This Gospel Passage Changes Everything

All right, back at it. End of another wonderful Monday, uh, heading back into John 5 with the evening Bible studies. Uh, so in the mornings, uh, devotions are in Daniel right now, uh, and that's a longer book, so probably be there for a little while. But, uh, gonna keep going through John at night with the Bible studies. Uh, when last we finished We were talking about the authority of Jesus and how he had that authority. So for those of you following along in your Bible, again, I read from the ESV. Whatever translation paraphrase you prefer. For me, it's, it's the ESV. But John 5:29 was where we finished last time, so we'll pick it up at 30. And again, we're not gonna go through a full chapter. John's a very long chapter, but— We are going to go through just a passage and whatever comes from it comes from it. And then we'll pick up where we left off the next day. So John 5— got alarm going off here. John 5, verse 30. 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 is Jesus speaking. 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 testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things 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 of the Father— the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the The Father has sent me, and the Father who has 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 I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For you've believed— if you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? So again, this is an interesting one. This is Jesus continuing to speak to the Pharisees, the teachers of the day. And what's interesting here is he touched on his authority, and now he's coming to a place that hits kind of close to home for them. Of I come to you and I give testimony. I tell you who I am. I tell you what I am here to do, what I am to accomplish. I'm telling you these things, and I'm telling them to you honestly. And you don't believe me because of who I am, but you don't know who I am. You just know that you don't want to believe me. Okay, I'm not going to be the one to judge you on this either, by the way. The one that's going to judge you on this is the one that you set at your foundation, that you set as the ground rule for everything that you do. Moses is who you go back to. You constantly point to the law and you say, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law. What you fail to understand is that the law pointed to me. Pointed to me. All of the law, all of it. There is sin. It keeps us separate from God. It hurts us. It keeps us divided from him. And sacrifice has to be made and life has to beget life. The wages of sin are death. Something has to die to cover it. And those pale examples and excuses in the Old Testament of, you want an ox, you want a goat, you want a dove, you want grain offering, whatever it may be, whatever you're going to offer up, it's never enough. It's not pure. It's not whole. It doesn't finish the job. But I do. I am everything that Moses had hoped and wished to see. I am the Promised Land. I am the perfect atoning sacrifice. I am here right now. right in front of you and you refuse to see it. That's a huge caution, I think. Reading through this, just reading through it, open up the Bible and you read it throughout the day, and do you actually see him? Do you actually see who Jesus is and what he has done, what he said he was, what he will do, what he is currently doing. It's such a huge caution of where, where is your foundation? It's always easy to mock the Pharisees. And this is something I really, really am trying to caution myself on. There's lots of sinners in this book. There's, there's a lot. It's a big book of sinners from start to finish. And there's a lot of mistakes that are made, a lot. But those mistakes are also there for us to learn from. So the Pharisees won't believe in Jesus and who he is and what he says, and they keep pointing back to Moses and saying, the law, the law, the law, Moses, Abraham, that's where we're from, that's where we came from, that's who we are as a people. But we have our own arguments that we make, I think, these days. We have our own foundations, and whether those are things of this world, whether they're our own opinions, the opinions of those around us, whatever it may be, there's an awful lot of things that we weigh, if not at priority, which a lot I think do, at least at parity, at least equal to what Jesus has to say. I think this is a big caution on that tonight of be very, very careful when you put something in front of God, because when it— whatever it may be that you put in front of God, that makes it an idol. And even if it's something good, even something great— your job, your aspirations, your health, your whatever it may be that you're putting in front You're still putting it in front. And when you do that, things really do tend to go bad. When you read through this book and you see what happens when you take something that could potentially be good and you put it in front of God, it goes bad really quickly. But as long as God stays as that foundation and you take those really good things and you put them Just, just after God, things go really well. They go really, really well. And so here, as he's cautioning the Pharisees and saying, you, you make these claims, these bold, bold claims of, you know God, you know who he is, and yet you don't know the things that he's done. You don't know who I am. You don't know who I was sent to be. You can't recognize my words, you can't recognize my claims, you can't recognize the work that I do, none of it. When you go through this and you read it, let God tell you who he is. He's not— there's a lot of people that make the assertion that this book is very difficult to read, and it's really hard, and it's difficult to grasp, and A child. A child can grasp what is in this book. Yeah, you could wrestle with it your entire life and try to understand the deeper meaning of it, and the implications, and the practical applications, and there's a thousand ways to make something difficult. It's also very simple. God sent me. I'm here to do the work that he had said I was going to do in Genesis. I'm here to finish that work. That's it. I have the authority to do it. I have the authority to lay down my life. I have the authority to pick it back up. Jesus has that authority. It's been given to him. It's his. It's that simple. He came, died, rose again, did it for you. He'd do it again. Depending on your foundation, you'll, you'll believe that or you won't, but I think that's What John has for us. I'm excited for tomorrow. We do Jesus Feeds the 5,000. So that's always a fun one. But that's it for tonight. Take it easy. Bye.