Sermon Tone Analysis

“The Most Startling Claim Ever”

 

     Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 5 as we examine our scripture for this morning.

Now this evening’s message is directly a sequel, as would be indicated by its place in the text, is directly a sequel to last Sunday in the sense that everything that Christ says in the passage for this evening, in fact, everything clear through verse 47 of this chapter, the end of the chapter, came as a direct result of the confrontation that was posed in the first 16 verses.

So, unless you were here last week, you will not perhaps gain the entire concept of what is going on.

Let me see if I can review briefly enough to give you a little bit of perspective.

Now we are entering in verse 17 upon a discourse by Christ Himself.

He has just performed a miracle.

Not anything extraordinary for Him, but it so happened that He did it on the Sabbath.

Now He did not break the law of God because the law of God made no particular specific mention of not doing good, rather Jesus Himself said the Sabbath was to be used for good, not evil.

And not only that, the Sabbath was for man...Mark 2:27, not particularly for God.

But when He did this deed on the Sabbath, He stepped on the toes of the ecclesiastical rulers of the Jews who had added their own laws, who had decided that you couldn't do things like this on the Sabbath, it was wrong.

Now Jesus purposely did this on the Sabbath, performing this miracle, knowing full well that it was exactly the opposite of Jewish law, that He was breaking the law of the religious leaders because He wanted to provoke a confrontation with them.

Now the basic thing that was keeping Israel in unbelief was its hypocrisy religiously.

They were disastrously enmeshed in a hypocritical religion that blinded them to true religion.

And it is true that if Christ ever reaches anybody, He first of all meets them at the point of their sin, reveals their sin and then when a man sees his sin, he sees the need of a Savior.

And so before Christ could ever communicate with Israel in terms of salvation, He had to hit Israel at the point of sin.

So then, knowing that their sin was based in their hypocritical religion, He confronts them at that point by purposely breaking one of the rules of their religion and performing a healing directly on the Sabbath day.

The Jew now wants to know why Jesus broke this law.

And Jesus replies in the discourse from verses 17 to 47 in effect this simple reply, "I did what I did because I'm God and that gives Me the privilege of doing it and I'm certainly not subscribed to your hypocritical religion."

So, in effect what happened was Christ confronted them and forced a confrontation that gave Him the opportunity to declare who He was.

This confrontation gave Him that privilege.

And in His defense of His action on the Sabbath, woven into the defense is a clear‑cut statement that Jesus Christ claims to be none other than God Himself in a body, veiled in humanity.

So then verses 17 to 47, this entire section, is Christ's own personal statement of His deity.

And as such, it becomes one of the greatest Christological discourses in the Scripture.

And the message this morning is going to be very much a theological message.

Perhaps not in the vein of some of the practical messages that we give, perhaps not so much in terms of inspiration, but it is going to be factual and deal primarily with the person of Christ, who He is.

But lest you think that is insignificant, let me hurry to say that it has to be the most significant thing in all the Bible, for if Christ is not God, then everything in the Bible is a lie.

So we have to begin there.

Consequently, this discourse this morning ranks number one in the matter of importance so far in John's gospel.

As clearly Christ declares Himself to be none other than God.

And after all, doesn't this fit John's purpose in his gospel?

Haven't we said that every page is a page geared to present Christ as God?  John has said it.

He's had other people say it.

He's had miracles presented here that show He's God.

He's had the insights of Christ into people's hearts to show that He is indeed God.

He has even shown by the believing faith of certain Samaritans in Sychar that this must be God.

He is again and again stating that this is the Son of God, God in human flesh.

And now it is the very words of Christ Himself that corroborate that statement that Christ is God.

And this isn't the last time Christ makes His claim, He makes it again and again.

We'll see it again as we look at chapter 10.

And so this is a very, very important passage.

It is a very, very amazing passage because woven into this passage are claims and expressions to deity as Christ announces to the world and particularly to these Jews in His defense of His action that He doesn't need to defend Himself in any other way than to say "I'm God, I don't do what's wrong, I do what's right.

And if there's something wrong, maybe it's not wrong with Me, maybe it's wrong with you."

And that's the underlying message clear through this...I'm right, have you ever thought that you might be wrong?

I'm right because I'm God.

That leaves you little choice as to whether you're wrong or not.

Now it's amazing also to me that the claims of Christ here are so clear.

They're...in fact, they're so clear that the Jews saw them...the Jews said, "Hold it, He's claiming to be equal with God."

They got the message.

And Jesus didn't back up and say, "No, hold it, no, I didn't say that."

On the contrary, He said you're right, in fact I'll add a few more things to that.

It's a very clear‑cut claim on the part of Jesus Christ.

And, of course, the claim provokes even more reaction than did the miracle.

In verse 17 it says they wanted to kill Him because of the miracle but when He claimed to be equal with God, the more they wanted to kill Him.

And so, really the death of Jesus Christ comes as a result of what started here in John 5.  Now it had been brewing for a long time.

They were a little upset at Jesus when He cleansed the temple.

They really weren't too much in love with John the Baptist, to say the least.

And when they saw the shift of interest going from John the Baptist over to Jesus, that perhaps was one of the things that provoked Jesus to leave and go into Galilee.

So it had been brewing for a while.

And their rather mocking hallow religion added to the problem and consequently when you come to this chapter, it's not merely a totally new thing, it's just kind of the opening of some kind of hatred that's been building.

And when the man who had been healed went to the Jews and said it was Jesus.

Instead of running to embrace Jesus, they ran to take His life.

And so, as we come to this particular verse 17 and 18, we come to the climax of hypocritical religion as they endeavor to kill the very one who is their Messiah so steeped are they in a hollow meaningless legalism.

Incidentally, it might be interesting for you to note that they attempt to kill Christ ten times without success.

Finally on the eleventh time, conjunction with the Romans, Christ is crucified.

But not until the eleventh attempt.

And you can classify those first ten under this, "My time is not yet...what?...come."

And Christ, when they finally did crucify Him, made the statement, "No man takes My life from Me, I lay it down of Myself."

But nevertheless, they began to seek to murder Christ.

And somebody asks the question, "Well, if Christ knew that they were going to murder Him, why did He provoke this?"

Well, the answer is He did know they were going to do that and He provoked it because He came into this world for really one reason, and that was to die.

He knew what would happen.

He knew they would take His life.

He knew He would die.

And step by step He moved toward His death.

You see, He had to die because the wages of sin is death.

And if He's going to bear the sins of man, it's going to cost Him His life.

He came to die.

And so He provokes this confrontation fully aware that ultimately it would result in His murder execution.

He knew for the most part the Jews would reject Him.

But He gave the message anyway.

You say, "Why?"  Well because, you see, first of all, He knew there were some that would come to Him, didn't He?

He knew that.

"All that the Father gives Me will come to Me," John 6:37 says.

He knew that some would come, so He presented Himself.

But secondly, and catch this, Christ presented Himself not only so that some would come...now watch this...but so that all would be responsible.

You see, when He told them who He was, they all became responsible for that knowledge.

And so He has set up the confrontation.

He has stepped on their ecclesiastical toes and broken one of their petty little rules, evidently.

And now He's going to defend Himself.

And, brother, what a defense He gives.

And this defense is nothing more than a claim to be equal with God.

And instead of letting them indict Him for breaking their law, He tells them, in effect, I'm God and if you accuse Me, you're impugning the morality of God, see.

He just turns the tables.

Now in our section, verses 17 to 24, we're going to find five claims to equality with God.

Christ makes five claims to being equal with God.

He claims to be equal in person, equal in works, equal in power and sovereignty, equal in judgment and equal in honor.

And this is nothing more than a declaration or a statement that He is God in every area, in every aspect, completely equal with God.

All right, let's notice first of all that He is equal with God in His person, verses 17 and 18.  Verse 17 says, "But Jesus answered them," that is the Jews who were accusing Him of breaking the Sabbath, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work."

Now what is He saying here?