Moving From Death to Life

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We are moving into a deep theologically rich sermon given by Jesus today. He wants the hearers, those in that day and us today, to understand who He is and what He has come to do. It something we can not miss, if we do, it’s to our own detriment. He has come to give life.

In high school I had started to grow in my understanding of Jesus and His Word (the Bible)… Mormon friend, challenged him, other friend pointed out my ignorance… it’s important to know why we believe what we confess to believe.

If you have your Bibles, or on your devices, please turn with me to John 5:19-29. Would you stand with me as I read our text this morning… this is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Thank you. Please be seated.

Like Father, like Son (19-20)

After the healing of the lame man, John tells us that they started their plot to kill Jesus, thinking Him to be a blasphemer. As theologian and pastor AW Pink would speak to this…

An Exposition of John (Chapter Eighteen: The Deity of Christ: Sevenfold Proof (John 5:16–30))

Did they (the pharisee’s of the day), like the prophetess Anna, give thanks unto the Lord, and speak “of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38)? Alas, it was far otherwise. Instead of being filled with praise, they were full of hatred. Instead of worshipping the Sent One of God, they persecuted Him. Instead of coming to Him that they might have life, they sought to put Him to death.

Jesus gives us a deep theological sermon around who He is and what He has come to do. He says it is through Him that God has granted life for those that believe. This is an uncommon belief for many.

When we think through the idea of what is God like, here we have a helpful text that clues us in on the heart and nature of God. There can be a skewed perspective when we fail to take in the whole counsel of scripture.

In the argument against the exclusivity of Christ (Jesus is the only way), there has been a metaphor that I’ve seen more and more to describe God and varied religions that exist and have existed. In trying to reconcile God, many have equated it to how three blind men come upon an elephant. In trying to describe what they are experiencing they seek share their findings:

The Problem of God: Answering a Skeptic’s Challenges to Christianity Chapter 9: The Problem of Exclusivity

The story is that four blind men were walking along the road and came upon an elephant. One man grabbed the elephant’s tail, another grabbed his leg, another his ear, and one his trunk. The one who held the tail said, “We have stumbled upon a snake!” The one who grabbed the leg said, “No, it’s too thick and solid to be a snake; it’s a tree!” The one who held the ear said, “What are you guys thinking? It’s thin and dry: it’s a piece of paper!” And the one who held the trunk said, “No, it’s a hose.”

The assertion of the story, of course, is that the different religions of the world are like these men, each having a small glimpse of total truth but not a comprehensive understanding of reality. We do our best to interpret data, but in the end, we are all talking about the same thing.

Leslie Newbigin, pastor, theologian, missionary to India for 30yrs responds this way

The Problem of God: Answering a Skeptic’s Challenges to Christianity Chapter 9: The Problem of Exclusivity

So Newbigin says:

The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmation of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is the exact opposite. . . . The story is told by someone who can see and is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality [which it claims that religions can’t].

It has been revealed to us, that if we have seen Jesus we have seen God the Father.

John 14:8-11 “Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

Hebrews 1:1-3 “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Exodus 34:5-8 “The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.”

The language used here is like that of an apprentice and their Master. Jesus compares the reality of His relationship to the Father with that of a handicraftsman to his son.

The Gospel according to John (a. The Relation of Jesus to His Father (5:16–30)) - DA Carson

If the Father out of love for his Son shows him all he does, and the Son in consequence and out of love for his Father obeys him perfectly and does whatever the Father does, such that people observe the Son and wonder at what he does, then two important truths follow: (1) The Son by his obedience to his Father is acting in such a way that he is revealing the Father, doing the Father’s deeds, performing the Father’s will. The Son is ‘exegeting’ or ‘narrating’ the Father cf. notes on 1:18). (2) This marvellous disclosure of the nature and character of God utterly depends, in the first instance, not on God’s love of us, but on the love of the Father for the Son and on the love of the Son for the Father. The same theme is developed in chs. 14–17: the achievement of the divine self-disclosure in Jesus, climaxed in the cross, was supremely the outflow of the reciprocal love of the Father and the Son within the Godhead.

To put the matter another way, if Jesus the Son of God stands with human beings, over against God, in dependence and obedience, he stands with God, over against human beings, in authority and revelation. Granted the incarnation, it is hard to see how God-made-flesh could reveal himself in any other way. The very obedience and dependence that characterize Jesus’ utter subordination to the Father are themselves so perfect that all Jesus does is what the Father wills and does, so it is nothing less than the revelation of God. In the immediate context, this means that Jesus’ implicitly claimed ‘equality with God’ (vv. 17–18), as real as it is, must never be taken to mean (as the Jews apparently assumed) that God himself was compromised (if the claim were given any credence) or demeaned (assuming it were false). Far from it: the claim was true, but God was thereby revealed.

We see His compassion and desire for all people to know Him and come to salvation...

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Ezekiel 33:11 “Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?”

Matthew 9:36-38 “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.””

From death to life (21-24)

Hebrews 9:27 “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,”

What Jesus is saying is that the Father has given Him authority over the judgement of all things.

Remember from last week they have just accused Jesus of blasphemy (equating Himself to God being the Son).

For the Jew, God is Father and Israel is the son. So for Jesus to take this on was not “on their radar”. They didn’t expect it. But rather than looking at what had just taken place with the healing at the pool of Bethesda, healing a man who had been there for 38 years lame, and asking, “woah, who is this that brings life”… they focused on the their law/authority.

So the fact that they are not honoring Jesus, they are dishonoring the Father.

The Gospel of John: A Commentary, Volumes 1 & 2 (1C. Honor the Son Who Gives Life and Judges (5:21–23)) C.Keener

Further, Jesus both answers the basic charge and returns it, a common rhetorical technique. In contrast with their charge of blasphemy, Jesus honors his Father. But because he is the Father’s representative whom the Father honors (5:23), by dishonoring Jesus they are dishonoring the Father (cf. the same idea more explicitly in 8:49). Jesus thus effectively returns the charge against them: it is they, not he, who dishonor the Father.

Jesus tells them that it is the Father that raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life (vs21). That word “raises” is the same word that Jesus uses with the lame man as heals him and tells him to get up. Jesus is saying I’m showing you this is true, look at what has happened.

Whoever hears His words and believes Him who sent Jesus has eternal life. It can not be more clear. It’s not just about hearing (though important), but belief and action are indicative of that belief.

We’re given the lame man as a visual representation of what Jesus is breaking down theologically.

We are all broken, lame, hurting, wrecked by sin…

Jesus is coming to you and saying, “do you want to be healed”; “do you want life”; “do you want what I have for you”

Those who respond and believe have a life and start in on a life-long journey of a life now steeped deeply in Trinity.

NT Wright says this:

John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–10 The Coming Judgment (John 5.19–29)

Those who are born from above in this way are not just receiving a new spiritual experience, the life of God’s spirit welling up within them like ‘living water’ (4:14). They are passing from death to life. The miracle of resurrection is taking place inside them, so that, when they finally die physically, that event will be irrelevant to the new life they already have. What God does in the present he will complete in the future, when the present ‘resurrection’, the new birth during the present life, finally produces the future bodily resurrection that will correspond to Jesus’ own.

This man heard Jesus’ words, and though offered an excuse, was obedient when Jesus called him to new life, calling him to rise, take up his bed and walk. He did not remain there, but he got up and walked. Jesus found him in the temple, worshiping, being in the place where he knew to be.

And notice that this life, this eternal life begins at this moment of belief and allegiance. (vs.24)

The fruit of the tree (vss25-29)

A. Those who hear His voice:

There is a specific title of Jesus that is found here (again, deeply theological) for the Jew though this would make sense… The title is “The Son of Man”.

The Gospel of John, Volume 1 (The Tremendous Claims (John 5:19–29)) - W. Barclay

(1) It has a long history. It was born in Daniel 7:1–14. The point of the passage is this. Daniel was written in days of terror and of persecution, and it is a vision of the glory which will some day replace the suffering which the people are undergoing. In Daniel 7:1–7, the seer describes the great pagan empires which have held sway under the symbolism of animals. There is the lion with eagle’s wings (7:4), which stands for the Babylonian Empire; the bear with the three ribs in his mouth, as one devouring the carcass (7:5), which stands for the Median Empire; the leopard with four wings and four heads (7:6), which stands for the Persian Empire; and the beast, great and terrible, with iron teeth and with ten horns (7:7), which stands for the Macedonian Empire. All these terrible powers will pass away, and the power and the dominion will be given to one like a son of man. The meaning is that the Empires which have held sway have been so savage that they could be described only in terms of wild animals; but into the world there is going to come a power so gentle and kind that it will be human and not bestial.

In Daniel, the phrase describes the kind of power which is going to rule the world.Someone has to introduce and exercise that power; and the Jews took this title and gave it to the chosen one of God who some day would bring in the new age of gentleness and love and peace; and so they came to call the Messiah Son of Man.

(2) But not only is this claim to be God’s Messiah made in so many words; in phrase after phrase it is implicit. The very miracle which had happened to the paralysed man was a sign that Jesus was the Messiah. It was Isaiah’s picture of the new age of God that ‘then the lame shall leap like a deer’ (Isaiah 35:6 “then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;”). It was Jeremiah’s vision that the blind and the lame would be gathered in (Jeremiah 31:8–9 “Behold, I will bring them from the north country and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and she who is in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back, I will make them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” ).

(3) There is Jesus’ repeated claim to raise the dead and to be their judge when they are raised. In the Old Testament, God alone can raise the dead and alone has the right to judge. ‘I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive’ (Deuteronomy 32:39). ‘The Lord kills and brings to life’ (1 Samuel 2:6). When Naaman, the Syrian, came seeking to be cured from leprosy, the king of Israel said in bewildered despair: ‘Am I God, to give death or life?’ (2 Kings 5:7). The function of killing and making alive belonged inalienably to God. It is the same with judgment. ‘The judgement is God’s’ (Deuteronomy 1:17).In later thought, this function of resurrecting the dead and then acting as judge became part of the duty of God’s chosen one when he brought in the new age of God.

For Jesus to speak like this was an act of the most extraordinary and unique courage. He must have known well that to make claims like this would sound the sheerest blasphemy to the orthodox Jewish leaders and was to court death. Those who listened to words like this had only two alternatives—they must either accept Jesus as the Son of God or hate him as a blasphemer.

B. Those who follow Jesus will do the things that Jesus does. He brings life. He advocates for life. He warns against the deceitfulness of sin. He doesn’t put His trust in the rulers/government of this world. He honors those in authority but speaks truth to those who hold power.

Those who do not hold allegiance to Jesus first and foremost will be known by their fruit. A tree bears a certain type of fruit, either it is good or it is bad. You can tell me all day long what you think and what you advocate, but unless there is a lifestyle and action that has been informed by your confession, it doesn’t mean much. In fact, one might even say that it is untrue. Who is thought to be the first pastor of the church, James, writes in his letter… our faith is seen through our works, not words only.

If our allegiance is to Christ first, we then are sons and daughters of the King, new creations in Christ. We then shall seek to do the things we see Jesus doing. We will seek to be peacemakers, meek, hunger and thirst for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, mourn with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice, seeking to sew peace into our community wanting all to come to the knowledge and understanding of God’s great love for humanity… desiring that we might see the Kingdom of Heaven invade Earth.

If you hear His voice today, do not harden your hearts. Yield your heart, life, and desires to Him today. If you need prayer, there will be those down here to pray with you.