Gooding, David: 12 - On the Road with Jesus

Ladies and gentlemen, we come at last to the detail of chapters seven, eight, nine, and ten. And to help myself, and then to help you to try and grasp at least some of its major points, I have had prepared, uh, these sheets of notes, a copy of which you have been given. You should have five pages of notes. Now, please do not imagine that these notes are more than they were intended to be. You should treat them simply like a scaffolding round a great building. If you are facing, say, a tremendous cathedral or state building, decorated e- elaborately, then it's difficult sometimes from the ground to see the detail of the decoration and how the parts of the decoration are related to each other in order to form a congruent whole. It is helpful then sometimes to have a scaffolding round the building along which you may climb to peer the more closely at some of the detail and then begin to see how it relates among, uh, the other parts of the building. If you care then to use these notes as a kind of a scaffolding, so that by their means you may come to look at the real building, which is scripture, you'll see. Then when you've seen what the Lord will show you in scripture, you can throw the notes away or do what you like with them, but you'll see. Scripture is the thing. These are only a set of notes. Moreover, they do not pretend to be exhaustive. There are lots of details that I've left out, and you'll think my choice of them is perhaps unwise and certainly arbitrary, but, uh, pray understand again the purpose for which it is done, uh, to help us to see, in the first place, thought flow, and then by giving attention to structure of these chapters, to see the functional interrelationship of the chapters and their ideas, one to another. So let's begin with the first sheet of notes that you have in front of you, which I suggest that all four chapters deal with this question, the problems related to the method that God has chosen by which to reveal himself to mankind in the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And I have suggested that in each of the first, uh, uh, each of the chapters, you have a problem, perhaps you have several. I have selected one, and the problem differs on each occasion. In chapter seven, the problem is, as our Lord himself states it to be, how is Christ to make himself known when his testimony provokes prejudice and hatred? The world cannot hate you, he said to his brothers, but me it hates, because I testify of it that its works are evil. And therefore that created a prejudice. How could Christ best get round or through or behind that hatred and prejudice and make God known to his contemporaries? Number one problem. In chapter eight, there is another problem, related, of course, but somewhat different. How to expose man's sin without condemning man? How can the divine judge of all expose man's sin, bring him to an acknowledgment, willing or unwilling, of his guilt, and yet not pronounce the sentence that that guilt deserves. And the case in question, of course, is the woman taken in adultery. Third problem. Our Lord Jesus is the light of the world that he proclaims twice. But what is the use of offering light to a man who hasn't the faculty of sight? So now what will you do? If the man is ever going to see the light of God, he will have to be given the faculty of sight. Now, as I pass that by, just let me observe that this is only one of the problems. Sometimes people take that particular problem and apply it generally, as if that were the only basic problem. And they come to mistaken results because they have not been careful to see that problem raised in the particular context in which it is raised. All of that and on. It's only one of the four problems. And in chapter ten, the problem is basically, how can the true shepherd be distinguished from the false? Christ was not offering himself and his salvation in a vacuum. There had been others before him, there's others since, multitudes of religious leaders in the Gentile world, how and by what criteria would you distinguish the true shepherd from the false? So there are problems then. Now let's notice, uh, coming back to chapter seven. Chapter seven talks about our Lord's timing of his earthly teaching. My hour is not yet come, says he, and I'm not going up to Jerusalem yet. Go you up to the feast, he said, I go not up yet unto this feast because my time is not yet fulfilled. When then he went up to Jerusalem and they came to take him, he then announced that now he was going. Question arises, what has this going away got to do with the central problem of making God known? Why the tactics? Our Lord's sense of time then as to his own ministry and his deliberate going away, as we shall presently see, part of the method of making God known. What I raised as though it were a difficulty at the beginning of our session this evening, why did he stay such a little while and then go off? Why didn't he stop longer and get across his teaching better? That was really an uninformed and therefore a stupid question, such as I'm liable to raise from time to time. The going away was part of the method of making himself known. But you'll find it is virtually the central part of the method of making himself known. You see, that problem, uh, you'll see, comes in chapter uh eight again, Christ the light of the world, the light by which men see. He is the I am, you'll see. But once more in that chapter eight, as we observed, he talked to the Pharisees of his going away. Why go away? And what did he mean by going away? In that chapter, the Pharisees say, what on earth does he mean saying I'm going away? Will he kill himself? In chapter seven, when he said I'm going away, the officers hazarded a guess that he might have been going on a lecture tour to the Gentiles. But this time the Pharisees puzzled, say, will he kill himself? And there's an irony in their question, isn't there? Not kill himself, gentlemen. But do you know what the going away will mean? And he mentions it later, just a few verses later. When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know. He goes by way of being lifted up upon a cross. That is the supreme method that God chooses to bring men and women to the knowledge of himself. In chapter nine, the question of timing arises again. Chapter nine, little b, Christ the light of the world, the giver of the faculty of sight, deliberately creating sight on the Sabbath. And what I have not added in the notes, but I should have done, I suppose, is what he says just before he heals the blind man. Says he, we must work the works of him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man can work. When I am in the world, I am the light of the world. It's of course referring to that unique exhibition of the light of God that was the presence and ministry of the incarnate Christ of God, who worked and lived and worked in the light of the fact that he wouldn't be here forever. He must get on with the work of God while it was day, while he was here, for the night was coming. And in the context of Judaism, it was a very solemn statement, wasn't it? When they crucified their Lord and rejected his apostolic messengers and their offer of forgiveness, what a night settled upon Judaism. Of course, it's a sentiment that can be extended to ourselves, can't it? Our sense of timing, ladies and gentlemen. We're given our hours of daylight to work and spread the light of the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. We shall always have the opportunity. When our Lord went home to glory, he was able to say to his father, I have finished the work thou gavest me to do. God in his mercy grant us his followers so to work that when our little day finishes, we could be able to say, I have finished the work. Yes, some days I look for the Lord's coming and hope it will be tomorrow, and other days I said hold, I say hold off, Lord, just a little while longer. You know, I've been wasting my time so long and so many and so often. Lord, would you not give me a little longer to complete the work that you gave me to do? Mm. Oh, timing comes up again, of course, doesn't it? You'll see, uh, in um, verse, uh, uh, in chapter ten, Christ's approach to the fold, his attitude to the sheep, and now his deliberate death once more and rising again, you'll see. Christ's going away in chapter seven, his going away in chapter eight refers to his death, and now in chapter ten we come to it once more, Christ going away, of course, is the laying down of the shepherd's life voluntarily, not killing himself, yet laying his life down voluntarily for the sheep. Come back again, chapter seven, little C, we put it. A call to use one's moral judgment and assess Christ's teaching and works. Now that goes counter to certain evangelical advice sometimes, you'll see. Some people say, as I said earlier, you shouldn't argue with people. Well, our Lord did anyway, so obviously we should. And other people say, well, the unconverted man, you know, he is so dead in trespasses and in sins, you might as well talk to a log of wood. I mean, uh, the man is dead, he cannot appreciate anything until, uh, uh, the Holy Spirit regenerates him. You almost might as well save your breath. But our Lord didn't. To his enemies, some of whom talked of killing him, he called on them to use their moral judgment. On what? On his teaching. As the first step towards their eventual coming to know who he was. First, to use their judgment on his moral teaching, as presently we shall see. In chapter eight, once more, he calls upon hi- his audience to use their moral judgment, this time not so much on themse- o- o- on his teachings, but on themselves. They thought they were sons of Abraham. They imagined they were sons of God. They imagined they'd never been in bondage to anybody, but presently, as they stood in the presence of Christ, and he talked, and he the light of the world, they began to discover he was the light of the world, as that light penetrated their conscience and mind and discovered themselves to themselves, and activated their moral judgment, till they began to see themselves as they'd never seen themselves before, and it was mightily uncomfortable. And in the end, they couldn't stick it, and they picked up stones to smash the light if they could. So painful was the light that shone upon them. Two chapters then, and you see how they are, uh, corresponding. They're twins, aren't they? One, using your moral judgment to judge Christ's teaching and what you make about that, whether it is of God or not. Two, using your moral judgment in the light of him and his word on yourself. And you will soon discover your sinfulness. Ah, but then, do see, in, um, uh, chapter eight— chapter nine, rather, call here to trust Christ in order to receive the new faculty of sight. The story is first of a miracle, and the man who did what the Lord said received his sight. Immediately he, um, washed in the Pool of Siloam. But that took some time, didn't it? Before he washed, he had to make decisions, didn't he? Then Christ came and said, look here, uh, ma- he spat on the ground, made clay, put it on his eyes, and told the man to go wash in the Pool of Siloam. Would you have done it? We shall presently see next week, uh, next time, God willing, what trust the man had to be willing to exercise in Christ, even before his eyes were opened to see who Christ really was. Trusting Christ and conducting the experiment that Christ laid down for him. He found the experiment worked and received his physical sight. Did that mean that he saw that Jesus was the Son of God forthwith and immediately? No. Just as there had been a, a, a process by which he recovered his physical sight, so there was now a process by which he came to see fully and without reserve that Jesus was the Son of God. And sometimes we expect instantaneous conversions, don't we? And sometimes folks are converted instantaneously. But whether instantaneously or not, very often there is a whole process they have to go through before conversion or after, until the fullness of Christ's glory dawns upon them. And what those processes are, and what we should expect, and and what the experiments are that people can conduct. That also is a matter of very practical concern, isn't it? Particularly on our own witness for the Lord and our dealing with unconverted people and our attempts to bring them to Christ. These chapters follow a logical order in dealing with the human soul, and the order of our Lord's approach is governed by what he diagnoses to be the need of people. And where, therefore, is a good place to start? And what kind of experiments can you suggest to the unconverted per- person? And how will they come to a full grown knowledge of the Son of God? And then, uh, in chapter ten, we shall discover a magnificent thing. When the Jews come to our Lord and say, how long dost thou keep us in suspense? Tell us if you are the Christ, tell us right now, tell us in, in so many words, outspokenly, whether you're the Christ or not. And he said, I told you before, you didn't hear. I tell you why you don't believe, because you are not my sheep. Ah, say some. Well, that's how it is, you know, unfortunately. You better reconcile yourself to that. God has chosen some to be Christ's sheep, and he hasn't chosen others to be Christ's sheep. He just passes them by. Now, the ones he's chosen to be his sheep, they will, of course, believe. The ones he has passed by and not chosen to be his sheep, well, they never will believe. There's no hope they ever will, you'll say. So, preach all you might and may, but you mustn't expect anything to happen. That is not quite, quite what our Lord said to these men. You're not my sheep, he said. But before he finished, he said, I tell you what you could do so that you could come to know that I'm in the Father and the Father in me. I could suggest a, a procedure, gentlemen. He says, if you find it too difficult to trust me and believe me and my claim to be one with the Father? You could start a little earlier in the process, he said, gentlemen. What about starting believing my works? That believing my works you might come to know. Yes, he didn't write them off because they weren't already his sheep. They could have become his sheep if they'd wanted to. And he puts the process before them, how they might so do. And, uh, finally, I've noted for your interest some of the features of the promised new age promised by the Old Testament prophets, to which these seven chapters point, uh, these four chapters point. We shan't go in more to that because I talked about that in the earlier session. A little typing. Well, it's not a typing mistake, it's an authorial mistake. It's not my good typist's, uh, uh, fault. She has done a magnificent work, as you'll agree, but I got the reference wrong, as usual. Uh, the last reference on that page, right down at the bottom, CF Ezekiel, it should be not thirty three twenty five but thirty four twenty five. With that, we come to chapter seven in our closing moments. We have thought about the problem, and we have heard our Lord say to his brothers, no, I am not now going up. Why not? I'm not going up yet. Well, he said, gentlemen, your time is already here, always here. My time is not yet come. The favorable opportunity, he meant, is not yet come. So I shan't be going up yet. Uh, but when his disciples and friends had gone up, then he went up, as it were, in secret. And when it was now, he says, the middle of the feast, verse fourteen, Jesus went up into the temple and taught. So why? Well, you can immediately see the effect it had. Our Lord had been to Jerusalem on a previous occasion, chapter five. He had healed a man on the Sabbath day, and the Jews were so upset because our Lord appeared to have broken the law of Moses that some of them were determined to kill him. And the memory of his visit lasted on, so much so that our Lord Jesus no longer walked openly down in Judea. He walked in Galilee because the Jews sought to kill him. It wasn't time for him to die. One day they would kill him, but he mastered the timing of it, of course. Now, if he had gone up at the beginning of this festival with the Galileans who knew him, and had taken the three or four day trek it was to get down from Galilee to Jerusalem with the pilgrim bands, you'll see, everybody from Galilee would have known who Jesus was, and that this is the Jesus that the authorities were seeking to kill, and that Jesus on the last occasion had claimed to be equal with God. So everybody on the road down that joined the caravan, as the caravans all came together and flowed towards Jerusalem, they would have announced it as soon as they got within the gates. This is the Jesus, you see. This is the man that claimed to be the Christ, and it would have spread through the crowd like wildfire. You'll see. As it was, many people stood in Jerusalem saying, do you think he'll come? Do you think he'll come? Some said he's a good man, some said no he isn't, he leads the people astray. But they were all agog, a few of them knew about him, you see, perhaps many in the city. Will he come this time? If he'd have gone up with the caravans, uh, that would have been him, he would have been pointed out immediately. So he didn't do it. It was a tactic, of course, deliberate tactic. It wouldn't have served his purpose to gain that kind of publicity just then. So he let them go up first. They didn't know whether he was coming up or he wasn't coming up. And halfway through the feast, or nearly halfway through the feast, he went up secretly, incognito, and slipped into the city. Well, if now you can imagine what the city would be like, there'll be hundreds of th- thousands of folks, perhaps, some hundreds of thousands milling all around the city, inside it, in the temple, outside, on the hills, all around. He could easily have slipped into the city without anybody knowing who he was or why he was there. Then, halfway through the feast, he went up into the temple and taught. Now, a lot of people might have heard about Jesus. They wouldn't know what Jesus looked like, wouldn't know him from Adam. So when he went up into the temple courts and began to teach, the crowd wouldn't know who he was, as you see in the narrative. It was only later that it suddenly dawned on them that this might be Jesus. He went and taught. Now, there would have been many rabbis and others having their little ceremonies in the temple courts, as you will see them nowadays at the temple wall in Israel. And so another teacher teaching, well, that was nothing new, and he came round and they listened. Why did he want to teach incognito? Because he first wanted to teach, without raising the question of who he was, that they might consider his teaching. Let me use a far-flung analogy. If you come to me after this meeting and say, Gooding, you are an insufferable prick. Proud, vain, lazy, altogether too fat, uh, we question whether you are a believer at all. That you're liable to hellfire. I should say I don't think so. You're positively wrong, of course, but we can forget that and get on together. Yeah. You come to me, say, Gooding, you are an insufferable sinner. And what is more, you'll perish eternally. And I'm the Son of God that's telling you. What do you suppose I shall say? I should say, no, you're not. You certainly are not. Why do I say that? Well, because if you are the Son of God, what you say about me is true. And if I'm not prepared to face what you say about me, I'm not going to admit you're the Son of God anyway. Am I? I shall fight to the last ditch to reject your claim that you are the Son of God. And ladies and gentlemen, you may think the analogy crude, but that is the situation of many men and women in this world, some very refined men and women. You get talking to them about the gospel, they'll suddenly turn missionary and be interested in the heathen. What about the heathen who haven't heard? They never were interested in them before, but now they are. Do you see, you know it as a dodge to f- to deflect. A message that if it were true, would make them begin to feel very uncomfortable. And many folks find that inbuilt prejudice of fear and then hatred when they're faced with the claims that Jesus is the Son of God. Because if he is, they'll have to accept his verdict. You say, well, what did Jesus do then? Well, you say he doesn't care for people like that. The thing to do is to go in full guns blazing, pooh, you know, shoot them to bits. Well, he eventually told them, if you don't believe I am he, you shall die in your sin. It didn't begin that way. I want you to see, if you will, the magnificent grace and patience of the incarnate Christ. They've got a prejudice. Poor little human beings in their pride, their fallenness and sinfulness, and tottering on the very edge of hell, and they've got a big prejudice that stops them from being willing even to consider he is the Christ. What will he do? Well, because he would love to save them, he wants to get round that prejudice and not raise it the very first time he speaks with them. Could he bypass it and get to their moral judgment anyway? You think that's being soft? I think that's the magnificence of the love of God and his respect for even his fallen creatures. He loves them as persons. And he won't put all his forms of terror on so that they can't even think straight. He will hide his glory and appeal to them to use their moral judgment. Unregenerate men and women, you know. So he went up in the temple and he taught incognito. They didn't know who on earth this fellow was. Ah, you say, yes, but tell me, what did he teach? What verse of the Bible did he teach? Hmm, he says a lot of verses in the Gospels, but they're not very evangelically minded, the Gospels. Uh, what, what, um, what, um, what actual gospel message did he preach on this occasion, you know? Was it John three sixteen perhaps? No, it wasn't, no. Well, what was it? Well, I don't know what it was. Well, you say, what is the sense of studying scripture like that, you see? When you ask a sensible question, now what verse is the first verse you ought to be preaching to the young convert? The preacher says he doesn't know. Well, I don't know because I'm not told. It just says he taught. So I don't know what he taught. Ah, you can build into that anything you'd like. Perhaps his ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount or the Good Samaritan or what have you. He taught, that's it. What John records was the reaction of the crowd. This becomes interesting. They said, whew, that's different. Wow. Uh, and then they could see he's a Galilean. I suppose his dress showed he wasn't a rabbi, because they were very important people. Um, uh, you'll see they were the theologians and the professionals. Uh, they said, how does this man know letters, never having learned? That ain't a bad place to start, you know. Is it? With raw heathen, otherwise culturally educated. Get them reading the New Testament gospels, you know, and you could point out, if you will, uh, uh, uh, forgive me if it sounds irreverent to you, that the person who invented these parables was a sheer literary genius. How used to people talking about the carpenter of Nazareth. All right, it was a carpenter of Nazareth. Like the parables he told to go no further. The parables he told, oh, how magnificently vivid. Oh, how masterfully psychological. How they conveyed the profound truth of God in such language as the peasant could understand it. How they had a way by their very beauty, yet somehow getting right to people's heart and disturbing their consciences. It's one of the evidences, ladies and gentlemen, for the, for the genuineness of our blessed Lord Jesus, his actual teachings. And if you'll allow a literary man who, like the prodigal, has spent his days, well, not with, uh, you know, riotous living, I hope, but in a luxury thing, studying good literature, see, if you'll allow that. God speaks in words, you know. You've noticed that in the Bible, haven't you? Surely you have. And then you've noticed in the Bible as well that he has special kinds of words. Sometimes it's prose, and sometimes it's poetry, and sometimes it's storytelling. What a magnificent thing it is. And supreme among those literary artists was our blessed Lord Jesus. Oh, don't be ashamed of him at that level. There was something to preach. And even the old atheist who's got any literary sense in his head can begin to see the story of the prodigal father and his son, or the prodigal son, as they call it, and all the rest of them can begin to see their magnificence. Where did he get it from? And as for the notion that his apostles invented this character in the Gospels, well, that is sheer ludicrous, isn't it? That the church invented Jesus Christ? Well, if they did, we better start worshiping them, I should think. For the evidence is they didn't invent it. In fact, when it came to certain crucial things, they violently disagreed with the Lord Jesus, did his apostles. And on the times went to correct him, and finally deserted him, and considered his prophecy that he would be crucified out downright folly. The church didn't invent the gospels, you know. It's part of the evidence. And then there's another side. Did he preach on these occasions the Sermon on the Mount with its exalted ethics, like the driven snow of the highest Mont Blanc in the world? Where did he get it from? And anyway, my good sir, you'll see. Um, if I wanted to know about music, where would I go to? Well, if I could, I'd go and wake up old Mozart from his grave, or see if he could hear me anyway, and uh uh uh uh uh he's not knowledge, world expert, surely is, or Chopin or somebody like that, you see. Yeah. And if I wanted to know about science, well, I would go to the boffins of the modern day, you know, Einstein, if I could get him too, and things like that. And if you wanted to know about morality, where would you go to? Well, I should make a shortcut myself. And I have tried to read some of the, uh, philosophers, the early philosophies of ethics, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics and the Epicureans and other such things, and they were serious men, worthy of reading. Jesus Christ, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to ethics, towers above the lot of them, doesn't it? It's he that taught us that we loved our enemies. And our Lord went up incognito. He hadn't raised the question yet, who is he? He just taught. And he got them all talking about his teaching. It led you know, there is an experiment you could make if you would. My teaching, in answer to their, uh, their question, where did this man get this from? He said, my teaching is not mine, but his that sent me. Well, how do we know that then? Oh well, he said, there's an experiment you could make. If you were willing to do God's will when you came to know it, then actually you would know. If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of my teaching, whether it is from myself or whether it is of God. You see, at least the people around him nominally claim to believe in God anyway, like Jesus Christ. If you are willing to do God's will, yes, when you know it. Now I'm telling you, I issue the guarantee that God will show you whether my teaching comes from me or whether it comes from God. That remains a very serious, very serious injunction. There's no use, of course, being a dilettante. Also, if someone comes to God and says, now, okay, God, um, I would actually be interested, this is a matter of interest, you know, uh, uh, uh, I would be interested, God, if you would, uh, like to tell me whether Jesus is your son. Of course, I have to tell you in advance, God, that, um, uh, even suppose you should show me he is, I, I still reserve my right to, uh, uh, to whether I should do what he says or not, okay? And God would say, well, I shouldn't bother if I were you. You don't say to God Almighty, show me that Jesus is your son if he is, and if you show me that he's your son, I still, God, don't necessarily want to follow you, and I'm not prepared to do your will anyway. Well, if that's your attitude, you, you might as well stop the whole proceedings. But if there's a God, and if you're prepared to do his will when he shows you, the guarantee of our Lord is that he, you shall know, for God will show it to you, whether Jesus is a teaching is of God or whether it comes from himself. Secondly, says our Lord, there's another test that you could apply, gentlemen, about my teaching. You'll see, he says, um, uh, he who speaks from himself speak- seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. I'm not here, says our Lord, in teaching to drum up glory for myself. You say, how can that possibly be? I mean, he walks along the streets of, of Jerusalem and says he's one with the Father. Isn't he caught in glory for himself? It is important, the question, because he that is, uh, uh, i- i- is doing these kind of things to, to get glory for himself is self-evidently false, says Christ. The man who is not seeking glory for himself, but the glory of him that sent him, he is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. I am not seeking glory for myself. In my teaching, I'm seeking to glorify him that sent me, my Father. You say, how can you see that? Uh, you'll see. How can he demonstrate that? Well, you will know the story that he presently tells them. I'm going away, he says. Going away? Going on another teaching lecture tour somewhere down in Egypt to the Greeks of the dispersion, the Jews of the dispersion. No, no, says Christ, I'm going away. What does he mean he's going away? Well, he's going to Calvary, of course. His very teaching will earn him a cross, and the decision whether he was true or false will now depend on God. If God glorifies him and vindicates him by the resurrection, he will be vindicated. If he is not of God, he will not be raised. The going away of Christ is an exceedingly important part of the divine strategy. Then he turned to the question of the morality of his works. He said, you see, uh, uh, did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law? Why seek ye to kill me? The multitude said, thou hast a demon, which was polite talk for you've gone off your head, you will say, who seeketh to kill thee? They didn't know who he was, you see, the penny hadn't dropped yet. Well, he said, for this I did one work, and you all marvel. And then he quotes his work that he did in Jerusalem in healing a man on the Sabbath. How he said that, yeah, that was breaking the law. Really, said Christ. Now look, can we not think this through? You say, is this a way to, to, to work with unconverted people, to ask them to think? Yes, it's a, it's a jolly good way to work with unconverted people, to get them to think. Let me say they're dead in trespasses and sins. Well, so they may be, but they still got a moral judgment. Now let's think it through, says Christ. You say I'd broken the law of Moses by, uh, making a man whole on the Sabbath day. Well, that's very interesting, because actually, he says, the, the law itself commands that we mustn't be circumcised that day, and the circumcision must be deferred so that the Sabbath be not broken. Or does circumcision take precedence so that the babe has to be circumcised, whether it's the Sabbath or any other day, even if it break the Sabbath, it must be circumcised? Oh. Oh. Oh, well, yeah, ha, well, yeah, well, yes, I mean circumcision, but then circumcision was so tremendously important, you see. Ooh, yeah, I mean, very important for that tiny bit of flesh to be cut off a man, I suppose. Yeah. And, and that's so important that you could break the Sabbath over it. Well, says our Lord now, if it's OK to conduct circumcision on a, on, on, on, on a man so that Sabbath, uh, uh, so that the, and break the Sabbath in the doing of it, how much more shall it be right not to cut a little bit off a man, but to make a whole man completely whole on the Sabbath day. Gentlemen, he said, you want to start using your moral judgment and think. And now he, he, he urges it on them, doesn't he? Here's the chapter seven verse twenty four. Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. Appeal to people to use their moral judgment, first on his teaching, then on his works, which led to a commotion in the crowd. They presently saw that, ah, this must be that Jesus. Well, how are the authorities allowing him to stand here and preach like this? Couldn't be, said some of them, could it, that the authorities have come to see that he is the Messiah? Well, no, said others, no, no, he can't be the Messiah. You can imagine the crowd, can't you, all flitting around, having a voice. No, he can't be the Messiah. Why? Well, because when Messiah comes, uh, nobody knows where he comes from. And where did they get that from? I don't know. That was a bit of the local superstition, you know. It's marvelous how people will risk their eternal destiny on some bit of secondhand theological superstition that they've dreamed up, and it becomes absolute canon law. Oh, he couldn't be the Messiah. Why not? Well, because we, when Messiah comes, nobody knows where he comes from. Oh, what glorious superstition. Perhaps it was based remotely on the verse that said that the Messiah should suddenly come to his temple. And what did our Lord say about that? Oh, do you suppose he said, ah, stupid people, stupid non- what is it good of talking to those nonsensical people? I know you have misread the heart of Christ. People lost in their superstitions. Ah, but if he can win them. He says, well, in some sense you're not true, are you? I mean, you know where I come from, don't you? I came from Nazareth. They knew his father and his mother. There's another sense, he said, in which you're perfectly right. You don't know where I come from, do you? For the Father sent me, and you don't know the one who sent me, do you? And some of them, in the honesty of their hearts, saw the point of you. So then the officers came to stop the rabble talking, you see, and getting wrong ideas, and they suggested they were going to to arrest him. He said, I shouldn't bother, gentlemen, I'm going away. We've seen how that going away was not running away from the task of making God known. His going away, as later chapters will tell us, were greater part of the method God would use. When you have lifted up the son of man, then shall you know. But here in this chapter, uh, uh, John doesn't stop to elaborate on his going away because he comes to his climactic point. Jesus stood at the last great day of the feast and cried, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and out of his inward parts shall flow rivers of living water. This spake he of the Spirit. And gentlemen, it is no difficulty, is it, ladies and gentlemen? This is straightforward, simple. You've known it since you've known everything. Christ was God's last message to men. Christ was not God's last witness to men. God never intended it so. I repeat, Christ is God's last word. God, who spoke in former times through the prophets, has spoken in these last days unto us by one who is his son. Christ is God's last message to men. Christ isn't the last witness. When the men, the men of this world crucified him, he died and was buried and ascended to heaven. Then, as this point chapter points out, not before, Christ sent forth the Holy Spirit to be that witness. And the Bible, uh, doesn't try to hide it from you. This is the way men come to know. They hear about Jesus. They consider his teaching. They start to think about it. They observe its challenge. They open their hearts to God's showing. Then the Christ points not just to his own teaching and his earthly life, nor simply to his death, points to the coming of the Holy Spirit, God's final witness to the truth. And you say it, you make it sound very academic, but it's practical, isn't it? If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and out of his inward parts shall flow rivers of living water. Not necessarily volumes of theological treatises out of his head, but out of his inward parts, rivers of living water. There is no greater satisfaction possible on earth than the satisfaction of coming to see through the Holy Spirit's gracious ministry that you've found the secret of the very universe. You have found the Christ and the heart of God. You have found the secret that the whole universe eventually will make sense, and within it you have found the secret of your salvation. This is the technique. Christ only needed to stay a few years to establish his teaching, to establish by his life his sinlessness and his moral quality, and by his death to make possible forgiveness of sins. That's all he needed to do. I say it reverently, what a big all it was. It was always the purpose that the final witness should be the coming of the Holy Spirit in the name of the ascended Christ. And we who have found that satisfaction should be instructed by it. Of course, without the Holy Spirit, how could we lead anybody to Christ? Ah, but how does the Holy Spirit do it? Not coming first and preaching in a vacuum, but first the coming of the Savior, his life, his teaching, his works, his death, these great objective historical facts, those first, and then these authenticated in those who trust him by the gift of the satisfying rivers of the water of the Holy Spirit. Thus it is. The crowd still had the difficulty. They said, hmm, but it doesn't come out of the, uh, out of the... can't be, can't be, they said. It doesn't come of the seed of David. And it doesn't come out of Bethlehem. It comes from Nazareth up the road here, so it can't be the Messiah. And what would you say to them? You would say, look, don't bother about those little details of prophecy. You'll say, what's that got to do with anything? Experience, my boys. I think you want to go, but wait a minute, it does, because our gospel is this, according to Paul. The gospel is a message about God's son who was of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the son of God by the resurrection of the dead. And if Jesus isn't the son of David, the bottom is knocked out of your gospel before you start. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we want to wake up to the immense importance of the historical preparation for the coming of Christ into our world. It is still a thing to be preached to your hard-headed atheist that Jesus, the center of our gospel, was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. If Jesus is the Son of God, is it likely that God would have sent him into our world without preparation, out of a blue, like a sudden lightning strike or something? No, if Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then it's the logical thing to think that God would have spent time in preparing for his coming, and so he has. Christianity is not a philosophy that any bright spark could think up if he had enough brains. The gospel message is founded in the great processes of history. God's purpose with Israel, Abraham, Israel, David, and the prophets. At last, some of our modern congregations don't know enough of the prophets to perceive the point of it. But as new age and things like that come on the increase, we shall need to grasp hold of the evidence of our Old Testament and its prophecies about Christ and the importance of history in the preparation for the coming of the Messiah. They were right to expect that Jesus came of the seed of David and be born in Bethlehem. Alas, they were prejudiced, prejudiced. He did actually come of the seed of David and was born in Bethlehem. They didn't know it. Why didn't they know it? Why, for the same reason that the council didn't know it. When the officers got back to the council, they said, have you not brought him? They said, never man spake like that. We couldn't make head and a tail of it. Uh, oh, they said, oh, you're not been converted too, have you? There are people that knows not the law are cursed. You can tell them any old thing. Believing Jesus is unbiblical ignorance, crass unbiblical ignorance, ignorance of the Bible, they said. There are some theologians who say so still. And all evangelicals suffer from crass ignorance of the Bible. And if you listen to some evangelicals, you think there might be a grain of truth in it. Ha. But you'll see, that's what they said. The case was that it was the very animosity of the council and their attempts to kill Christ that had driven him to Galilee. Nicodemus had the courage to make a sort of an indirect profession, didn't he? He said, well, you talk about biblical ignorance, but, um, actually, isn't your prejudice a little unbiblical itself? Does our law condemn a man before it hear him? Po, they said, you, you, you his disciple, look and see, out of Galilee arises no prophet. Thought they proved it, when it was their own hostility that had driven him north and therefore cut off the opportunity to talk with him and find out what the real evidence was. But if they'd have talked to him, they might have discovered that he was born at the seed of David and was actually born in Bethlehem. And it ends on a solemn note, isn't it? The very evidence that men need in order to ponder it, that they might come to belief that Jesus is the Son of God, it's their own hostility that sometimes cuts off from them. The evidence that is available. All my dear brothers and sisters, I've kept you long, but you see, this is a dying world, and there are millions that perish. These are not mere academic things. This is the blessed savior of the world on the sacred business of reaching souls for God, and showing us the grace and love and mercy and the wisdom of the divine tactics in seeking the lost to bring them home to God. Let us copy his example. Let us know our gospel and know how it is to be presented, and how, if we will do it, God the Holy Spirit will authenticate the very message that we preach. Thank you for your great patience. We only started a quarter of an hour late, so now we are all.