Seeking Christ In Vain

21 Then Jesus said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come.”

How can Jesus say in the same sentence, “you will seek me” and “you will die in your sins”?

Ezekiel 3:16–21 “16 Now it came to pass at the end of seven days that the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 17 “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me: 18 When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. 19 Yet, if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul. 20 “Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die; because you did not give him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. 21 Nevertheless if you warn the righteous man that the righteous should not sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; also you will have delivered your soul.””

Proverbs 1:28–29 “28 “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me. 29 Because they hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the Lord,”

22 So the Jews said, “Will He kill Himself, because He says, ‘Where I go you cannot come’?”

This is mockery. They aren’t trying to say he’s going to kill himself, but that he is out of his mind. Suicide was to them something a lunatic would do. Its a slight on his sanity.

As one writer puts it, they have unwittingly become prophets. He is going to in fact hand himself over to death. John 10:18 “18 No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.””

Not a suicide, and not as one out of his mind, but in obedience to his Father. In acordance with his mission as the suffering servant.

23 And He said to them, “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

What is meant here? Jesus diagnoses the problem, the reason for their ignorance. Because they are from a different realm. They are strangers to the Word. They are worlds apart. How do you answer such a slanderous comment. Questioning ones sanity. He answers it accordingly. He shoots back at them. My identity is in God. Your identity is darkness, sin, that is on its way to death. Truly truly, I say to you unless one is born again, he cannot( is not able) see the kingdom of God. Ch 3 onward has sort of been an exposition of what the kingdom of God is. What is it to see the Kingdom of God? It’s to see Jesus for who he really is. It is to have spiritual eyes. It is to perceive things rightly, as they are, not what they appear to be. Jesus is the King of the kingdom of God, Jesus is the revealer of the Kingdom, and his kingdom his bound up in who he is and what he came to do. It is bound up in his salvific work, and his sufficiency as the God-man to accomplish that work. If you don’t see that, and do not get that from this gospel account, if you are puzzled by some of the clear statements Jesus has made concerning his person and work up to this point in the gospel, then it is probable that you still belong to the world like these Jews. I’m not talking about some of the more loaded statements that we’ve encoountered concerning eternal origins, but statements like “I am the light of the world”, “I am the Bread of life”, “he who believes in me will never parish”.

To be of the world is to have a constant cloud over your head

Is there a sense in which the believer says the same? Yes.

Do you want to know where someone is from, listen to their conversation. Is it all about things below, or is it in heaven? Many are full of this world and void of the things of heaven. The Christian is not to leave the world. Not only must we not leave the world, but we must use the world. We must use the world. How so?

“Use the world, but live on Christ. ~ Owen, XIX:217

Maybe you are living to much on the world right now and not enough on Christ. This is the war that we are in. The fight is always to put on more Christ, and free of sin, and the pleasures of the world. Do you tell other’s about your struggles of loving the world too much. Do you tell your spouse or a close bosom friend. You should. Of course, first and foremost you should bring these things to the Lord in prayer. But you should find those whom you can confide these things in. I hope you could tell me these things and ask that I would pray for you. There is nothing, no struggle with sin, that you could tell me that would surprise me. I know my own heart, and I’ve been in the church long enough now to know that I should not be surprised if a brother or sister were to let me know that they’re struggling with any number of peculiar sin’s. I had a man who was struggling with pornography, confess to me and another brother his struggle with pornography, and you know what we did? -stormed out and shunned him for the next few months— No we sat there and wept with him, and prayed for him, and listened to him, and vowed to help him in every way to help him in this time of repenting, of turning away from that vile sin.

If you are a woman and wouldn’t feel comfortable confiding in me, know that you can confide in my wife and in confidence.

You know part of me wants to know how each and every one of you struggles to rid yourself of the world, and part of me is glad that I don’t.

Does it trouble you that you might be mocked and ridiculed for not being of the world? Perhaps you have not counted the cost.

What does Jesus say in John 15? Don’t be surprised if the world is indifferent to you, for it was indifferent to me.

John 15:19 “19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 15:20 “20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…..”

But if this is you, this is cause for rejoicing. Becuase it means you are already at present a citizin of heaven. Already. That is amazing. So we are to be about it. In our throughts, in our words, and in our deeds.

24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”

Now looking back at verse 23, is it just the Jews that belong to this world, are they the only ones who are from below? Is that what John would have us take? No. Anyone who does not believe that I am-full stop- will die in their sins. Now, does this statement have reference to the divine name in Ex 3 like we’ve stated before, I am that I am? Could it be a reference to the suffering servant. It doesn’t need to be either or, because the servant of Isaiah is identified as Jehovah. It amounts to the Christ, the anointed one, the Son of the living God.

Jesus is saying your destiny hangs on me, on my person. If you do not believe, you will die in a state of sin. Children's catechism why is catechism important. Because they will know by to short question and answers.

And one more Q & A that tells of the destiny of the wicked.

If an adult were to take this catech by memory he or she would have a better theological ed than 90% of pastors in the US.

25 Then they said to Him, “Who are You?” And Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning.

26 I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him.”

What has he been doing the whole time? John 1:18 “18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” He has been declaring the Father. What is the Fathers will? Jesus. That is his will. What Jesus does is what God wills. He is God’s last will and testament. Hebrews 1:1–2 “1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son( it is narrowed down to one Word from one Son, his eternal Son. Spoke and is still speaking. The Words and actions of Jesus are the words of the Father. God is truth. Jesus is the Truth.

27 They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father.

28 Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things.

29 And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.”

30 As He spoke these words, many believed in Him.”

John, in giving us these words under the inspiration of the Spirit, is to show us that all men who have not believed in Jesus, who have not been born again, are worlds apart from Jesus, from his kingdom, and it takes nothing short of a miracle, of life from the dead, of a transfer of realms, to see, and hear, and think rightly. To perceive reality. Until then it is all strangeness.

Our application as we close is that for those of you who have been born again, you indeed are from above, you are not of this world, you indeed are Ephesians 1:3 “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,”

And with this dear beleiver we need to be more like what we are, citizens of Heaven. One thing is true of us all here today who are in Christ is that we are too much like the world yet. Our thinking still worldly, the way we treat those outside the church and inside the church is often not fitting for a citizen of heaven. We think evil in our hearts, We cut down with our mouths those whom Christ has purchased with his own blood. This

And though this be true, though it be lamentable, just as our Lord, we are not alone, the Son and the Father have not left us alone, but have given us the Spirit. Remember that Jesus is the one who batizes with the Spirit.

He is the one who takes away your sin. That work is going on in you right now, the whole work of renovating your nature by the Spirit, the penalty and power of sin, the consequences of sin. What a gloriosu thing the Christian is the new creation. The sermon title is worlds apart, the reality for the Christian in one sense is that he or she is between worlds. Because we are between worlds, we Don’t have lofty views of yourself, but low views of yourselves. We confess, God be merciful to me a sinner, do not take away your Spirit, and we have lofty views of Christ, sure lofty views of Christ in you. Amazing that you can abhor yourself(because of indewelling sin, and wonder at yourself( because of the work of the Spirit of Christ in you) in the same hour. This is the Christian life. The war between the old man, and the Spirit of Christ in you. I don’t want to steal from this afternoons message so I’ll stop their, but contemplate this week this