Gooding, David: 11 - On the Road with Jesus

And of summer, ladies and gentlemen, it's delightful to see you here once more. And we come to study in some detail the chapters seven, eight, nine, and ten of the gospel by John. These four chapters, seven, eight, nine, and ten, are by many people found to be some of the most difficult chapters in the whole of this wonderful gospel. Let's not to forget that these chapters contain some of the most loved stories and parables that our Lord Jesus ever told, or which are things he ever performed. The two stories, one, the woman taken in adultery, and two, the giving of sight to the blind man, have been preached upon by countless preachers and have led many people to come to a personal knowledge of forgiveness, have cleared their hearts and consciences of the dark load and terror of guilt. And sim- similarly, the story of the blind man has led many people to follow in his steps of ever increasing understanding of who Jesus is, until, like the blind man himself, they have fallen at the feet of our blessed Lord and confessed him to be the Son of God and worshipped him. And the parables of the shepherd and the sheep that are given us in chapter ten, why, of course, they have been the source of endless delight and comfort to long generations of the Lord's people. Uh, they have discovered in our blessed Lord the noble shepherd who gives to his people eternal security and that intimate knowledge of the Father and the Son on which that security is based. But the trouble begins in the intervening verses, for these chapters contain in between the stories and the parables a long, long sections of detailed discussion, not to speak of argument, and sometimes it is very easy to get lost in the detail and then to fail to see what the point, the major point of all this discussion and argument is. You know, if you are about to use a spear, then it's good to pick a spear that has a moderately long shaft, and the weightier it is, if you can wield it, the better, because when a long and heavy spear makes its impact, the length and weight of the shaft will drive the point all the more deeply home, you'll see. If it has a point. Ha. The trouble with some spears is that they have long, heavy shafts, but no point. And, uh, that can apply to sermons as well. And unless you see the point, the, um, the argument then becomes a little wearisome and ineffectual. Not only is there a long argument, much, much rigorous detail, but in addition, there are great lengths of apparent repetition. One of them we might observe as an example of the rest. At chapter seven, for instance, and verse, um, thirty three, we read as follows: Jesus therefore said, yet a little while I am with you, and I go unto him that sent me. You shall seek me and shall not find me, and where I am you cannot come. The Jews therefore said among themselves, whither will this man go that we shall not find him? Will he go unto the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What is this word that he said, you shall seek me and shall not find me, and where I am you cannot come. A whole little paragraph then on this fact. Our Lord now announces that he is going away, and they will seek him, and they shall not be able to find him, and where he goes, they will not be able to come. Forgive me my sins. Well, very good. The point is made in chapter seven. But when we come to chapter eight and verse th- twenty one, we read very, very similar words. He said therefore again unto them, I go away, and you shall seek me and shall die in your sin. Whither I go, you cannot come. The Jews therefore said, will he kill himself that he saith, whither I go, you cannot come? And he said unto them, you are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you that you shall die in your sins, for except you believe that I am he, you shall die in your sins. Repetition then, and that is but one example of a number of phrases that seem to be very similar or exactly alike that are scattered across these four chapters. And the first thing that happens with repetition when you have absorbed the impact of the emphasis that it brings is to think, well, that's interesting, but it doesn't seem to advance the argument very far. Why the repetition? So these, um, chapters are, uh, somewhat difficult. On our last occasion, nonetheless, we saw, as we conducted a bird's eye view of the four chapters, we noticed what the major problem is with which these four chapters set out to deal. The problem is what you might, uh, describe as problems related to the way God has chosen to reveal himself in Jesus Christ, our Lord. A problem that presented itself to his brothers, worldly cynics that they were. They said, why do you stay here in, uh, a one horse little Nazareth? If you are proposing to start a new religion or conduct a cause, there's no sense in staying in this one-eyed show. You want to get down to Jerusalem and get on the radio or TV or something, do a lot of miracles and get the publicity. The only way to start a, a religion is to get publicity, do you see? And no one with any sense seeketh himself to be known and simultaneously hides up in secret. And our Lord had to tell them, but you go up to the feast, I'm not going up yet. Why not? And then when he did go up, he went up in secret. Why ever in secret? I thought he wanted the world to know that he had come as the savior of the world. And when he went up, he started teaching, and presently the Pharisees sent officers to take him, and he said, I shouldn't bother if I were you, I'm going away, gentlemen. What, what, what so soon? Which reminds us that when God sent his son into the world, he only stayed here about thirty three years, all told. Thirty of those years he spent in obscurity, and the remaining three of his public ministry was spent mostly in Galilee, that, uh, the Jews of Jerusalem thought the most godforsaken part on earth anyway, obscure Galilee. To us, of course, who are believers, yes, perhaps we don't notice the difficulty because we believe anyway, and anything that the Lord Jesus did is right in our eyes, for which you get full marks out of ten for thinking that. But it would help us first to see the problem, because then we shall see the solution, isn't he, won't we? And anyway, one of these days you might meet an unconverted person who has the problem, the modern counterparts of our Lord's own brothers, and then what will you say to them? If God really wants us to know that Jesus is his son, how will you account for the historical facts? That he deliberately spent so much time in obscurity. His public ministry, only three years, mostly in obscurity, and then deliberately leaving. That then is the problem, and you'll remember we extrapolated from it last week, last occasion, and we said, well, yes, and we could think up similar problems. If Jesus is the Son of God and God wants the world to know, why doesn't he have it coming on in lights on the sky, you know, like a digital watch, every, every so many minutes in each language of the world, Jesus is the Son of God. Then we'd all believe, wouldn't we? Or would we? Well, I think the Russians wouldn't. They would say it was an American concoction. But, but, but, I mean, God isn't hard up for ideas and means of doing things, is he? He's got one or two angels if he wants a staff of publicity. Then, if you really believe that Jesus is the way God has chosen to manifest himself. You will need to find some answers to the problems, not that I have raised merely, but that, um, John himself raises. The Bible itself raises it by deliberately recording the problem that our Lord's own brothers had. Some bad preachers raise problems and never then give you the answer. There's one standing in front of you. But Holy Scripture is not like that, you'll see. If it raises a problem, it generally intends to answer it. Difficulty sometimes is that we don't see the answer. So what is the answer? We noticed then at the end of our session last week that the four chapters, whatever they contain, seem to be very deliberately written. We considered the end, the beginnings, and then the ends of each chapter. In chapter seven, he was in Galilee, for the Jews sought to kill him and walk no more in Judea. At the end of the chapter, this is raised against him by members of the council in Jerusalem. Search and see that out of Galilee there arises no prophet. In chapter eight, our Lord comes into the temple and there is, uh, accosted by men who bring a woman taken in adultery to him and say, Master, Moses commanded that such be stoned. What do you say? And he said, let, uh, him that is without sin cast the first stone at her. At the end of that chapter, the Jews picked up stones, this time to stone him, whereupon our Lord went out of the temple. Chapter nine likewise, begins with the vision of this blind man sitting there in front of you, and the disciples question, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? And our Lord said, neither. It ends with the Pharisees saying, well then, are we blind as well? And our Lord replies, if you were blind, then you would not have sinned. But now you see, you say you see, therefore your sin remains. And finally, chapter ten begins with a reference to the Good Shepherd, the true Shepherd, coming to the fold, and thus giving evidence that he is the true Shepherd. Because when he comes to the fold, the doorkeeper opens to him. And the chapter ends with a reference to John the Baptist, the God-appointed official doorkeeper of the fold of Israel. When the true shepherd appeared and came to the nation, acted as the doorkeeper and opened the door to him. Chapters then that are very carefully constructed. The fact that their ends correspond with their beginnings so clearly encourages us to think that what lies between the beginning and the end in each chapter is not, uh, an unsolvable maze of detail altogether uncontrolled, but carries the thought flow very carefully from beginning to end. Ours then to try and understand the thought flow. And then we noticed on our last occasion that the four chapters are interrelated among themselves. Chapter one deals with our Lord's going up to Jerusalem, his approach to Jerusalem, using the Greek verb anabino, to go up five times. Similarly, chapter ten deals with our Lord's approach to the fold of Israel. And the approach is all important because the approach to the fold shows who the true shepherd is and who the false shepherd is. The false shepherd doesn't come to the door, he climbs up some other way, and that is the Greek word anabino once more. So chapter seven discusses our Lord's approach to the feast to Jerusalem. Chapter ten discusses our Lord approach to the fold. The topics are obviously interrelated. We finally noticed in our last session that chapter eight has our Lord declaring, I am the light of the world, and chapter nine has our Lord declaring the same thing, I am the light of the world. And we noticed the difference between the two. In chapter eight, he is the light by which men see things. In chapter nine, however, he is the light of the world in the sense that he can give us eyes to see the light with. If you're going to see any object, you must first have light, else you won't see it. If you have nothing but darkness all around you, though the object is there, you won't see it. You need light to see it with. But even suppose there is abundant light, if you have no eyes to see with, you still will not see the object in, uh, concerned. You need both light to see with and eyes to see with. And chapter eight is about to tell us that our Lord Jesus is the light by means of which men and women see things. Chapter nine will tell us that our Lord is the light in the sense that he is able to give people the faculty of sight to see spiritual things. That, at least to my mind, is an encouragement as we have to begin now delving into the, uh, long detailed arguments. There are some dear Christians who will tell you, and I was told it many times and perhaps need to still to be told it over and over again, that if you are seeking to lead a soul to Christ, you shouldn't argue. Because the Holy Spirit doesn't use argument. He manifests himself to people directly, perhaps while the preacher is preaching, but, uh, yes, it's the Holy Spirit work to reveal the Lord. And with the second half of that, uh, proposition, you can, uh, readily agree, I hope, that you can have the finest argument in the world and get nowhere unless the Holy Spirit simultaneously reveals the Savior to the person you're talking to. But that said, the first part of the proposition can't be true, can it? That you shouldn't argue, because these, uh, chapters are full of argument. And it's our Lord doing the argument. He was and is what, uh, John Stott at one stage called the, the controversialist. And the Gospels are full of his arguments. And if we would be his efficient me- servants to spread his gospel and make known the glories of the Lord Jesus, we shall surely not go astray if we learn his arguments, perceive the force of them and the relevance of them, and ourselves learn to employ them. But in order further to encourage us to face the more difficult things, let's, uh, be wise if we can, and help ourselves by what is a well, uh, uh, well known and well used, uh, and to be recommended device for pioneering in scripture. I have at least found it very helpful coming to a new book of scripture or to an a- a new passage of scripture to begin by saying, well, let me go to the heart of it. And how would you do that? Well, the first big question to ask, surely, about any passage of the Bible, any book of the Bible, is this: what does it say about the divine persons? If I could come to them within these passages, I should get my necessary landmarks, for they lie at the heart of it all. It's therefore an idea to begin with the divine persons, to g- begin therefore in these chapters by the way in which the Lord Jesus makes himself known. Four marvelous, glorious, infinitely rich revelations of the person of the Lord Jesus. Let me point you to them. Chapter seven, for its part, verse thirty seven onward, our Lord Jesus reveals himself as the Jesus about to be glorified, the glorified Jesus, the dispenser of the thirst-quenching rivers of the Holy Spirit. Cool, let's stop and get hold of that and allow ourselves the luxury of enjoying it, shall we? The glorified Jesus, dispenser of the thirst-question, thirst-quenching rivers of the Holy Spirit. Let's read the words. Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive. For the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. And we must pass by the verse in almost indecent haste this evening because of the pressure of time, but all that as we read it. That same blessed Holy Spirit, ladies and gentlemen, would make it real to know the Lord Jesus. There lies the heart of one of the secrets of knowing him. The glorified Lord Jesus, dispenser of the Holy Spirit, those thirst-quenching rivers. Let our little hearts never dare say that this is an exaggeration. The rivers of the Holy Spirit. Come across, if you will, to chapter eight. And here our Lord Jesus refers to himself as the son of the house. As Hebrews would put it, the son over his own house. And because he is the son of the house, he is the conferrer of freedom, dignity, and true sonship on all who believe. Let's read the verses here. This is chapter eight, uh, and uh, verse thirty— uh, verse, let's read from verse thirty four. Jesus answered them, verily, verily, I say unto you, every one that committeth sin is the slave of sin, and the slave abides not in the house forever. The son abides forever. If therefore the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Magnificent work- words, aren't they? Fancy being elevated. We tiny creatures, fancy being elevated to the status of freeborn sons in the very house and family of Almighty God. No longer simply sinners. No longer, I say guardedly, simply creatures. But taken up into the very family of God and constituted with all the dignity of sons of the house. To say, now are you sons of God, says Paul, through faith in Christ Jesus. This the blessed Lord Jeb- Jesus is able to do, able to confer upon us this dignity and this freedom, conferrer of freedom from sin, dignity and true sonship of the Father. Look at chapter nine, if you will, where our Lord is perceived finally as the Son of God, the Creator incarnate, bestower of the gift and faculty of spiritual sight. And so that we might perceive and remind ourselves of the wonder of this, let's observe now what we shall have to consider more seriously later, that in chapter seven and eight, Christ is dealing with men's moral perception. Even the unregenerate still have moral perception, don't they? If you doubt that, find the best Mercedes-Benz you can, parked in Belfast, and in sight of its owner, run off with it, or attempt to, and see whether the unregenerate owner of the Mercedes has any moral sense and knows the difference between right and wrong, and you'll find out very quickly. You'll see. Even fallen men, therefore, have a, a, a moral sense, some of them not very well developed, some of them almost crushed out of existence, some of them very well developed. But moral sense is one thing. Spiritual sight is quite another. To see that Jesus is the Son of God, you won't come at that simply by use of your moral ability. For that you will need to be given a special faculty of sight, to know in that deeper sense the Father and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. Jesus is the creator incarnate, able to impart a faculty of sight that we have never had before. And finally, in chapter 10, our Lord announces himself, does he not, as the good, the noble shepherd, provider of eternal security for the sheep. The verses are famous, you'll see. They are chapter ten, verse twenty seven. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, which hath given them me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. Jesus, the provider of eternal security for his sheep, enclosed in the double-handed protection of the Father and the Son. Lovely things, aren't they? They stand at the heart of these four chapters. For all I know, they would make a series of four sermons, but, uh, I must pass by. One way then of coming at these chapters, each one of them has that great characteristic of revealing some aspect of the glory and work and person of the Lord Jesus. Another way that we can help ourselves as we come closer to the detail is to do what we have done on other occasions, and that is to look at the feast, on this occasion at the two feasts in the course of which our Lord made the remarks and did the deeds that are here reported. We found it useful, for instance, on in the last section, considering chapter six. It was exceedingly helpful to notice that the feeding of the five thousand and then the crossing of the sea happened when the feast of Passover was near at hand. We thought about what Passover stood for, and then at once began to see the relevance of what our Lord said when the Passover was near at hand. So let's do, in our first session, a similar thing, and think about the, uh, two feasts that form the background of these four chapters. First of all, in chapter seven verse two, now the feast of the Jews, the feast of tabernacles was at hand. And then in chapter ten and verse twenty two, and it was the feast of the dedication at Jerusalem, and it was winter. Two feasts, feast of tabernacles, feast of dedication. And what was their particular significance then? Well, first of all, should we, should we notice that the details of these feasts are given in one or two places in the Old Testament. Perhaps the easiest one to take is the book of Leviticus, and I have put up a little chart on the board here just to refresh your memories of the historical facts. The Feast of Tabernacles is the last one in the series that are given us in Leviticus chapter twenty three. The Feast of Dedication was a feast that you will not read of in the rest of the Old Testament. It wasn't set up until one hundred and sixty four BC, and therefore the canon of the Old Testament was long since closed before that feast was instituted in Israel. So let's leave that for the moment and concentrate it on the first feast, the Feast of Tabernacles. It came at the end of the series, as you'll see. And in the book of Leviticus, chapter twenty three, the significance of these festivals is clearly laid out. They were given to Israel when Israel was still in the wilderness, and the first two are Passover and Unleavened Bread, and they look backward to Israel's deliverance out of Egypt. Israel delivered from the wrath of God and the avenging angel by the blood of the Passover lamb. And there those feasts started, of course. You say, why do they start there? They don't nowadays, do they? In the modern Jewish religious calendar, you don't start with Passover anymore. You start in the second half, do you see, uh, uh, uh, uh, in their present calendar. But in the biblical calendar, you started with Passover. That was the beginning of months to you. The modern Jew will say, yes, the beginning of months, but not the beginning of the year. The beginning of the year, Rosh Hashanah, comes later with the Jew around this, uh, uh, these, um, very important feasts, trumpets, and then in particular the Day of Atonement. But as I say, in Old Testament, uh, the beginning with Passover, why the beginning? Well, for the very simple reason there wouldn't have been a nation to begin anything, hadn't they been delivered and redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb, which incidentally preaches its lesson to us, doesn't it? There is no beginning, the Christian experience, except by the redeeming blood of Christ. And then, yes, and the second one was unleavened bread that followed immediately upon the first Passover, the fourteenth day of the first month, and unleavened bread the fifteenth day of the first month. They ate the unleavened bread because when they came out of Egypt, they came out in haste, and they hadn't time to make leavened bread, so they had to put up with unleavened bread. That the historical affair. So even in the wilderness, had they chosen two, they could have celebrated those two. They were looking back to what had happened. But when these feasts were given, the rest of them could not as yet be celebrated because they were in the desert. So you will find that, uh, in chapter twenty three of Leviticus, the rest are introduced with the words, and when you become into the land, you'll see, and reap. Yes, that was as yet future. All these feasts, therefore, are largely, basically agricultural feasts at their lowest level of meaning. They were celebrations of all the wonderful glories, joys, uh, and delights of reaping and enjoying the glorious inheritance that God had gave them in the land flowing with milk and honey. When you come into the land and reap the harvest of your inheritance. Reaping the inheritance of the land, therefore, was divided basically into two groups of festivals. The first lot in the early part of the year was the Feast of First Fruits, and then the Feast of Weeks that in New Testament would be called Pentecost, a Feast of Weeks in He- uh, Hebrew, Shavuot. And, uh, this was the first fruits of the barley harvest, and then followed by the complete harvest itself. This was the reaping of the new corn of the year. And of course, in Palestine, it happens comparatively early, not like us here in these northern climes. It happens comparatively early, seven weeks or so after what we call Easter. You'll see. And there they ate these first fruits. Then there came a gap, and in the second half of the year, beginning in the seventh month, now the beginning of the second half of the year, a cluster of feasts, trumpets in the first place, followed very soon afterwards by the great solemn day of atonement. And then when that was over, the great and glorious and most enjoyable of the lot, the feast of tabernacles. Because tabernacles happened at the time of year when now not merely the barley and corn that was reaped in the first group, but the harvest of the vine and the harvest of the olives took place, you'll see. So now there were other things like nuts and various other fruits and veggies that had to be harvested after this. But this was the second part, the main second part of the harvest, when you brought in the, uh, uh, the grapes for the wine and the olives for their oil. And when that happened each year, uh, God, uh, uh, uh, uh, laid down that they should have a festival lasting a whole week long, you'll see. And it was ordered to them that they should make booths out of the branches of various trees, and leaving their homes, they should live in these temporary structures, these booths, you'll see, for the whole week long. The kids loved it, I suspect. Don't kids love it when they've got a comfortable bed up in your house, madam? Uh, they they like to forsake that and go and all to the discomforts of living in a tent on the lawn at the back of the place, you'll say. That's great adventure, isn't it? It's more comfortable in Israel when it's a bit warmer, you'll see. And it was a lovely season when Uncle George and the rest of them came from Timbuktu, Egypt, or Patagonia or whatnot with their army of kids, you'll see, and the relatives hadn't seen them, and they came from Canada and some from, uh, elsewhere, you'll see. And now you at last met up in the city of Jerusalem, and then you celebrated this, uh, feast of tabernacles, and you had plenty to feast on. In the ancient world, when it came to springtime, just before the harvest, very often people had to go hungry for some weeks. Last year's supplies were running out. But when now the new harvest was there, that was a time of rejoicing, of feasting. You can imagine them, can't you, sitting in their tents, you see, with the corn saved up and the bread baked, and now the new wine and the olives, a time of real enjoyment, yes, before God, reaping the full harvest of their inheritance. And when they did it, God, as I say, ordained that they should, um, live in booths. Why for? That they should remember how they got there. They should remember that once upon a time their ancestors were slaves in Egypt, and God had visited them and redeemed them by the blood of the Passover lamb, and then God had asked them to journey that long pilgrimage all the way across the desert that they might reach their inheritance. And in that time of journeying, they had to live in tents all the way across the wilderness, plodding along their weary way, and it took them forty years in the end because of their folly. Forty years of wilderness wanderings, plodding along, hoping to arrive. And God had them remember it now when they were in the land. How they got there, their nation had had to live as pilgrims in tents, journeying towards the promised inheritance. It added to the comfort, didn't it? If you've been out on a stormy sea with the wind howling, or you've been enjoying your holiday in Donegal when the weather has been putting snow on the mountains and sleet down your neck, then when at last you get back into your home or comfortable hotel, that's lovely, isn't it, to, before you go off to sleep, to lie there and hear the wind howling and the rain coming down and remember that you were out on the deep and threatened to be eaten by the whales, but now you're safe in bed and you're enjoying yourself immensely, yeah. Now they had arrived, and they were asked to look back the journey that had been required to bring them there. Wonder, my dear sister, when you get home to glory and sit in your heavenly tabernacle, will you look back on Ballybunion, Ocker and Clocker, and Five Mile Town, and all the pilgrimage that you were required to take before you arrived at last in glory? Methinks it will make heaven the more enjoyable to remember all the way that he led us. Yeah. I can tell you one thing about this tabernacle feast, however, that the first time you did it, particularly when you were father and had your own house and you were in charge of the booth and you had the kids, do you see, that was exciting. And the next ten years it was moderately exciting. Um, but when Feast of Tabernacles has come and gone fifty three times, and you put the booth up fifty three times and taken it down fifty three times, and now you're putting it up the fifty fourth time. Somehow kind of loses its novelty. It's like Christmas, isn't it? I find it very difficult to be moved too much by Christmas, you'll see. Had so many, and as for birthdays, hmm. I wonder how many Israelites, as they sat munching their grapes, now seventy years old, and they said to themselves, we've arrived now, you see, we- we- we've arrived. This is it. Got a swanking new bungalow. The farm is prosperous, you see. The cows are fertile, and uh, look at the bumper harvest again this year, and the income tax isn't too bad. Um, we've arrived. Sons are all doing well, good jobs, mm, arrived. I wonder how many sat as they munched their grapes for the seventieth year, began to say to themselves, well, uh, yeah, we're arrived, but is this all? I mean, they got a bit repetitive after a while, see? Is this all? Is this what mean- it means to arrive in life, to munch grapes and olives and things, and have your house and a booth in the garden, a garden summer house and things? Is that all? And of course, the answer was no, it, it wasn't at all. And as you begin to read the prophets, you will discover that as they thought about the Feast of Tabernacles, yes, they did think about it as a something that reminded them of the past and where they'd come from and the ways of God with Israel up to this point. But then they saw in Passover indications and pointers to something that lay still ahead, a far more wonderful and magnificent feast of tabernacles. And let me show you how that came about, if I may. In addition to the biblical injunctions as to how they were to keep it, the Jews over the centuries has added other ceremonies in the course of the week. So each day, for instance, uh, they not only lived in booths, but they, um, each day went down to the pool of Siloam with a golden pitcher. They filled the pitcher with water, they came up, and the water was ceremonially poured at the base of the altar. On the last great day of the feast, it was done twice. It came at a very dramatic point in the whole proceedings, with the thousands gathered in the temple courts and around, every man carrying what they called a lulab, that is his branch of, um, leaves and things. And, uh, as the water was poured at the base of the altar twice this day, the whole crowd would erupt into singing, Hosanna, Lord, save us now. What did it all mean? Well, as for the water, first of all, it was done in memory of the fact that when God had brought the Israelites across the desert and they ran out of water, God had miraculously supplied them water out of the rock on two occasions, and water from a well that sprang up in the desert. So God had maintained his people. They remembered it. But then there was another element to it, you'll see, as the farmers sat at least in their pools, enjoying the year's harvest, they would have known men that unless they now got their rains, their seasonal rains in the autumn, they wouldn't be able to plow, for the ground by this time would be absolutely rock hard. So they needed the rains to soften the ground, else they'd never be able to plow, and then there'd be no harvest next year. And Israelites had had enough experience in life to know that when God was chastising his people Israel, sometimes the rains failed and didn't come. And therefore, as they poured the water at the base of the altar, it was not merely in recognition of the past, it was a s- unspoken prayer to God that God would look upon his people and the next year grant them the rain that they so sorely needed, so that there would be a sowing and then a harvest next year as well. Yes, but as the prophets pondered that, they began to think more deeply still. Surveying the hardness of Israel's heart, the sinfulness and waywardness of that nation, the way they had become so sinful that God had had to banish them to exile both in Assyria and then in Babylon. And even since they were returned, their recurrent lapsing into evil and wickedness. So when the prophets thought of the future, they said if there was ever going to be any hope of permanent restoration of that nation, any hope of a paradise to come, any hope of glory, then this would be needed, not just literal rain poured out of heaven, there would need to come an almighty outpouring of God's Holy Spirit on the world. Rivers of living water upon the dry ground. And Joel had said it, hadn't he? After the catastrophe of the locust plague, Joab was moved to prophesy of a day that would come when God would pour out his spirit, not merely on Israel, but on all flesh, if you please. The prophets, using the imagery of the past history and the imagery of the ceremony at Tabernacles, thought of that future great blessing when God would pour out his Holy Spirit on all flesh. And then they thought more. And they will say, in the course of the week of the, uh, uh, of the, um, uh, Feast of Tabernacles, they had the special custom of lighting lamps, both in the women's quarters and in the houses of Jerusalem. They lit lamps. And a lovely sight it must have been of an evening time when the sky was purple dark, to see the lamp light glowing up in the Temple Mount as you looked to it. That also was a memory, a memory of the time when God had led his people through the wilderness, a way they had never gone before, but he had gone before them as they traveled in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Then as the prophets thought about it, and they thought about the moral darkness of Israel, the spiritual darkness of Israel, and uh, the uh, darkness of heathendom all around them. Then they began to prophesy in these terms. Let me read you one of Isaiah's famous passages, you'll see. Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples. But the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee, and nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. And it was the prophet's inspired hope and promise that one day the darkness would be dispelled by the light of God shining upon his people, Israel, so vividly that the nations themselves would be involved, and they would come to the light. And then, as they thought about the grapes and the wine harvest and the joy, they thought even more deeply, didn't they? Wine that maketh glad the heart of man, munching your grapes, but, as I say, when you're getting towards seventy, you ask, how much longer is this going on? And then what? And with di- death finally come, what lies behind in the darkness of the grave? And the inspired answer came through the prophets. Uh, let me read you, for instance, Isaiah again, chapter twenty five. Listen to the phraseology and the metaphors that are used. Isaiah uh twenty five and verse six: and in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He has swallowed up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces, and the reproach of his people shall he take away from all the earth, for the Lord hath spoken it. Oh, what a great harvest that will be, will it not? Oh, what joy when the ten thousand times ten thousands and thousands of thousands find death itself swallowed up in the great victory and shall rise to bless God with a joy that shall never end, but shall ever increase. A feast of fat things. God's idea of a banquet. Oh, my good fellow believer, God bless you. God give you the very best bungalow in Belfast, two or three chariots, vines, if you can grow them in this com- uh, this temperature, and of course, children and grandchildren and great, great, great, great, great grandchildren and all the rest of it. I tell you, God's idea of a banquet is bigger than that. Bigger than that. Life's joys and the natural joys of creation are given us that we might genuinely enjoy them, for he has given us all things to enjoy richly. But they were never given us to mock us. They point to the bigger joy. Death swallowed up in victory, and the Lord God with his heavenly handkerchief wiping the wa- the tears off from every face. And, uh, what is more, you'll say, uh, Zechariah joined in this marvelous prophetic forecast. He saw, like the other prophets saw, the tabernacles was not only a remembrance of the past, but a promise and a prophecy of the future. And in his last chapter, Zechariah fourteen, he talked about, verse six, when the Lord shall come and stand on the Mount of Olives, uh, Fourteen four, verse six: and it shall come to pass in that day that the light shall not be with brightness and with gloom, but it shall be one day which is known unto the Lord, not day nor night, but it shall come to pass that at even time there shall be. Ah, there shall be light. Do you get his metaphor? And it shall come to pass in that day that the living waters shall go, says Zechariah. And what is more, the nations that came against Jerusalem, what nations then survive the judgments of God? It shall be, he says in verse sixteen, that everyone that is left of all the nations which come against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. Uh, you'll see, and anyone that doesn't come up shall be severely punished. And in that day there shall be upon the bells of the horses holy unto the Lord, and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Magnificent visions of the second coming of the Lord Jesus and the delights of the paradise that they will then institute. That was feast. And our Lord came to Jerusalem eventually on the feast of Tabernacles. And what would he say about it? And what do about it? Chapter seven tells us, doesn't it? The last great day of the feast. The water had just been poured for the second time at the base of the altar. The people were crying in their enthusiasm, save now, Lord, we beseech thee. When the tumult had died down, there was heard a voice lifted up and crying aloud over the heads of the people, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. The relevance of that to the pouring of the water of the Siloam at the foot of the altar is obvious, is it not? And he was saying what? That little ceremony, vivid and eloquent though it was, the pouring of the waters of Siloam at the base of the altar, was but a ceremony and a promise. Here, says the incarnate Lord, is the reality. If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. Those promised rivers of living water, they shall not merely, uh, proceed from the Savior, they shall fill the recipient until they overflow his being. Out of his inward part shall flow rivers of living water. And this he spoke, not of what he was able to give them at that moment, but what he would give them when he ascended on high and when he was glorified, and in particular on the day of Pentecost, he would give them the great water, thirst quenching of the Holy Spirit. And there were many who believed. When the day of Pentecost came and our Lord shed forth the Spirit, on the very first day there were three thousand that received him. In a day or two thereafter, five thousand was the number, and so it went on. Um, and as to the light. Well, it's a sorry story. You'll see, when our Lord offered himself as the living water, some believed, but the Sanhedrin were infuriated. Well, I suppose you can, you can understand it a little bit, can't you? If you'd put on a big show like that, what ho, ha ha, for a whole week, and you were the high priest, clad in your garments and vestments, and all these, uh, the care they took to see that the high priest remained the whole week through ceremonially undefiled. That was a job too, I tell you, with some of the high priests. Anyway, uh, to see that they maintained their purity at all say, and with those people in those far off days, some of the Jews in their descriptions of his appearance said it gave grown up men near heart attacks. They swooned in wonder to see this spectacle that was the high priest. And he'd gone through all the gorgeous ceremony and the music of the Levites and the chanting and the incense and the everything. And for this Galilean to have the effrontery at the end of it all, and in the service too, just at the end of the service, wow. To suggest that it might have left anybody thirsty. There was a stormy meeting of the council that night. They said, if anybody believed on him, those people that knows not the law are cursed. Yes. They had the ceremony, they loved it. They felt no need for the reality. And there's a message there, isn't there? At every level you can possibly think of. Oh, how true it has been in Christendom, hasn't it? With Christendom's holidays and celebrations, it's Easter, it's Christmas, and it's Easter, and it's Whitsunday, and there's Good Fridays. It is possible to keep the external feast and not have the reality. In chapter eight, our Lord announced himself as the light of the world, did he not? Standing in the treasury, in the temple, and other such places, near where the lights would be burning, in the women's court, and the lights in the houses. He announced, I am the light of the world. But in what sense light? Well, not just those ceremonial, uh, figurative, metaphorical, uh, lights, uh, the lampstands with their literal oil. But now the great reality, light. As you remember in chapter eight, light on the great question of the guilt of sin. As I hope we shall see later this evening. That basic problem that we all have, for all have sinned. How can I get rid of my guilty conscience in a way that will uphold my values? Light on the question not only of the guilt of sin, but of the power of sin. If you continue in my word, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free, free from the bondage of endlessly repeated sin. And finally, light, light over the very grave itself and on beyond it. Verily, I say unto you, said our blessed Lord Jesus, he that followeth me shall not see death. He didn't say you shall not see dying. We do need to make the distinction, don't we? I have known people, I've had to try to help them in my day and generation, I expect you have known, that have been pushed into psychological difficulties by hearing preachers say that if you are a Christian, once you become a Christian, you'll never be afraid to die again. They'll say, you won't be afraid to die. And people have sat in the congregation and said, well, I'm afraid to die, so I, then I'm not a Christian then, but that's what the preacher said. Mm. We know what the preacher meant. He meant that if you are a believer, uh, you know what awaits you should you die and on the other side. For to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. What our Lord Jesus said is you shall not see death. And what is death? Death is not just the process of dying. It's the result of that process and what happens at the end of it. Death. That eternal separation from God under his conscious displeasure. Death. The second death. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, he shall have the light of life. He that believeth on me, he shall not see death. To pass through the process of dying and then to die is to wake up forthwith in the presence of the Lord, at home with the Lord. You will never see death in the full sense of that term. You may, may well see dying, of course. That's another thing, isn't it? That's a process. Or you mightn't. I mean, you may be walking merrily down, down the road one day, and the wind blow a tile off the roof and split your head in two, and you go home to glory. What a lovely way to go home to glory. Now, would it not be one minute in Belfast? Nothing wrong with that, but the next second in glory. Marvelous. Or it may be a long, drawn out affair, to see. Um, but you have to see very much of. And the preacher says, but we don't be afraid of it. You know, sometimes I'd love to get a preacher like that and invite him out to the country, and by prearrangement stand him in the middle of a twenty-acre field, and keep him there until he realizes something's happening behind him, and looking around sees a bull coming head down, snorting through its nostrils at thirty miles an hour, about to charge him. And then I should like to consult the preacher whether he was afraid of dying or not. I don't think the preacher himself would have time to think. Nature would take over. Instinct would propel him across the acres blindly, and he'd be over the hedge, and he'd get over without knowing how he got over. Because God, you see, has put within the human makeup fear, hasn't he, of dying. God put it there. Little birdie on your lawn takes one bite at the crumb and two bites, one over each shoulder, to see whether there's a hawk around. If it didn't have this fear of hawks, it wouldn't survive, of course. And God puts the fear of death in, in nature's domain to keep us alive, of course. It may be that you are fa- your own faith is so strong that, come what may of the terrible pains of dying, you have no fear and go through unflinching. If you are so, praise God for it. Not all believers are like it. In some, nature's fear of dying adds torture to the process, and it is no evidence that they're not believers. You'll see. Ah, but to get back to the point, they shall not see death, but have the light of life. Oh, what a magnificent thing. This will be the full final, uh, fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles and its imagery. A glorious feast of grapes, of wines on the lees well refined, death swallowed up in victory. And many believed and learned from the Lord Jesus to regard physical death as falling asleep. But for the bulk of them, and in particular the rulers, ah, listen to him. Ha. Now they said, now we know you, you, uh, you've got a, you're a Samaritan, you've got a demon. That is a polite way of saying you're mad. You are right over the edge now, they said. Abraham is dead, can we tell you? Abraham is dead. Are dead. In fact, they could have added everything around here is pretty dead too. A- a- and, and you say, if any man, uh, follow me, he shall not see death. Whom makest thou thyself? And he said, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and saw it and was glad, because God has not asked his redeemed people to live in uncertainty, even down those Old Testament ages. There were pointers towards the coming of Christ and his final triumph over the grave. And he rejoiced in anticipation to see my day, saw it and was glad. They said, Jesus, you're absolutely insane. You're not fifty years old yet. You think you've seen Abraham. He said, before Abraham was, I am the great eternal come down into time, spreading the light of eternity over the darkness of this sin-cursed earth. And the only response they could muster to that was to pick up stones to stone him and put the light out. For men, what strange psychology it is. They love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. It's a good thing to ask, isn't it, religious people who feel they are religious and will claim to be believers in the Lord Jesus. It's one way of getting at their real hearts and consciences to ask them, have they any assurance about what is going to happen to them after death. So often the sad reply comes back, we can't know, we can't know. Or listen to the pathetic talk. We have to go out into the great unknown, they say. La la. Suppose you were in, in some, uh, uh, public building, and after the, the concert or whatever it was, you're going home and you see a little lad there, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, and you say, hello, uh, uh, where's your mum and dad? You here by yourself? Yes, I'm here by myself, yes. Oh, uh, are you going home, lady? No, I'm going into the great unknown. Really? You've got a home, you've got no father and mother. All the sadness, doesn't your heart feel a certain compassion for people? And that's the limit of the horizon. They're going out into the great unknown. Our blessed Lord has come as the light of the world, and we can therefore see how his remarks now and his preaching is to some extent geared to what was happening at the feast of Passover. We're going to spend just a little while longer thinking of the second of the feasts that are mentioned, for that too, we shall find, will become very relevant to our understanding of these chapters. Chapter ten then, and verse twenty two. The feast of dedication. It was not, as I say, a biblical feast laid down in the Old Testament. The story of its origin is as follows. In the years one hundred and sixty seven to sixty four— one hundred and sixty four, that is, BC, the Jews in Palestine, in Jerusalem, suffered such a persecution that they had never suffered before. They were under the control of the Seleucid Empire that lay to the north of them, northeast. The monarch of that empire at the time was a certain Antiochus Epiphanes. And for various reasons that we cannot now discuss, he decided to turn Jerusalem city into a Hellenistic city. You'll see hitherto, though it was part of his empire and he controlled it, it wasn't a Hellenistic city. In those ancient empires, there was a difference, you'll see some cities, even under the Greek emperors, some cities would be Hellenistic cities, some would be just ordinary cities, you'll see. And the difference was considerable. To have a city that were, to be in a city that was a Hellenistic city, and yourself to be, have the status of a Hellen brought you considerable advantage. It brought the city advantage in economics. It brought the people advantage in education. They were then allowed to have a, uh, a gymnasium where the boys could learn gymnastics and then go on to, uh, be trained in the arts and the sciences of the time. Hence, of course, in many a Scottish city, the grammar school is called the gymnasium, borrowing the term from the Greek Hellenistic cities. Not a place only where you do gymnastics, but where you get a liberal education. So there were many advantages in being a Hellenistic city. Antiochus Epiphanes decided that to control the Jews, uh, and bring them more securely under his dominance, he must certainly suppress their peculiar Jewish religion and set up in the temple a pagan Hellenistic religion, in order, so it seems, the better to control the Jew. So, eh, from one hundred and sixty seven onwards, this is what he did. He banned all possession of Holy Scripture. It was a capital offense to be found with a copy of the then Old Testament. He banned the practice of circumcision. Any mother caught having circumcised her son would be taken to the ramparts of the city, and with her son in her arms, be thrown over to dash out her brains and her infant brains on the rocks beneath. The temple was desecrated, for there in the very temple itself, Antiochus Epiphanes set up the abomination that maketh desolate, set up an image to one of the pagan gods, probably, as far as we know, Baal Hashemaim, banished the worship of Jehovah, and all had to worship the pagan deities. And further, to enforce the pagan religion, he had a pig offered on the altar of the Lord in the temple at Jerusalem, knowing, of course, that this was an utter abomination to every Jew who knew his Old Testament, for the Old Testament regarded the pig as an unclean animal not sit for fit for sacrifice. And there were placed idols all round the city. It was a time of grievous persecution. The saddest thing of the lot was this, that some of the leaders of the nation, and notably some of the high priests, if you please, along with some of the aristocracy, connived and in fact, cooperated with Antiochus Epiphanes and his administrators. For they too were wanting to turn the city into a Hellenistic city for all the educational and economic advantages that it would bring them. And alas, at that time, the high priests, many of them, had reached the stage when they were prepared to say, with the thinkers of the day, that Jehovah was simply the name of God in Israel. It meant the same thing as Zeus among the Greeks, or Baal amongst the Syrians, or On or Osiris or what have you in Egypt. These were only names, and really everybody worshipped the same God. And what were the Jews doing saying that their God was the only God? Surely that was narrow-minded. And in the modern world, where syncretism is in favor and toleration is in favor, then surely the Jews ought to admit that there's truth in all religions, and Jehovah is only one way of approach to God, and Baal is another, and uh, Zeus is another. And uh, so far from the Bible being God's own inspired and unique word, it is only one holy book among many. And the high priests collaborated with the Antiochus and tried to enforce this apostasy upon Israel. And when a nation's religious leaders start having interfaith services with other religions. You have taken a very big step, haven't you, on the road to syncretistic apostasy. While the high priests and leaders of the temple apostatized in that fashion, there rose up a right wing in Israel under Judas, who came to be called the Maccabee, and they fought with guerrilla warfare, bitter struggles, and eventually won through to independence after a long, long story. Uh, but earlier than that, they won control of the temple area and were able to, uh, clean the temple and rededicate it and set up a new altar and, uh, rededicate the temple to the worship of the one true God of Israel. And they decided, when they thus rededicated the temple and the altar, to set up an annual festival in memory of that happy occasion when their bondage was lifted, their frightful persecution at an end, and once more the worship of God established. And that would have been all happy and good, had it not been for what then followed. Presently, some of the Maccabean rulers that now had political control, who themselves also were priests of a lower order, arrogated to themselves the high priesthood in Israel, quite contrary to the laws of descent that were given in Old Testament. They thus alienated what came to be called the Pharisees and the Hasidic sects, and were the cause of much strife in Israel. Things went from bad to worse until, uh, uh, there came a revolt in ninety four to eighty BC, led by or joined in by the Pharisees against the then Maccabean ruler. His name was Alexander Jannaeus. Not only had he contravened scripture himself in taking the place of high priest as well as civic ruler, but he had acted as a drunken, besotted tyrant, and the Pharisees tried to expel him by force. They failed. And Alexander Jannaeus crucified, literally crucified eight hundred of them in his drunken anger. Eventually, of course, the Maccabees, the dynasty, the Hasmoneans, as we call them, came to their end as Rome became strong enough to take over the whole province and to govern it, whether by vassal kings like Herod or eventually by governors like Pontius Pilate. That little thumbnail sketch is enough to show us, perhaps to remind us, of the troubles, political and priestly, that had beset Israel and were continuing down to the time of our blessed Lord Jesus. Which is what made the authorities very nervous when Jesus came claiming, as they thought, to be the Messiah. Because in their eyes, the Messiah was a political term, claiming to be king. They'd suffered enough ghastly things under the Hasmonean kings in the later generation. What if another im- imposter came, claiming to be the Messiah, and led the crowds out in their fatuous deception, and brought the nation to ruin? It was no idle fear, was it? Do you see, there had already been some upstarts that had come claiming to be messiahs and had led groups of people out into the wilderness there to meet their gruesome ends. And after the Lord Jesus was dead, buried, risen, and gone to glory, in AD sixty six some of the right-wing parties in Israel eventually got the upper hand and compelled the high priests and everybody else to join in their revolt against the Romans, did they not, in AD sixty six? and it led to the vast massacre of Israelites and the destruction of the temple. Later on in the years, round about the hundred and thirty AD, another such man arose. His name was Bar Kokhba. This time it wasn't against the will of the rabbis, it was with the, with the praise and cooperation of one of the leading rabbis who named him the star, son of the star, fulfillment of the prophecy given through the lips of, of Balaam, that a star would rise out of, uh, of Judah, out of Israel. And this Bar Kokhba led the whole southern part of the nation, Judea, once more in a revolt against Rome and succeeded for three years having his own currency. But in the end, the Romans came and absolutely steamrollered them. And then it was that Jerusalem was turned into a Gentile city and was downtrodden of the Gentiles until recently in our own lifetime. What does that all add up to? That added up to the nervousness with which particularly the authorities would have heard anybody claiming to be a Messiah. You say, did Jesus explicitly claim to be the Messiah? Well, very rarely explicitly. But in our famous chapter ten, he claims to be the Good Shepherd. Now we must do a little thinking at that point. When we think of our Lord as the Good Shepherd, very commonly we're thinking of the Lord Jesus as our individual shepherd. You know, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he anoints my head with oil, my cup runneth over, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Marvelous. And we think of the Lord Jesus in relation to our individual selves. By me, if any man enter in, and I've entered, and I'm saved, and I know the Lord Jesus as my personal shepherd. That's very good. But more often in the prophets, when the prophets talk about the shepherd of Israel, they're talking about a political ruler. The rulers were meant to be the shepherds of the nation, just like in the church, the elders are meant to be the shepherds of the people of God. Only in Israel, the shepherds were, generally speaking, uh, the foremost ones, political. That is why in the prophets, Ezekiel in particular, when God is promising them the coming of the great messianic age of peace and plenty and glory, God phrases it this way, I will raise up my servant David to be their shepherd. That is why, of course, you'll hear the people saying about the Lord Jesus, yes, he's doing some marvelous works, but wait a minute, he can't be the Messiah, can he? Why can't he be the Messiah? Well, the scriptures say that the Messiah comes of the seed of David, and he was born in Bethlehem, and as far as we can make out, this man comes from Galilee, so he can't be the son of David, the great shepherd that God is going to raise up to lead his people from their enemies into the pastures of blessing and millennial glory. Our Lord does claim, doesn't he, chapter ten, throughout it, I am the good shepherd. Not simply a good shepherd, the good shepherd. The great shepherd of Israel promised in the Old Testament prophets. What would they make of it? I'm not here to apologize for what the Jewish leaders did to our Lord, but at least I think I can begin to understand them, can't you? You see, history had taught them, you can't afford to make a mistake and accept someone as Messiah, shepherd of the nation, whose claims are false, who isn't the true shepherd. It could lead to the butchery of the sheep, physically butchery of the sheep, in a very big way. They were nervous a little, weren't they? To hear our Lord claiming to be the good shepherd on the occasion of all occasions of the feast of dedication, with its memories of Antiochus Epiphanes and the apostate high priests. You'll say that's all past history, and I come back to my, um, little figure of diagrams of the feasts. You will have already seen the contradiction in what I said, and you have passed it by with your customary tolerance and forbearance, you'll say, and you, you encouraged the young, and you therefore didn't stamp your feet. I began by talking about the, uh, the day, uh, uh, uh, the, the Feast of Tabernacles, the ceremony of the pouring of the water, and said it was a figure of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And then you'll see I said, uh, that happened at Pentecost. And you'll say, well, that there, there, you see, he's got it all muddled up around his neck. And you'll say, because, dear me, Pentecost, Pentecost is here. It isn't here. Now, if these things are a picture of what happened when our Lord was here on earth, well, Passover is his cross, isn't it? Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Then there came three days after his burial, feast of first fruits, that green sheaf of corn that was waved before the Lord, first fruits of the coming big harvest. And Christ was raised from the dead, first fruits of them that slept, three days after he was buried, yes. Fifty days after his resurrection, there came, of course, the feast of Pentecost on the Holy Spirit. And you tell me that the Holy Spirit was, in another somewhat different sense, first fruits, yes? For we which have received the first fruits of the Spirit. Ha, you say, there are Mr. Peter, allow the correction. It was at Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was shed forth, and we of this age have received the Holy Spirit. Ah, very good. Very good. So what now? How shall I get out of my trouble? Well, I shall say, um, fo fo, I shall say, yes, but um, historically is one thing. We went through the history of it and the, the, the lowly level of the farmers, didn't we? Then we consulted the prophets, and we found them saying that this whole scheme was a prophecy. Isaiah tells us in chapter fifty three about the lamb led us to the slaughter. Yeah. And uh, Isaiah talks of the trumpets being sounded and Israel regathered. Zachariah talks of the great time of Israel's sorrow and examination of heart and repentance and confession of sin. And Zachariah talks explicitly of the second coming of Christ, when the feast of tabernacles will be kept as scarce it was ever kept before. So what is that beginning to point to? They're beginning to point to this, that we, Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost. Uh, this is that which was spoken of by Joel the prophet, said Peter on the day of Pentecost, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. But when later you consult Paul, uh, and others, they will say, yes, that's right, our Lord poured out the Holy Spirit, but he came as the first First fruits. fruit. There is going to be the full possession of the complete inheritance in a glorious day to come. The Holy Spirit you have, my brother, my sister, is the first fruits, the earnest, the down payment of that glorious consummation of salvation that shall be yours when the Lord Jesus comes. Already we have the Holy Spirit, then later the full consummation. With that in view, I talked just now about what happened when our Lord went in history to the Feast of Tabernacles, and how, as he made his claim to be the shepherd, and thus the Messiah, descendant of the house of David, the authorities would have been alarmed, lest he got a following after him and they started another revolt or set up another tyranny and brought disaster upon the nation. With the memory of Antiochus Epiphanes, you couldn't afford to make another mistake. Oh, but, uh, oh, my good friends, we can't afford to make a mistake either, can we? For our blessed Lord himself takes the language of Daniel the prophet that originally referred to the abomination of desolation set up by Antiochus Epiphanes, and solemnly warns us that there will come in a future day, not another Antiochus Epiphanes, but someone infinitely worse. He shall set up the abomination of desolation in the holy place. He shall sit himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God and exalting himself above all that is worshipped. And the book of Revelation reminds us he will demand divine honors. That is what the future holds, before the coming of our Lord in power and great glory. You say that's, that's fantastic. Really? You say atheism has a problem, doesn't it? Julian Huxley, now of long deceased memory, but he voiced it at one stage, but of course he said there's no God anymore. Evolution has proved it. The trouble is that as evolution evolves, evolution, poor old dame, she hasn't got as far as we'd like her to get. Well, it's understandable, you know, evolution hasn't got any sense in its head, so it's a wonder it gets anywhere, but it hasn't got as far as we would have it get, you'll see. And, uh, one of these days, of course, evolution will evolve until it creates a paradise on Earth, like Marx said it would. Uh, it will create a paradise on Earth, you'll see. The, the, the danger is that some silly, foolish man will go and press the wrong button before evolution has had a chance to bring in the paradise and blow the whole... They're prepared to forego their own rights and their own, make sacrifices for the good of the whole, you'll see. Try and tell it to the Serbians. H- h- how will you get them to, to, to, to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole and give evolution the chance to bring in the great new world? Only thing, says Julian, actually will have to be, we have to have a, a, a new religion. To say it's religion that gives people that motivation, that altruism, willingness to sacrifice their own interests for the good of cause. Not the old religion, he said. No, of course not. But, well, then what religion? I don't know if you've thought about inventing a religion ever. It's a little more difficult that you might imagine to do it successfully. Our Lord's brothers had some ideas on the topic, about what you have to do if you're going to start a religion. They were rather shallow, though, weren't they? But if you can't have a religion based on the true God, what, what God would you have then? What will you worship? What will you hold, hold out as the great ideal for which people would sacrifice their lives if need be? You can't go back to worshiping crocodiles, can you? Or monkey gods or elephant gods or things like that. Well, what will you worship? There will be some who will say you will worship the biggest thing that evolution has produced so far. That is? Man, of course. And along comes the New Age movement with its concoction of Hinduism and goodness knows what else, all geared up for the popular taste, to tell us that now we shall reach our paradise when we each come to realize that we are God. The new gospel, or the old gospel of pantheism. Ladies and gentlemen, we can't afford to make a mistake, can we? To whom shall we bow as the ultimate power and a good shepherd? The stakes are enormous. And God himself warns us in his word, lest we treat it as something trivial, that the stakes are indeed enormous. Whoever takes the mark of the beast, he shall be tormented in the presence of God and the Lamb forever and ever. We are at the ultimate question that faces our world, and faces every man and woman in it. And how will you know that Jesus is the right one then? You'll be very unpopular, I'm warning you now, you'll be very unpopular, not only in the atheistic world outside, you'll be very unpopular in certain ever increasing sections of Christendom these days, if you dare say Jesus is the only one. You will indeed. And why do you say it anyway? And how do you know he's the right one? Oh, say my mum said so. Oh, thank the Lord you had a mum then. Yeah, but how will you, how will you point it out to your atheist friend who didn't have a mum like you had? And what other reasons have you got for believing he's the right one? Beside, your mum told you anyway. What are the answers? Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are studying scripture in a sort of a curious mixture of theory and e- experience, but it's not just, uh, academic disinterest, is it? It lies at the very heart of our world's problems, and there are millions out there, millions of them, millions of them. Millions of them in our own Europe, lost, as lost as they can be. What reasons shall we supply them that Jesus is indeed the Son of God? How does he demonstrate it? And learning from him, how could we demonstrate it to others. That's the importance of this section of the Gospel of John, that, as you see, structurally lies at its very heart. But there we must leave it, and there's a cup of coffee to sustain us, and we shall have a shorter session after our break.