, the others end up leaving him. And it really, this is really the message he was trying to get across, that you want to labor for the meat that perishes, not for the meat that perishes, like the bread that they ate the day before, or the manna in the wilderness. You know, you eat it, and then the next day you have to eat it again, and the next day you have to eat it again. He's saying the meat you want to have is the meat that endures unto everlasting life. That is his flesh, his body and his blood, which of course he goes into in great detail in his discourse in the Feeding of the 5,000, and it sort of culminates in when he says, he that believeth on me has eternal life. We talked about that idea quite a bit last week. If you believe in Jesus, you already have it, you have eternal life. Just like when Jesus allows them to get, when they allow Jesus, willingly allow Jesus to get into the boat, they immediately on the other side, immediately in the place of comfort, once Jesus is in the boat. If Jesus is in the boat, you have everlasting life. And so this is the big message he's trying to get across to the Twelve. He wants the Twelve to understand, first of all, his relationship with the Father. That's why the Father and the Son is mentioned so much in

Chapter 6, the relationship between the Father and the Son, and this idea of that he has literally the power over life itself, that of course being true life, being everlasting life, not just this mortal frame that we live in, but to live forever. That's what life in the end is really all about. And the disciples certainly get the message to a certain point. You know, they say at the end, this is the slide I didn't have last week, came on me. Then Simon Peter answered onto him, remember Jesus said, will you go also? Remember, they were on the verge of being part of the crew that was going to rush them to Jerusalem to make him king. So he gives his discourse, and of course, they said, oh, this is hard teaching, you know, who can hear it, and it says that everyone left him, except the Twelve. And so he says to the Twelve, will you leave me also? Then Simon Peter answered him and said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God. Well, that second half of it, that's really where he was trying to get them to, that they would believe and are sure that he is that Christ and that he is the Son of the living God, again, the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father has sealed, right? So the Father has put all power and authority over life in

his Son. And so Peter expresses the very point that Jesus is trying to get across, save for the fact that he comes up a little short in his words about eternal life, because he says to Jesus, you have the words of eternal life, which of course, Jesus does. But Jesus doesn't just have the words of eternal life. Jesus has the power, the authority over all life, over eternal life. In fact, just to give you a few verses, again, in John 6 in his discourse, remember, he's speaking to the people that found him, but the lessons are really for us and for the Twelve. And notice how often he talks about his authority, his power, that the Father has given him, the Father has sealed. I am the bread of life, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, he that believeth on me shall never thirst, verse 39. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing but shall raise it up in the last day. Of course, raise it up in the last day is resurrection, it's eternal life. Verse 40, and this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on him, which is exactly what Peter just expressed, may have everlasting life and I will raise him up at the last day. No man, verse 44, no man come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him and I will raise him up at the last day. Notice, it's Jesus doing all the raising, he has the power. Verse 47, verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. There it is again. If you believe, you have it. I am the bread of life. Verse 51, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world. Verse 53 and 54, then Jesus said unto them, verily, verily I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoso eateth of my flesh and drinketh my blood has everlasting life and I will raise him up in the last day. Verse 56 and 57, he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him. As the living Father has sent me and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me even he shall live by me. So the relationship that I have with my Father, I live by him. He doesn't eat the Father. He ate those words for years and years and years as he was growing up. There's the expression where it says that God breathed out and Jesus breathed in. That's the way it worked. And he's saying if that's the way you believe in me, then you will have the relationship with me that I have with my Father. That is not the natural relationship that we have with Jesus. So John chapter 6 is all about the relationship between the Father and the Son. John chapter 7 is not going to be about the Father and the Son. In fact, the name the Father is never used in John chapter 6. In fact, the disciples of John chapter 7 wrote. In fact, the disciples are never mentioned in John chapter 7. The message in John chapter 7 is about the relationship between the Son, or the Son of Man, and everybody else. And that relationship has to be defined in two ways. One, that there is Jesus in the eyes of God and then everybody else. And then that you can have the relationship with Jesus that Jesus had with the Father. So the power that Jesus had, you can be a part of that power. That's literally where this diatribe is going to take us to. But the first thing you have to understand is your relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we looked at that. I'm going way back, so I don't know how many of you remember it or heard it. But we looked at this before. The relationship between Jesus and everybody else. And we start in John chapter 1 when we talked about the baptism of John the Baptist. Remember, John had to learn a vital lesson, and he learned it at Jesus' baptism. And the lesson that he learned was that there is Jesus and everybody else. Those are the two breakdowns. He found it in Isaiah 53. Remember, before Jesus came to John, John used to say this. He said, I baptize with water, but there is one coming after me who is greater than I. Who shoelaces, I am not worthy to unloose. He will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit. He says that in all three of the synoptic gospels, because all of them are before Jesus came to him at his baptism. After Jesus comes to him at his baptism, he changes what he says in two places. The first place he changes is he no longer says there's one who cometh after me because Jesus had already come. He made his public appearance when he showed up at John's baptism. The second thing he doesn't say anymore is he no longer says who is greater than I. He takes that out when he makes the same speech in John chapter one. And the reason that he takes it out is not because Jesus is not greater than John. It's because John was realized through what happened at the baptism that he's not greater than anybody else. When John said there cometh one who is greater than I, the implication is that he's somehow greater than somebody else. Right? He said, you think I'm great, there's come in somebody who's greater than I. John gets rid of that. And he gets rid of it for this reason, because Jesus tells us something at the baptism that changes everything. And it's not even written down, but it's absolutely there. Because remember, it's baptism. When you go to a baptism, there's two things you have to do. You have to give a public confession of your sins, and then you go through the waters of baptism. Those are the two things. So Jesus comes to John, and John says, I should be baptized by you, not that you by me. And Jesus says, thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. And then it says he went through the baptism. So the natural inclination for us is, oh, then he lowered him to the water, but you forget the first part, which is Jesus has to make a public confession of his sins. So John has to say, just like we say, the same thing. Do you make a public confession of your sins? And now Jesus has to make a public confession of his sins, and he only has one answer. He says, John, I have no sins. That changes everything. Because once John realizes that Jesus is sinless, everything in Isaiah 53 comes to light. Because in Isaiah 53, which talks about John, but is about the Lord Jesus Christ, but John is there, that's where John realizes, all we have gone astray, everybody's in the same boat, all we have gone astray and have gone to our own will. He did not. No guile was found in him. He bore our sins in his body in the tree. That was the day John realized, there's Jesus, and then there's everybody else. And that's the relationship we all have to realize, first and foremost, that there is Christ, and then there's everybody else. And we're going to see that in John chapter 7 in the Feast of Boots. We're going to see how that is laid out, even at the point of coming out of Egypt. So that's the message that we're going to be looking for today. Any questions or comments before we move into John chapter 7? I'll take that as a no. So this is the map of Israel because of what it says in John chapter 7, verse 1. After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jewry because the Jews sought to kill him. John chapter 7, verse 1. After these things, we pointed this out again, this is the continuity of the Gospel of John. He moves them from one chapter to the next to the next. So it's saying to you, take what you just learned and bring it with you as we go into this next stage. Well, what did we just learn? Well, we just learned Jesus has the power of life itself. That was the message of the feeding of the 5,000. He is the bread of life. Later on, he's going to say he is the resurrection in the life. He has the power over all life. The Father has given him that power. It is sealed. It is done. We take that message and then we go to John chapter 7, verse 1, and it says he was afraid to die. That don't make any sense. How could a man who has the power over all life be afraid of dying? That's not what, so you have to take that with you as you go to John chapter 7, verse 1, and then you have to say, okay, what is being said here? Because it says Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jewry because the Jews sought to kill him. So, your natural inclination is to say, oh, he was afraid of going down to Judea. Jewry is Judea. Basically, it's where the Jews are, where those antagonists to Jesus were. And he said, oh, well, he didn't go down there because they want to kill him. So, what is it really saying? Because it can't be saying that he was afraid to die. In fact, when he goes down there, remember, there's two different incidents. One where they want to take him and they couldn't take him because his time had not yet come, which, of course, Jesus would already know. And the second is when the guards are supposed to grab him, the guards go back to the Sanhedrin and they say, nobody talks like this guy. We couldn't grab him. Nobody talks like this. He wasn't afraid to die. The point that this is making is this. He has, they have already rejected him. They already want to kill him. He's already been rejected down in Jewry. So, he's not going to walk down there because there's no purpose to walk down there because they've already rejected him to the point where he does the miracle and they want to kill him for it because they refuse to face the light. We've talked about the light many a time. This is the condemnation of the world, right? I think that's the, is that the next verse I have coming up? No. But, right, that's what he says in John chapter three. This is the condemnation of the world, that the light shines in the darkness and they hated him because their deeds were evil, right? That's John, it'll pop up here better put than I just put it. But, that's why he doesn't want to go down there and you know that's why because it doesn't say he stayed up in Galilee and he refused to stay in Judea. That's not what it says. It says he walked in Galilee and wouldn't walk in Judea. And, walking is preaching, healing, miracles, going into synagogues. He stayed in Galilee because he continued to shine as a light down in Jewry. They were already in the darkness. And, when you look at, we looked at Jewry back when we were with the healing of the impotent man, after Jesus heals the impotent man, the only people you hear about are the Jews and the Jews reject him. So, it says he refuses to go where the Jews are or with the Jews because they want to kill him, which means they've already rejected him. Does that make sense? It certainly makes more sense than the idea that somehow he was afraid to die because he had no worries about dying. He knew exactly when he was going to die. He knew what the situation was, better than we would even know it. So, again, you have to take, you know, those small little phrases and those small little words is what carries things along in the story, after these things.

And, it says in chapter, verse two, now the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand. So, we've talked about that before. It's not the Lord's feast of tabernacles. That's still yet to come, right? The ultimate feast is in the kingdom, when the entire harvest is taken in. We're going to look at a couple of things about the feast in just a couple of minutes. But, this is the Jews' feast. They're celebrating it the way they want to celebrate it. And, it was an elaborate celebration, by the way, the feast of tabernacles. They had all, they followed many of the rules of the feast that are taught in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. But, they added on to it. They had this big light ceremony. They had this big water pouring out ceremony. In fact, that's what they were doing when Jesus says, that I will give you living water, is they were doing the water ceremony, which is at the culmination of the entire feast. But, the whole purpose of the feast was, that they were doing, was to talk about their relationship to the Father. Look at all these, look at the harvest that we've got by the grace of the Father. And, the Son is not there. And, the lesson is that the Son has to be there, as we'll see. So, this is the Jews' feast was at hand. So, this is the feast of tabernacles. This feast of tabernacles is the third feast of the year, right? The first feast is Passover, first great feast. First is Passover, then Pentecost, then tabernacles. And, in John chapter 5, during the healing of the impotent man, that was Pentecost. We talked about that, even though I kept calling it the wrong name, that was Pentecost. And then, in John chapter 6, it says, after these things, he goes up to where he does the feeding of the 5,000, and that's Passover. So, somewhere between Pentecost and Passover, he goes up to feed the 5,000. So, wherever the feast of tabernacles comes in, because you would have Pentecost, tabernacles, Passover, or however you want to angle it, the tabernacles get skipped over, and they end up at the Passover up north of Galilee. So, he stays up there, right? He stays in Galilee from that point on, through the next Pentecost, until they get to the next tabernacles, because when he goes down in chapter 7, it's now the feast of tabernacles. So, he's up there for quite a while. His brethren, therefore, said unto him, depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. So, he's not talking about his disciples. He's talking about his family, his brothers, probably, for the most part, probably James and Judas, and the other brothers that he had, said to him, what are you doing here?

He's been up there for a while. He's saying, you've got to go down to Judea, so that your disciples can see what you're doing. So, what disciples are they talking about? They can't be talking about the 12, because the 12 are with him in Galilee. So, what disciples are the brethren talking about? That it would be down in Judea, that he would need to go down there and show himself. Well, what they're talking about is the religious leaders, those dedicated Jews down in Judea. Right? Those are the people. Look, if you're going to talk about the Word of God, who better to talk to than the people down in Judea who are dedicated? But people up in Galilee, they're all worldly. They're not dedicated Jews. The dedicated Jews are all down in Judea. And what we learned from John chapter 5 is they were really dedicated to themselves. They thought they were religious or spiritual, but they weren't at all, because they didn't have the sincerity. And without the sincerity, you can't see the spirit. But his brethren are with them. Why? Why wouldn't it say that is, yeah, we're going to the next verse, because that's what it said, right? It says, for there is no man that doeth such a thing and seeketh himself to be known. Oh, I don't believe if thou do these things, show thyself to the world, for neither did his brethren believe on him. How could his brothers, brothers and sisters, or brothers and sisters, and how could they not believe on Jesus? Because they didn't know he was the Christ, I refuse to believe that. They grew up with him. His mother had him as a virgin. Joseph was not his natural father. Did they keep that hidden for 30 years?

No. They didn't believe on him because they didn't understand what the Christ represented. They had their idea of what Christ should be. And think about it, there'll be nobody, this is what you have to learn when it comes to Christ. This is what his brethren had to learn, this is what John the Baptist had to learn, this is what his mother had to learn. Remember, he calls his mother woman, and you say, well, why would he call her woman and not mother, or whatever? And it is this, your relationship to Christ, whatever it is naturally, doesn't make any difference. The only thing that matters is that he's your savior. The only thing that matters is that all things are possible through him. The rest of it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're his natural half-brother, it doesn't matter if you're his mother, doesn't matter if you're his cousin who is as dedicated as he is. None of that stuff matters because there's Jesus, the Savior, and then there's everybody else, and nobody comes to the Father but through Christ. So if you have a natural relationship with Jesus, like he's your half-brother, that makes no difference. And that's what they have to learn, and that's really, really hard to learn, right? Because you think of James, his next youngest or closest brother, as far as we can tell. He would naturally think that he had some sort of special relationship, he grew up in the same family, his brother had been the chosen one, if you will. I must have something here, and he doesn't even make him his disciple. And then what does James do when he writes his letter after he's been converted? Does he mention the fact that he's his brother? Not at all. He says James, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the only thing that truly matters is the relationship that you have with the Savior. So they have to put that aside. In fact, they don't even do it until he appears to him after his resurrection. He appears to James after his resurrection. Before that, they can't let it go. And the one thing that you want to do, in their example over here, is if you think he's just another person like you are, then you're going to judge what they're doing. Remember what John said, whose shoelaces I am not worthy to unloose? That means this is what John understood. I have no, no right to judge what he does. None. I judge everybody, right? John judged, John the Baptist that is, judged everybody. You're all a generation of vipers. Everybody was judged by John, but not Jesus. Because John knew he had no right to judge him. And here they are saying to him, what you need to do is you need to go down to Judea. Because if you're going to prove who you are, look what it says. Again, go back to what it said. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. There is no man that does it this way. You're absolutely right. There's no man that does it this way. You know why? Because I'm not no man. I'm something else entirely. Not that he's not a man, don't think I'm changing my doctrinal stance. What his position is, is far more important than his relationship to others. Because his position is saving. His position is the son. That's his position. And you have to accept that position before anything else makes a difference. Does that make sense? Is that coming across? Okay, good. So it's natural that his brethren would be the ones saying, hey, you need to do this because they didn't believe on him. Well, they will eventually. And he goes down in secret. So they say, you can't do this stuff in secret. Well, actually, yes, I can. Sure, I can. You know why? Because whatever I do, he's the light, right? He's the light of the world. So everything he's done is not going to be hidden. Unless you don't want to look at the light. And that's his point about them down there. They don't want to look at the light. So you say it's hidden. It's not hidden. He didn't heal the impotent man in private. He's not the nobleman in private, but he didn't heal the impotent man in private. He was right there in front of all that multitude at the pool of Bethesda. He didn't feed the 5,000 in the closet. He fed 5,000 right there for everybody to see. He wasn't doing anything in secret. But that's the appearance to those that refuse to see the light. If you don't look at the light, then the light's not there. And his brethren were in the darkness. Understandably, that his brethren were in the darkness. Because they think about him as, oh, he's our brother. Yes, he was the Christ. But what the Christ should be doing is the Christ should be down in Judea, making himself known so they can make him ruler and make him the head of everything. And that's not the way it's going to unfold. I hope that makes sense. There it is right there. This is the condemnation. That light is convinced in the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. And that's right where everybody is. Not just his brethren, not just the 5,000, not just the Jews. That is everybody. That's what Isaiah 53 teaches. All we have gone astray and have gone onto our own way. Everybody's in the darkness until the light shines. Then the question becomes, are you willing to face the light? Make sense? Okay. John chapter 7 verse 6. Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come, and your time is always ready. So if you're part of the darkness, there's always a place for you because that's where everybody else is. So he's saying to his brethren, it's not my time. This is your time. The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. We just saw that in John chapter 3. That's just the testimony that he's giving. So there's the Christ who is not evil, who is righteous, has done no sin, and then there's everybody else. And yet he's going to give his life for everybody else, not replacement. Please don't think I would ever suggest that it's replacement. He is the authority. He is the seal. Go ye up unto the feast? I go not up yet unto this feast, for my time is not yet come. When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee. So he stayed in Galilee. Now he's not walking in Galilee. He's just staying there because the time's going to come. So what we're going to do now is we're going to take a look at a couple of the explanations of the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths. And the first one is in Leviticus. And I want you to recognize the difference between what is said in Leviticus about the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths, and what is said in Deuteronomy, which we've looked at before in a different context, but we're going to look at again. Because the context, what is said, is very different. Now it's the same feast and the same lessons, but the context is very, very different. So this is what it says in Leviticus. And I'm thinking Leviticus is a long diatribe about this part of Leviticus, is a long diatribe about the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths, but this is the culmination of it. This is the very end of what Moses says about the Feast of Booths. And notice the emphasis that's on it. You shall celebrate it as a feast unto the Lord for seven days in the year. So it's a celebration. Okay, so let's ask the question, what's it a celebration of? You shall celebrate it as a feast unto the Lord for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever. So it's a rule. This is a rule. You have to follow this rule. It says a statute forever throughout your generations. So there's no end to this rule. You shall celebrate it. There it is again a second time in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths for seven days. We'll talk about booths in a minute. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths.

That your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God. So what's the lesson of the Feast of Tabernacles? Three times at the culmination of Leviticus it says you must celebrate it. It is a celebration and you must dwell in booths. So what's it a celebration of? And the natural inclination and the ultimate inclination of the Feast of Tabernacles is a celebration of the harvest, right? That Jesus brings in everybody in. We'll talk about that again in just one minute. That's the ultimate goal of the Feast of Tabernacles. But that's not what it's saying here. Not that it's saying that's not going to happen, but it's making a very specific point Moses is making here. And the point is this. That your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. That's what it's a celebration of. That the Lord God made them dwell in booths. Why? Why were they made to dwell in booths? It's mentioned three times.

Why is that so important that the Lord God made them dwell in booths? And then you see the booths. I don't know where that picture came from. I just stole it off the Internet. But that's the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of booths. A box, a box, a box, a box, a box, a box, a box, a box, a box, a box, a box, a box. And here's the lesson. That is what you're supposed to be celebrating. First and foremost that everybody came out of Egypt. It didn't matter whether you were righteous. It didn't matter whether you were a sinner. It didn't matter whether you were rich. It didn't matter whether you were poor. It didn't make any difference. Everybody was brought out exactly the same. Just like there's two schools of people. There's Jesus, the Passover lamb, and there's everybody else. That was the lesson of booths. You were part of everybody else, and everybody came out of Egypt. The Lord brought everybody out of Egypt. We pointed out He brought them out at night because they were still in the darkness. But everybody came out, and everybody was in the same boat. That's the lesson of the Feast of booths. That's the celebration. You say, why is it a celebration? Because everybody's a sinner. And yet if you believe in the Passover lamb, right, if you looked at the blood, if you believed in the Passover lamb, you could be brought out of Egypt. It's never going to be about you. Well, I was brought out of Egypt because I'm holier. Everybody knows the only one here that's holier is Butch. The rest of us, we're not holy. Not naturally. That's the lesson of the Feast of booths.

We're all in this together. Nobody gets to stand up. We don't get to promote anybody. Now look what it says in Deuteronomy. It says this.

Now notice the difference between what's said in Leviticus. Again, not wrong, just different. Thou shalt observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine, and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou and thy son and thy daughter and thy manservant and thy maidservant and the Levite and the stranger and the fatherless and the widows that are within thy gates,

thy, thy, thy, thy feast. This is about Christ. This is the spiritual application of the Feast of Tabernacles. And the spiritual application of the Feast of Tabernacles is it's about Christ. It's about everything that he is able to accomplish that we could never accomplish on our own. Booths are never mentioned here. We're in the booths. Here's Christ's Feast. It's his wine, it's his corn, it's his feast. And it says thy daughter, one of the interesting, this is a side like, one of the interesting things about this is it says thy maidservant, I'm sorry, it says thou and thy son and thy daughter and thy maidservant and the Levite.

In Tabernacles, it says the same thing. But what it says there is it says thou and thy son and thy daughter and thy maidservant and the Levite are within that are in thy gates. And then it says, and the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are among you. But in Tabernacles, it's different. In Tabernacles, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow are all within the gate. That's the Feast of Engathering. That's Christ. Everybody is brought in. The fatherless, the widow, everybody is within the gates of Christ. That's where we are. We're part of the fatherless, the widow, and the stranger. Seven days thou shall keep the feast on at the Lord thy God and the place where the Lord thou choose because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase and in all the works of thine hands. Whose hands? Christ's hands. He's the one that makes it all possible. It is his feast. He's the one that raises everybody up on the last day. The marriage supper of the Lamb. It is his feast. This is a message to the Lord Jesus Christ. For thou shalt surely rejoice. Not an obligation to rejoice. Surely rejoice. So what happens at the Feast of Tabernacles? How much time have I got left? Oh, plenty of time going, right? Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booze.

In his case it would be Tabernacles because he wouldn't be one of those dwelling in booze. We never hear Jesus dwelling in a booze. But when his brethren were gone up, then he went also up onto the feast. So he goes onto the feast. So this is going to be a lesson that Jesus is going to teach. Not openly, but as it were, in secret. Nobody can do this stuff in secret, but of course he does it in secret and it all gets exposed anyway. Verse 11. Then the Jews saw him at the feast and said, Where is he? And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him. For some said he is a good man. Now notice it's the people and not the Jews here. Because you're at the Feast of Tabernacles, there's more there than just the Jews. And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him. For some said he is a good man. Others say nay, but he deceiveth the people. Howbeit no man spoke openly for fear of the Jews. So it's still about, at this point, still about the Jews. Now about the midst of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and taught. And the Jews marveled saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? So again, the Jews are the antagonists of Christ. And Jesus starts teaching. And notice they don't stop and say, What is he saying? I've never heard this before. That's what the guard said. The guard says, No man ever spoke like this. I've never heard this stuff before. So what the Jews say. What the Jews say is, How knoweth this man letters,

having never learned? He never learned. So how does he know this stuff? You know, I'll tell you a story. I was working at a hotel once and I was talking to some people about the Bible in the back of the house, whatever. And there was somebody there who was a religious person. I think I've told this story before. But I'm telling something. I honestly don't know what it was. And the person said to me, Where did you study? And I said, What do you mean, what did I study? Where did you go to school for this? And I said, I didn't go to school for this. I study in my bedroom. And they said, No, no, no. Like what seminary did you go to? And I said, I didn't go to a seminary. Well, how do you feel about the Texas Bible Seminary? I said, I never heard of the Texas Bible Seminary. I'm sure it's very good, but I never heard of it. You never heard of the Texas Bible Seminary? No. That was the end of the conversation. At that point, what I had to say didn't make any difference. It didn't matter whether it was right or wrong. I didn't have any authority to say it because I didn't go to the Texas Bible Seminary. To this day, I don't know what the Texas Bible Seminary is. But that's exactly what they're saying. How can he be right? Who is this guy? He doesn't have any credentials. The guy with all the credentials turns out to be Paul, right? Paul had all the credentials. Still said the same thing. So that's how the Jews respond to what he's saying. Not to try to understand what he's saying, but say how could he possibly know this stuff? He doesn't have any credentials. Jesus answered them and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. Notice it's not about the Father and the Son. It's about him that sent me. If any man do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it is of God or whether I speak of myself.

He that speaketh of himself speaketh his own glory, but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. That's Isaiah 53. There's no unrighteousness in this person. The rest of us, all we have gone astray. There's no unrighteousness in him. And that's the lesson of John chapter 7, and that's the lesson of the Feast of Tabernacle. We're all in the booths.

Christ has the harvest feast. But Jesus is going to offer to those that believe in him far more than just everlasting life. Look what he said. In the last day, that great day of the feast, why is it called the great day of the feast if this is just a feast of the Jews? Because the ultimate lesson is going to be given by Jesus at the feast. Edersheim does a whole thing. I don't usually talk about people outside the Bible, but Edersheim does a whole thing about this moment in time at the Feast of Tabernacle. And this was the culmination of the entire week. It's called the pouring out of the water. And everybody's there. And the whole place is filled up. And the priest is carrying this water up from the pool of Siloam. He's going to pour it out as if this is the water of God. And of course, the water of God is right there. He's right there standing in the midst at the moment of this great point in the feast. Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, remember before, he that believeth on me will get eternal life.

As the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of

living water. If you believe in me, it will be sealed. And all that I am able to do, I will give you the power to do, just like he gave his disciples the power to heal, just like he gave the seventy the power to heal and preach. If you believe on me, all things are possible, far beyond eternal life. You can have rivers of living water pouring out of you as well. That's what it is to be in Christ. What is absolutely impossible is possible through Christ. That's the message of the Feast of Tabernacles. That's the message of the harvest, when Jesus has the great day of the harvest and then sends out his disciples to the entire world to preach the gospel, so that the whole world will be filled with the glory of the Lord. It's all possible through Christ, and nothing is possible without it. And what happens? And there was a division among the people because of him. Those who were going to refuse to face the light, and those that are going to say, where else can we go? He has the word of eternal life. And now, you have this division in John chapter seven of those people that are looking at this saying, wait a minute. And those people are looking at this going, no, no, he's just trying to trick us. And of course, right at the end of the chapter, that's what it becomes all about. Nicodemus says, don't you hear this guy first? And they say, well, no man comes out of Galilee. And it says they all went to their own house. Jesus went to the mount of Olives. So that's where John seven takes us. Any questions or comments?

Transcript

so good morning everybody uh it's wonderful to be with you it is a beautiful morning I mean it's not warm and sunny but everything is covered in white we certainly didn't get uh 5 to8 inches here down in Marshfield but uh and uh I think Steve and I both want to send a very special uh shout out thank you to brother Mark Hampton who worked so hard to get our building prepared for us today mark thank you all thank you so much for your hard work effort we're not going there but we certainly appreciate your dedication there's no doubt about it so thank you for that um I want to continue to uh I want to pick up uh Lord willing today for the next couple of weeks um back in what we were discussing back at the end of November and the beginning of December this idea of worshiping in spirit and in truth when we left we had considered John chapter 7 and actually I want to go back to John Act 7 and consider some uh other things uh from that chapter and from the Feast of

Tabernacles um our title comes from John chapter 4 as you probably know uh when Jesus was speaking to the woman of Samaria I got to move you guys up here um he said this he said to her the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the father in spirit in and in truth for the father seeketh such to worship Him and we talked about um at the time of the class back in November this idea of spirit and truth and the relationship between that word spirit and what Joshua said in the same place hundreds and hundreds of years before remember at the end of his life Joshua was speaking at sheam which is where Jesus is he it's called sikar at the time of John 4 but it's the same place and what Joshua says is if you want to serve the Lord you have to serve him in

sincerity and in truth and there's a very close relationship between the idea of sincerity and spirit because you cannot see the spirit without sincerity so what exactly is meant by sincerity well to serve the Lord in sincerity is to serve him completely is to serve him genuinely is to serve his agenda and not your own that's what Joshua was talking about and what what the Lord is seeking what the father is seeking is those who are sincere and therefore can understand the spirit can understand the truth and can Worship the Lord in spirit and in truth so this becomes the Lord Jesus Christ's commission this is what he's looking for as he walks through Judea and as as he walks through Galilee he is searching out and seeking out a people for the lord's name he is calling them to him who can worship who have the sincerity that they can worship in spirit and in truth remember the interesting thing about the Samaritans and Jesus speaking to them was that they were sincere they had been worshiping the father in a certain way for centuries each and every one of them generation after generation after generation but what they didn't have was truth remember Jesus says to the woman you worship what you know not we worship what we know for salvation is of the Jews so the Jews had the sincerity but couldn't see the spirit because they didn't have the truth and they even recognize remember the woman tells Jesus we know that the Messiah is going to come he's going to explain all this stuff to us and Jesus says the Messiah is here and he does just that and he explains to them and they they come to understand him and believe him they come to Worship in spirit and Truth again that is what the Lord is looking for as he as he continues his his ministry remember last time when when we were talking about the Feast of Tabernacles we were talking about the two aspects of the feast or how they were repres they're represented and they're represented in two separate ways they're represented with this idea of the Feast of booths found in Leviticus and this idea of the Feast of Tabernacles found in Deuteronomy and we talked about why that difference exists even though it's the same feast and even though it has the same emphasis the or the same lessons the emphasis is is different so look what it says in in Leviticus this is just as as a review as we move

forward the Lord tells them you shall celebrate it that is the Feast of booze as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year is a stat forever throughout your Generations you shall celebrate it in the seventh month you shall dwell in Boos for seven days all Native Israelites shall dwell in boo that your generation may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in Boots when I brought them out of the land of Egypt I am the Lord your God so notice first and foremost it's a celebration you are celebrating what God has done for you that's what he's tell he's telling them and it says three times that they are to dwell in Boots well what's the emphasis of the booths all about well notice as you look in the picture that's that those are the booths again I just took this picture off the Internet but that's the boo one has a brown box brown box brown box brown box and the lesson was supposed to be this this is what they were supposed to get out of it everybody that came out of Egypt were all in the same boat they were all Sinners none of them were worthy of of being saved but God saved them anyway so the so it didn't matter whether you were more righteous or less righteous more dedicated or less dedicated it didn't matter whether you were Rich you're poor everybody came out the same way the Lord brought everybody out and that's the lesson of the booze that's the lesson remember we when we talked about John the Baptist and John the Baptist had to come to the realization that there is the lamb and then everybody else that's why he stops saying one greater than I because we're all on the same boat we all need to be Redeemed by the Lord Jes by the Lord Jesus Christ or in the case of Boos by that Passover lamp that the blood was on was on the lentil and so that's the lesson of of the feasts of Boo and remember when God brought them out he brought them out at night in other words while you were yet sinners Christ died for you while they were yet sinners the Passover land brought them out of Egypt and of course the symbolism of coming out of Egypt is coming away from the will of the flesh but you have to be dedicated to it you have to be sincere and boy we learn the Israelites in the wilderness were not sincere right they proved it again and again and again even though the Lord had saved them even though the Lord had parted the Red Sea even though the Lord had given them mana and given them Fire by day and A Cloud by night night yet they could never get over the idea that at some point it had to be about them and they had to they had to be punished for their actions that's not what salvation is while you were yet sinners Christ died for you and and in this it's all about the Lord notice it's the Lord the lord it's I it's I it's what the Lord had done for them and now notice the the contrast in

Deuteronomy in Deuteronomy same

Feast Thou shalt observe the Feast of Tabernacle seven days after thou Hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine and thou shalt rejoice in thy Feast thou and thy son and thy daughter and thy manservant and thy maid servant and the levite and the stranger and the fatherless and the Widow that are within thy Gates that's a it's a key part of this um expression seven days Thou shalt keep a solemn Feast unto the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord shall choose because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase and in all the works of thy hands therefore Thou shalt surely Rejoice again the Lord has mentioned three times but thou thy thee thine 19 times in three verses that expression is is used this is about the Lord's feast and about those that the Lord calls that's why it talks about within in thy Gates this is the Lord's Gates remember the great Feast of Tabernacle is coming in the time of the Kingdom with the marriage supper of the lamb and with Jesus bringing everybody to the Harvest and that process understandably is going to begin here in John

7 with the Feast of Tabernacles where Jesus is going to seek out those and to call those who can Worship the Lord in sincerity and in truth so this part of the feast is the culmination of what the feast really

represented uh today uh we're not going to focus on this idea of of Christ and everybody else we're going to focus on this idea of seeking out uh a people for a people for his name remember that that's exactly what happens in John chapter 6 with the disciples we talked about John chapter 6 and the feeding of of the 12 yes it's the feeding of the 5,000 but it was the 12 the that were fed because it's the 12 that come to the realization at the end of the chapter of what what it's all about remember what remember what they say to Jesus at the end of chapter 6 it says Simon Peter said answered and said Lord to whom shall we go thou Hast the words of eternal life and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ the son of the Living God

remember this is this is right after so many had left Jesus in Galilee because they said this is hard teaching who can hear it and here's the disciples saying this is the words of eternal life there's the sincerity that they had come to remember they went through quite a process in the feeding of the 5,000 because they wanted to take him and force him to be king and the disciples were getting caught up in that and then remember when Jesus comes to walking on the water they're afraid of him why because they're afraid of judgment and yet Jesus says fear not it is I this is

not the savior of judgment this is the savior of Grace this is the savior of redemption this is this is God doing this while you were yet sined and they say you have the words of eternal life that's the sincerity that they had to come to and they had to come to understand in order to understand that you have to understand the depth of your own failings that's what it's all about and he said we believe and are sure which means that feeding that Jesus gave them in the feeding of the TW was successful we believe and are now sure that thou art the Christ the son of the Living

God why does Peter emphasize the idea of it being a living God because this is not an abstraction this this is not a theology this is not a philosophy this is a living God taking Living Action his presence is real this is what they had to come to recognize this is what the people struggle to come to recognize as we'll see in just a minute but this is a living God an active God in their presence through his son and that's what the disciples come to realize and that's what Jesus is seeking and he seeks it from the Samaritans he seeks it from the disciples he seeks it from the noblemen and he's going to seek it from the people in uh Jerusalem at the time of the feast so we're going to go back and consider a few things we're not going to go over everything we went over uh two months ago that would be uh ridiculous but there are other things that we can focus upon I think need to be uh considered so we're going to do that now and notice at the beginning of what it says after these things that is after the feeding of the 12 Jesus walked in Galilee for he would not walk in jewelry because the Jews sought to kill him we talked about that a couple months ago it wasn't that Jesus was afraid to die he wasn't afraid to go down to to Judea because they would kill him Jesus knew when he was going to die he knew what the circumstances would be and he knew that that was not at the Feast of Tabernacles or or any other time at the immediate moment in fact he even brings it up when he goes down for the Feast of Tabernacles it it wasn't about that it was about he was walking he was working and he couldn't work down in Judea because it all became about with people trying to kill him so he couldn't get the message out so he stayed up in Galilee until he had the convenient moment to go down there and to and to bring the message that's why he was walking in Galilee it wasn't a fear of of being killed were they seeking to kill him absolutely they were seeking to kill him but it wasn't his fear of death we we talked about that and then we talked about this as well but I want to emphasize something it says now the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand the Jews Feast of Tabernacles his Brethren that's his family that's James and Judas and his immediate family therefore said unto him depart hence and go into Judea that thy disciples Also may see the works that thou that thou do us and of course his disciples weren't down in Jerusalem his disciples were with him up in Galilee he's not James and Judas aren't talking about the 12 they're talking about those those dedicated religious people down in Jerusalem they because they thought that that's who his disciples were you would naturally think oh the people who were the most committed uh to the law that must be what your disciples really are and of course that wasn't the disciples Jesus was going to expose their insincerity but what I want to emphasize here is notice how isolated at this point Jesus is you know down in Judea he's got people that want to kill him in Galilee he's at the point where most people have left him because they said this is hard teaching who who can hear

it in John chapter 7 after the disciples have been converted in John chapter 6 you don't hear about about the disciples at all in John chapter 7 I I don't think it's not because they weren't there but it's because what Jesus is doing is is separating himself out from everybody else and now his own family is expressing the fact that they don't believe in him so Jesus is extremely

isolated but literally that's the way his life is he is going to bring a message that nobody else knows and nobody else understands because everyone else is ruled by

sin and so he understands that he's isolated he understands that he is the only one bringing this message but it's an important message to know that it comes from him who sent him and not from him

himself and this is what he says to his disciples I'm sorry to his Brethren then Jesus said onto them my time is not yet yet come but your time is always ready the world cannot hate you but me it hateth why because I testify that the works thereof are

evil that's the hard lesson that Jesus has to bring to the people that in actual fact your natural inclination is to do evil and this goes right back to what he says to Nicodemus and John chapter 3 when he says in verse 19 and this is the condemnation that light has come into the world and Men love Darkness rather than light because their deeds were

evil you know before light came into the world and of course light is the Lord Jesus Christ he is the light of the world he is the light that the father provides he's the light of the world and before light came into the world

you could say I prefer the light but in my weakness sometimes I slip into darkness that's People's Natural inclination to how they think about themselves both 2,000 years ago 4,000 years ago and even today but when light came into the world what it did was

expose that it's not a matter of you people wanting to be in the light and and sometimes Falling Into Darkness that that can be true especially those who have come into the light but that's not man's natural inclination Jesus says light came into the world and Men loved Darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil that every thoughts of the imagination of the heart is evil continually that's the lesson of scripture but it's a hard lesson to learn and it's one that you're not going to just accept unless you face the light remember that's the whole lesson of Nicodemus we don't have time to go back into the class of Nicodemus but Nicodemus had to come to realize that the very organization that he was dedicated to the

Pharisees were dedicated to their own evil that's remember remember Nicodemus ends up after the after the the leader of the Sanhedrin says uh you go and see there's no there's no uh Prophet comes out of Galilee

and Nicodemus goes and there is a prophet that comes out of galile Jonah comes out of galile so so what they said wasn't true and you say oh maybe they just got it wrong but what what Isaiah 8 teaches is not if you look at Isaiah 8 and the whole point about you know uh to the lawence of the testimony if if they don't go by that then there is no light in them and it says that they're driven into darkness that's what Nicodemus had to come to understand that our natural incon nations are evil and therefore when you come to that understanding the first thing you need to do is Repent Jesus says You must be born again of water that is the water of repentance the recognition that of myself I am evil continually that is the natural inclination and by the way that's the natural inclination of everyone including Jesus though he never sinned his natural inclination was to do his own will his natural inclination was to see him himself as a good person maybe that doeses can make mistakes that's everybody's natural inclination and when you repent you recognize you have no control over that natural inclination the Lord Jesus Christ only had control because he put the will of the father ahead of his own ahead of his own

will and so Jesus says to his Brethren you can go down anytime you want the world will always accept you it can't accept me because I have to tell it that its Deeds are evil otherwise you're never going to repent and you're never going to be trans

transformed and so he heads he heads in in uh secret to the Feast of Tabernacles and it says in verse 11 and the Jews sought him at the feast and said where is he and there was much murmuring among the people concerning him for some said he is a good man and other say nay but he deceiveth the people how be it no man spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews now there's three points I want to make about this first of all those that said oh he deceives the people why would they think Jesus deceives the people because what he was saying was hard what he was saying is you have you have to stop and think about it you have to think about it outside of your own prejudices you have to just think about it based upon what the word says and people are not inclined to do that and so they hear what he's saying they don't understand oh he's trying to trick us he was he was trying to trick them he was calling them out but notice the other one the other one says that some said that he is a good man and and our natural thinking is oh well these people these people get it because Jesus Jesus did so many good

things but what Jesus is going to emphasize right after this is that it's not him when they when when somebody says oh this is a good person what you're saying is that that person is his natural inclination is to do good that he's a he is a good person he's a good man and Jesus is going to teach them it's not about my

goodness it's about the will of him who sent me that's where goodness comes from Remember When the rich man comes to him and says good teacher what good thing must I do and he says don't call me good there's none good but God and that's the lesson they have they have to come to understand and the reason they have to come to understand it is to see beyond themselves because notice the insincerity of what it says here even though they say he's a good man they won't say it openly for fear of the Jews remember what the disciples said the disciples said Thou Art the son of the Living

God this is not a living God in their eyes because they have a greater fear of the Jews than they do of God and so they don't speak openly and going to change in this chapter as we're going to see I need to I need to move along verse 16 Jesus answered them and said now notice his

emphasis said my Doctrine is not mine but his that sent me if it's about me then you can sit there and go we know who you are you're you're Mary's son you're you know we know your brothers and we know your sisters who do you think you are and he says you're right you know

me but what I do is not mine but his that sent me if any man will do his will he shall know the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself he that speaketh of himself seeketh his own Glory but he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him the same is true is genuine is

sincere and there is no

unrighteousness in him if I'm seeking this for myself you have every right to criticize because I'm doing it for my own Glory I'm doing it for my own praise there are many people that do good things so that people will say nice things about them I've done it a million times nice things so people will say nice things about me Jesus says that's not it I'm doing the will of him that sent me and that will is good that's the same will that brought you out of Egypt while you are yet sinners both the the Israelites in Egypt and you and I as well that's the god that we seek to worship so he goes right to the law and he says did not Moses give you the law and yet none of you keep the law that's the challenge of the law isn't it in our natural inclination the go the law is good but we are not but and then he goes right to this idea so why are you trying to kill me and the people answer and said thou as a devil who who's trying to kill thee in other words do you think he knows that people are trying to kill him of course he does well he must be crazy if he thinks such a thing well it's not crazy it's only five verses later where they say isn't this the guy they're trying to kill they know what's they know what's going on but they haven't they haven't learned the sincerity as of yet and then notice what Jesus says in verse 21 he says I I have done one work and ye all Marvel that one work was the healing of the impotent man that's the one work he's talking about remember the impotent man represents disobedient Israel remember he's impotent for 38 years he represents Israel in the

wild he says I did one work he says and ye

Marvel so what does that mean that means they

recognized that it was a miracle that it was from God you marveled at

it he says Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision in other words there's no difference from what I did in what Moses did Moses is cutting off the will of circumcision is cutting off the will of the flesh Jesus said I healed the impotent

man cutting off the will of the Flesh and ye say on the Sabbath sorry uh not because of it is of Moses but of the fathers and ye on the Sabbath day circumcise a man so the cutting off of the will of the flesh is done on the Sabbath day a good work remember they came out of Egypt in the darkness that's the cutting off of the will of the flesh it's a good work from God that's done on the Sabbath day if a man on the Sabbath day receives

circumcision that the law of Moses should not be broken so he's not breaking the Sabbath why are you angry because I have made every man wit hole on the Sabbath

day I what are you upset about what are you angry at me for think about it that's what he's saying to him think about notice what he says next he says judge not according to the appearance but judge righteous

judgment think it through think about what it means that that happened on the Sabbath day don't just sit there and say oh we can't do uh anything on the Sabbath day and you went and did something think about it Moses circumcise Moses had circumcision done on the Sabbath day think it through remember buter was talking about that on Wednesday and about our kids we want our kids to think it through through the word of God we want them to think it through Jesus is saying think it

through he's imploring them to recognize the presence of the almighty to rec iiz that it is a living God and then he goes on and says this then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught saying ye both know me and you are known where I come from in other words it's not about yeah you know me sure I'm just another guy like

you but I don't come of myself but he that sent me is true whom ye know not but I know him for I am from him and he have ha sent me that's what the miracle is telling you he has sent me to yeah you know who I am yeah I'm nobody else but you just like you and yet the father has sent me and now I'm coming to seek out you and I'm going to send you remember that's what he does to the the Blind Men he sends them down to the well down to the to uh the

pool then they sought to take him but no man laid hands on and because his hour has not yet come he's not afraid to die and it says and many of the people believed on him remember at the beginning it said he's a good man but don't say it out loud because of the Jews it says and many of the people believed on him and said when Christ cometh will he do more miracles and these that this man does and the Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things they weren't hearing it at the beginning and now they're starting to hear

it and the Pharisees and chief preent offices to take

him and then in the last day of the feast the great day of the feast Jesus stood and cried saying if any man

thirst let him come after me and drink why does he do it we talked about this uh couple months ago because he's at a point now where the people are starting to

recognize that they are not being fulfilled by what the law and the in and the Pharisees and the and the feasts were offering there was still something missing and Jesus says if you feel that way come on to me and drink listen to what I have to say and then he says he that believeth on me as the scripture has said out of his belly shall flow rivers of Living Water you see it's more than just

Redemption you can be part of the process

Living Waters can come out of you through me if you come onto me and drink same thing he was talking to the Samaritan woman about the exact same

thing and then in verse 40 it says this now notice the difference where we're at now many of the people therefore when they heard this saying

said of a truth this is a

prophet others said

this is the Christ but some said shall Christ come out of Galilee look at the contrast between the two those that look at what he's doing and what he's saying and measure it up against the law and the prophets they said oh he's a prophet actually he's the Christ and then they say no he comes out of he comes out of Galilee he can't he can't be the

Christ and so there was division ision among the

people because of him a division among the people remember at the beginning of the chapter there's just

murmurings and now people are standing up and saying this man is the

Christ and the division Begins the separation Jesus separating out the wheat from the

chaff bringing people on to him those that can sincerely seek and are now starting to see the spirit take place in this man that yes they know but his message is far deeper than what they than what they ever

realize and so this this brothers and sisters is the great lesson of or one of the great lessons of the Feast of

Tabernacles the Feast of Tabernacles is supposed to be about a harvest feast

it's supposed to be about calling people into thy Gates and they had great

celebrations that said look how dedicated we are and Jesus said first and foremost you have to recognize who you are and then recognize who God is recognize where goodness comes

from and what they're going to do in John chapter 8 which we'll pick up uh in the next couple weeks is really an extension of what goes on in John chapter

7 and this this idea of where does goodness come from where does sincerity where does where does truth come from does it come from the individual or does it come from God and of course the answer is it comes from God and Jesus is the light of the world because he does the will of his father because he understands both both natural human nature and also his role as

Redeemer and so John chapter 8 is going to bring us to those very messages and so that's everything I have for today on John chapter 7 that's two classes on John chapter 7 that's enough

Transcript

All right, so we're going to be continuing along in

our considerations of—let me shrink that down—our

considerations of John chapter 7 and the Feast of Tabernacles, moving Lord Willing into John chapter 8 and the story of the adulterous woman. And what we're trying to consider is how Jesus' message grows and comes across. We want to remember that Jesus is seeking a people. He's seeking for those who are willing to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Remember, that's what he says to the woman of Samaria in John 4, and that is Jesus' commission is to seek out a people for his Father's name. We're in the Feast of Tabernacles, and I just wanted to consider one event that takes place in the Old Testament. There's not a lot in the Old Testament about the Feast of Tabernacles. There's certainly the requirements. We looked at the requirements as they were listed in Leviticus with the Feast of Booths. We looked at that quite a bit. We also looked at how they were expressed in Deuteronomy, the Feast of Tabernacles, and that great harvest feast that's mentioned in Deuteronomy. But there's one event, excuse me, in the Old Testament that I want to look at very specifically, because it takes place specifically on the Feast of Tabernacles. In fact, it's interesting to consider. It's the dedication of Solomon's temple, and it's interesting to consider that Solomon actually goes out of his way to make sure that it takes place on the Feast of Tabernacles. Let me show you what I mean. This is from 1 Kings 6. The dedication is recorded in 1 Kings 6, 7, and 8, and in 2 Chronicles, I believe it's 6 and 7. But, you know, the corollary accounts. But anyway, this is from 1 Kings 6, verse 38, moving over to 8, verse 2, and this is what it says. It says, In the eleventh year in the month bull, B-U-L, which is the eighth month, was the house finished, that is the house of the Lord was finished, in the eighth month of this year, throughout all the parts thereof. Then Solomon assembled all the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the chief of the fathers of the children of Israel. And all the men of Israel assembled themselves onto King Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month. So notice the temple is finished in the eighth month. He then holds the dedication, which we're going to look at a couple words from the dedication, in the seventh month, which means he waits. The temple is basically closed for 11 months. Remember, it took seven years to build this temple, and yet because they didn't finish until the eighth month of the seventh year, Solomon said, no, we're going to keep this place closed until the seventh month because we absolutely positively have to dedicate it on the feast of Tabernacles. And it's because of what the Feast of Tabernacles represented and because of what the temple represented. And so what are those things? Well, consider how he starts his dedication. He starts his prayer. You all remember the story that all the people come to the temple and the sacrifice is there, and Solomon is up on an altar, and he starts, he raises his hands, and he starts to pray for the people. And this is what he says. This is the very start of his prayer. It says, And Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and he spread forth his hands towards heaven. And he said, Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like thee in heaven above or on earth beneath, who keepeth covenant and mercy with thy servants that walk before thee in all their heart. Now we see in those words about covenant and walking, the very things that we've been considering in the Feast of Tabernacles and what it represents. This is servants who walk before the Lord with all their heart. That's the sincerity that we talked about from Joshua 24, that in order to serve the Lord, you have to follow him with sincerity, with all your heart. And the temple represented in what regard God was going to dwell with

his people. And the way you have to dwell with God is to recognize that goodness and mercy, law and truth, come from God. Notice it says, who keepeth covenant and mercy. Covenant is law. Covenant is the rules. Who keepeth covenant and mercy with the servants that walk before him with all their heart. Solomon understood that the father was seeking out those who would worship him in spirit and truth. And Solomon understood that the temple was the representation, that place where God would dwell, where the rules of that dwelling would take place. And of course, Jesus is the temple. He is the way that we communicate with God. But we have to do it both in sincerity and truth, and we have to do it with an understanding of who we are and who God is. And that's what Jesus is trying to get across in both John 7 and John 8. And he does get it across. My question right now is, what about the people there at the time of Solomon? Did they understand what Solomon was talking about? Well, I think we can get the answer to that and how it ends. This is what it says in 2 Chronicles 7, verse 1. This is how, at the end, this is what happens. So Solomon's prayer, we're not going to look at the entirety of his prayer, but basically what he prays about throughout the prayer after that opening thing is about all the sins that Israel was going to commit. It's one after another after another. And then he says, when we turn back, please forgive us. In other words, when we recognize the depth of our sinfulness and we turn to you, please be patient with us and forgive us. And of course, the Lord's mercy endures forever. So he is patient with us. I like this picture, and I'll tell you why. It's not necessarily historically accurate, but I like the way

it exemplifies the emotional enormity of this event. A lot of the other pictures that show the dedication of the temple has the people standing over on one side and the burnt offering taking place on the other side, and they're just sort of watching it as if they're watching a fireworks display. I don't believe that's the way it happened at all. I believe the people were there in the midst of everything going on. And I think it was an incredible, overwhelming experience to have Solomon give this prayer and then finish the prayer and the fire comes firing down from heaven. It must have been remarkable. And it consumes, but the only thing it consumes is the sacrifice. It doesn't consume the people who were worthy to be consumed as sinners. It just consumes their sacrifice. And of course, the sacrifice also represents Christ as well. And so I love this picture because of how overwhelming the event takes place. These people are amazed. But notice what it says. It says this. When they saw the fire, they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground and worshiped and praised the Lord. So they didn't bow themselves to the faces to the ground in fear. They bowed themselves with praise and worship, saying, the Lord is good, or for he is good, his mercy endures forever. So remember when the fire came down during Mount Sinai and it lit the mountain on fire, the people were terrified. And yet here, it doesn't express. I'm sure they were overwhelmed. I'm sure they were filled with wonder and all that, but it specifically mentions that they worship and praise. And why is that? Why were they able not to be afraid, but to worship the Father and to praise him for his goodness and his mercy? And that's because that's what we are able to do if we recognize our own sinfulness, if we recognize the depth of our sin, as opposed to thinking, oh, well, I'm a good person that does bad things. That's always going to be about me. I'm always going to try to reform that person and make that person better. But that's not what Jesus teaches and that's not what Solomon understood. And that's not even what the people understood. The people recognized that goodness and mercy came from God and not from themselves. And so they were able to appreciate, as we are by the grace of God, able to appreciate his goodness and his mercy with the recognition of who we are before him, but also recognizing that he consumes the sacrifice and doesn't consume us in our sins. But we have to address our sins. We have to worship him or seek him in sincerity and truth, and we have to worship him in spirit and in truth. So I think this moment that takes place at Dedication of the Temple is a vision, if you will, of the Kingdom Age, when those that follow God and understand God can worship him properly and can be there at this incredible event, almost like the marriage supper of the Lamb, that we have the right relationship with God. I think this is a vision of that final Feast of

Tabernacles, and I'm going to go on today looking at more things from John chapter 7 and John chapter 8. Remember our theme. Our theme is Spirit and Truth. That comes again from John 4 and Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman. And the Feast of Tabernacles was seven days. Remember seven days they were to dwell in booths. And then the eighth day was actually a Sabbath day. So you dwelled in

booths. And then on the eighth day, it was still a Sabbath day. The people were still there, but they no longer dwelled in booths. Notice what it says at the very end of the chapter. This is the very last verse of John chapter 7. And it says, And every man went on to his own house. So in other words, they didn't go back to the booths. They went to their own house. And we'll consider a little later where exactly many of the different people went. We know that Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Jesus didn't have a house, right? The Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head. But he went to the Mount of Olives, which is where he communed with his father. But others went elsewhere. And we'll take a look at that later. So people go to their own house. But meanwhile, we have the Sincere Servant from Deuteronomy 16. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. And he is busy gathering the harvest, right? So we're going to see that as we look at John chapter 8. And remember, who's the harvest? That is those who are seeking the Lord and Spirit and truth. Jesus is bringing the people out of the darkness of sincerity into the light of God. Remember how Isaiah 9 puts it, that very idea. Isaiah 9, talking about the Messiah, as we know, puts it this way. It says, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shine. So Jesus is bringing people out of darkness. Remember, this is talking about the Galileans, but it's also true about those who are at the Feast of Tabernacles, that they were walking in darkness. They didn't even know what the light was. They didn't even recognize the light. Certainly that goes back to John chapter 3, what Jesus says about the light and about darkness. But notice it says, they dwell in the shadow of death. They didn't know anything else but darkness. That's why I picked this picture, because without these lights, that road would be

guiding them as they go along. In John chapter 7 and John chapter 8 in the Feast of Tabernacles, we tend to focus, and understandably so, upon Christ's rejection, upon his arguments with the Jews. But there is always that small remnant that follow the light. There's always those there. There has always been and there always will be there, just as there was back in 2 Chronicles. It's also true even today, those who are willing to come into the light, if you will. We see in John chapter 8 and verse 30, it says this, and as he spake these words, many believed on him. So by the time you get to John chapter 8 verse 30, it's not just about the healing. It's not just about the miraculous. It's the things that Jesus is saying. They're now paying attention to what Jesus has to say, as opposed to where they're at at the beginning of John chapter 7. Remember, when we even meet his own brethren who didn't believe on him and who were telling him, hey, you need to go to Jerusalem to where your disciples are. But at time you get to John chapter 8 verse 30, you have these people willing to speak out, willing to be open about their belief in him because of what he has to say. And that's what the Samaritans said back in John chapter 4 when they talked to the Samaritan woman. They said, we don't believe Jesus because of what you said. In other words, that remarkable statement that Jesus made where he told her everything she ever did. He says, we believe him because we've heard what he has to say. And that's what Jesus is trying to get out there. He's trying to get his message out there to a people who are willing to listen so that he can bring them on to the Father, those that will seek the Father in spirit and we've talked so much about the importance of sincerity. Well, this is where we want to get to, but we'll get there Lord willing between this week and next week. We certainly won't get to John chapter 8 verse 30 today, but that's where by the grace of God we're headed. So this is what it says, Jesus, remember, says to his brethren in John chapter 7 verse 7. And he's talking about the difference between the world and himself and how he's got to get this message out there. And he talks about the world cannot hate you, but me it hateth because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. And remember that comes right from John chapter 3 in his talk to Nicodemus where he says, this is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. This is a huge lesson to digest, to come to understand and to accept. Remember before the light comes, and Jesus is the light he's talking about here, light is coming to the world. He's going to make that a point again in John chapter 8, I am the light of the world. Men loved darkness. The lesson was that men loved darkness rather than light. Remember before the light comes, they would say just as we are inclined ourselves to say today, and that is I'm a good person that sometimes does bad things. And if that's what truth really is, that really we are inherently good, but occasionally we do bad things,

then why would we ever be born again? The Pharisees were infamous reformers. If I just keep the law and everything else good enough, I can be acceptable unto God. Never recognizing, never accepting, never dealing with the fact that they were inclined towards sin right from the very beginning, from their very nature, they inclined towards sin. And what Jesus teaches, he says it to Nicodemus, and what he teaches, both we don't have time to look at the story of Nicodemus, but Nicodemus learns the lesson that's not just that men are in the darkness, it's that they prefer the darkness. And so Jesus testifies that their works are evil, and that's what evil is. Even though we have it veneered over with this great civility, the reality is when we try to explain all the terrible evils that we see in this world, how was it possible that Nazi Germany could happen and all these other things, that's man's inclination. We are not good people doing bad things. We have goodness and mercy in our lives because it comes from God. And notice what it says in the next verse in John 3, so that we're not sticking with the negative. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light. They hate it. And boy, did that come out true with the Lord Jesus Christ, the light of the world. They hated him. He performs the miracle of the healing of the impotent man, and they hate him for it because he was exposing their evil. Neither cometh into the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. That's what we don't want. We don't want to come to the terrible things that lie in our hearts, but that's the reality. But he that doeth truth cometh into the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. And that's exactly what happens with Nicodemus, right? He's speaking to Nicodemus here in John 3, verse 20. And remember, Nicodemus has to work this out. In fact, we're not going to look at Nicodemus, but we'll look at the verses where he does work it out, at least make the passing reference to it. But in the end, there's Nicodemus at the cross, coming out in public, recognizing the Lord Jesus Christ. He comes out, he doeth truth, he comes into the light, and his deeds were certainly manifest, that they were wrought in God. In contrast to that, just as a quick review, consider what we see in John chapter 7, verse 11, when Jesus, remember, he's going to secretly go to the Feast of Tabernacles. And in verse 11, it says, Then the Jews sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he? So what were the Jews seeking him for? Well, this is the Feast of Tabernacles. This is the great annual event in which the Jews, in which the children of Israel show their love for God through all this wonder and this special, with the water sacrifice and with the congregation and with all the humility of the shaking of the olives and the leaf. This is what they do to show how greatly they love their God, right? And they're like, well, Jesus has got to be here. The Jews are like, Jesus has got to be here and see this, and so that he can appreciate how much we love our God. That's what the Feast of Tabernacles, or as it's referred to more specifically in John chapter 7, the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was all about showing how much they love and appreciate God. But that's not really what the Feast of Tabernacles is supposed to be all about. The Feast of Tabernacles, remember, was a celebration of God's love and mercy, not about your love for God. It is about God's goodness and God's mercy. And so they wanted Jesus at the Feast so they could say to him, look at all this splendor, look at this wonderful temple, look at the lights, look at this incredible water ceremony, look at the priests as they take, walk up and ascend up the stairs to the Nicanar Gate, pray in those psalms, the final one being, the Lord is good, all these faithful actions that show their love for God. And that's that's not right. That's incorrect. And it says, and there was much murmuring about the people concerning him, for some said he is good and others nay, that he deceiveth the people, albeit no man spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews. We talked about this last week. The thing about those that, I made the point last week that, you know, those that said he's a good man, the problem with that is you're not recognizing where goodness comes from. Jesus, though he certainly did no sin and was obedient unto the Father and did all good things, certainly recognized that within him, within his natural nature was the same evil that everybody else had, the same inclinations, if you will. That's why he says to the rich young man, don't call me good. There's none good but God. Because if the individual is good, then the individual never has to be transformed. All the individual has to be is reformed. And Jesus says you must be You must bury this old man of the flesh. And it was just as true for him. He had our inclinations. He never sinned. And so he would never pay the consequences of sin, but he had our sinful nature. That's why the burnt offering, by the way, is consumed. Because the burnt offering recognizes or represents the sinful nature of man. So they sought Jesus. And some did deceive, say that he deceived. And there's no sincerity there. There was no sincerity among the Jews. But those that said he was a good man, I believe they were sincere. They were seeing what he was doing. They just didn't understand truth. So they had sincerity. But they didn't understand truth. They didn't understand the nature of man. And Jesus has got to teach them what the nature of man is. And that's why Jesus so strongly focuses upon the idea that all that he does is not from him, but from the father. And remember what he did was good, the healing of the impotent man. He says I healed one man on the Sabbath day and you want to kill me for it. That's what they hated him for, for doing a good thing. So notice what he says in verse 16. He says, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory. But he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, the same is true, and no righteousness is in him. In other words, it's not about me. Remember, they keep saying, wait a minute, we know him. He's that guy from Galilee. He's the carpenter's son. We know his brothers. We know his sisters. We know him. He can't be what he's claiming to be. And what Jesus says, yes, you know me, but it's not about me. It's about the father. And if you know the doctrine, notice there's the law again. There's truth. If you know the doctrine, or it says, yeah, he shall, if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself. And we're going to see at the end of chapter seven that the Jews, even the chief priests, didn't know the doctrine, didn't know the truth. They didn't know that a prophet comes out of Galilee. They stand upon untruth or upon their own personal ignorance of truth, if you will. But he's making the point. Goodness comes from God. I'm just doing what I see my father doing. If you make it about me, I'm just another man of the flesh like you are. You have every right to sit there and say he's glorifying himself. But I'm telling you, it's not about me. And he, of course, makes that point again and again and again until he can talk about what his role is, right? When he talks about being the light of the world, he gets to the point where he can talk to you about what his role is as the Redeemer. As long as you understand that goodness and mercy comes from God, then you can understand my role as the Redeemer, as him who could bear your bodies, bear your sins in his body on

that tree. It says this in verse 60. And Jesus answered and said, My doctrine is nine, but his that sent me, if any man will do his will, he shall know it. I just read this. Why did I put this up again? So this is the doctrine that Jesus is trying to get across. He wants people to understand that goodness and mercy come from God, that that's the whole point of the Feast of Tabernacles and why you dwell in booths so that you'll recognize your relationship to God. You'll recognize that in his goodness and his mercy, he brought you out of Egypt, out of sin while you were yet sinners by offering the sacrifice, by preparing the sacrificial lamb, the Lord's sacrifice as it's put in

Exodus. So the question is, does he get this message across? Well, we've covered all that in the last couple of weeks. That's sort of what Rich calls a lecap. But it's important to know these things as we look at the end of chapter seven and going into chapter eight. And so it becomes about at the end of chapter seven, the Sanhedrin. Before we move into chapter eight, I just want to look at the end of chapter seven and events that take place. Remember, the seven days wraps up the official feast, the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tabernacles, the seven-day event, and then the eighth day is the Sabbath day on to the Lord. And this is what it says. It says, then came the officers to the to the priests and to the Pharisees, and they sought on to him. Why have you not brought him? Remember what takes place before, I'm going to go back one because it's on my notes back there, but takes place before that event in verse 45. So by this time, by the time they're looking for the officers, Jesus has emphasized that it's not his will that it's his that is the will of him who sent him. It's after verse 31. Remember when it says many of the believers started believing on him because of the miracles, right? In verse 31, it talks about the miracles that he does, and it says they believe on him because of the miracles. And it's after verses 37 and Jesus cries out at the pinnacle of the feast and says, you who do not feel complete, in other words, you who thirst, come on to me, and rivers of water will flow from you. In other words, those who do not feel complete by what this feast is offering, by what you're seeing, what you're experiencing, come on to me. And I will make it about what comes from inside of you as opposed to all this outside show. I'll make it about what comes out of what comes out of you. And that's what faith is really all about. If any man thirsts, let him come on to me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water, living water, truth coming from within your heart. That's what faith offers as opposed to the flesh where really in the heart lies evil. This is after verses 40 and 41 where they heard the cry at the pinnacle and then they started to say, this is a prophet or others said that this is a Christ. And then, of course, the leaders are now hearing this. Remember at the beginning of the chapters they didn't hear it because the people were afraid of the Jews. Now the people are starting to speak out loud and the leaders are hearing it. So they send officers to take Jesus. And we know what happens. And that's where this verse comes in. I apologize for skipping ahead. It says, then came the officers to the chief priests and the Pharisees and they said unto him, oh, the officers answered, why have ye not brought him? In other words, we told you to take the guy. Why didn't you grab him? And they answered, never man spake like this man. In other words, we never heard a guy talk like this before. We really didn't know what to do. And so why would they have felt

that way? Well, first of all, because Jesus always spoke from Scripture. If you've ever read, even to this day, Jewish diatribes about the law and all that kind of stuff, it always goes in completely all over the place. It's almost impossible to read. I used to get the Jerusalem Post and the very back of the Jerusalem Post, there would be an exposition on some aspect of the law. And it was, for me at least, almost unreadable. I couldn't even understand it because it didn't speak plain truth. It spoke about all kinds of other stuff. And that's one of the ways that Jesus stood out. The point is made repeatedly that he stands out. He speaks with authority because he comes right from the word of God. And then the other thing was, for these officers, you couldn't catch them, right? They said, go and take them. And they're like, take them for what? We can't arrest a guy who's speaking the truth, or at least who's speaking in a way that we can't prove it's not true. What are we taking him for? If he was lying or if he was doing something out of bounds, if he was saying something that was able for us to say, ah, that's dead wrong, then maybe we could take him. But we can't take this guy because you can't catch him in what he has to say. Then answered then the Pharisees, are ye also deceived? Have any of the rules of the Pharisees believed on him? Which is a great line because as we know Nicodemus is one of the Pharisees and he was starting to believe on him. But the people who knoweth not the law are cursed. Now notice what they do. They say, you've been deceived. And the people who don't know the law, you know what? They're cursed. They're following this guy because they're cursed. Notice what they don't say. They don't talk about his ability to follow the law. They turned over to the people and they say that because they don't know the law, they're cursed. But Jesus knew the law and they couldn't prove him wrong on the law. And so they move it to the people because they can't catch Jesus. And so the Pharisees themselves do it. And now they want to talk about the people. And then what Nicodemus does is Nicodemus brings it back to Jesus. So they say, well, these people are cursed. Why didn't you take him? These people are cursed if they believe him and you'll deceive yourselves. But I can't prove him wrong. He knows the law better than we do. Nicodemus saith unto them, doth our law judge any man before it hear him and know what he doeth? In other words, we have a law in place that says we don't just arrest somebody for what they say. We find out what they're saying and why they're saying it. But they can't arrest Jesus for what he says and why he's saying it because they can't prove him wrong. So notice what they do again. They don't go back to the law or go back to what is true. They say this. They answered and said unto them, thou also of Galilee. They make it about where he's from. Search and look for out of Galilee, ariseeth no prophet. And every man went on to his house. So this is what Nicodemus did, and we don't have time to look at the story of Nicodemus. But if we did, I would prove to you that this is exactly what Nicodemus did. Nicodemus went to his house and he did just what it says right there because Nicodemus was a student of the law. He was a student, right? Jesus called him a master in Israel and a teacher in Israel. He went back and he searched the scriptures. Does any prophet come out of Galilee? You know, I don't know where all the prophets come from. Some of the prophets, we don't even know where they come from. But if you look and see, what you find out is that that's not true. You find out that Jonah actually came from a place called Gath-Hefer, which is in Galilee. It's in the land of Naphtali, if I remember correctly. And then Nicodemus follows the scriptures to find Isaiah 9 about the light coming out of darkness, out of Galilee. And if you follow it, you'll end up back in Isaiah 8, right before Isaiah 9, and you find out that in Isaiah 8, it talks about the inherent evilness of these leaders and how they're driven into darkness. That's just what Jesus does by exposing the light, is he drives them into darkness. And so a prophet does arise out of Galilee. And so Nicodemus goes back to his house and he does just that. He starts digging through his books. And of course, that eventually brings him to the cross. Meanwhile, Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives, as it says in chapter 8, verse 1. And where did the others go? Well, the others went to somebody's house and they created a deception. They created a way to catch Jesus in his dedication to law and to truth by offering in something they believe would have forced Jesus, either to do something against the law or to do something that the people wouldn't appreciate in the stoning of the woman. So let's go there now. And of course, before we go to the bringing of the adulterous woman, we want to look at what it says prior to that, because it says so much about how far Jesus has come in getting his message across. And John chapter 8, verse 1, is where it says Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. And then in John chapter 8, verse 2, it says this. And early in the morning, he came again into the temple and all the people came unto him and he sat down and taught them. So first of all, what is that Why is it mentioned even that he went there early in the morning? And I believe the reason why it mentions that he goes there early the next morning is because of this. Because Jesus understood that there was going to be a people there early, seeking for him. In other words, everything that takes place in John chapter 7 sets it up. So now the people are going to look for Jesus to try to understand what he has to say. Remember, back at the beginning of John, you had two things. You had his disciples, I'm sorry, his brethren, who didn't believe on him and who was chastising him, though they didn't know what they were talking about. And you had the Jews who were seeking him at the Feast of Tabernacles, so that they could disprove what he was saying. And you had the people, some who believed and some who did not, but who were not speaking openly because of their fear of the Jews. And now after the events of John chapter 7, after Jesus standing up at the pinnacle of the temple and saying what he said, and everything else he had to say about this being about the one who sent him and not himself, now it's early the next day. And there's already a group of people there who are ready to sit down and listen. And I think that's why it talks about sitting down, because this is an intimate conversation, as opposed to what he did during the feast, where he had to shout out at the pinnacle of the Feast of Tabernacles, at the pouring out of the water ceremony, actually. He had to speak out while everybody was watching what the ceremony was doing. He was over here yelling out, he who's thirsty. Now, now they're sitting down with him in a quiet conversation. Having a conversation, he sat down and taught them, this is where this has taken him. We can look at all the difficulties that he went through, all the people mocking him, all the arguments, but look what Jesus is really doing. He's seeking out a people. And now one day later on that eighth day, that Sabbath day, he's now sitting down with a group of people. I mean, this picture is just a picture, but that's literally the way it's set up, that he sat down and he taught them. Now, here's the question, what did he teach? What do you suppose he was teaching these people? We're not told specifically, but we do have a hint of what he was teaching them, because the last thing that he says in John chapter seven, before the events that take place and before John chapter eight, verse two was this, and it goes back to him speaking at the pinnacle of the feast. If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, he that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. I got the last thing he says. And then the next day, the people are sitting down, sitting around him, listening to what he has to say. So they are those who thirst. That's who's sitting there with him, those who recognize that this whole ceremony, this whole water, this whole light, all of this is just some outward show of something and it doesn't come from within. And the Lord is seeking for those who seek the Lord in sincerity. And so now he's sitting down with him. But this is a reference to an actual other passage from Isaiah. I believe it's a reference to a passage from Isaiah and it's from Isaiah 55. Isaiah 55, verse one says this, and Isaiah 55 itself is all about the Christ and what the Christ represents. And it says, Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye buy and eat, and ye come buy wine and milk without money and without price. And so as he cries out and says, he who thirsts, come unto me. Those who understood the Bible would have heard Isaiah 55. And I believe in their thirst, they sat down with Jesus that day and they asked him, what did you mean when you said, he who thirsts, come unto me, and out of me shall flow rivers of living water? What does it mean for us? What is us? And I believe Jesus would have said to them, well, where does it come from, everyone that thirsteth? Where does that come from? And maybe it was somebody there who knew or maybe he had to tell them. It actually comes from the prophecy of Isaiah 55. Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. And Jesus was the water. Remember, when he screamed that out, it was during the water ceremony, if you don't know how it works, it was during this big ceremony where the high priest would pour out water, showing the blessings of God. And Jesus is the water. He's the water of the word. He is the word made flesh. Come ye to the waters, come ye to me. And notice how you have to come. You come with no money. If you had money, that's reformation. That's me buying my way. That's me saying, if I can just be good enough. But you come to God and you come to his Redeemer with no money. I am a man who was a slave to sin. I have no way to pay for this water. I have no way to pay for it. And the answer is, there actually is no price. That the goodness and mercy of God is offered free and charged for those that come before the Father in sincerity and in truth. So I would suggest to you that this is exactly what Jesus is sitting down talking to them about. About what it means to come to the Father in sincerity and in truth. That this is the free will offering. Remember back in Egypt, the Father said, stand still and see the salvation of the of the of the world. Remember he says, I brought you out of Egypt in the darkness. In other words, you were still a slave to sin when I brought you out. There's no price. I mean, there's no money and there's no price to pay. Christ pays the price. And I believe he was having an intimate conversation with those who were seeking in sincerity and truth when that whole situation was crashed into by the bringing of the adulterous woman. Now it is 10 18 and I could go diving in. Well, we'll look at the first verse anyway. I could go diving in but explaining what goes on with the adulterous woman is not going to take only 10 minutes. So we're gonna have to pick up on that next week. But it says this in verse 8 verse 3. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman, taking adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said unto him, Master, interesting word to use, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses and the law commanded us that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou? So they were setting Jesus up. Look at the hypocrisy of them when they call him master, because this is all a setup, right? What were they trying to prove? But why would they do this? Well, the people were amazed at his focus upon the law and the prophets. So now they give him what they believe is an untenable situation. Here is a man who they said was a good man. Here's a man who's talking about the goodness and mercy of God. And now they give him something in which you can't be good. This woman was caught in the midst of adultery. You either have to follow the law and stone her, or you have to go against the law and not stone her. So they think they've caught him in a trap. And of course, Jesus is going to turn that trap around and put it upon themselves. And then, of course, they walk away. We'll start to look at that next week. And I can tell you, for those who have known me for a long time, I'm going to go back to my old lesson about what Jesus wrote in the sand and why. And it might be something different than what some of you have heard before.

Transcript

class number

nine it is my hope and prayer that this is the last class for a while um Brother Rich I believe is down to take over next week we are at the point in our studies of uh the Gospel of John in spirit and Truth um where we uh come to the story in uh John 8 of the adulterous woman often times this story is treated almost as something that that doesn't need to be considered they like you know some people like to look at well you know some of the old transcripts don't have this story in it therefore it didn't really happen um I think that's incorrect I think the story is uh not only uh fitting but I believe it carries along the very message and the Very lessons that uh the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching uh at this time so we are certainly not going uh to skip over

it uh we've come a long way uh in these eight plus classes uh Slash exhortation

uh we've gone from the end of John 4 with the the story of the healing of the nobleman uh remember it was the nobleman's son who was physically healed but it was the nobleman who was actually healed we talked about if you remember quidd proquo the concept that you know everything C everything costs a price and yet the hope the nobleman's son was healed without a price and of course that's a lesson that we've been uh reiterating almost every single week that there is no price to pay uh that Christ has paid the price and those that come with sincerity uh can worship in spirit and Truth with the understanding of what our nature is and yet also understanding that by the grace and goodness of God we have been redeemed

and so that's a

ongoing uh story all the way through uh the impotant man at the pool of Bethesda remember we looked at the pool and talked about the fifth uh porch which runs right straight through the middle and how it's a reflection of The Parting of the Red Sea and what did God say at The Parting of the Red Sea he said stand still and behold the salvation of the Lord again no price to pay uh we pointed out that that's Pentecost it's when Jesus begins his public Ministry in which he seeks out those who are SE looking to serve the Lord in spirit and in truth we spend quite a bit of time with uh the impotent man we we then spend some time in John 6 with the feeding of the 12 yes he fed 5,000 physically but he fed 12 spiritually so much so that they come to the point of saying to him we know that you are the Christ the son of the Living God that's one of the things we emphasize so importantly this is not thetical it's not philosophical it's a Living Word and they said to him you are the son of the Living God and you have the words of eternal life they come to make that confession after everything that they'd gone through uh at the feeding of the of the

5000 and then we ended up at the Feast of Tabernacles we've been there for quite some time in John 7 and Jesus walking I kept saying in the Pinnacle of the temple it wasn't the Pinnacle of the temple well it was in the Pinnacle of Temple but it was in the Pinnacle of the of the week it was in the high point of the Feast of of Tabernacles when Jesus called out to the people and said he who he who is thirsty come onto me and drink and out of your belly shall flow rivers of Living

Water um of course they sought to take him at that point but also at that point many came to believe on Jesus and were saying so out loud which they weren't doing at the beginning because of the fear of the Jews so this so the message is getting out there like I pointed out last week often times we emphasize uh the criticism or emphasize the the the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and Jesus and the Jews and Jesus and the scribes but at the same time that there is this conflict there is also this this group of believers who are slowly maturing and slowly coming out of the darkness if you will as we pointed out from uh Isaiah 9 those who dwell in the shadow of death have seen a great light this is exactly what's going on in the Gospel of John uh people are starting to see uh this great light and that brought us all the way to where we are this morning where the next morning Jesus goes to the temple early in the morning and there's a group of people we'll refer to them uh moving forward because we're going to mention it many times uh this morning as the sincere they're the they're the ones who are seeking uh the Lord in sincerity and they're there early in the morning and remember they're there early in the morning because they want to hear the message from yesterday they want to understand what Jesus was saying when he says come on to me ye who thirst and of course the whole point about being thirsty is that comes from within know you know they have this tremendous uh ceremony that takes place at the Feast of Tabernacles a full week of worship culminating in in uh the great pouring out of the water and the great light display and everything else they just so again uh early in the morning they are there they are waiting they want to hear the last words that Jesus had said the day before was come onto me ye who are thirst and and the whole thing sort of uh came to an end and now the next morning Jesus knows they're going to be there and so he sits down with them and he has this he has this intimate

conversation

uh with them

the people that walked in darkness are now seeing a great light it's no longer about the Miracles it's now about what Jesus is saying that's one of that's the remarkable change that that has taken place in John 5 it was all about the healing of the impotent man people saw the healing and that that physical change and they were they were Amazed by it and wondered by it now people are listening to what he has to say and and seeing the same living presence of God in what he's saying this story this morning I believe is going to uh perpetuate uh that and so here's that point if there if any man thirst let him come onto me and drink and he that believeth on me as the scripture has said out of his belly shall flow rivers of Living Water and so they come the next morning and they're meeting with Jesus and they they want to understand explain to us what you meant yesterday when you said If any man thirsts let him let him come on to me and drink what what were you talking about and I pointed out the suggestion and it's going to come up again and again and again this morning so I want to present that as more of a suggestion I really believe this is what Jesus talked about I believe he talked about Isaiah uh 55 because it fit the context of what he said very specifically and I believe there's another passage that we'll look at later that that also reiterates the second half of this this fits the first half of it when Jesus said ye who are still thirsty you who are not getting filled from within who are still thirsty come on to me and that goes back to Isaiah 55:1 where he sayso everyone that thirsteth come to Come Ye to the waters and he that hath no money Come Ye buy and eat yay come buy wine and milk without money and without price and again that goes back to the part of the Red Sea it goes back to the one of the whole major points of Tabernacles there's no price to pay remember the no the noble expected to pay a price that's why it had to be that his son was healed at the moment that Jesus said it otherwise he wasn't going to believe it because it didn't cost him anything and he was a nobleman that's why we're told the only thing we're told him about is he's a nobleman he's a quid proquo he's a you take care you wash my back I wash yours that's the way life Works only that's not the way life Works in faith there is no quid proquo this is a free offering of God because of God's goodness and because of God's mercy and because of God's grace he gives this offer to those who are sincere enough to recognize that they can't bring it about themselves that they can't reform themselves to a point of being acceptable to God because that's not the way sin actually works you are a sinner you are a slave to sin you have to make that recognition you have to come before God with that truth in your in your heart and then God God offers you free of charge this incredible offer and that's exactly what Isaiah 55 is talking about come to me with no money no money doesn't mean you don't have cash it means you have no way to pay right you have no way to pay and so come to me and drink you who have no way to pay that's how you have to come to the Lord God and that's Jesus said that's is saying to him that's why I made that statement about about come on to me who thirst and notice it says buy wine and milk without money without price why wine and milk wine is the sacrifice wine is the fruit of the vine right you are buying from the fruit of the vine you are you are paying to be part of that part of that vine you are putting on Christ that's what that's what the wine is about that's what you come when you offer your repentance and are baptized into Jesus Christ and milk is the word but it's not it's not just the word it's not the law it's the law is part of it because the law is good but it's about the spirit of the word it's about that's why Paul talks about being fed with the milk of the word right not you it starts out as mother's milk and then it becomes you know that strength that that that milk offers so that's what you're buying without price doesn't cost you anything it's just the only thing that cost you is humility the humility to come be to come before for

god

um remember about the disciples you know we talk about the idea of no price to pay remember as as they're in the boat in John 6 they're afraid when they see Jesus come that yes in other contexts it talks about you know he was a ghost so they were afraid of a ghost but in John's they make they don't make that statement Jesus is coming to the boat and they're afraid because it's Jesus because remember they had been disobedient they had been caught up in the whole idea of taking him by force and bringing him to Jerusalem and so they were afraid and what does Jesus say he said don't be afraid it's me don't be afraid you know what I represent there's no price to pay there's no there's no Penance there's no Penance I remember years ago somebody was mad at somebody and they said well I just I I think they shouldn't come to church for a while and I said oh you know what that is that's Penance we don't we don't have Penance here we don't we don't have penance we forgive and move on and that's the way a life in faith is really about so again

um jesus takes them in this intimate Gathering like you see here this this uh intimate situation having this uh close conversation where he's literally sitting down and talking to them he doesn't have to stand up and Bell like he had done the day before uh in um in the temple in the at the Feast of Tabernacles

um he's sitting down with him and then of course the whole thing is interrupted uh by the

uh manipulation if you will the situation that the uh accusers of Jesus have set up remember we talked about everybody going to their own house all these people went to their house and they said we're g to we got to got to do something we got to catch this guy everybody saying he's a good man well we're going to prove he's not a good man we're going to put him in a situation where he either he either can't be good or he can't be a servant of the law because the other thing they were saying was he nobody spoke like this man before right this is a man who speaks right from the scripture and speaks clearly and openly and and everything about the scriptures and they can't prove them wrong because because he knows his Bible because he is the word made

flesh and so they're going to set something up so that so that they they're going you know trash his reputation either he's going to say we need to Stone this woman at which point everybody's like wow that's that's pretty harsh especially given the situation there's no man there or else he's going to say uh okay we we'll let this one slide oh you don't really you don't really follow the law then do you all this claim about about knowing the law and about knowing the word and you don't really follow it yourself because that's right from the law right

I want to consider before we take a look at the passage a couple a couple uh

things first of all what they're what they're doing to this woman devoid of of her behavior however whatever her shortcomings

were what they're doing to her is is really quite terrible you know what I mean they're they're using

her and exposing her for the sake of their of their own duplicitousness right if if Jesus had followed the law in in that context they're actually wrong here we'll look at that in a minute but had he succumbed to their to their pressure and followed it this woman would have gotten stoned to death she would have been killed now yes she she had an adulterous

relationship but she was set

up and they said up so that she was going to pay a price for for for their duplicity the only reason they they were doing this was to catch Jesus and aive they weren't doing this because they had some some you know concern for

sin they were committing sin they were doing it solely to catch Jesus and so what they were doing just to this woman in general was just

terrible the the other thing about this woman before we get into to the text

is who do you suppose she

was we know that she had some questionable moral Tendencies given how quickly and how easily it was to uh ens snare

her but we really don't know anything else about

her we don't know she's a Jew we I would assume she is only because they dragg her into the court of the women so you can't you can't get there if you're a gentile so they would be breaking that law just to to bring her to Jesus but we don't know that that's speculation we don't know her

name and that's something we've looked at right a number of different times we don't know her name all that we really know is that she was morally

weak and if you think about about it how is that any

different than any of the rest of us maybe maybe you're not morally weak I hope you're not maybe your pride is your thing maybe anger is your thing maybe lying is where you is where you find find your vulnerability but we all have those

vulnerabilities she's just another sinner like the rest of us

that's why we don't know her name that's correct we are the adulterous

woman what happens to

her is what happens to us does no one condemn

you then neither do I go and send no more there's no price to pay it's repeated again and again and again why because our natural inclination is to always wait for the other shoe to fall to always be afraid that somewhere somewhere along the way I'm going to pay a price for my sin and this woman is dragged into this public display for all the world to

see and she pays no

price and the one that could charge the price says I'm not going to charge that price so that's why we're not told as Bute said what her name is we should see our ourselves once again just like the blind man just like the impotent man just like the nobleman these lessons are there for us to see ourselves in these people and recognize that what's being offered to us is just as free of charge it's

not the price was

paid right it was paid by Christ he is our sacrificial lamb all things are possible

because he gave his life for us so when you say the thing there's no price to pay well there was a price to pay Christ Christ paid it not not you know uh

substitution but the reality is that that all things are possible because he did

this so it's not it's not free you know it's like when you talk about forgiveness and you say well well there should be something more to forgiveness uh than just you know you making a confession and then you're forgiven there should be a bigger price to pay and the answer is always there was a bigger price to pay Christ paid that price that's how we can forgive um

completely

okay getting into the context time to go five minutes or 10 oh we get all kinds of time John chapter 8 verse3

and the scribes and Pharisees brought into him into him a woman taken in

adultery and when they had set her in the midst so what does that mean they set her in the midst so Jesus is is is sitting there you know and he's surrounded by the sincere right they're all they all have to be close to them because they're all sitting down it's it's it's a small conversation and there's certainly not three people you know this there's a group of people uh that that are there and they bring the woman in they bring her right smack into the the middle of everything where Jesus is seating is seated right into the middle of it all they make a point of saying it it it'll actually come up again as well and they say unto him Master now that's

interesting because the whole reason the sincere are there because they now recognize that he's the master but these people don't and yet that's the context in which they drag her in and so they call him Master oh you're the master clearly you're the Master look here's all your here's all your Believers right right here so they call him Master this woman was taken in adultery in the very act no ifs ends or butts about it and there's no question it doesn't come up as you know well was she really or wasn't she it's it's it's believed right there and then yes she was taken in the very act however that displayed

itself now Moses in the law commanded us

that such should be

stoned but what sayest

thou so again what were they trying to prove they were trying to prove either that he was not the good man that they were saying that he was remember he was trying to tell people it's not about my goodness it's about

God but people were calling him good and the Pharisees didn't like it what do you mean this guy this guy is good we know him we know what he is we we we we've met him all of that or else he's not really the follower of the law that he claims to be because this woman has been caught in the midst in in in the very act rather of of adultery

but Jesus stooped down and with his finger rode on the ground as though he heard them not before we get into the whole idea of what he writes on the ground notice that it says he Stoops down so when they bring the woman in the midst he must stand up because remember he's seting sitting teaching the people and they probably all stood up as well because this was like whoa what is this so he Stoops down and and the the text goes out of its way to say as though he heard them

not so he Stoops down and just pays no

attention uh to them

why why does he pay no attention and just stoop down and start writing in the

sand you already knows

yeah anybody else any other reason why he would

pay no attention to what they

said in in a sense

yes he paid no attention because what they said was completely irrelevant it was it had it had no

validity it had no power and it wasn't going to be about them remember he's teaching just like remember when when we looked at the start of John John 6 and the feeding of the 5,000 it starts off with him going up the mountain sitting down with his disciples and teaching them that's the context in which the event takes place and the point we made was that the whole feeding of the 5,000 was about the 12 and now he's sitting down with those that he's been seeking for the very ones that that are that are being called out of Darkness uh are right there that's who this is going to be about that in the adulterous woman it's going to be about them it's not going to be about the scribes and Pharisees it's not going to be about what they're trying the trick that they're trying to make either that's all that's all just just the context of it J this what what you are saying is meaningless here I say that look at what the law of adultery says in Deuteronomy this is in Deuteronomy 22:22 that come up there yeah okay good if a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband that's adultery by the way then they shall both of them die both the man that lay with the woman and the woman so it's repeated twice as we know repetition is always to to solidify the point they both die nobody gets gets out of it they both die and yet it's just the woman now I'm not going go into the specifics of adultery but it takes two but there's only one and they come to him and they said the Lord Moses says you've got to Stone

her and what Jesus could have said right was well that's actually not what the LA of Moses says right what the L of Moses

says is they both have to die so what you need to do is you need to leave bring me back the man and then we'll talk

about now he doesn't say that for a couple of reasons because what they're doing is relevant first of all so it's not it's it doesn't matter

secondly they're clearly not going to bring the man

back because if if if they had just caught a couple in adultery they'd had they'd have brought the man the man was duplicitous into the situation the man was one of the guys I believe that was back at the house saying well like I Know This Much I know that you know if I go visit so and so something's going to happen part perfect but we'll just bring her but notice what it says at the

end so shall thou put away

evil from

Israel that's the whole point of the law of adultery it's not it's not about you know somebody has to pay a

prize it's about putting away evil and by bringing by just bringing the woman in this setup situation

they're not putting away evil at all they're displaying evil there's no putting away here of evil so it doesn't fit the law and what the law is truly teaching at

all and Jesus knows this and so he just starts writing in the sand

right so what was he writing in the sand and bl notice I had to decide what he was writing why was he

writing

well a lot of the suggestions that that you'll see is that Jesus was writing the names of the people who had brought the woman uh before Jesus so H how many people was

there well we don't know right says scribes and Pharisees so it's at least two but presumably it's more than than just two presumably it's a whole group of of people and so you have this intimate setup as it is and then they bring in

um the woman with the scribes and Pharisees and the suggestion is that he was writing the names of those that had brought the woman basically condemning them and when they saw that their names were there they recognized their cond nation and that went way or else they were writing the names in the in in in the uh in the Sin as well that's associated with that individual now where that comes from by the way is from Jeremiah 17 and there is clearly I I wouldn't want to suggest that there isn't there is clearly a connection between what is written at the beginning of Jeremiah 17 and what takes place in John chapter 8 so once again it validates John chapter 8 because basically Jeremiah 17 is is an exposition on what on what wood L takes place so look what it says in Jeremiah 17 in verse one it says it says this the sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron and with the point of a diamond it is Graven upon the tables of their heart the sin of Judah anybody want to guess what the sin of Judah is comes from

Jeremiah 3 verse

eight the sin of Judah was adultery correct sin of Judah was adultery in Jeremiah 3:8 it talks about Israel and it says Israel was an adulterous woman and you picked up right way she right where she left off the sin is adultery not not a man sleeping with a woman prostituting yourselves and the nation the nation of Judah was doing that with other nations so the sin of of Judah is adultery and obviously it says it's written with a pen of iron and with the point of a diamond and so it's a

hard scratched into the surface of the flesh kind of sin very very difficult to break iron or a diamond so it's engraved into them this sin that they just cannot and here they are continuing it once again thus sayeth the Lord in verse 5 and six cursed be the man that trust in man and maketh flesh his arm that's exactly what uh that's exactly what um they're doing here they're trusting in sin to catch Jesus in a sin so they're trusting in the flesh whose heart departeth from the law for he shall be like the heath in the desert the heath in the desert is like a Shrubbery that is dried and dead and good for nothing that's why the heath in the desert that's what you are like and then of course it says and shall not see when good

cometh and that's exactly what they couldn't see it was the manifestation of God before them the goodness of God standing before them and they couldn't see it so it's it's really speaking to John chapter 7 and John chap chapter 8 verse 9 and 10 says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked there's that lesson who can know it I the Lord search the heart I try the Reigns this is exactly what's going on even to give every man according to his ways according to the fruit of his doings which takes you right back to John chapter 3 right back to John chapter 3 if you know he's he's doing the works of God if he comes into the

light so it's the works so he he he reveals that very thing and then verse 13 it says oh Lord the hope of Israel all that forsake thee shall be ashamed and they that depart from me and that's just what they do shall be written in the Earth because they have forsaken the Lord the Fountain of Living Waters picking right up on what we had just seen in John chapter 7 out of you shall come rivers of Living Water so again there's an obvious connection between what goes on in John chapter 17 and what Jesus is writing in the sand but it says there and they shall those shall depart from me those that shall depart from me shall be written in the earth so it doesn't say their name is written in the earth doesn't say their sin is written in the earth and it says it's written in the earth after they depart so what is actually going

on what was Jesus writing in the sand well if he was writing the names in the Sin we have we have a serious font issue now they would not refer to it I don't think in in uh 80 30 whatever this is as a font issue but it clearly was and the issue is this and if you ever written in the S at the beach you know this issue again this is a tight situation he doesn't have a lot of space there's probably 8 10 12 uh men that they brought uh that brought the adulterous woman uh before Jesus and he's going to bend down and he's going to write their names in the

sand well he first thing you're going to have to do is ask everybody get out of the way right everybody move out of the way I need a lot of space here I need a football field because for me to write down Butch and for you to understand that that says Butch I'm going to have to write pretty darn big for you to see it and recognize

it right and and at least if you write Butch you know maybe there's only going to be one Butch if you're you're jym right if I'm standing there as one of the people and you write down jym I'm going to go yeah that's not me that's that's that's some other gym I'm sure there's I'm sure there's somebody else around here Jim and if you write down you know Jim the you know the Glutton it's like yeah I know a Jim that's a glutton for sure in fact if there's if there's a hundred people that brought him and you wrote down Jim Sullivan I'd say well there's bound to be another Jim Sullivan here somewhere so it doesn't work it doesn't work

contextually uh it just doesn't work so he couldn't have been writing down the names but but but that's not even the real issue the real issue is that Jesus doesn't judge Jesus doesn't condemn we condemn ourselves that's the Hope consider the light the light doesn't condemn all the light does is

reveal right and the condemnation in John chapter 3 is that the light shined and Men preferred Darkness because their deeds were evil that's why you go to the darkness it's not that Jesus is going to sit there and say You're The Sinner you're the one it's time for you to pay the price that's not salvation in Christ Jesus that's not even the role that he plays in fact in just a few verses uh later Jesus says I do not judge in verse 15 he says I don't judge well it would be pretty darn strange for him to say just a couple SEC couple seconds later I don't judge when he just wrote your name in the sand and condemned you to death so that's not not what he's writing in the

sand because he doesn't judge because that's the whole message to the to to the sincere that's the whole message he's been repeating again and again and again understand who you are recognize my relationship to the father recognize where sin comes from and recognize where goodness come from and you can't do that as as a judge so then what does he write in sand well to answer that question I want us to go back to another event and that's in 2 Chronicles 7 we looked at it earlier and this is the dedication of the temple we looked at this uh last week or a couple weeks ago I think it was last week and notice what it says so

so Solomon gives his prayer remember his prayer was was basically a condemnation really in many respect he he's talking about all the sins of Israel and when when we do this and when we do this and when we do this well that's the confession that's the same confession for those that come before baptism and give a confession of their faith and Solomon recognized that the Feast of Tabernacles and that the dedication of this Temple was all about God's

goodness in forgiving our in forgiving our sins and so it says and so remember the the at the moment that he finishes the prayer the fire comes down and it consumes the burnt offering burnt offering being sinful flesh and the glory of the Lord fills the temple so that what does that mean the glory of the Lord fills the temple it means that there was a light shining seven times brighter than the sun this is the shakina

glory my apologies to those that don't want to believe me but that not withstanding that's what it is this is the Shag Glory glowing from the

temple so much so so bright that they fall on their faces to the

ground so awesome is this but notice their response

and and worshiped and praised the Lord saying for he is good as Mercy endures forever they worshiped and praised that's a remarkable response to this incredible event if you think about it remember did I mention this last week remember when Mount Sinai was on fire right and they saw it and again the glory comes onto the mountain that that that brightness that overwhelming brightness that comes and what did they do they ran away they were scared

why sin that's why that's what puts the fear of God within us is our sinfulness sometimes the fear of God is good sometimes we need that kick in the butt but here with the power of God with that remember I told you that's why I like this picture because everybody's being knocked back virtually it's so overwhelming and if they fall on their faces and and they worship and praise the

Lord that's sincerity and truth that's standing before God with the right mentality with the proper understanding of what he represents all the power all the glory all the goodness all the

mercy and it

says saying for he is good for his mercy and

forever well that's wonderful but they weren't

saying and there's a really good reason why we know they weren't saying it even though you see how that word is in italics we know from our Bible if you have a good one that if it's in italics that means the word's not really there and they just added it in to try to you know make sense of it but it shouldn't be there at all now how do we know that they weren't saying but he is good his Mercy endures forever how do we how can we be absolutely sure that that's not what they were

doing habac 2 verse2 the Lord is in his holy Temple that all the Earth keep silence before

him the Lord is in his holy Temple is the Lord in his holy Temple at the dedication boy he show

us so you not saying and and by the way the reason you're not saying it is not just because well I'm not supposed to speak because the Lord is in his holy Temple the reason they not saying it is because they are

overwhelmed by what's going on overwhelmed to silence have you ever have you ever been there have you been ever had that dream you know where you're where you're so afraid and you want to cry out and you can't because you are so scared well the same thing can happen in wondering

Glory you can't you can't speak you're silent before the Lord and so they didn't say it they wrote it they wrote it in the sand they wrote it it talks about the pavement but where would the sand come from by the way where would where would the dust and all that they're writing from come from any

ideas the ashes of the burnt offer fire comes

down covers everything and in that Ash of the burnt offering which represents Christ they write he is good why would they write he is good and not the Lord you don't write the Covenant name of God right the Jews to this day won't write the Covenant name of God so they right he is good but that's not J not going to worry about that so what he does is he bends down in the sand right before the woman

and writes very short sweet and to the point the Lord is good and he writes yah is good because goodness only comes from

one and you wouldn't even I don't believe even say Yahweh even though it's certainly the Elohim and the yah it all comes from one place and who does he write that for

you say oh well they they they saw it and they they walked away actually that's that's actually not what happens at all right so when they continued asking him he lifted up himself and said he that is without sin among you let him cast the first

stone and they hear what he

said and they walk

away and they don't just walk

away they walk away in silence

the Lord is in his holy Temple let all the Earth keep silence before him whether you're afraid or whether you're worshiping when the Lord is in his holy Temple the only response is silence and so they walk away in silence but notice what it says here it says first of all they continue so finally after they keep badgering as he's writing he finally lifts himself up and when he lifts himself up the reason I like this picture actually I don't I've sort of made the point I really show pictures of Jesus um because I don't like the whole idea of perpetuating this idea that he looks a certain way well this one doesn't cover that way so it's not it's not as bad I've never seen Jesus look like this before but the reason why I like this picture is because it's the only one that shows the intimacy of the situation and how close he was to the woman and so he stands up but he the woman is right there and he stands up right there with the woman right where the man should be that's where he stands and that's why I like I like that picture because that's right where he's standing where everybody else is around him and then he

says he that is without sin among you let him cast the first stone so anybody throwing a

stone and anybody seeing where he is standing is going to recognize first of all they could hit him with the stone

but that they would easily recognize that he is standing where the man should be she's not standing alone he's standing with her and they see that and all of their sinfulness for bringing this woman alone before him and everything that they had is all

displayed on where Jesus is standing when he stands back up and it's just just because it makes the whole point about the midst that they're right all close together and he stands up with the woman with the with the words down below written right there in front of her the Lord is good that's where goodness comes from that's what they wrote in the ground at the dedication of the temple because that was the whole point and that's the whole point he's making to the

sincere it's all about the goodness of

God everything exists because of the goodness of God and then of course he Stoops back down and he writes

again and then he writes for his Mercy endures forever well they never saw that either did they because they walked

away that's the condemnation written in the earth that they walk

away and he writes his Mercy endures forever who does he write that for I believe he wrote that for the woman

and then he says to

her oh here's and they which heard of being convicted of their own conscience went went out one by one beginning in the eldest even onto the last and it says and Jesus was left alone and the woman standing in the midst now I've always thought of it and and they left you know when I pictured it before that they they all left and the only two people left were Jesus and the woman because it says say you know they left and and they left them alone but it makes it very very specific that it's Jesus that's being left alone and the woman is in the midst well if the woman's in the midst there's got to be a midst there for for her to be in the middle of so what if they all left what was the midst that's the sincere it has to be a midst because she's in it that's the sincere but it says Jesus is left alone

what does that mean because they're all there the woman is there the sincera there they're right there in the text so why does it say that Jesus is left

alone and the reason is this because Jesus said to to them he who was without sin Let Him cast the first stone and they all

left and the only one there that still fits the scenario is is him that's why it says he's left alone so now he's going to turn to the woman

right and he says

woman where are those thine accusers hath no man condemned

thee no man it's the whole point about

Jesus and she says no man

Lord and Jesus said unto her

neither do I

condemn I'm a man just like them but I don't condemn you either he had no

sin the Lord is good his Mercy endures

forever go and sin no

more does

she we don't know do you well I still sin

sure but I still stand before Jesus as the adulterous woman in need of redemption through him and recognizeing my sin I'm not being dragged in front of a public display I'm glad I'm not being drag front of a public disag but I'm still the adulterous woman my salvation still comes from Jesus and so then Jesus in the very next verse says then spake Jesus again unto them saying I am the light of the world he goes right back to the concept of light why because it's not about judgment the light reveals that's what it does and in that Revelation how do you turn do you turn into the darkness because your Deeds are evil or do you recognize the darkness within you and say I need that light and Jesus puts that light in our

hearts because there's no price to pay

and in fact I want to go to one more verse and then we'll be done and verse 20 it says this these words spake Jesus so this whole teaching this whole event everything takes place in a certain place it says in the treasury as he taught in the temple and no man laid hands on him for his hour was not yet come so where this takes place I stole these two pictures from our brother lean I hope he doesn't mind uh the top one shows you where this all Tak place it all took place in a place called the court of the women um it's inside the temple I I'm not going to give a big speech because it's almost 10:25 now about where the court of the women uh was uh those are the stairs up to the nikanor gate and the treasury was here as well that's what the picture down below shows treasuries was off to the side and what they would have is they would have these these you can see them down here uh these things shaped like a trumpet supposedly with a wide top and then a narrow and then a wide bottom although it doesn't quite look that way there but what it was was that was where you put your money in and the reason they they were shaped that way with wide on the top and then narrow and wide on the bottom is so that when you put your money in it would make a nice

noise right and so if you had a lot of coins and you dumped it in there everybody would hear it go look who's putting all all that in right that's why the W the the woman's two might stand out because she drops the might in and it's just like ptin pink you know just a little what whatever so they'd have these these uh treasury things I think they had 13 of them right for for you to put your to put your money in but the place is called the court of the woman and yet here it says he was saying it in the treasury this area is also called the

treasury because that's where the treasury was but why does it say it's the treasury

here these words spake Jesus in the treasury as he taught

in the

temple and no man laid hands on

it because that is the

treasury that's where the treasury is

kept no price no

cost Jesus is the treasury he has paid the price he is Our Redeemer and so even the context itself says this takes place in the

treasury not in the court of the women in theas treasured because there is no

price when we come to him in sincerity and in truth