A Summary of Faith
Notes
Transcript
ME
ME
Perhaps you have heard people give great synopsis, maybe its from a book that you hadn’t read yet, or maybe its from a movie and you heard a good explanation of what was to come…
OR maybe you got one of those fantastic Cliffs notes and it helped you in high school or college to get through some hard pieces of literature… I may or may not have used some to get through an amazing piece of literature in high school called of Crime and Punishment by Doestoevsky to make sure I could really understand it without having to put in the time to actually read it, which is funny, because I love to read, but there was something about that book that I couldn’t get in to… Anyway, what we are finding this morning is just that… a synopsis, a cliffs notes of what Jesus has already told us, he is going to very quickly give us a quick synopsis of the gospel message… and so this won’t be an unabridged version of everything we believe as Christians, but instead we are going to look at the things that are of the first importance to us as Christians.
EXPOSITION
EXPOSITION
As we begin to dive into John 12:44-50 this morning, we need to remember that Jesus has pulled himself back earlier and was keeping himself out of the public eye, but now we find him crying out to people, and we aren’t exactly sure who Jesus is talking to in this moment… but it is presumable that he has come out of his hiding and walked back into the public view and begun to teach again…
44 And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.
This would be the fourth instance of Jesus crying out in the gospel, you can look back to 7:28,37 and as recently as chapter 11 outside the tomb of lazarus when he calls for him to come out….for those instances and see those were a specific time and place that he had cried out and there aren’t as many specifics here as to those other times…If you follow in the other Gospels, he will cry out two more times, both of those being on the cross…
And we see Jesus crying out and he is almost urging the people to listen and understand what he is telling them… this synopsis… this summary of the faith… and the first thing he wants them to understand is this relationship between the Father and the Son, it is important to him they get the idea of what is going on and how it really works… and he is telling them,
Look if you believe in me, you have this relationship with me, and if you have this relationship with me, you also have a relationship with the father…
And I think we have to understand why this is so important and why this is such a monumental piece of information, Jesus is explaining to the people that he is so close in relationship to the father… that he is one with the father… that they are so close … this oneness that if you have Jesus, you also have the father… and its not so much because the father sent the son, its about the very essence of who they are… the very essence of the trinity that makes this relationship…
And this is important… because he is telling us we cant have Jesus and Reject the father… ad also you cannot have the father and reject Jesus… If you trust in Jesus you trust in God… if you trust in God you trust in Jesus… and it puts it out there where we can see there is no other way to God but Jesus.. you can’t have the father but through him and this is nothing new…
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
So it isn;t new information, but as we continue what we will see is he is putting a bunch of fundamentals right together, which is what some people think John did here…
45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.
And this word here for see is the greek word theoro which is where we translate our English words Theory and theorize… and in this context it means so much more than just visualize… it goes deeper much like when we see the people in verse 21 of this chapter saying they want to see jesus… it was just more than an eyesight…
But this is an observation… and getting closer to him… and by really studying him and his life and his acts we can see the heart of the father and what God is truly like… Think of his death on the cross… we see his great love… by his forsaking him we see how holy he is that he cannot let anything unclean there… and in seeing his pain and anguish on the cross we see how bad God’s wrath is against so…. so for anyone that may question, what is God like? You just point them to the life of Jesus for their study.
And Jesus goes on with his summary
46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
What we miss here if we rush through this is there is a sort of incrimination against mankind in this statement, what he is telling us is our natural state, our nature is to darkness. We are not born in light, we are born and living in darkness without him. And he is telling us the whole reason he came was so we wouldn’t have to stay that way… so we wouldn’t have to continue to live in the darkness in the world… he came and gave us light… which is nothing new in this Gospel… remember
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
And just a few verses again in Jn 12:35-36
35 So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.
36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.
So when we come to Jesus he throws us into the light, and it is reminiscent of what God did in Genesis when he said let there be light… in the moment we come to Jesus is speaking light into our lives and illuminating the darkness…
So no one can come to Jesus and remain in darkness… it is antithetical to what Jesus does, so we have to look at ourselves… but what we know from scripture is that the light of Jesus exposes and reveals…
That is it exposes the darkness in our lives and shows us what the darkness has hidden from us in our sinful lives… and because of that it should change the way we live… look at what Paul tells us in Ephesians
8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true),
10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
And so what Paul is in essence telling us in these moments is believing in christ means living for him as well… we have said before coming to Jesus doesn’t just change what you do… it changes what you want to do… and so what Paul is pushing his people and what Jesus was showing us is when we are giving and living in the light of the Lord it changes how we want to live… and we shouldn’t want to do those sinful things that kept us in darkness… does this mean we will always get it right? Of course not… but what it means is the holy spirit is constantly speaking to those areas of our lives and our hearts are wanting to do right and leave that darkness behind… it no longer consumes us… we are constantly walking away from it TOWARD Jesus.
And then Jesus goes on
47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.
48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.
There are a couple things for us to note here as we read these two verses, first, some people hear these words and use them to say that Jesus was only a man… he was not God, he was not part of the trinity… because as they read these words they think Jesus is saying it is his words only, it is not him that will return to judge the world… and I love the way A.W.Pink talks of Jesus in this manner…
“In a lowly place with a patient grace Jesus broke into this fallen world to save sinners. At the end of all things He shall return in robes of white and judge sinners with His powerful might. Once He came as a lowly servant, one day He shall return as the exalted Sovereign. He came to woo and win men, He shall come again to rule over men with a rod of iron.”
But as we read this there are three things we should remember.
There will be a last day Jesus tells us. One day everything we see around us will end, the work at hand, the life you know the world you know will end. We are in the last days we should learn, and one day like the final day will come upon us like a thief in the night - when we least expect it.
The last day will be a day of judgment. You know what I find interesting… we talk about how upon that day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, and its almost as if in that moment people will judge themselves on what they have done with Jesus. Now, I know He is the judge, but in that moment, I can’t help but imagine when people who have rejected him see him, and realize who he is and what they have done, they will know… they will know…
Lastly, the judgment will be based upon the word of Christ. Don’t like his word? Don ‘t want to read it? God forbid people mock it… it is the very thing, these words that will be the guide of our judgment.
The scary thing is what will judge us on that last day will be God’s word spoken in pulpits all across the world every Sunday… And as we hear them it should cause us to want to change our lives and get in order with God. IF it doesnt I venture to say there may be something wrong in our hearts.
And we conclude the summary this morning with our last two verses…
49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.
50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”
And Jesus has come back to where we started… talking about his relationship with the father. He says, my word is not just my word…. its what the Father gave me… And becasue his message is divine we can know that it is a good judge, it is not just words of some dude that came and taught some good things…
YOU
YOU
As you hear his words this morning, a summary of where our faith is and where it shoudl be how does it hit you? Do you believe it? Better yet do you live it?
WE
Can you imagine a world where we all lived as ift hese words were the words of life?
