Jesus IS - Part 1- The Gospel of John - The Bridegroom
Jesus Is - The Gospel of John • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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GREET EVERYONE-
Good Morning Loved Ones
If I have not had a chance to meet you; My name is Scott and I am a follower of Jesus and have the privilege of serving Him as the Lead Pastor among the people of Stonewater Fellowship.
INVITATIONS
KAIROS - meal tickets and prayer chains.
This morning we are going to begin a new series as we continue walking through the Gospel of John together - Titled “Jesus IS”
SO
LETS GRAB OUR BIBLES IF YOU HAVE ONE AND
Open it to John Chapter 3 and verse 22 as we begin to expose what the God says through the Apostle John about How God describes Jesus.
NOW If you don’t have a bible or simply would like a new one!……..
PRAYER OVER SERIES
AS we began this walk we began Asking the question “Who is Jesus?”
We heard through the Holy Spirit that Jesus is GOD - Jesus is the creator - Jesus is the one on whom His name can be called on and He is the one who can be trusted
Through the Word Jesus is the One who invites us INTO relationship with Himself. AND to come and see what a difference He can make.
That Jesus was a God/Man sent with a purpose.
And Jesus is the one who speaks of Miraculous Rebirth and Everlasting Life.
In this series My prayer is that we will be able to identify Jesus as some titles by Saying
Jesus IS -
Jesus is the Bridegroom
Jesus is All Satisfying
Jesus IS the sower of Eternal Life
Jesus IS the great Healer
Jesus IS God with Authority.
But here is my prayer -
Not that we can say "Jesus is” things becasue the Bible says Jesus is these things -
I pray that we would say these things becasue Jesus actually IS these things in our life through our experience with HIM.
And if for some reason we have not turned to Jesus to be all of these things in our life - WE would turn again and again and again - bowing the knee to Him as Lord and Let Him be all of these things - SO our hearts and lives will cry out loud - Jesus IS
PRAYER OVER MESSAGE
My Prayer over this mornings message is that we would understand the relationship that we have as individuals and as the assembled called out ones - That we have with Jesus.
not just the relationship or the fact that you have one - But what are the Dynamics of the relationship -
That the relationship you should have with Jesus is one of greater power and influence over your life that anyone or anything else.
And the power of His influence comes from what happens with-in not what we can control from with-out.
And our understanding of the dynamics of the relationship we have with Him is described as a marriage - Bride and Bride Groom.
Our hearts and Experience would cry out loud Jesus is the Bride Groom and we are His Bride.
ENGAGEMENT –
When we hear the words Bride and Bride groom we automatically think about Marriage.
and I think it is VERY natural and Normal to when we hear Bride and Bride Groom to think about weddings -
Celebrations - Ceremony - Weddings Festivities - Costumes and Decorations - Meals -
And for moms and dads of the bride and groom - Money!
When we think about Weddings and all of the trappings that Go with that -
WE rarely if Ever do we think about the relationship that is necessary for the Bride and the Bride Groom.
You wee when we think about weddings we rarely thing about marriage.
Weddings - The ritual of Getting married is over in just a few minutes - A short story of you will. Like a reader digest story.
But Marriage - That takes a lifetime - It is an LP album - A novel
And when we do think about marriage in our culture - Marriage is not looked at like a novel -
Marriage is not defines by the roles in the relationship -
What the Bride does - What the bride groom does -
SO what has happens to us is we as a culture have redefined Marriage in what ever way we think -
Not just in what Marriage IS but also in the roles of the Bride and Bride groom.
How ever the Bride does her thing and What ever the groom does His thing - Well as long as they sat together and have soem kids -
All will work out in the end or at least it is supposed to be.
I actually hear this the other day - AND I think it is really true now a days-
Young ladies are trained what to expect form a husband and young men are trained how to treat a wife.
But what does not or rarely happen is Young ladies are not trained on how to treat a husband and young men are not trained on what they should expect from a wife.
Here is the funny thing - When I said this there are some ladies in the room or watching on live stream that said -
That women have the right to enter into marriage with a man that also should enter into marriage without ANY trained healthy expectations at all on How His wife will treat him.
That today is called all kinds of crazy names.
Because we have been discipled into this kind of relational framwork
SO people enter into marriage without the proper preparation as to what the Bride and the Bridegroom are supposed to life out this relationship.
With unreasonable and unmet expectations and what has happened is marriage has become transactional - You do this and I will do that and if you break that - I can find my way out - we will just go amicably our own way and roll the dice again that I will find the one who meets my underdeveloped expectations.
In our culture those are called starter marriages.
TENSION
The problem that this created when we step take any of those long term relationship frameworks into our relationship with Jesus.
and we hear that We are the Bride of Christ -
We enter into our relationship with Jesus Expectation Free -
We enter into it with A cultural bride syndrome where we have been conditioned by modern evangelism as to what to expect form Jesus as the bride groom but no real training as to what to Jesus as our bridegroom expects from us.
and there fore what lots and lots of people have done is entered into the relationship with Jesus thinking My expectation is that Jesus will save me from the wrath of God and I will go to heaven -
And my salvation is a free gift - Ot will cost me nothing - i can say thins prayer and walk this Isle - and it is a FREE GIFT -
And the Scripture - In fact Jesus Himself says There will be many that day who say to me Lord Lord and don't get in - but only those who do the will of My father.
Jesus talks about Hell as a place of weeping and knashing of teeth.
I imagine the weeping is the people who thought they were going to make it and did’t and they become instantly aware “Oh no I’m here!
BACKGROUND
What the very best friend of Jesus is going to introduce to us through the person of John The Baptist - This seemingly Crazy man who was proclaiming “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”
is the Idea that Jesus is the Jesus is the Bride Groom who has come for and is in possession of His bride.
UNPACKING
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized (for John had not yet been put in prison).
The Apostle John picks up this narrative with the words “After This”
After what?
What John is referring to is the previous part of the Narrative when He records for us the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus where Jesus speaks of two miraculous events - 1 Being born again and the requirement of being born again in order to enter the kingdom of God
and 2- The fact that entrance to the kingdom is inter correlated to receiving Eternal life.
and so After this - this could mean after week then this or after months then this.
So after this what is happening is Jesus is beginning to Baptize people and Jon the Baptist is also continuing to baptize.
What we will learn later is that is was His disciples who were doing the Baptizing.
Now a discussion arose between some of John’s disciples and a Jew over purification.
SO what happens is there is a question that comes up from a jewish person over “purification”
The Jewish ritual of Purification was what a person would do to make them selves clean again.
That can be a little confusing so let me add some detail.
There were thing that a person could do or happen that would make a person ceremonial unclean - And in that state of being ceremonial unclean a person could not go to the temple and worship GOD.
SO they would take a ritualistic bath and restore themselves to being Clean and in that state it was illegal accorging to the jewish Law for them to go and worship GOD.
Jesus of course completely undoes this - of course in three ways -
ONE way - it is the inside, the very nature of man that needs to be made clean not the outside.
TWO - There is no ritual, no work we can do to make ourselves clean in any way.
THREE - Come as you are to Jesus and worship God through Him and He will make you clean and worthy of being in the presence of GOD to worship by giving you His cleanness.
And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”
And what arises out of this discussion over purification is a comparison between what Johns disciples consider competition.
Competing ministries!
Look at what Johns disciples say -
The one you bore witness of
He is also baptizing people
and
All are going to Him -
They are getting more people than we are!
And Johns answer is so counter cultural today
Today - in the world of competition, people set out out concure the people that are actively involved in other ministries.
In the church world we call that “sheep stealing” and that is when we pursue people who are involved in another ministry and invite them over and over to come to their ministry -
Just to be clear - In our being visible to the world we do not target other church members -
Our visibility is specifically designed to open our doors to the “church shoppers” people intentionally looking for a new church for what ever reason.
the “d-churched” meaning people who haven't connected to a local church people in a long time.
and the last group the”un-churched” people who have never ever come to faith and been connected well to a healthy, loving, united community of people pursuing Jesus together.
But John’s disciples are noticing that John Ministry of baptizing for the forgiveness of Sin is in a downward trend and Jesus ministry of Baptizing for new life is on an upward trend and they think there is something wrong with That.
Watch what Jon Says - This is so very important!
John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’
In these two verses what John is saying is “we recieved this ministry from God as we recieved everything else.
That’s what he is meaning in verse 27
and then He reminds His disciples that He is not Jesus - He never claimed to be -
He makes it clear to them that He was the one that God appointed to come before Jesus.
and John is seemingly very very happy and content with this - We can tell this my the TONE of the Text.
in verse 29 John explains why the decrease in His ministry is great with Him and he uses the topic of Bride and Bride Groom to make the point with His disciples.
and this is EXTREMELY important for us to grasp the fullness of this illustration so that we too can see Jesus in the fullness of who God has positioned Him to be.
AND at the same time - John own position in relationship to Jesus
John Begins this by saying:
The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete.
and What John has just done is identified Jesus as the Bride Groom and those that follow Him, Those that God has given Jesus to be followers of His - The Bride.
This is the very first time in all of Scripture that the relationship between God and Man - Between Jesus and His followers - Between Jesus and His Assembly of the Called out one - Between Jesus and His church is defined as The Bridegroom and the Bride.
To us this morning this claim might not have too much significance - But to a Jewish person - Johns Disciples - And this other Jewish Guy that was having this discussion about purification .
This would have been an Earth Shattering declaration -
and there are several things that make this such and extremely earth shattering declaration by John the Baptist.
Back then - Marriages we completely different than they are today.
Bride Groom and Brides were considered permanently united together even before they went through the wedding ritual.
The role of the Bridegroom as Leader and Authority in the relationship was established -
The Role of the Bride as being subject to Her bride groom was established
The Bride groom was leader and the Bride helper, follower, supporter.
Bride groom as Supplier, provider and protector and soul-mate and bride as steward and multiplayer and the one who’s soul loved.
this is lived out in this culture in real and practice ways -
the Bride groom would give His bride a house she would return to Him a home.
The Bridegroom, as a fisherman would provide the ingredience and His bride would multiply that and return to Him a meal.
John then continue to develop this Idea of His own position in relationship to Jesus.
and What He does is He places His own purpose as pointing others to Jesus.
“When the friend of the bridegroom heard the Bridegroom - He rejoyces greatly at the bridegrooms voice!”
Why?
Because the bride and the Bride groom are going to be united as one!
At the end of VS 29 this is why John can truly say “His joy is complete”
His joy is complete becasue Jesus has come as the Bridegroom to be united with His bride the Church.
Who is the Church?
We are the Church!
He must increase, but I must decrease.”
John is basically saying “my work is complete” the things I must do are different Now that Jesus has come -
VSS 31-36 john the Baptist continues to speak here in this narrative and what He does is he expands the severity of Jesus showing up and actually being the Bridegroom from GOD.
And in this John the Baptist Seperated Himslef and Every other person on the planet form Jesus - as well as declaring that Jesus has Authority and responsibility over His creation just as, in that culture, a bridegroom had authority and responsibility over His bride.
He is also using these analogies to explain to this disciples why His work is complete.
He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all.
He is indicating that Jesus is from above and look at the beginning “above all”
He says this twice!
He who comes from above is above all -
he who comes from Heaven is above all
He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony.
This is Jesus - bearing witness to the movement of new birth and new life - the same way that Jesus was sharing with Nicodemus in the previous verses.
VS 33
John then comes behind this and says something very simple and very straightforward.
Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.
There are several things John is bringing to our minds in what He is saying about Jesus.
The invitation of Jesus is open “Whoever”
Who ever believes Jesus, who ever trusts Jesus - That is what He means by “Receives His testimony”
“Sets his seal to this”
Here is what John is saying - When Some one wrote a note back then, one of the things that Jewish people did - was to melt Was and use a stapmor other things to make an impression in the wax to seal the note until the intended reciever got the note.
When the reciever got the note and the seal was on it the reciever woulld then have a guarentee that what was written in the note were words form the actual person that wrote the note and they could be trusted as His words.
This is what John is saying that when we recieve the words fo Jesus - We set our seal our guraentee that God is true.
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Then john Talks About the spirit being Given by God -
Loved ones - Notice it is GOD who gives the Spirit without measure -
John is saying Two things about God giving the Spirit.
First of all He is referring to the Holy Spirit.
Here is what it means “without measure”
God is never going to say “This is all the spirit you can Have”
In fact just the opposite is true - God will give the believer all of the Holy Spirit - without limit.
The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
John then gives additional witness to Who Jesus is and the Position that Jesus has in this world and the position Jesus has with God the father.
It is interesting to notice that in these to passages of text VSS 34-35 the three persons of God are brought to bear on these declarations -
Spirit Father and SON!
and at then end of verse 35 John speaks once again to the Position that Jesus has in this world and in the framework of Heaven -
The Father Loves the Son and has given ALL THINGS
Everyone say “All things”
All things into His hands.
VSS36
Is one of the most neglected and ignored scriptures in all of the Bible.
In fact there are many many people who have been in churches their whole life and never knew that the Gospels much less the bible would even say something like this,
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
here is what John has just said -
John the Baptist - who is the pre - proclaimer of the Gospel - The announcer of Jesus - The one who boldly and out-loudly proclaimed to the crowds and everyone with in ear shot “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World”
John has just differentiated for His own disciples and for everyone who would read and hear these words for the next two thousand years - the fruit that will be on the tree of the life of everyone who is truly saved.
Watch what he says:
and loved ones this is eternally important -
Loved ones Culturally this has every contractual connection with the rolls of Bridegroom and Bride mentioned before -
This has Every contextual connection to Johns twice Proclamations that Jesus is Above all
This have Every contextual connection to the proclamation by john that Jesus has been given all things by the father.
and becasue of these contextual connections vss36 then becomes a logical and rational conclusion
VSS 36 begins with the open invitation of Jesus.
Who Ever
Everyone say “who ever”
Who Every Believes -
Believes means to ? To Trust!
Who Ever TRUSTS the Son - That is Jesus has Eternal life.
This is the promise of Jesus, the promise of Scripture - The Promise of God in and through the person of Jesus.
This is the Good news The Gospel
Whoever Trust in the Son HAS - Possesses as an ever lasting promise - The greatest gft that any person can recieve - the greates blessing that GOd can besto - Eternal life.
BUT WATCH -
John then asks and answers the question - How is that trust lived out?
What does Trusting Jesus in this life Mean for all who claim to trust Him?
John implies in this declaration that Trusting in Jesus means Obedience to Jesus as the one who has all authority - as the one who is above all things - as the one who is the bridegroom as the one whom the father has given all things.
Watch what John Says -
Whoever - everyone say “whoever” this means everyone is included in this examination.
Who ever does not Obey - The word in the original language of the New Testament means “a direct refusal or passive unwillingness to comply with the demands of authority to disobey or be in disobedience”
John says: Whoever disobeys the Son - Shall not see life -
What are the implications of not seeing eternal life -
Recipients of the wrath of God.
“That is what John says when He says “the wrath of God remains on Him”
THE GOSPEL CONNECTION
Loved ones this is what the Gospel Saves us from -
This is what the eternal life that Jesus came to give us saves us from - Salvation earned by Jesus, Granted From Jesus and found in Jesus saves us from the wrath of God.
Loved ones we are save By God, We are saved From God - We are saved to God as his Sons Bride -
and Loved ones What John has just said is it matter not what we say becasue of our salvation
It matter not what we think becasue of our salvation -
It matter not what our confessions of faith are becasue of our salvation
What matters is what we do becasue of our salvation -
STICKY POINT
This is what needs to Stick with us this morning -
first is we do not obey Jesus to try to ear our salvation -
Jesus earns our salvation by His WORK -
Him coming in the flesh and dwelling among us - HIS Living a perfect life in perfect obedience to the father
Obedience to even death on the Cross Him taking all the wrath of God that was resting against those who would be given eternal life - by
Becoming Sin even though He new no sin so that we who believe might become the righteousness of God. -
His bride and
Loved ones - He as the bridegroom - He unites us with Himself with expectations.
THE COMMANDS OF CHRIST -
1- Repent and Believe Trust
2- Ba Baptized
3- Pray
4- Go make disciples
5-Love
6 - Worship THROUGH perseverance
7- The Table of Jesus - Communion - The Lord’s Supper
8 - Give
9- Gather
10 - Long term Study, Growth and multiplication - Discipleship!
Let us be found faithful -
Let us live a life of representing Christ and Making Him known to anyone any-where any-time
PRAYER TEAM
