There are many voices calling out for attention in the church today. And there are perhaps as many messages as there are voices. How are we to know which are true, and which are trustworthy? Many of them sound convincing. Many of them claim to be based on scripture. And yet many messages are at odds with one another. So they cannot all be true. If some are true, then others have to be false. The great difficulty comes in discerning which are true and which are false.
I believe that the Bible teaches us that the way to know the truth is by the leading of the Holy Spirit. When I got right with God 37 years ago in California, that was the primary thing I asked of the Lord, that I would know the truth. And later on that evening, as I read the book of John, God showed me three passages which I believe indicated that the Holy Spirit was the source of truth, and the means by which I could know the truth. The apostle John records Jesus as introducing the Holy Spirit specifically as the Spirit of Truth. Listen to what Jesus says in John 14:16-17 "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”
And Jesus reiterates that in the next two chapters. John 15:26, "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.” The third is in John 16:13 "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.”
So three times Jesus gives us this phrase, the Spirit of Truth, as both a title and a description of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So when Jesus declares this three times, we can be certain that it is an essential doctrine, and that it’s validity is without question.
Knowing that principle then helps us to understand the nature and purpose of the Holy Spirit. One of the greatest misunderstandings in Christianity today is that of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Just taking these three verses at face value, then we must recognize that the primary ministry of the Holy Spirit is to reveal to us the truth. So many people seem to miss that altogether. They think that the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to make us feel something, ie, the presence of God, or to give us some emotional response or ecstatic experience. But that simply is not taught in the Bible.
Paul makes it clear in 1Cor. 2:11-14 that we have been given the Spirit so that we might know the things of God, through the word of God. He says, “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” So we have to have the Spirit of God to understand the things of God, particularly the word of God, which of course was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
It’s also interesting that the Holy Spirit is spoken of not only as the Spirit of Truth but as the Spirit of Christ. Look at Romans 8:9 “However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” In fact, Peter goes even further stating in 1 Peter 1:11 that the Spirit of Christ was working in the Old Testament prophets when they wrote the scriptures.
So in the Trinity, all three are one in agreement, in unity, and are the same in nature, but different only in administration. So Jesus is the exact representation of the Father in flesh, speaking the words of the Father and doing the deeds of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the exact representation of the Son in the Spirit, enabling us to do the deeds of Christ and to know the words of Christ, which is how we come to know God.
Now this may seem like a lengthy introduction and unrelated to the passage before us, but I believe that it is actually very pertinent to understanding today’s text as I hope to show you in due time. Because what is at stake here is the authority and deity of Jesus Christ. How could the Jews know for sure that what He was teaching was true? Was His message trustworthy? Was He claiming to be God, and was that a true teaching?
Now the Gospel of John is different from the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Even more specifically than the others, John wants to show that Jesus is the Son of God, the very God come in the flesh. In the first place, rather than starting his gospel with the birth of Christ as the other writers do, John opens his gospel with Jesus in heaven, an eternity past before His physical birth. He says, ”In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John does not present miracles in his gospel, he has signs. That is, his miracles are intended to teach spiritual truth. He is very strategic in deciding which signs to include, and those which he does are used to point to Jesus’ divinity. Furthermore, the book of John is characterized by the upper room discourse, in chapters 13 through 16, and then the great high priestly prayer, in chapter 17.
But one of the primary things that characterizes the Gospel of John as different is the claim of divinity that Jesus Christ makes for Himself. They are unique in the sense that they are self-proclaimed. And that was a problem for the Jews. It was a problem because the law specified that truth cannot be established on the basis of a single testimony, but that only by the testimony of two or three witnesses may a matter be established.
The claims of Christ are extraordinary to say the least. The well known prophets of other religions such as Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius did not claim to be God. But Christ claimed to be God. For example, Jesus has proclaimed in the temple, with thousands of people in attendance at the Feast of Tabernacles, three great claims equated with the pre-existent God of the Israelites. The first statement was, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.”
Now in that claim, Jesus is speaking at the exact moment when the priests poured water into basins which spilled down upon the altar, signifying the water which came from the rock in the wilderness when Moses struck it. John tells us in the next verse that Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit who had not yet been given to those who believed. Paul said in 1Cor. 10:4 that “all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ.” So the rock was Christ, and the water is a picture of the Holy Spirit which springs from Christ, welling up inside of the believer. This picture of living water flowing from our innermost being is representative of the life of Christ, the power of Christ, living in us, enabling us to do the works of Christ and to understand the truth of God.
That was the reason that in the first instance of water coming from the rock, Moses was told to strike the rock, signifying that God would smite Jesus on the cross, and by His sacrifice making us holy so we are able to receive the Holy Spirit. But 40 years later in the second occurrence of Moses smiting the rock for water he was disobedient. Because God does not strike Jesus again and again. He was the sacrifice for sin once on the cross, and now He ever lives to make intercession for us. Hence, the second time Moses needed only to speak, to ask for God to give water, signifying that we have a mediator, great high priest in heaven, Jesus who is able to make intercession for us.
So in the first statement in effect Jesus is saying that He was the Rock in the wilderness, from which the Israelites were able to drink. And in the second statement, Jesus cries out during another ritual when the priests lit the great candelabras which lit up the courtyard and the temple during the evening, saying, “I am the light of the world, he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”
In this second statement, Jesus indicates that He is the great “I Am”, the name God gave to Moses at the burning bush. And then thirdly, He compares Himself to the pillar of fire that led and protected the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. That was the significance of the ceremony during the Feast which was the context for Jesus’ proclamation. It celebrated the light that shone above the tabernacle over the camp of the Israelites and protected them as they traveled. And at just the moment when the priests lit the candelabras, Jesus cried out in the temple, “I am the light of the world, he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life.”
So Jesus proclaims with great boldness who He is, and what His purpose is, and I’m sure the full import of what He said was not lost on His hearers, especially the Pharisees. And yet their response was not to accept the truth of what He was saying, but to focus on a technicality. They say, "You're bearing record of yourself. Your record therefore is not true. “ What they are really saying is, "You're not following the teaching of the law.”
In fact, Jesus Himself had stated that principle of the law, back in chapter 5 verse 31 Jesus said, "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true." So you would think that perhaps the Pharisees have a point in their accusation. But Jesus answers them in a way that shows that while in His flesh He has submitted Himself to the Law, but in His divinity He is outside of the Law, because He is the author of the Law.
So to establish that He is outside the law, first of all He says, “Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.” In other words, men are creatures of the present. We cannot revisit the past, nor can we know the future. That is the province of God alone. Therefore the testimony of men is unreliable, but what Christ knew in Himself embraced the two eternities, the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future. And therefore, He knows that the things that He says are true.
Secondly He says that they may judge according to appearance or human logic. But He does not judge by appearances or human standards. Vs.15, “You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone.” That is exactly what Jesus said in John 3:17, "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
But the world would in fact one day be judged by Him, because they rejected Him. So vs 18 says, "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” The judgment of sin was already in place in the world. It is only removed by Christ. So to reject Christ is to reject forgiveness of that judgment, and thus the judgment remains upon him. But Christ came the first time to save the world, not to judge it. Judgment came upon the world way back in the Garden of Eden with the first Adam. Salvation from judgment comes with the second Adam.
Not only can we say that Christ was the second Adam, but there is a sense in which Christ was the second Noah as well. Heb.11:7 says “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” Again, the condemnation of the world had already been established. The ark represented salvation for the world, but they rejected it. The Bible says that Noah preached 120 years, and yet we have no record of his message. His message was the living testimony of his life, and the coming destruction was foretold by the building of the ark. So also Christ is patient, not willing for any to perish, and the gospel has been preached for 2000 years so that they who reject it are without excuse, condemning themselves to destruction.
The third argument Jesus presents to them is to say that divine testimony can only be witnessed to by a divine being. Note vs.16 "But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent Me. Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true. I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.” So Jesus says that God the Father also testifies concerning Him. Matt.3;17 says that at the baptism of Jesus, God spoke from heaven saying, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Only divinity can attest to the truth of divinity. No man was there in the beginning with God, only God was in the beginning with God. So if we are going to know the truth about God, then God must reveal it Himself. Finite man cannot know it, therefore he cannot attest to God’s truthfulness.
So Jesus is saying then that God can testify about Himself, otherwise we could not come to know God. God has to reveal knowledge of Him if we are to know Him. Otherwise we worship Him in ignorance. Otherwise we are left to guess how to please God. We have to imagine what God is like or compose a picture of Him based on earthly evidence such as creation. We can in fact learn that God must exist from observing nature, and we can ascertain certain eternal characteristics about God through nature, but we cannot know God fully as He wants to be known simply through nature. He must reveal Himself, He must testify of Himself if we are to know Him. And God has testified about Christ, and Christ has testified about God. Jesus was the exact representation of God, according to Hebrews 1:3.
One of the amazing things this passage illustrates is that although these men claimed to know God, they really did not know Him, because they did not recognize the truth about Jesus. I find this is the problem with many people today. They say they know God, but the god they believe in is a god of their own imagination. They are merely projecting an idea about God that is a fantasy of their own imagination. Consequently they do not know God at all. Neither do they worship God; they are worshiping a product of their imagination. As James said, “you say you believe in God, so what? The devil’s also believe and tremble.” You are not saved by believing in the existence of God. You are saved by worshipping God in the truth.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones had this to say about such people: “Their god is something which they created themselves, a being who is always prepared to oblige and excuse them. They do not worship Him with awe and respect, indeed they do not worship Him at all. They reveal that their so-called god is no god at all in their speech. For they are forever saying that "they simply cannot believe that God will punish the unrepentant sinner to all eternity, and this and that." They cannot believe that God will do so, therefore, they draw the conclusion that God does not and will not. In other words, God does what they believe he ought to do or not do. What a false and blasphemous conception of God! How utterly untrue and unworthy! Such is the new paganism of today.” That was written about 60 years ago. How much more true it is today.
So once again, the Pharisees don’t want to acknowledge the truth of what Jesus is saying. Instead they try a personal attack to disparage His credibility. Jesus is obviously speaking of His heavenly Father, but they try to disparage His legitimacy by bringing up the rumor of His illegitimate birth. They are insinuating that His father in the flesh, Joseph, who was actually His step father, was not his legitimate birth father, and so then Jesus was born out of wedlock.
Vs. 19 So they were saying to Him, "Where is Your Father?" Jesus answered, "You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” Now you might look at that at first and think, well now, that's an incomplete answer, He hasn't said where is His Father. He hasn't answered their question. But He's answered the more fundamental question. He said you don't know Me because you don't know my Father. If I produced my Father you wouldn't even know him. If you had known Me, you would have known the Father. One knows the Father only as he knows the Son. There is no other way to the Father, except through the Son. The God of the Scriptures is only known through the Son. Over and over again the Bible teaches that. The Lord Jesus later on will say, after Phillip asks him, "Lord, show us the Father." He will turn to Phillip and say, "Phillip, have I been so long time with you, and yet you have not known Me? He that has seen Me has seen the Father. How then do you say, show us the Father." And then later on he will say, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Me." It's impossible to know God except through the Son.
Now John concludes this section by saying in vs.20, “These words He spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; and no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come.” And I can’t help but think that this is the bookend of a single thread of teaching that began back in chapter 7 vs. 8 where Jesus said to His brothers, ”Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.” Now in chapter 8vs.20 we see that even though Jesus said all these things in the temple, in the very headquarters of those who sought to kill Him, no one laid a hand on Him because His hour had not come. His hour speaking of course, of the hour in which He would lay down His life for the sins of the world.
And I think if you look at this section in total you will see that the theme of Jesus being sent from God, being in unity with God, presenting the truth to the world and then going back to God is consistent throughout the whole section. Implicit in this passage is the principle that God exists out of time, and Jesus being One with God, existed in eternity past, but came into time present, in order to bring the truth of salvation to the world. Those that believe in Him, He promises to give them life, to give them the deposit of their inheritance, the Holy Spirit, and to give them all the blessings of God. But those that reject Him remain in darkness, and as such will ensure their own destruction as they remained condemned by that rejection.
This principle of faith in Christ revealing the truth of God was stated in chapter 7 vs. 17 "If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.” This is the principle that belief in Christ is self validating, when you submit your will to God, then God will reveal His will to you. You will know the truth, when you submit to the truth that has been revealed to you. Repentance and faith leads to confirmation of the truth.
Those who claim a superficial form of Christianity would rather skip over texts like the one we have in front of us today. Instead they would rather find a text that focuses on some benefit to us, like the power to heal, or the power to perform miracles. Let’s find something that assures us of our specialness. Something dramatic, exciting. The attention of many in the church today is firmly fixed on what they suppose to be the dramatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit. We don’t want to know God, we want to experience Him.
But if we are going to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth, then we need to make sure that our worship is based in sound doctrine, and that our doctrine comes from the facts of the gospel which were written for our instruction. Jesus has much to say here about who He is, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So it behooves us to study this passage thoroughly, that we might fully know the truth of God, so that we might worship Him in Spirit and in truth, and not be led astray by a gospel which is not according to Christ, but manipulated by self serving individuals who wish to twist the gospel to serve themselves rather than serving the Lord.
As I said earlier, to judge according to appearances means to judge according to human experience. Human experience is the fail point of much modern Christianity today. Unfortunately doctrine has taken a secondary place to experience. So then, what we feel, what we think, the way we determine truth, is dependent upon our human experience, our human judgment. And from our experience, or human reasoning, we then interpret scripture or even reject scripture and determine for ourselves what is worship or determine according to our dictates what God is like. But that is not the pattern of the gospel and that is not what Jesus taught. God must disclose Himself to us if we are going to know Him. And we have to submit ourselves to His truth if we are going to be found acceptable to Him. So all human experience must be subject to sound doctrine. And when we believe in Him as He has declared Himself to be, then we must submit ourselves to do His will, and then we will know the truth of God, because the Holy Spirit will lead us and guide us as we study His word. That is the pattern of the gospel. Only then can you know the truth that can truly make you free.
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