John 5:30-47
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The Witnesses to Jesus
The Witnesses to Jesus
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
Bearing witness is a very good and vital thing to do in this world filled with limited humans
We are, by our very nature, limited in our knoweldge
Where God is omniscient (all knowing) —we as humans are naturally ignorant—we have to be told in order to know
Thus in order to know, or understand, we MUST rely upon the witness of an outside source
This is key to all of life
If you are falsely accused of a crime
You want people who actually saw the crime to come and give accurate information—or to bear true witness
Or if you are trying to figure out what business to go with for an important product, you want to rely on previous customers to bear true witness to the different businesses
So important it is to bear or give proper witness that it is in the Decalogue, the ten commandments
#9 You shall not bear false witness
The fact that it is a commandment to refrain from saying something happened that did not speaks volumes of who we are as fallen creatures
If we were not fallen, then everyone would always want the truth, and nothing but the truth, thus everyone would tell the truth as to what they saw, or did not see
But as it is, we are fallen creatures, and false testimony abounds
False witness abounds when someone has an agenda that they wish to see happen and this agenda is not in keeping with the truth
So any witness that aids this false agenda is welcomed, no matter if it is true or not
On a small scale, my middle son needs to be taught not to bear false witness to his own crime against his younger brother just because he has a narrative of innocence that he is trying his best to narrative despite the falsehood
On a larger scale, I was taught growing up in public schools the false witness of the origins of life commonly called Macro Evolution
Our cultural god “Scientisim” or “Naturalism” claims to have the witness of this fact as clear as the laws of gravity or thermodynamics
The bottom line: truth always has witness
And it is of godly character to provide true witness because that is what God does in His Word
And witness is needed because of our limitation
Jesus is the Son of God, Son of Man, and this is the witness of all creation of all time
Why then is it widely rejected (now and then)
Not for a lack of witness (as the atheist will claim) but for a distortion of that witness—or false witness
Which is because of the sin within our hearts
We are still in this same conversation that Jesus is having against his haters—the Jewish leaders
They hate Jesus for working a miracle on the Sabbath day
And they hate Jesus for claiming equality with the Father
And Jesus responds by stating his role as Son of God and Man—salvation and judgement
And now today moves on to the witness of this lofty claim that is available and clear to the Jews
Thus he does not say—well your mistake is an understandable one since the Father is mean and keeps such things under a rock
Or, your unbelief is not your fault since these things can be hard to understand
No, instead Jesus labels the abundance of witness’ to himself and says emphatically, you distort this not in innocence but
How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
And that’s ultimately because of
But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.
In their lack of love for God, they distort the witness God provides and in so doing end up bearing false witness
Why do people not worship Christ as Son of Man, Son of God?
The answer from the one that has perfect witness is clear…they seek the glory from man and not God
Because they do not have the love of God in their hearts
And that’s what sin does to all of us
It robs God of his rightful glory
By robbing our hearts of perfect love and submission to our God
So they take the true witness of Jesus and his majesty, and because of their sin they distort it—and in their distortion they bear false witness
That’s the overview of these several verses (30-47)
And the question that we will answer is the nature of the witness’ to Jesus
And in so doing, we will see the nature of the Jews’ refusal of such witness
And what this tells us about unbelief in general
And what that tells us about true belief in general
Thus understanding true and unbelief better
Because the fact of the matter is there are people all around us who suffer from unbelief
And there are people all around who suffer from false belief
And we need to be able to understand the nature of it—and celebrate the antidote of it
The doctor who is ignorant of the disease will be ignorant of the cure and most the time will make the situation worst with his supposed remedies
We need to be the doctor who is taught from the great physician, the clear witness to Jesus and how unbelief distorts it
So we can better serve our community with the much needed gospel
The Need of the Witness of the Father
Another words, if our witness does not find its source in the one who knows all things—it is a vain and faulty wintess
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.
If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.
The Witness of Man (John)
You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.
This acts like a bridge between what we were talking about last week and what we are talking about this week
Last week we focused on the salvation giving abilities of Jesus as Son of God
And his office of judge and judgement as the Son of Man
Here we see Jesus detail his perfection as judge
Not because he let’s people get away with sin
But because he is just
And what makes him just is his shared will with the Father
When we see Jesus saying these things like
I can do nothing on my own
I seek not my own will
He is not highlighting his own inability as if he does not have power of himself
He is highlighting his shared will, and shared power with the Father
This is heavily contrasted with the religious leaders around him who were false—they acted according to self will and not God’s will
Thus the accusations that he was sinning, or was out for vain self glory and not God’s glory is utterly false
Those who accused him of such were guilty of it themselves
“I can do nothing on my own” is not Jesus saying I am powerless without God the Father as we are
It is simply him teaching that God the Son, and God the Father work in loving harmony with each other always
It is impossible for them not to
And so Jesus is a perfect judge because unlike man in which we judge with a standard that is our own
Jesus judges with the standard that is perfect, of God
That’s what makes him a just judge
And it is the will of God to punish and bring judgement on all sinners—who live in rebellion against him
And the only way we can be saved from such rightful judgement is if we hide in the accomplished work of Christ
And so all those, in the end, who stand on their own will receive a just judgement from the judge
Who is intent on being a just judge after the will of God, not rebellious man
One of the ways this is twisted from man, is assuming Jesus will judge with human will and not God’s will
A contemporary Christian band called Hawk Nelson has made headline news
Their lead singer Jon Steingard has recently announced that he does not believe in God
He tells his reasons and it is clear that he has not been taught well by the church
And his coming out he is labeling as a positive experience that is overall good
The other band members are quoted as follows:
“God is still for Jon and he still matters…that truth doesn’t change just because we question it”
“One of our best friends, one with whom we have walked, worked and lived alongside for 20-plus years revealed some of his innermost feelings on his faith journey this past week.”
“We are called to love one another unconditionally, as God loves us.”
They also said that their goal is “to inspire and encourage all people with the truth that God is for them and not against them.”
God’s love is unconditional in that he sent his son to die for our sins when we were yet sinners
And that we loves us in His Son
Thus we don’t clean ourselves up for God to love us
We grab hold of Christ so that God would love us with a salvific love
But what about those who do not hold on to Christ?
They have only a terrifying judgement waiting for them
God shows his love by offering His Son, but for those who deny him…what is waiting for them? Eternal love? No eternal damnation
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Jon Steingard
“If God is all loving, and all powerful, why is there evil in the world? Can you not do anything about it? Does he choose not to? Is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will? OK then what about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering that isn’t caused by humans in our free will? If God is loving why does he send people to hell?”
Normal questions that church leaders and if he has them, godly parents need to be faithful to answer
But ultimately he wants a God who judges man, and interacts with man, according to our rebellious will
And not according to his perfect just will
He is like the world in which he likes the Jesus that gives life to those who do not deserve it
But does not like the Jesus that judges according not to man’s will but God’s perfect will
This man needs to be told to repent of such a rebellious and hateful attitude against the Son of God
Instead he is being told that its okay…because even those within Christianity has fallen prey to the world philosophy that God judges according to the current flow of the world
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.
In the context of when Jesus spoke, this would have hit the Jews right between the eyes because they wanted a messiah that would judge the enemies of Israel and look past the sin of Israel itself
The Jewish leaders knew who needed judgement—the gentiles, but not us
So they wanted messiah to follow their orders—their will
Jesus came to give life and judge and what drives him is not vain human will but the will of God
Not false testimony of humans
But the true testimony of the Father
He came to bear true witness which is what would lead him to the cross by a human race that is in rebellion against the Father
If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true.
Now again, Jesus is not saying my testimony as Son of God is insufficient
Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness 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.
His testimony of himself is sufficient because he knows....as the Son of God
But what he is highlighting here is that a witness that does not have God as its foundation is not true
Because only God knows all
The haters of Jesus hated Jesus because they had a witness that was not rooted in God but in self
And Jesus says a witness that is rooted in self is false
Because we must be rooted in the one who knows all
There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.
This is the greater witness of God the Father
And it is his witness that is the standard
Because God knows all things and so his witness is always true
Now the problem with the pharisees and man in general is in our fallen nature we like the witness of man
We like the attention of man
And no matter how false such a witness might be to the truth, we can feel good in it
Jesus here makes it clear, his witness comes from God—and not man
And this, to its core, is why the Jews hated him
Not because he broke their sabbath
Not because he made himself equal with God
But because Jesus operated off the witness of God not man…not them
And now Jesus moves to the lesser witness of man to the truth (John the Baptist)
And Jesus receives such witness not in the way man receives false witness
For selfish gain
But Jesus uses such witness for the salvation of other men
You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.
You remember in John 1, the Jewish leaders sent delegates to John the Baptist to figure out who he was
Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved.
What made Jesus value John the Baptist’s testimony was not the same reason why the Pharisees would welcome a positive testimony from man
Their very motivation was to receive positive testimony from man
Jesus says my foundational motivation is not man’s testimony like it is for you guys
The reason Jesus valued it though is man’s testimony to the truth is what’s used to save other men
but i say these things so that you may be saved
Another words, Jesus didn’t need the testimony of man, man needs the testimony of man
What’s the only hope for humankind today?
Jesus and his work
How is such a work applied to humans?
By the faithful testimony of other humans
Jesus says, I highlight John the Baptist’s testimony that you may be saved through it....not because I need it as you need human testimony
He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.
Notice he is a lamp and not the light itself
Jesus being the light of the world, John the Baptist just displaying it by giving proper witness
And they were willing to rejoice for awhile in this light
John the Baptist was very popular at first, as was Jesus
There was much anticipation that the messiah would come soon and destroy the gentile Romans
And the way he would do so would be to fit into the Jewish system and use the Jewish system to do so
But when Jesus proved to be an enemy of the Jewish system, speaking more against the Pharisees and their false peity than speaking against the Romans
Such a rejoicing in the light that John the Baptist witnessed to dwindled
Thus, why did they abandoned his testimony
Why did they hate the testimony of Jesus
Because the motivation of John the Baptist, the motivation of Jesus was not rooted in the applause and praise of rebellious man
But rather to expose it
And thus, when Jesus faces these rebellious people
He points out their unbelief simply by saying the issue here is that I can only do, and only perform the will of God
And the testimony that i receive is God’s testimony
What man says, in their distortion matters not
And when man gives proper testimony like John the Baptist
That is for your benefit for salvation, not something that I need
It is very important to get to the heart of the issue
Or to get to the root of the issue
Many times in marriage counseling most of the time is showing the troubled married couple that their issue is not the flare ups of the individual arguments, but rather it comes from a deeper issue hiding underneath
When there is a flare up it is always the result of a deeper issue that needs to be addressed if overall healing is going to be had
Jesus is accused of breaking the sabbath and blaspheming God by declaring himself equal with him
Jesus does not address this by going into endless details of the current flare up
How he did not break the Sabbath law but their sabbath law
And that he is equal with God that is why he can claim it
Rather Jesus goes to the heart of the issue and says
Your true problem is you are driven by a heart that hates God
And thus loves the false testimony of man, and not the true testimony of God
After Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, the Jewish leaders get together and their concerns are comical if they weren’t so sad
So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
They liked the position of authority they had and the glory they got from man
And even when faced with true signs from heaven
They wanted to retain such authority and work against the testimony of Jesus
And so the heart of the issue here, and Jesus knew it, was that they did not love God, they loved self
And so loved the false testimony of man that uplifted themselves over God
Jesus says, unlike rebellious man, I cannot do anything outside God’s will
And my only testimony is not man’s but God’s
That’s why you hate me
Do you see how this explains unbelief in general?
So even in our context here in central Ohio, 2020?
Why is there unbelief?
Why did Jon from Hawk Nelson just come out as an atheist?
Because there is a testimony that is true that comes from God
And there is a testimony that is false that comes from the world at enmity with God
And when a heart that loves God encounters something that does not make sense because of his ignorance
He submits to God’s testimony and ask God to open his eyes to truth
But a heart that does not love God will gravitate to the false testimony of the world instead
And this testimony is rooted in self glory, and not God’s glory
And so people hate Jesus, or are indifferent to Jesus, or create in their heart a false Jesus
Simply because the true Jesus made it clear that his will is the Father’s
Simply because Jesus made it clear that the testimony he receives is from the Father
It created a rift between Him and the world he came to
And it will create a rift now in this world if we are staying true to his testimony
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
The heart of a Christianity is humility
And understanding that to our core we are ignorant and our in need of divine revelation to understand truth
That our flesh is going to try to make us believe lies and have thoughts and commit sin as if that is the better way
We are a people who follow Jesus though
The One who refused to follow the will of man but only God
The One who only has true witness to himself
Let us be a people of truth—always forsaking self will and also submitting to the Lord of LIfe
But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.
And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”