Believing Jesus

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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Believing Jesus

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2020 · 6 December 2020

You have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and that’s the thesis of this gospel. So you have to know who the Jesus Christ is. Therefore this is a selective biography of Jesus. It’s not about health and wealth in this life. It’s not about morality. It’s not about changing social structures. The message is about the life to come, everlasting life through believing in Jesus Christ.

So the Son of God comes to the nation Israel, the people of God who are to be God’s missionary nation. They’re not the end, they’re the means to the end. However, John also tells us Jesus came to His own and His own received Him not. Now, when we come to John 5, we begin to see this clearly because in verse 16 the Jews are persecuting Jesus. And in verse 18 they’re seeking to kill Him.

So Jesus begins then to go for those who will believe, it’s a small group. There are a few by the time we get into John 6. He has some followers but you’ll see when we get into that chapter they start to disappear. Then the Kingdom is opened up beyond the Jews to the Gentiles and the church is established and the church then becomes the mission agency to the world to replace a failing Israel.

So John 5 gives us the declaration of the deity of Christ. In verses 17 to 24, Jesus declares Himself God by saying He is the same as God in every area. And in verse 23 He says He’s to be worshiped as God is worshiped, honored as God is honored. So Jesus gives His own personal declaration of His deity and starting in verse 30 He calls on other witnesses to proof this to the Jews.

So He turns to the witness that God the Father has given through John the Baptist, through the miracles and through the Old Testament. And we looked at all of that. So it is a declaration by the Son of God Himself as to who He is, attested to by the Father through John the Baptist, through the miracles that Jesus did which the Father enabled Him to do and through the Old Testament.

Verse 40, “And you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” How sad is that Jesus is not accepted with all that supporting evidence that He is who He claims to be. And they all said John the Baptist is a prophet from God. We know that that son was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. He was preaching repentance in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah.

Sinners are going to be held responsible before God for their unwillingness, for their unbelief. In John 3:19, this is the judgment that the light, meaning the Lord Jesus Christ, has come into the world but men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. The judgment will fall because unbelievers were unwilling to leave their sins and their darkness.

If you’re saved, it is because of the will of God. We saw that in John 3, you must be born from above. Something has to happen to you that you don’t contribute to. So we have to give God all the credit for our salvation. But sinners takes all the responsibility for their unwillingness and unbelief. Those two truths are taught in Scripture. If you have trouble harmonizing them, join the human race.

The sinner’s condemnation is never because there is some limit in the atoning work of Christ. It’s never attributed to a limited atonement so that there’s no way to include these people because there’s no provision for them. Judgment is never attributed to a lack of invitation, because we’re to take the gospel invitation to the ends of the world to every creature. It’s never attributed to a lack of information.

So our Lord concludes John 5 then with some words about the unwillingness of the sinner that are very instructive. And He’s here talking to the Jewish leaders and He’s diagnosing their unwillingness to believe. But that’s not the limit of this because the whole nation fell into the same category of unwillingness and you’re living in the twenty-first century of a world that has continued to be unwilling.

So the principles of unwillingness and the character of unwillingness are still today exactly what they used to be. This then speaks to us. The Lord assesses three elements to their unwillingness: an unwillingness to glorify Christ, and unwillingness to love God, and an unwillingness to believe Scripture. And those are the very things the Jews would have prided themselves on.

So Jesus condemns them for their spiritual pride. They were messianic and yet they don’t glorify the Messiah. They were supposedly lovers of God, but that was a deception. They gave superficial homage to the Scripture but didn’t believe what it said. So He literally cuts deeply into the body of their hypocritical false religion. Now Jesus knew what to say because He knew what they think.

Number one then, they were unwilling to glorify Him. Verse 41, “I do not receive glory from men.” Notice verse 42, “But I know you.” We only know the person from what they said and our experience with them. Jesus knew them because He knew what they thought. He knows the components of this unwillingness. You are unwilling to believe because you will not give Me glory.

It’s all about Christ. Will you honor Christ? Will you deny yourself? Take up your cross and follow Christ. And that is the issue He is making here. You don’t give Me glory. In fact, back in verse 23, remember, He said, “You cannot honor the Father unless you honor the Son.” Jesus says, you don’t give Me glory, you call Me a blasphemer, you persecute Me and you seek to kill Me.”

Look what it said in Isaiah 53:2-3, “For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground.” That’s how they viewed Him. “There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” The leaders didn’t think anything of Him. “He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”

Now that’s exactly what the Jews did to Him and they will one day confess that. Look at verse 44, “How can you believe?” And John circles back to this same point from verse 41. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another but you do not seek the glory that is from the only God? You can’t believe when you’re so busy receiving glory from people that you can’t give honor to the One from God.

Number two, you’re too busy seeking glory from others for yourself. And they were wrapped in the pursuit of self-exaltation, self-promotion, and self-glory. It was the mutual admiration society among those leaders. In Matthew 23:4, at the end of His ministry, Jesus addresses these leaders of Israel and He says, “They do all their deeds to be noticed by men.”

John 12:43 says they desire the approval of men more than the approval of God. They broadened their phylacteries, a tiny case that they carried around with the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength.” But instead of just a little case, they make it a huge box to portray themselves as noble, righteous and holy.

In Matthew 23:6, they love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues. Verse 7 says, they wanted to be called rabbi. Verse 10 says, they wanted to be called leader. But they were anything but servants. Jesus in verse 11 says, “The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled.” That is an illustration of their approach.

So you don’t really have an interest in the Messiah, you have only interest in yourself. And they were unwilling to love God. Verse 42, “But I know you, you do not have the love of God in yourselves.” You don’t love God. That’s just shocking because they had a little box with their life verse, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.”

That box meant: apply that when you work and apply it when you think. But because it wasn’t in their heart, they put it in a box and strapped it on their wrist and on their head. That’s not the point. Think this way. Strap this on your arm to act this way. They prided themselves on being the lovers of God. But Jesus says I know you, and you don’t love God at all, just yourselves.

Verse 43, “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.” If a son came in the father’s name, you were receiving the father. If you loved the Father, you would receive the Son. But I’ve come in My Father’s name, you don’t receive Me.” You will not honor Me, nor do you love the one who sent Me.

All false religion is dishonest, it’s all attached on the outside. It doesn’t live in the heart because people in false religions just love themselves and glorify themselves, not God and not Christ. “But if another comes in his own name, you receive him.” Well, the history of Israel is a history of false Messiahs and historians have counted as many as 70 different people who claimed to be the Messiah.

And when the judgment comes, our Lord promises that there are going to be false Christs. Matthew 24:24, “false prophets arise, showing great signs and wonders so as to mislead, even the elect.” There’s going to be competition for Messiah in the time of the Tribulation. The Antichrist, the ultimate false Messiah, as described in Daniel 9 is the one with whom Israel makes a pact for seven years.

Israel has always been willing to follow a liar and a deceiver and a false Messiah, that’s been their history in the past and it will happen again in the future. And they’ll be pretty convincing because they’ll do satanic wonders. They have not, however, been willing to follow the true Messiah whom they had despised and rejected. And they were unwilling to believe Scripture.

And then number three in verse 44, “You do not seek the Glory which is from the one and only God.” Capitalize the Glory because it’s referring to Christ. Who is the Glory that came from God? John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw His Glory as of the only begotten from the Father.” There is the only begotten, the Glory of the Father manifest.

Verse 45-47, “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses is Moses in whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me for he wrote about Me. 47 but if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” Matthew 23:1-2, “Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.”

In other words, they rule from Old Testament Law. And Moses refers not only to the writings of Moses, but it’s a cryptic term for the whole of the Old Testament Scripture. If we want to be formal, there are three sections in the Jewish Old Testament: Moses, which is the first five books, the prophets, the major and minor prophets, and then the rest which are called the holy writings.

The Old Testament is about Jesus. Jesus Himself refers to twenty Old Testament persons and quotes from nineteen Old Testament books. That was the Apostles’ Bible. That was the early gospel preachers’ Bible. And they found Christ in that. When the Apostles preach, they preach the Old Testament in the book of Acts. They’re preaching the gospel from the Old Testament.

And when they wrote the New Testament, there are 312 Old Testament passages quoted specifically in the New Testament. There are about five hundred and thirty references to the Old Testament. Fifty references in Romans alone. Verse 46, “if you believed Moses, you would believe Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

Even the Jews today are in that same dilemma. If they will not accept what Moses said about the Messiah, then why would they believe in Jesus? So, the deeper look at the issue here, unwillingness basically is a mix of these three things, an unwillingness to give honor to Christ an unwillingness to love God, and an unwillingness to believe Scripture. And that is still true today.

In pastoral ministry, we deal with a lot of issues in people’s lives as we kind of try to help people enjoy their Christian experience. But the most difficult thing to deal with is a lack of assurance of salvation, fearing you’re not saved, worrying about sin. Thinking, I sin continuously in the same way. I’m constantly disappointed in myself. How do I know that I’m really saved?

Those are the wrong questions. Let me tell you how you can know if you’re a Christian and I’m just going to turn it into a positive question. Do you desire to honor Christ? Do you seek to glorify Christ? Do you love God? Do you believe Scripture? If you do, then the Lord has made your unwilling heart willing and that’s the miracle of conversion. So it’s not about your lack of perfection.

It’s about asking things that relate to direction. Which manifests itself in a desire to worship Him, obey Him, rejoice in Him, and praise Him. Do you believe Scripture? Those believes are unnatural. So when contemplating your spiritual condition, those are the questions you should ask. And if you answer “I do,” even if you sometimes fall short, then you have been saved by God. Let us pray.



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