The Source of Life, John 6:16-21

I don’t know what it is about religious holidays, but I just can’t get too enthusiastic about them.  I guess I’m less concerned about formalities, and more concerned about realities perhaps.  Somehow, the more ceremonial and religious it gets, the less it does for me.  So that’s my excuse why I’m not too concerned that my message this morning is not a typical Easter message. I guess I’m not your typical preacher, and this isn’t a typical church for that matter.

The fact is though, we celebrate Easter every Sunday.  If it were not for the reality of the resurrection, we would still be meeting on Saturdays.  But we meet on the first day of the week to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the church established in the first century.  Easter bunnies and chocolate eggs came several centuries later and as far as I can figure out have little to do with the resurrection.

But I don’t want to knock your traditions here this morning. Paul said in Romans 14:5, “One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.”  So if the traditions of Easter celebrations help you to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth, then go for it.  

But on the other hand, you shouldn’t be upset if I don’t follow the traditions of the holiday.  I have been preaching through the book of John verse by verse for some time now and I see no reason to change course.  If the resurrection isn’t true and didn’t happen, then everything I preach is worthless and void.  So the fact of the resurrection is something that is essential to the foundations of our faith, and because of that we can build the church of Christ here on earth.  

However, we should be careful not to add pomp and circumstance as a substitute for substance. Religious ritual and ceremony which was instituted by the law was what was done away with at the cross. So we have to guard against adding new ceremonies.  Paul writing to the church at Galatia said in Gal.4:9 “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.…”  

Here is the point I wish to make; there is a form of religious ceremonialism and  mysticism that is acceptable and pleasing to the masses, and yet it is powerless to really make a difference in your life.  This is what Paul warns Timothy about saying that such people “have a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”  

Jesus said that God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Worship then is not merely pageantry or ceremonies or rituals or even music.  Worship requires first that you be made spiritual, by believing the truth of God and acting upon that truth in faith and trust. 

The resurrection teaches us that we must die to the old man, and be raised to new life, spiritual life in Christ.  In Adam we were all made dead spiritually.  God said if you eat of the tree you will surely die.  What died?  Well, the spirit of man died immediately.  The spiritual sustains the physical.  So that in due time the flesh died.  Thus all men are born dead spiritually. The cross of Christ illustrates that death that is unavoidable as a result of our sin.  But by faith in Christ as our substitute affecting our atonement, we are made alive spiritually.  And because we are alive spiritually, we can have life, and have it more abundantly.  

Now that new life is what is being presented here in this chapter symbolically in the feeding of the 5000.  Jesus is illustrating that He is the source of life.  At the end of the chapter we are going to be looking at a rather long discourse by Christ about how He is the bread of life, by which we eat and are made alive spiritually.  But in the first section we have two miracles which serve as illustrations of life in and by the Spirit.  The feeding of the 5000, (which was just men, so probably closer to 15000 with women and children), and then Jesus walking on the water.  

In the first miracle, the illustration teaches us that Jesus is the source of life.  He is the bread of life. Bread being understood to be the staple by which life is sustained.  And as Jesus supernaturally manufactured bread and fish from HIs hands, He powerfully demonstrates that He is the source of life.  But if you look at vs.15, Jesus knew that the people weren’t interested in spiritual life, but only in temporal, earthly things.  They wanted to make Him King. Everyone who follows politics recognizes that whoever can give the masses free food and free health care has the people’s vote.  Jesus seemed to be healing everyone of their diseases, and now providing free food, so “hey, let’s make Him King!”  They wanted a King to deliver them from Rome and Jesus seemed at that point like the deliverer Moses was from the Egyptians.

But that isn’t what Jesus wanted.  He did not come to earth to set up a physical kingdom at this time.  He said in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”   So Jesus did not come to enact a physical kingdom but to establish a spiritual kingdom.  He came to make men spiritually alive, and once that element of the kingdom comes to completion, then He will come again physically and bring His physical kingdom into existence.  So the principle is that the spiritual empowers the physical.  That is an important principle of the Christian life.  The spiritual empowers the physical.  That’s what happened in the garden of Eden.  When the spiritual died, the physical died.  

And that is the operative principle for the life of a Christian.  The spiritual gives life to the physical.  That principle is going to be preached by Christ later on in this very passage; Jesus said in vs.63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”  

What Jesus did by feeding the 15000 was one of the greatest miracles in the Bible.  I mean by that the magnitude of the miracle.  It wasn’t one person being healed; but 15000 people eating food that He created.  But what does that miracle teach us?  It teaches us that the physical food that Jesus created and gave them to eat, may have sustained them physically, but it did not do anything for them spiritually.  They were not saved as a result of eating the food that He provided.  They would have been saved by responding in faith to what that taught; that He was the source of life, God incarnate.  That’s the message that He was preaching, the message concerning the nature of the spiritual kingdom of God.  If they had responded to that message, they would have been saved.  But the eating of fish and bread did not save them.

Folks, for that reason, eating communion, or taking the mass, will not, cannot, save you. It does not impute righteousness to your account. Eph.2:8,9 says “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.”

So though the feeding of the 5000 did not provide salvation, it illustrated that faith in Christ is the source of life, and that spiritual life as well as physical life comes through Him.  But not all who heard Him that day, nor ate of the miraculous food He provided were saved. Only by receiving the spiritual food He offered could they be saved and receive spiritual life.

Now then what is the meaning of the second miracle?  In this miracle we see Jesus sending the multitude away, according to the parallel passage in Mark 6, and then making the disciples to get into the boat and sending them across the Sea of Galilee.  So note first of all, this is not a miracle for the mixed multitude, but it’s a miracle for the saved, the believers, for the church if you will.  So that’s going to give us a context for how to understand it.  It’s for His followers, those that already have believed in Christ,and consequently are made spiritually alive.

I believe in some respects that this event is a foreshadowing of what to expect in the Christian life, as we live the spiritual life that we have been given, particularly for these disciples, but also for us in the church as well.  And that is evidenced by the fact that Jesus is separated from His disciples.  They don’t want to go away from Him, but He has to send them away.  And I think that this prefigures the ascension of Christ after His resurrection.  He offers Himself as the bread of life which was broken for us on the cross, and soon after His resurrection He is taken up into heaven and His followers are left alone.  In this event we notice that Christ is alone on the mountain praying or interceding with the Father on behalf of the disciples. In Mark 6:48 it says that Jesus saw the disciples straining at the oars, and yet at that point He was on the mountain and they were several miles away on the sea in the darkness.  This is a picture of the separation that the disciples would experience after His resurrection.

Now there are several things we can notice about this event.  First of all, that trials are the predetermined, sovereign plan of God.  Jesus knows what is going to happen, and yet He deliberately sends the disciples into a storm.  You know, a lot of people expect that the Christian life is going to be a trouble free existence.  That somehow, being a Christian is insurance that life is going to be smooth going.  But the Bible doesn’t promise that at all.

In fact, if we had time I could show scores of texts that show that we are promised tribulation in the Christian life.  We  are promised persecution.  We are promised hardships.  That’s not to say that Christians are necessarily going to experience more difficulties than the unsaved.  On the contrary, I think the Bible teaches us that by following God’s way we are delivered from many hardships.  But the difference is that as Christians, God uses trials to teach us and refine us, to enable us to be stronger spiritually,  capable of achieving more for the kingdom of God.  That’s why James says in James 1:2, that we are to “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,  knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

So Jesus makes the disciples go out without Him, and notice that though the disciples don’t really want to go, or necessarily understand why, they are obedient to the Lord’s commands. In fact, they continue to be obedient even though all the circumstances seem to be against them.  It should have only been a short trip by boat of about 7 miles, but the wind started to pick up against them.  The wind of course produces waves which makes it almost impossible to row the boat with any forward speed.  And then it gets dark.  So there is a lot going against the disciples, even though they are being obedient.  In fact, the trip seems to take forever.  They leave Jesus on the shore before sunset and start rowing.  And Mark says that it was the fourth watch of the night when Jesus came walking on the water towards them.  That’s between 3am and 6am.  Can you imagine rowing a boat against a gale force wind, with waves crashing over the front of the boat for perhaps as long as 8 hours?  Those disciples never imagined that the trip could have lasted so long.

There are so many things we can learn from that. The main thing I would emphasize is that the walk of faith, or the spiritual life is not easy.  It’s not easy because it’s not normal.  As a Christian, you are figuratively running against the wind.  You are swimming against the current.  The world is described in Ephesians 2:2  as a current, as a course in which the river of life flows. And it goes on to say that it is designed by the devil to keep you enslaved to it.  So when salvation comes to us, and we are given new life in Christ, by which we walk in the Spirit, we are in effect striving against the forces of this world which are in opposition to us.  And that is a battle.  It’s so tempting sometimes to just give in to the current, to allow yourself to get swept along by the things of this world.  

Notice in Mark 6:48, Jesus sees them straining at the oars.  I hope you can picture that.  These guys were straining.  The Christian life can sometimes require a battle that tests all your resolve.  I’ll give those disciples something.  They persevered.  They kept at it.  Eight hours after saying goodbye to Jesus on the shore they are still rowing with all their might.  And they are still only in the middle of the lake.  Listen, sometimes our trials last a lot longer than we think they should.  Sometimes we think that there is no way that God could be in this situation.  It’s gone on too long.  There are too many things working against us.  

I’ve been guilty of thinking that far too many times.  I start counting all the things working against us, all the things which have gone wrong.  I start thinking about how long I’ve been rowing and have so little to show for it.  I sometimes get so discouraged.  And then there is the darkness.  How depressing is the darkness.  The nights when you wake up every hour and it’s still only the middle of the night.  When you pray and doze off, and then wake up a few minutes later and do it again.  And the nights seem to go on forever, and God seems so far away.  Sometimes, we soldier on in obedience, but we have long since run out of joy and our hope is almost completely gone.  There is a song which is from a sermon I think,  that I’ve come across a couple of times this holiday, which says, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a coming.”  The idea being that when it’s dark and things look hopeless, hang on, Sunday’s coming. The darkness was crushing on the Friday of crucifixion, but on Sunday, when the sun comes up, it reveals that the Son of God has risen.  

Well, the disciples still had a few hours to go before the dawn, and it was dark, raining, waves threatening to sink their boat, they had made practically no progress, the wind was pushing them backwards for every foot of progress they made, and it had gone on far too long. But what they didn’t realize was that Jesus was watching and praying for them on that mountain. Oh, if they could have known that truth, how much more encouraged they might have been.  I want you to know something this morning, ladies and gentlemen.  No matter how difficult your long night of trial, no matter how long you have been straining against the oars, no matter how long the wind has been against you, or how big the waves are breaking against your boat, Jesus is watching over you, and He is praying for you.  

I want you to know that you are not alone on that dark night of your trial.  Jesus is watching you and praying for you.If that doesn’t encourage you then I don’t know what will.  But if you are HIs child, then He has promised to watch over you and to intercede on your behalf to God.  Hebrews speaks of our great High Priest who is Jesus Christ, who has been seated at the right hand of the Father as our mediator, and intercessor.  And so it says in Heb 4:13-16 “There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.  Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.  Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Now that should be a great comfort.  But notice that Jesus doesn’t just pray and leave them there to deal with it alone, but He comes to help them. However, I want to point out that Jesus delays coming until the poor disciples are worn completely out and the night is almost gone.  You know, my biggest problem sometimes in the spiritual life is understanding the timing of God.  Why does He so often delay?  Why does He let us reach the end of our resources, the end of ourselves before coming to help us?  I think it is to teach us that the end of our extremity is God’s opportunity.  God wants us to reach the end of our strength so that we might come to rely on His strength.  Paul said in 2Cor. 12:10 “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”  The Lord’s strength is made perfect in my weakness, but I must recognize my weakness for His strength to be completed in me.

So Jesus finally comes to them, walking on the water in the midst of the storm.  There is an interesting principle there.  When you pray for someone, there is a good chance that God will appoint you to be the answer to your prayer.  And Jesus illustrates that principle right there.  I appreciate it when someone says I will pray for you.  But sometimes, I think if they really prayed, they would find that God has given them the means by which to answer that prayer. God choses to use people to minister to His people.  But  sometimes I believe people try to get off the hook by praying and not doing.  James said in James 2:16  if you say to someone in need, “'Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?”

But the disciples see what they think is a ghost on the water walking to them.  Now a lot of people give the disciples a hard time about being frightened, but I think that when you have been in the middle of a fierce gale for 8 hours, and rowing yourself to exhaustion, probably haven’t eaten or drank anything because of the severity of the storm, you obviously haven’t been able to sleep either, and suddenly you see a figure walking on water through this storm and through the waves, you would probably freak out too.

So Jesus says to them, “Take courage, it is I, be not afraid.” I don’t know for sure what fear Jesus was referring to.  Was it the fear of the waves, the fear of the wind, the fear of the night, or the fear of Him?  I sometimes think that we fear complete surrender to the Lord almost more than we do the terrors of tribulation.  It’s amazing to me sometimes to talk to someone who is caught up in some destructive sin, and it has almost completely destroyed their life.  They have lost everything or are about to.  And yet when you tell them that the only hope that they have is to surrender to the Lord and ask Him to help them you would think that you just asked them to do something terrifying.  People are so afraid to surrender completely to the Lord, to ask Him to be their Savior.  And I can only guess it’s because they are afraid that they will have to let go of the steering wheel of their lives and let God have control.  We are so conditioned to try to control our lives.  And the devil’s lie is that we still have control even when our lives are clearly out of control.  

But I suppose at it’s simplest Jesus is saying that if we are God’s children, and we are doing what He tells us to do, we are living in obedience, then He is in control over the events of our life and we don’t need to be afraid.  I’ve said it before and I will say it again; there is no safer place on earth than to be in the will of God, and there is no safe place outside of the will of God.  If you are doing what God has told you to do, then you need not fear what man or nature can do to you.  Rom. 8:31 “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”

This miracle illustrates that not only is God for us, but He is with us.  Jesus said in Matthew 28:20, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  In the storms of our Christian life, we can be certain that not only does God superintend the trials we go through, but He has promised that Jesus would pray for us and watch over us as we go through them, and that He will be with us when we go through them.  He says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  He says in Isaiah 43:1-2 “But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel,"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;I have called you by name; you are Mine!  "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,Nor will the flame burn you.”  We can be unafraid of life’s trials when we know that the Source of life is with us.

And there is one more application that I want to make today which is that He is the strength and the supply we need to do what He tells us to do.  The disciples had rowed all night and made practically no progress.  But John tells us that when Jesus got into the boat with them, they were immediately at the other side of the lake.  It says in vs.21, “So they were willing to receive Him into the boat.”  Listen, that’s not talking about salvation, but sanctification.  Jesus gives you new life at justification, but He empowers your life through sanctification.  You get the power to overcome sin, and the power to get through temptation and trials when you let Jesus take command of your boat.  That’s the secret to sanctification.  We have been given the power to triumph over sin and temptation, but it’s not in our strength, it’s not in our straining at the oars, it’s in giving Jesus permission to captain our vessel.  When we look to Him for wisdom in every decision, for guidance in every action and then let Him direct our lives according to His will, then we will find ourselves arriving safely at our destination.

The destination for a Christian isn’t just heaven, ladies and gentlemen.  The destination for a Christian is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  To be remade in the image of God.  To reflect the light of Christ in our lives.  And to do that in our own power and might is not possible.  The only way it’s possible is to be filled with the Spirit of God, in accordance with the truth of God, and in obedience to the word of God, and in the power of God, we then walk as Jesus walked.  

To be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ is to be sanctified here on earth, and then one day to be glorified with Him in heaven.  That’s the purpose of the trials of life, to sanctify us for His purposes. Paul said in Rom. 8:28-30  “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.  For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;  and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”

That’s the lesson we need to learn from this passage; that Christ is the source of life because He is the author and finisher of our faith. He is the beginning and the end.  What He has called us to, He is able to make possible.  But in doing so He often brings us through times of difficulty and trial, and though sometimes it seems to take forever, He is working in us that which is pleasing to Him, to bring about conformity to His Son, that we might be His representatives here on earth.  

In closing, let me remind you of what I said at the beginning.  The physical cannot produce the spiritual.  You must be born of the Spirit of God to have spiritual life within you.  Then once you are spiritual, the physical is empowered by the Spirit of God, so that we might do the works of God.  The question I have for you is do you have life in the Spirit?  Have you been born again by the Spirit of God?  If not, then today I offer you the Bread of Life.  Believe in Him and receive life. 

And if you are saved, then I hope that you have come to know more completely the process of our spiritual life.  That our purpose is to be conformed to the image of Christ, and to do the works of God, so that others may see our good works and glorify God.  It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to mean swimming against the current, but God has a plan for you, Jesus is praying for you and interceding on your behalf, and He will come to you and help you if you will receive Him as captain of your soul.  He is the source of our life, and the source of our strength, and He is ever ready to help us in time of need.  

The Bread of Life, John 6: 1-15

This miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is probably one of the best known miracles in the Bible.  Perhaps that’s because it is the only miracle that is presented in all four gospels. And as such it is perhaps difficult to provide new insight that hasn’t already been presented elsewhere at some point in the past.  But that’s not really my job anyway.  A pastor’s job is not to try to find out new information, or a new perspective and show everyone how smart he is because he has something different.  But the pastor’s job is just to present the old, old story - to a new audience.  So I probably won’t have anything new to say this morning, but I do hope that God will provide the impetus of the Holy Spirit through the Word, so that it will come home to you in a practical way.

The danger of familiarity is that we can lose sight of the practicality and the purpose, and think we already know the answers. It’s like the little boy who was asked what his favorite Bible story was. He said, "I like the one where everyone loafs and fishes.”  He was familiar with the story, but he misunderstood the meaning.  Maybe some of you may have that kind of familiarity. I know I do.  I grew up in the church. Literally.  My dad was a pastor.  I was born while he was at Bible college.  I grew up attending church about 4 times a week.  Back in those days, they used to give you a little pin for attending Sunday School if you attended every Sunday during the year without missing one.  And each year thereafter you got another pin that hung off the bottom of the primary pin.  It was like a medal, that had a ribbon added every year that you were in attendance every Sunday.  By the time I was a teenager, I had about 13 little ribbons on my pin.  I was like a Sunday School hero.

But growing up in the church has it’s downside.  One was I knew all the songs in the hymnbook by heart.  But the downside was I learned them before I could read.  So in later years I discovered that some of the lyrics to songs were quite a bit different than what I thought they were. For instance, it was a few years before I realized it was “blessed assurance, Jesus is mine” and not “blessed insurance, Jesus is mine.” I had heard what I thought were the words, but turns out I was substituting another word that sounded like it, but had a different meaning.

Maybe that illustrates the difficulty in coming to familiar passages of scripture.  We think we know the words, but we may have missed the meaning.  So rather than give you some new geography insights, or historical insights, or even theological insights, I want to just focus on the purpose of the miracle this morning, and make sure that we all have the right message.

This is the fourth miracle that John presents in his gospel.  And yet at this point in Christ’s life, Jesus has been in public ministry about 2 years. So John leaves a lot out.  In fact, since the end of chapter five, it’s probably been at least 6 months to a year that has elapsed.  But the miracles that John does give us are strategically presented in order to illustrate his stated purpose found in the 20th chapter.  John 20:30-31 “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;  but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”

So that’s the purpose of this miracle.  It’s to teach us that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.  And that if you believe in Him, receive Him, then you will have life though Him.  That is the summary of John’s opening thesis of chapter one where he sets forth the theology and doctrine of Christ whom he calls the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And then he says that in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

You should know by now the principle that I state almost every week - that every physical miracle presented in the gospel is  given to illustrate a spiritual principle.  And that is especially true of this event.  There have been many misinterpretations of this miracle over the centuries.  Not the least of which is that of a social gospel, the idea that this presents a template for what the church is to be about; feeding the hungry.  Or another favorite interpretation of Sunday school teachers,  that it teaches little boys that we need to share, and if we share, then we contribute to the accomplishment of the purpose for which Christ came; to make us nicer, more gentle, giving people, and to make the world a better place.

But the fact is, that Jesus took care of natural needs only as a means to take care of spiritual needs.  I have to be constantly reminded of this myself as I go through life.  I tend to focus on the physical, on the immediate, and I lose sight of the spiritual.  But what this miracle illustrates is that Jesus did not come to set up a physical kingdom on earth, where peace and goodwill would prevail.  That is exactly what He took great pains to avoid, as you can see in the last section of this passage.  Look at vs.15, “So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.”  

Jesus didn’t come to set up a physical kingdom, where He would provide universal health care, and universal welfare.  People will vote for that kind of king.  But Jesus didn’t come to establish an earthly kingdom, or overthrow a political empire.  Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom.  So whatever He did in the physical, was designed to serve that purpose, and no other.  

And as Christians, we need to be reminded of that.  Christ always sought to expound the spiritual principle through the physical illustration, and not vice a versa.  So when Christ works in  our lives, it’s to promote spiritual growth, not physical growth.  There may be times when He works in the physical, but it’s to bring about a spiritual transformation.  It’s not just for physical comfort or success or profit, or just to make life more enjoyable.  That’s how we get the cart before the horse.

But the fact that Jesus is also compassionate towards our physical needs goes without saying.  These people were hungry and so Jesus is concerned about that and wants to provide for their needs.  But there is a big difference between God supplying our needs and supplying our wants.  Our wants never get satisfied.  And God will not serve our wants.  But He does promise to provide for our needs.  

The multitude may have been following Jesus for less than perfect reasons, but He was still compassionate towards them, and so He feeds them physically, but as a means of feeding them spiritually.  That’s what we really see going on here.  It says in Luke 9:11, that when Jesus saw the crowds following Him, “He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing.”  In effect, His miracles were designed to teach them that He was the source of all life, even the Son of God. That’s what it means to teach them about the nature of the kingdom of God. But as is often the case, the people were a little short sighted.  Most of them really only cared about the immediacy of the miracles and the signs that He was doing.  

But it shows the mercy and compassion of God towards sinners that Christ does not rebuke them, knowing their lack of spiritual insight.  But rather He continues to be gracious to sinners, in order to open their eyes to the truth.  Romans 2:4 says that the kindness of God is designed to lead us to repentance.  God is gracious and compassionate and kind, even towards sinners who are selfish, or motivated by self serving reasons.  Paul said in Titus 3:4 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,  He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.”

  

So Jesus has already determined that He is going to feed the multitude, but He’s going to do it in such a way as to teach some important spiritual lessons.  And so He turns His attention first to His disciples.  That’s the first principle.  That if we are going to change the world, it starts with us that are saved.  It starts with the church.  God wants to include us in the building of the kingdom of God.  Why?  Because I believe that this is merely practice for what we will be doing in eternity when we rule and reign with Christ in His kingdom.  He wants to teach us and prepare us now for the day when we will be exalted to sit with Him on His throne in His kingdom. 

Jesus turns to Philip in vs.5 and says, “‘Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat?’ This He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do.”  Now understand something.  When it says that Jesus said this to test him, it doesn’t mean to trick him, or to embarrass him by asking him a question that he knew he would get wrong.  Jesus isn’t like our old high school teachers who liked to ask us questions when they knew we hadn’t done our homework.  The idea of testing is to prove something.  To prove that something works as it was designed to work.  David, you will remember, said about Saul’s armor that he had not tested it, or proven it.  That means he had not tried it out and knew that he could depend on it in a fight.  Jesus wants to prove or test Philip’s faith.  And maybe sometimes that means He has to stretch our faith.  He presents an obstacle, and gives us the leeway to tackle that obstacle, not to watch us fail, but to show us the way that He wants us to overcome it.  At the time, it may seem impossible, and we might not handle it right, but the divine purpose is to teach us to be overcomers, and that nothing is impossible with God, when it is God’s will. 

Philip though pulls out his calculator.  He is a practical guy.  Maybe he was an accountant in his old life.  But irregardless, he is practical.  He does the math, and says, “Listen Lord, if we had 200 days worth of wages, we couldn’t buy enough bread to give everyone here a snack.”  By the way, Matthew says in Matt.14:19, that there were 5000 men, not including women and children.  So there were probably 15000 people in attendance.  A denarius was a day’s wage for a Roman soldier, so we could estimate that equates to about $20,000 by today’s standards.  Philip says we don’t have nearly enough money to feed these people.  He was practical, but he was missing the point.

The point Jesus wanted to make was that it was impossible.  Not practical, nor possible, but impossible.  That’s the whole point of the gospel.  It’s impossible for us to be reconciled to Christ.  Our sins have created a chasm between us and God that cannot be jumped across. God gave us the law to show us that it was impossible to achieve God’s standard of righteousness. So God made the impossible possible through the impractical; holy, righteous God became sin for us, that we might be made righteous through Him.

Now in Mark’s gospel, chapter 6 we read that Jesus tells the disciples to go into the crowd and see if they could find some food. And when they come back Andrew reports that there is only one boy’s lunch, which is five barley loaves and two fish.  But that only further emphasizes the impossibility of the situation.  “What is that for so many people?”

Now a lot of commentators want to disparage the disciples for their lack of spiritual comprehension.  Personally, I cringe whenever I hear preachers disparage the disciples, as if to say if they were there, they would have had all spiritual discernment.  They wouldn’t have been like those knucklehead disciples who couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  But I prefer to think we should give the disciples the benefit of the doubt.  If Andrew didn’t have any faith, then I don’t think that he would have offered Jesus the boy’s lunch.  I think he would have looked at that lunch and said, “there is no need to bring this to Jesus.”  But I think there is a hint of a little faith here.  

And let me tell you some good news.  God can use a little faith.  I preached last Wednesday on Psalm 121, and I never got past the first verse which was “I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains, from where comes my help?” And if you were there then you will remember that I used that as a pretext to go to Zechariah 4, where God tells Zerubbabel that the rebuilding of the temple will not be accomplished by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord.  And then the Lord goes on to say that he is not to despise the day of small things, but He will make this great mountain into a plain.  Now I don’t want to go off on another tangent on that passage, but the point that I want to make is that God doesn’t despise small things, and He can use small things to move impossible mountains.  Not by might, not by power, but by His Spirit.

In Matthew 17:20, there was a demon that the disciples could not cast out, and Jesus said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”    The point is, a mustard seed is the smallest seed in the garden, and yet even faith of that small size, when it is faith in the right source, can move mountains.  And nothing will be impossible with God.  

Andrew had a little bit of faith. And the little boy had a little bit of lunch.  But it was still an impossible situation.  And Jesus wants to illustrate that even more.  So He says, “have the people sit down.”  It was a grassy knoll there, and the other gospels tell us that Jesus said to make the people sit in groups of 50 or 100.  I like that.  It shows Jesus had a sense of humor.  Tell 12 disciples to go into a crowd of 15000 people and get them to sit down in groups of 50 on the ground. That’s 300 blocks of 50 people.  That’s like a miracle in of itself to get that many people organized and quieted down and seated in rows.  I think that was another test of faith.  But the disciples didn’t object, they didn’t complain, and they got it done.  They had enough faith to be obedient, even when it didn’t make sense or they didn’t understand it or it wasn’t easy.

Listen, that’s an important principle.  When you are faced with an impossible situation, don’t start running around in circles like a chicken with it’s head cut off crying that the sky is falling.  Go to God with what little faith you have, trust God to deal with the impossibility, and then just do what He tells you to do.  Do what you know you are to do.  Let me put that in practical terms for you.  When your life is in chaos, don’t stop coming to church.  Find your place in the congregation, sit down, and put yourself under subjection to God in spite of the difficulty.  Be obedient to what God has already told you to do.  Don’t stop praying, don’t stop reading your Bible. Order your life under the authority of God and make yourself ready to trust in God’s providence.

So Jesus takes the food in His hands and blesses it and breaks it and gives it to the disciples to distribute to the crowd.  John doesn’t say that He gave it to the disciples, but the other gospels do.  Again and again, you see Jesus using the disciples.  But notice that He blesses the food, He gives thanks.  He is giving thanks to illustrate that God is providing the miracle of feeding the multitude.  Jesus isn’t doing this for His sake.  If He were hungry He would not have created food for Himself.  Satan tempted Him with that in the wilderness and Jesus rebuked him by saying, “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Jesus is doing this to glorify God, and to feed these people spiritually. 

By the way, I hope you are in the habit of blessing your food before you eat.  Jesus did it as an example to us, that we should give thanks in all things.  Give thanks when you have but a little and God will multiply His blessings unto you.  And don’t be ashamed to do it publicly as a testimony to others.  That’s what Jesus was doing.

So how did Jesus feed 15000 people from 5 loaves and two fish? Well, he obviously created food already cooked and ready to be eaten. That’s what they call in the military MRE’s.  Meals Ready to Eat.  But I bet you Jesus’ meal tasted a whole lot better than the military version.  Anyhow, the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how the miracle happened.  But what it does tells us is the result of the miracle.  Everyone ate until they were full.  And the disciples gathered up 12 baskets of leftovers.  John 1 told us that Jesus made everything in creation.  So that is exactly what is being illustrated here.  Jesus is manufacturing fish and bread out of His hands, and giving to the disciples and they give it to the people.  

The how of the miracle is not as important as the why of the miracle.  One thing that was being taught was that someone greater than Moses was here. That is what they meant in  vs.14 which says, “Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, ‘This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.’”  What they are referring to is the prophecy made by Moses in Deut. 18:15  who said, ”The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”  Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and fed them with manna and quail for 40 years.  But of course, Moses didn’t feed them himself, God rained down manna from heaven.  Now they see Jesus, manufacturing bread and fish out of His hands to feed 15000 people.  The parallel was apparent.  This was the prophet that Moses spoke of.  This was the Messiah.  So their impulse was to make Him their king, thinking that He would overthrow their oppressors the same way that Moses did.

But that was not God’s purpose in doing the miracle.  Yes, it was to confirm that someone greater than Moses was here. The Messiah was here. The kingdom of God was at hand.  But not a physical kingdom, but a spiritual kingdom. Jesus told Pilate in John 18:36  "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." 

So if Jesus did not come to establish a physical kingdom, then what was He coming to do? Jesus will say later in chapter 6 vs.35  "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” The real significance of the miracle is to illustrate that Jesus is the bread of life, the source of spiritual life. That is how He establishes a spiritual kingdom, by transferring sinners from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God through the forgiveness of their sins.  He is the bread of life that was given for us.

My wife is the baker around our house, I am not. But I do know that to make bread there are certain things you have to do. The grain that grows in the field must be cut down.  The grain must be crushed under the grinding stone to make flour. And then that flour is mixed with oil, and then baked in an oven. And all of that pictures the life and suffering of our Lord Jesus.  So when the Lord says, "I am the bread of God that comes down from heaven," or "I am the bread of life," we need to understand the process by which bread becomes bread. And Jesus becomes bread by virtue of the fact that he gives his life for us. So it is a lesson in the sufficiency of our Lord for salvation. In order for him to become bread He must be cut down and crushed, He had to be filled with the Spirit of God, and He also bear the punishment of God for sin -- the fire of God’s wrath on sin. He must be baked in the oven of God’s wrath, executing penalty upon Him  for our sins.

Isaiah 53 records the beautiful prophecy concerning Jesus doing just that.  It says “For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground….Surely our griefs He Himself bore,And our sorrows He carried;Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions,He was crushed for our iniquities;The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,And by His scourging we are healed.”

So the significance of the miracle was to show  the impossibility of man’s situation; that man was without hope, cut off from God, cut off from the source of life, and unable to accomplish his own deliverance.  There was no way to provide for what was lacking.  Spiritually speaking, we were starving, facing an impossible barrier, an impossible mountain that we could not overcome.  But God in His compassion and mercy sent Jesus to offer Himself as the bread of life, as our substitute, that by faith in Him, even a little faith, by believing in Him; believing what the Bible said about Him and what He was claiming to be, believing His teaching and His works, by even a little faith, we are able to partake of that bread and receive life.

Salvation, as I’ve said over and over again, is by repentance and faith.  Repentance is simply acknowledging your sin, your inability to attain the righteousness that God requires.  Repentance is coming face to face with the impossibility of your situation, and recognizing that Jesus is your only hope.  And then the second step is faith.  Your faith is just a willingness to believe that He is sufficient to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  That He is God and the source of life eternal.  By simple faith and repentance you receive Him, just as the multitude ate of the meal and were satisfied, Jesus is the bread of life that satisfies forever.  You will never hunger for righteousness again.  Because Jesus is the source of spiritual life. 

Listen, there are a lot more applications that I could make from this miraculous event.  Most of which I’m sure you probably have heard before.  But what I want to express to you today above all else is that the gospel is for lost people.  It is for broken people.  The gospel is for destitute people, hopeless people.  Jesus did a lot of things in that miracle to emphasize the hopelessness of their situation.  I think He even planned it so that they would be far away from every source of food so that they would realize the hopelessness of the situation.  Jesus came to save sinners.  He came to seek and to save those that are lost.  He did not come to make good people better.  He came to make sinners righteous by the grace of God, because of the compassion of God towards man.  

And that primary application demands a response from you.  Have you received the bread of life?  Have you tasted and seen that the Lord is good?  Have you received the forgiveness of your sins and been clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ?  Listen, no amount of money could purchase the bread that was needed to feed that multitude.  Jesus gave it without charge, without cost, so that whoever would receive it might receive life, and be filled abundantly.

There is one other obvious application as well which must be made and that is the involvement of the disciples.  When Jesus had witnessed to the woman at Samaria in chapter 4, He sent the disciples away to buy food in town.  And when they came back, urging Him to eat, He told them that He had food to eat that they did not know about.  He said in vs. 54, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”

And that principle is laid out for us here in this passage through the disciples.  He wants them to do even as He did in Samaria.  He wants them to find spiritual food in feeding others.  And when they do that, they end up with 12 baskets left over. Twelve baskets for 12 disciples. That was the disciples’ spiritual food.  In doing the will of God, God provided more than enough for their own needs.  Each of them ended up with their own basket filled with provisions.  So for us that are Christians, our job is to be obedient, even as the disciples were, and feed His sheep.  And when we do that, we will find food for our souls, and life for our spirit.  

I want to close this service today by asking you once again, have you eaten of the bread of life? He was broken for you.  God loved you so much that He sent Jesus to be broken and bruised, to bear your sins upon the cross so that you might know the forgiveness of sins and receive eternal life.  Have your received Jesus as your Savior?  He says, “eat, drink, this is My body, which is broken for you.”  You can’t do anything to earn salvation, or buy it, or try to find it on your own.  But what you can do is come in faith to Christ as your Savior and the source of all life, and you will find spiritual life in Him.  Do it today.  It’s already bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ, and He offers it to you as a free gift today.  Receive Him, eat the bread of life and live.

The claims and proofs of Christ, John 5:31-47

As we continue in this study of the fifth chapter of John, I would remind you of the claims that Jesus made concerning Himself in the second half of this chapter.  They really are amazing.  He claims to be the Son of God, equal with God, the One sent by the Father, the source of eternal life,  the one in perfect unity with the Father,  the judge of all the world, and that He would raise all the dead in the earth either to stand in judgment before Him, or that He would give them eternal life.  Now those are exceptional claims.  No man in history has ever made such outrageous claims.  

As I said last week, Jesus was either the Son of God as He claimed, or He was a lunatic and a blasphemer deserving of being locked up or executed. But there is no middle ground.  He could not be just a good teacher, or a good man, or just a prophet.  He was either God incarnate, or a complete fraud. Jesus doesn’t give us any other choice.

It’s no wonder really, that the Jews were skeptical of Christ’s claims.  Couple His claims with a lack of prestige or pedigree, and you can almost understand the animosity towards Jesus by the Jewish establishment.  But I say almost understand because in reality there were many accompanying signs which should have verified who He claimed to be.  The fact is, that the evidence for Him as the Messiah was overwhelming, but they choose not to believe in Him, because He did not fit into their template for how they wanted the Messiah to operate.  It’s almost as if God sent Jesus to be the Messiah, and they looked Him over pretty good, examined His resume, and said, “No thanks.  He’s not what we’re looking for right now.”  And so John says in vs.18, that the Jews were already conspiring to kill Him.  Not only did they not accept Him, but they believed the best way to get rid of Him was to murder Him.  Pretty amazing really.  They hated Him without cause.  Without proper justification.  They hated Him simply because He did not fit into their plans for self-aggrandizement. 

The first part of the chapter illustrates their attitude perfectly.  Jesus healed a paralyzed man who had been sick for 38 years and all they seemed to care about was that Jesus healed him on the Sabbath Day.  They really didn’t care about the sick man or the Sabbath Day.  They just wanted to exercise their power and position over Jesus and the traditions of the Sabbath served their purpose.  They really wanted Jesus to have to submit to them instead of them submitting to Christ.

That’s not just an exclusively first century bad attitude, by the way.  That’s a common 21st century bad attitude as well.  We still have people who want Christ to serve them, rather than to submit to serve Christ.  People may be willing to believe in Christ, but they want to limit Him to serving their agenda, to helping them achieve their goals, their happiness, their success.  Rather than understanding that the crux of the gospel is the cross of the gospel.  And as Jesus went to the cross for us, so we are to go to the cross for Jesus, sacrificing our world, our goals, our priorities for the sake of Christ.  So we have the same problem today that the religious Jews had in that day.  A convoluted, self serving sense of entitlement at the expense of Christ.

So Jesus made these outrageous claims, in effect saying that He was equal with God, and now in verses 31-47 He is going to present validation for His claims.  And to do so, to establish His deity, He is going to put forth five witnesses.  That was in keeping with the law, by the way.  The law said in Deuteronomy 19:15, that every word was to be corroborated by 2 or 3 witnesses.  In other words, in a court of law, in order to establish truth, there must be at least 2, or better yet 3 witnesses to validate one’s statement as truth.  So Jesus is upholding the law here and actually exceeding the requirements of the law. by offering multiple testimonies to His deity.

But I have to say as I have studied John’s writings over the years, I’ve often struggled with his writing style.  I get the sense sometimes that he is overlapping things or being repetitive in laying out certain principles.  And I have to admit sometimes I am almost frustrated by it.  I kind of want to move the pace along a little bit.  But as I was thinking about this style that he seems to have, I found myself comparing John’s writing style to something which is called in engineering terms, redundancy.  According to Wikipedia, in the field of engineering, redundancy is the duplication of critical components or functions of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the form of a backup or fail-safe.  So redundancy is very important in engineering things like airplanes.  When you are 30,000 feet in the air in a tin can going 600 miles an hour, it is comforting to know that the essential hydraulics and components of the engine have redundant features.  So if one system should fail, there is at least one or two more that are designed to sustain the aircraft.  Redundancy may produce a more complicated system, but it generally produces a more reliable system.

And perhaps that is what John does with His gospel.  He takes the essential doctrines of the gospel, and overlaps principles or evidences or witnesses in such a way as to provide a fail safe salvation.  It provides for a faith that will prove to be reliable, no matter how great the stress that is placed upon it.  And that should be a comfort to us as we go forward in his gospel.  Sometimes as we study it, it may seem complicated, but I hope when you feel that way you will remember that the principle of redundancy is there for your safe keeping.

So John is going to be somewhat redundant in this passage in order to verify the claims of Christ, upon which we base our faith, and thus our salvation.  And so he records  several testimonies or witnesses of Christ.  And the first witness that Jesus mentions is that of His own testimony.  He gave witness of Himself as we read in vs.19-30. In them He makes the claims that we enumerated earlier which are all statements reserved for deity.  But Jesus says that they don’t accept them as true.  And so Jesus sets His own testimony aside, because He knows that they will not admit His testimony alone as legal proof.  However, of course we know that His testimony is true, just as we know His words are true, because the Spirit says amen in our hearts.  But these men who don’t know God, do not have the Spirit of God, and so they do not know the truth, nor recognize the truth.  They were blind to the truth, even as Paul said in 2 Cor. 4:3-4 “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

I’ve noticed this phenomenon myself from time to time.  I can preach a truth until I’m blue in the face and not get any response but some sort of vague skepticism.  But then someone in the church hears another preacher say something similar, and they accept that as the truth.  I don’t know what to attribute that to.  I guess it’s just a natural skepticism on the part of man or inability to recognize truth as truth.

The second witness that Jesus presents is that of the Father.  In vs.32, Jesus says, "There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.”  Now He is going to go on in the next verse to the witness of John the Baptist.  But in vs.32, He is speaking of  His Father.  And he picks up this witness of the Father again in vs. 37, “And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form.”

Now how did God bear witness of Jesus? Through multiple dispensations.  There were several instances at His birth when angels who are the messengers of God spoke concerning Him as being born of the Spirit of God, as the Son of God and as the Savior of the world. And God appointed a special star to shine out of heaven to guide the wise men to birth of the King of the Jews so that they could worship Him.  Then there was the Spirit of God in the form of a dove descending upon Him at His baptism in fulfillment of prophecy.  And there was the voice of God declaring “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” So God the Father bore witness of Christ’s deity.

The third witness Jesus brings forth was that of John the Baptist. Vs.33, "You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth.”  Now John was an important witness, and yet Jesus says in the next verse that He did not receive the testimony of man.  What does He mean by that?  He means that God is self sufficient.  He does not need the testimony of man to validate Himself. Christ needs no letters of recommendation from man - He is able to establish His own credentials.  But He includes John’s testimony so that they might be saved.  So then, He brings up John not to prove Himself, but as a benefit for our salvation.  God has ordained that by the foolishness of preaching we are saved.  And God has chosen to use men to preach the gospel to other men, so that they might believe.  He includes John’s testimony for our sake, and not for His own.

He goes on to say that John was a lamp that was burning, and they were able to rejoice for a while in that light. They received for a while the ministry of John. It was a novelty in their minds, he was popular for a while.  But because they did not truly believe his testimony, they eventually grew tired of him.  But Christ says that His testimony was greater than the lamp of John, because He was the light.  John was a lamp in which the light was reflected.  But Jesus is the Light of the world, that sets ablaze the lamps of men. Jesus’ testimony is greater than John’s testimony even as the light is greater than the lamp.  But nevertheless, God uses lamps to draw men to Himself so that they might be saved.  God has designed you to be a lamp as well.  You are to reflect the light of Christ in your life that men might see your light and be drawn to Christ.  We are told not to hide our lamp under a bushel, but set it on a hill that men might see the light of salvation and the result of that salvation reflected in us.

The fourth witness then which is greater than the witness of John was the works of Christ. Vs. 36 "But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish--the very works that I do--testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.”

Now we know that the Jews knew that Jesus did the works of God, by the testimony of one of their own and that was Nicodemus whom we were introduced to in chapter 3.  Remember Nicodemus said in 3:2, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”  They knew that He did miracles that only God could do, and so He had to be of God.  And yet they still planned to kill Him.  That’s why I said last week that I am convinced that the Jews knew that He was the Son of God, and yet they still wanted to kill Him because He did not fit into their religious paradigm which was designed to promote themselves.  That is a damning accusation, and as such it is more than enough justification for God’s judgment to fall upon Israel as it did in AD 70.

So the miracles and works that Jesus did were testimony to the fact that He was God incarnate. John the Baptist didn’t do any miracles.  Did you ever think of that?  God designed that John would simply preach the gospel of repentance.  The miracles Jesus did were evidence that He was the Son of God. The miracles that the apostles did were evidence that they were spokesmen for the Son of God, appointed for the foundation of the gospel.  Paul said in 2Cor. 12:12 “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.”  Are there true apostles today?  I would say there is not.  They were specially commissioned men who had been with Christ that were given attesting miracles to show the veracity of the word of Christ that they were speaking.  

So then we might wonder if God is doing miracles today?  I would say a resounding yes.  But I would add the caveat that God does not work through apostles any more, and He has not appointed certain people to be healers.  He may heal as He sees fit, but the purpose of that healing is not to validate the word of God, nor to validate a person as a spokesman of God.  God has sufficiently done that through Christ, through the apostles and His word is established and verified and sealed as being true.  It does not need continual verification by miraculous means.  But yet God may still heal as He sees fit.  

I remember a service we had on the beach last summer, and afterwards a woman came up to me and said that she had recently been diagnosed with stage four cancer.  She was a believer, yet she wasn't coming to me for healing, but simply to ask for prayer and to let me know that she desired to live out her remaining days for the glory of God.  I prayed with her there on the beach, and I asked that God would grant her wish that her life would bring glory to God, and that if it was His will, that He would heal her.   Well, that lady’s name is Pat Nordstrom.  And I can tell you that today this woman is cancer free.  I don’t know how or claim to have anything to do with it.  I am not a healer.  Lot’s of people besides me I’m sure were praying for this lady.  But I will tell you that God healed this woman, and that all the glory goes to God.  And today she is very involved in a Christian ministry.  So God heals as He sees fit.  

But I also will tell you another story.  I was at a pastor’s conference a few years ago.  And a missionary from Africa spoke there and he began telling stories of an evangelistic campaign that he was a part of to many villages that had not had the gospel presented to them before.  And at one point of that ministry he said there was an entire village that accepted Jesus as their Savior.  And in this large conference in which were over 1000 pastors, I heard a few isolated “amens” sound out as he described the conversion of an entire village.  But as he continued his message he talked of another village in which they were baptizing people who had become saved.  And as the townspeople were standing beside the river, one of the women supposedly realized that her baby had died.  And the pastors  called the woman to come into the river, and when the baby touched the water, the baby supposedly came back to life.  And when the missionary reported this, the entire 1000 attendees stood to their feet and gave a standing ovation.  

Now I found the story skeptical to begin with.  But what I found even more ironic was that when an entire village was saved from eternal damnation, hardly a few grunts and amens emitted from the crowd.  But when one baby was supposedly brought back to life, all 1000 men jumped to their feet and applauded.  Now what is the greater miracle, I ask?  To give physical life to one child, or eternal life to an entire village?  What should we be excited about? A physical healing or a spiritual healing?  I would remind you of the two healings we have looked at so far in John, that Jesus made sure that they were spiritually healed and not just physically healed.  Christ always sought to expound the spiritual principle through the physical illustration, and not vice a versa. 

The fifth witness that Christ brings forth is the testimony of scripture. Vs. 38 "You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;  and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.”  What was amazing about this statement was that the Jews were the custodians of the scriptures.  They of all the people in the earth had been given the word of God and were supposed to be stewards of it.  Yet  though they physically possessed the scriptures, they did not spiritually possess it.  God wrote the law upon tablets of stone, but He desired to write it upon the tablets of the heart.  

That is speaking of salvation by the way. Jesus will say in the next chapter in John 6:63  "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”  When the word of God is combined with the quickening power of the Spirit of God, then it brings about spiritual life.  Jesus gave a parable concerning the soils, and He said that the seed was the word of God and some fell on good soil and some fell on bad soil.  That soil which was good caused the seed to spring up into life, producing fruit, which was spiritual life.  These men were those who were illustrative of bad soil, on which the seed fell but did not remain.  So that Jesus says they didn’t have the word abiding in them.  And they didn’t have spiritual life because they did not receive Jesus whom God had sent.

Ironically, they searched the scriptures, they memorized the scriptures, they knew the scriptures backwards and forwards.  And because they knew them, they thought that they had eternal life.  They saw the rules and the laws and read ordinances between the lines and found symbolism in every syllable, and they thought that they could do the things of the law and find righteousness, thereby earning eternal life.  But they missed the point of all the scriptures.  The scriptures present Jesus Christ from Genesis to Malachi, and yet they did not see Him.  They saw only themselves as being more righteous and honorable and deserving than others, and so they missed the entire point of the scriptures.  So in vs.40 Jesus says that you missed out on eternal life, because you do not come to Him who is the source of eternal life.  He is not talking so much about ignorance, as about their will.  Their was ample evidence, but the problem was that they were not willing.  

I think that is true of all men that reject Christ.  It is not that there is not ample evidence of God that men and women become atheists. It is because they do not want to have this Man rule over them.  Men and women today champion independence as a virtue.  While that may be true of nations, it is fatal for individuals.  Our total salvation is dependent upon being dependent upon Christ.  That is one of the reasons we go to church by the way.  We go to church to declare publicly our dependence upon God.  Those that claim to believe in God and yet will not bow to depend upon God, and declare that dependence in the congregation must still be intractable in their independence from God.

Note that is what Jesus continually asserts He cannot nor will not do.  He is never independent from God.  What God does, He does.  What God says, He says.  They are unified, but never acting independent.  And by the way, that is the purpose of the Holy Spirit as well.  So many Christians today seem to think that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, and that was replaced and done away with by Jesus Christ, who is the God of love.  And now that Christ has gone into heaven, He has given us the Holy Spirit, who is the God of experience.  So when some spiritual experience happens in the Christian realm, whether at church or a concert or crusade or whatever, they attribute such things to the Holy Spirit.  

Folks, that is poppy cock.  That is borderline heresy.  The Trinity is One God.  There is one faith, and one baptism.  God is the same yesterday, today and forever.  And furthermore, listen to the unity of the Trinity as Jesus describes it in John 14 an 16. John 14:9-11 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.  Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.”  So everything Jesus did was mirrored in the Father.  He was the exact representation of the Father God.  

Now consider what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in John 16:13-14  "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”  So then, Jesus is the perfect representation of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the perfect representation of Jesus Christ, so that all three are One. One nature, One essence, and one voice, but separate in persons.

So in vs.41, Jesus says that He does not receive glory from men.  He does not need glory from men because He  receives glory from God.  But Jesus is rebuking them because they should have been glorifying Him, but they were not.  He says that they don’t glorify Him because they don’t have the love of God in them.  That means that they don’t love God.  Instead, they love the glory of men.  They love receiving honor from men.  That’s the condemnation of mankind, that they are lovers of self, and lovers of men, lovers of ungodliness, and rejecters of righteousness.  That is our nature.  We love darkness rather than light.  We love the adulation of men.  We love the glory of men.  And as such we dishonor God who made man for His glory.

That is why repentance is a constant staple in the diet of a Christian.  We must constantly be renouncing the pride which is such a part of the warp and woof of our lives that we hardly even recognize it.  It seems normal, and perhaps it is.  But normal means natural and therefore it is not spiritual.  That’s why God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.  God hates pride.

So because men love the honor and glory of men more than God, then God will give them over to a deluding spirit.  Jesus says that they will receive those that come in their own name, that seek after their own glory, and in accepting those false prophets they condemn themselves.

Jesus says in vs. 44 "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?”  Paul classified such men this way in 2Cor. 10:12 “For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.”  

The point is that they used religion to compare themselves among themselves and even to commend themselves, and as such they did not seek to glorify God nor the glory of God.  And so they are unbelievers.  And as such they will deserve the judgment due them for rejecting Him.  Vs. 45  "Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.”  The very scriptures in which they professed to know, will be the thing that accuses them and judges them.  

But, Jesus says in vs.46, if you truly believed Moses, you would have believed in Me, for He wrote about Me.  But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

I think that Jesus is indicating there that the greatest witness of all is the Word of God.  Not the miracles, though God did use miracles.  Not some experience, though God may use experience.  But the great expression of God is the Word of God.  John says in chapter one vs one, that Jesus is the Word of God manifested in the flesh.  To reject the Word of God is to reject Jesus Christ.  To believe the Word of God is to believe in Jesus Christ. It is the testimony of God, the testimony of Jesus, and the testimony of the Spirit all in One.  That is a greater testimony than miraculous works, that is a greater testimony than John the Baptist, and it is a testimony that will endure forever.  1Peter 1:25 “BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER."And this is the word which was preached to you.”

I hope that you do not reject the testimony of God’s Word concerning His Son.  If you believe in Him, in all that He claimed to be, then you will receive life, and His word will abide in you, and you will be fruitful.  But if reject His Word, then you are rejecting the solemn testimony of God, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and as such you will enter into judgment.  And that judgment will be merciless.  Because you have rejected Mercy and lived independently.  

When I am judged, thank God I will not be judged independently.  I will be judged as dependent upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ.  Because I have trusted in Christ as my Savior, and my substitute.  2 Cor. 5:21 “God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  When I come before God I will stand dependent upon Christ’s righteousness alone, and not my own.

You can either be found righteous in Him on that day, or you will stand alone in your independence, and have no answer when you are asked why you rejected the gift of God’s Son’s righteousness.  You want to remain in your sins and face that judgment?  That is your choice.  But I pray that you choose to come to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the One equal with God, the One sent by the Father, the source of eternal life,  the One in perfect unity with the Father,  the Judge of all the world, and the One who will raise all the dead in the earth either to stand in judgment before Him, or choose Him, and believe in Him and be saved.