Having the Right Affection

Feedback on elder candidates. Prayer for staff retreat

Study

Some of the greatest storylines have it, movies, tv shows, plays… there is a difference between studying and understanding a concept vs. actually being able to excellently accomplish a task. There is a thin line between knowledge and practice.

Traveling to Europe for the first time: Understood that I needed to get from the airport to the train station, in the train station to the right train, from the train to get off on the right stop, from the stop get to transportation to get me to my end destination. I got it intellectually, but to actually execute it was a different story. I was exhausted, frustrated, and cranky by the time I got to my destination.

Another reality that hits a bit close to home is that following Jesus, loving people, cultivating relationships (with God and people) is rather enjoyable until its not. When things become difficult, painful, inconvenient, or down right hurtful, do all those things that I understand about God to be true? Maybe even more difficult to sit with, if my power, authority, or influence is challenged or at risk of waining, how do I respond? In a way that allows me to hold my power and authority (at any cost) or do I just simply give it up?

If my comfort, my hopes, my dreams, my authority, pride, or provision become threatened, how do I respond? How do I act, what do I believe? Belief informs action.

In John 5, Jesus has detractors (Pharisees) who want to kill him (Jhn 5:18). Jesus is committing blasphemy in their understanding. This was a capital offense and the penalty for blasphemy was death. Blasphemy was committed when Jesus declared that He was equal with God. Jesus takes John 5 to reinforce what John, the gospel writer, already affirmed earlier in chapter 1.

In the beginning was the Word… the Word was God (v1)

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (v14)

To those that believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (v12)

Jesus is finishing His message to them that they might see Him for who He is and what He has come to do. Their lack of belief does not negate the truth, but in believing the truth, that they might have life.

If you have your Bibles, or on your devices, please turn to John 5:30-47. We will only be looking at verses 39-47, but for context we’ll start in vs 30. Would you stand as I read our passage this morning.

This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray. Please be seated.

Cut to the heart

In verses 39 and 40, Jesus gives a scathing rebuke.

John 5:39-40 “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.”

This gets at the root of those who are religious.

God gave the law in that it told a story which came to its climax in Him. As NT Wright would say, “It pointed to the ideal for human life, and to God’s provision of sacrifice for human sin, not so that people could boast of how successfully they’d accomplished it all, but to point to the Messiah, the true human, the lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.

Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (p. 69). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

They were reading the right book, they weren’t reading it in the right way. It is easy to be attracted to the Bible, to see its intricacies and intellectual brilliance. It really is one of the most fascinating books of the world and of all time. Anyone who has a love for literature, history, great stories, and powerful narrative can get completely absorbed in it.

But it is possible to miss the entire point as we see in our text. We also don’t have to look far and beyond our own time where we have those who are espousing Christ’s name but yet continue to behave in ways that are not Christ.

You can not say that you love God and hate your brother/sister.

1 John 4:20 “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Knowing God, knowing God’s word, when done well and right is a transformative work that conforms us into the image of Jesus. This is what the Holy Spirit does, this is the work of God in our lives.

2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

It is a sobering and powerful reality that we can read scriptures, come to church, and be a part of Bible study but miss Jesus in all of it. This is what Jesus is saying to the religious leaders of that day, and to those that are following them.

This is the crux of Matthew 25 and the parable of the sheep and the goats. The goats never knew Jesus… in that they weren’t loving those who could do nothing to benefit them, they weren’t doing it to Jesus.

Evidence and a witness

In any testimony there must be a witness to truth of a testimony. We have it in our judicial system and it is through out the law in the Jewish scriptures.

Jesus speaks to the truth that the Father is bearing witness to who He is. That Moses speaks to who He is.

It is independent of their understanding.

John 5:41-44 “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?”

I hope you can see the opposites and irony that is taking place here.

Jesus who has the true authority (WHO IS BEING SOUGHT AFTER TO BE KILLED) is extending grace, is long suffering, is motivated by love extending love to them that they might experience true life. This is the testimony of God towards His people throughout the entire Jewish scripture.

The pharisees (the creation) is seeking TO PUT TO DEATH the Son of God, because He said that He is God, though they are experts of the Jewish law (scripture), and stand in the judgement of God.

The greatest indictment is there in verse 42

John 5:42 “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.”

Here is our metric church: Do we love? Do we love with the love God loves us with?

Not but a few years later (end of Acts 7) a young man would stand and hold the coats of those who took up stones to kill a young deacon in the first church who they felt had blasphemed.

He would then attack, persecute, in prison, and be complicit in the death of many that confessed and followed Jesus.

He would then come face to face with Jesus (Acts 9), repent, and believe… that belief though translated into a new way of being.

His power and authority would not be one in which to oppress but to liberate, 2 Corinthians 11:21-30 “To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that! But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me…”

Ben Cremer, a Wesleyan pastor in Idaho, said; “The greatest threat to our Christian witness in the world isn’t secularism, pluralism, or loss of religious liberties. It’s always been Christians who claim to worship a nonviolent teacher from Nazareth who then use violence in his name to enforce and preserve their own power.”

Love is how the follower of Jesus takes their decision process… Love of God and then Love of neighbor.

Let us remember, or be reminded, that it is Jesus who is setting the world right. This has been extended to us as His followers. Jesus brought order to the man in whom He healed at the pool that day. As we seek to be about Jesus’ will here on Earth as it is in Heaven, it threatens the structures of power and authority. When those structures are upset, people react horribly at times (even in the church when our eyes are off of Jesus and His kingdom).

Jesus also invokes his works—in the Johannine context, first and foremost his messianic signs (such as the one just performed; John 5:1–15)—as testimony, given to him by the Father. Ultimately, it must be noted, the Father is behind all these witnesses: he is the sender of John the Baptist (see 1:6); he is the one who enables Jesus to perform his works (v. 36); and he sent Moses and inspired the Scripture he and others wrote. Hence, as the writer of Hebrews noted, God revealed himself in OT times in various ways, but in these last days he revealed himself by a son (Heb 1:1–2).

Köstenberger, A. J. (2009). A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters: The Word, the Christ, the Son of God (p. 209). Zondervan.

Who’s testimony will you receive?

We tend to give our allegiance to people easier than we give it to God.

Political leaders

Celebrities

Influencers

Love interests

We seek to not live a faith that is just cultural or because it is comfortable, but that the true and living God that gives life would lead us in His ways.

That means that Jesus calls sinners to repentance and faith in Him. Not just sinners like you and me (which we tend to be tolerable of our own sin), but sinners in whose sin makes us cringe… whatever it is.

We need them. We need you. I have been having conversations lately around who is here at the church and who is not here. Who do we need here? Who is a part of the body of Christ that is not here and because of that, we are worse off.

Single, married, divorced, abandoned, orphaned, addict, lesbian, gay, trans, queer, republican, democrat, libertarian, reformed, pentecostal, agnostic, atheist/questioning, wealthy, poor, middle class, black, white, latino, hispanic, academic, uneducated, extrovert, introvert… etc.

Will we be instruments in the hands of the living God to bring the witness of the testimony of Jesus of those who are needing the redemptive, cleansing, empowering, establishing work of Christ through the life and power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father?

God has established you in your work place, in your daily rhythms, in your patterns to be conduits of His as messengers of grace, truth, and unconditional love. That they would see your love, one for another, and know that we are His disciples. It’s an attractional model… not solely, because faith comes by hearing and hearing from the word of God… but it is the living out of God’s word that brings to bear to weight the glory of God upon the life of an individual that this is real, transformative, and true.

This last week in some neighborhood work I was doing, a middle schooler asked me if I believed in God. I responded with, “Yes, do you?”. She replied in the affirmative and then asked me “why?”. I’ve given varied responses in the past… and depending on who I am talking to and the context in which I am, my answer can be varied… for those so many reasons…

1. Design in the universe- intricacies and exactness for life to exist

2. Prophecy- God’s prophetic words in the Bible have never failed

3. Literary- The Bible is and continues to be a text that stands the test of time transforming communities across cultural lines (no other text has done it the way the Bible does).

There’s many others… but what I shared this time is that it I know God to be true is because He loves me and His love has changed me. His love continues to change me.

As a personal note, I’ve dealt with fear, anxiety, pride, anger, lust, insecurities… some of those things still creep in when I’m not expecting it. I still am delivered and am being delivered by His great unending, gracious, and kind love working in me.

May you receive the testimony of the Spirit that Jesus is the Son of God. That God put on flesh, dwelt among us, and where our sin separated us from Him… Jesus took upon Himself the consequence of sin (separation from God), that we might know Him and enjoy Him forever.