Jesus’ 5 Bold Claims, Part 4: The Claim to Divide the World — A Christian Growth Message

Transcript

We’re following a conversation on the Sunday mornings in John chapter 8.

And I wonder if you can explain this to me. Why does the chapter begin verse 12, with a very wonderful invitation?

I’m the light of the world, said Jesus, whoever comes to me or follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light of life, and by the time you get to the end of the chapter, verse 59, there is a near execution.

Why does this chapter go from gracious invitation – to near execution?

There’s about 5 generous offers in this chapter from Jesus, he offers light to people and forgiveness and truth and freedom and life.

Now friends, I’m just like you. I’m a little brain dead like you. I don’t register. Stuff washes over me, I don’t hear what’s being said, I don’t listen well, I don’t read very well, I don’t think very well.

But there comes a time where you have to say, here’s a chapter of history. And a man, the best man who’s ever lived, is offering the best stuff that’s ever been. And the end of the chapter and the end of his life is going to be execution.

Why?

And at that point my brain begins to think.

Now I’m not actually surprised that the best man who’s ever lived was attacked from all sides. I’m not really surprised that Jesus Christ is shut out from most people’s minds and hearts.

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I’m not really surprised that for many people Jesus Christ is spat out as a swear word. It doesn’t really surprise me that Christians suffer today, it grieves me that Christians suffer today, it doesn’t really surprise me when I hear that they do.

The religious editor for the Melbourne Age has reported that there are 200 million Christians in 60 countries who are in danger of persecution today.

200 million Christians in 60 countries who are in danger of persecution today.

North Korea has sent 50,000 Christians to the concentration camps in recent years. China has sent 40,000 Christians to the concentration camps.

Our own country, which is very democratic and very laid back, has no real place for Jesus Christ, does not want Jesus Christ. I said to the business lunch on Wednesday that in the 90s, it was seen as pretty legitimate for me to go visiting my parish, I could go and door knocking and it might be inconvenient for people, but people saw it as pretty legitimate that I would knock on their door.

Now I find that it is seen as illegitimate. It’s seen as inappropriate. It’s not appropriate, there is a kind of sophisticated freezing. Hostility.

But I say again, I’m not surprised, I’m sobered, but I’m not surprised by this and the reason that I’m not surprised by any of this is because I actually believe what is in verses 42 to 47 of John chapter 8, and that is that there is a spiritual battle, that Jesus pulls back the curtain and that behind a great deal of what is going on is the devil himself.

All the conversation that has been taking place in John chapter 8, which has been increasingly hostile, getting hotter and hotter with all its clever arguments and all the claims that you don’t really need Jesus and we’ll be fine without Jesus, Jesus pulls back the cover and he says this is actually a facade.

And that behind it all, there is spiritual opposition.

He believes in the devil, it’s the main reason I believe in the devil is because Jesus believes in the devil.

And he shows the tragedy of the devil, very confrontational these verses in John chapter 8, but there is a battle behind the scenes. And because we’re in danger of forgetting the devil and we’re in danger of forgetting the battle, it’s always good for us to come back to this subject.

You may remember from last week, and you know I can often not remember what I preached on last week, can you believe that? I sometimes can’t remember what I’ve preached on about an hour later. I just confessed that to you, I know that none of you would fall into that trap.

That months later you can remember exactly what I said but for me I occasionally forget, and I want to remind you that last week we were looking at Jesus’ promise or claim to be able to give truth that sets you free, truth which is ultimately Jesus himself, not just a book, and freedom which is ultimately inward and eternal, it’s not just external or a system.

And you remember that as Jesus talked about these things and promised them, the Jews he’s speaking to wanted none of it.

And they wanted none of it because they felt perfectly safe as they were, they had Abraham as their father, as their ancestor, and therefore they didn’t need any more. And so Jesus began what last week, we didn’t get quite to see this, but we would have if we’d gone a little further — he tries to show them that they’re actually nothing like Abraham.

And today he explains why they’re nothing like Abraham, he says verse 42 that they do not want Jesus, and verse 43, they do not want his message, because verse 44, they belong to the devil.

So this is a very shocking passage today, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen at the end of the sermon, you’re either going to just shelve the passage and say that was just too weird.

Or you’ll be very sobered by the passage and very strengthened by the passage, but I do trust it’ll be the second. In this little section of about 6 verses, verses 42 to 47, Jesus tells that there are two refusals, two strange refusals, and then he gives the reason.

Verse 42.

If God were your father, says Jesus, you would love me. Verse 43. You’re unable to hear what I say.

Here are two excellent tests or checks or proof for you here this morning, listening to me, if you want to work out whether God is your father. Do you want to know whether God is your father?

The first is, and there’s lots of others in the New Testament, this one from Jesus, verse 42, is that you love his son.

Not perfectly. But you love him.

The second, you receive his word.

Not brilliantly, but it means a lot to you, his son means a lot to you, his word means a lot to you.

This is very comforting for many people here this morning cos every now and again you wonder if God is your father and if you really are a believer, and the fact of the matter is that if you’re drawn to his son and you’re drawn to his word, that’s God at work. It’s also a very serious warning, isn’t it, because if you have no great interest in Jesus Christ and no great interest in the Word, then of course you might start to hear alarm bells.

These simple tests are a dead giveaway, sadly for thousands and thousands of people who walk into churches, and they have no love for Christ, and they have no love for his Word. Calvin says in his commentary, how can people pretend they’re friends with God if they disagree with him on the significance of his Son?

It’s a good question. Good old Calvin.

Now verse 42 is a bit of a textbook, just have a quick look at it, you’ll see Jesus says in chapter 8 verse 42, I came from God, that’s a one-off, I came from God in the incarnation, Christmas, I came from God.

And then he says, I now am here, and that little phrase actually means that there is an eternal coming of Jesus, there is an eternal progression, there is an eternal procession, there is an eternal generation of Jesus on a mission to the world.

And therefore you see what he’s saying to his Jewish listeners, you want to trace yourself back to Abraham, I trace myself back to eternity.

You want to trace yourself back a couple of 1000 years, I trace myself back to God.

And this is the first test for God as your father, is that you realise who Jesus is, you realise that he’s unique, and he’s supreme and you embrace him, you run to him, you take hold of him. You grab him.

You don’t just see Jesus as somewhere in the religious system, you know, he fits in a creed, he fits in a hymn somewhere. You say to yourself or you say to your friend, I belong to him.

If I might put it as boldly as this, here’s the bridegroom in the wedding where you’re the bride. He’s that significant in the plan of God.

It’s absolutely wonderful this week to talk to people who are beginning to take Jesus seriously and I’ve had the great privilege of doing that a number of times this week, and one of the people who came to see me said to me, you know I’ve recognised God up here and I’ve sort of felt that Jesus was somewhere off here.

And now I’ve come to realise that Jesus Christ is in the centre.

And I was able to help this person not only to hear and understand that Jesus speaks, I will. Through his life and death and resurrection and through the gospel, he says to people, I will have you. And I was able to help this person speak back, I will, to him. And to take hold of him as a bride to a bridegroom.

I’ll give some examples in John’s Gospel chapter 1 verse 12, if you don’t think this is um,

A regular theme, listen to this, John chapter 1 verse 12, we read, if you receive Jesus, you become God’s child.

Receive Jesus, become God’s child, or chapter 5, verse 23, if you honour Jesus, you honour the Father.

Or chapter 6 verse 44, if you come to Jesus, it’s because God is at work.

So your reaction to Jesus is crucial to being God’s child. This is a real bombshell of a piece of information isn’t it, when you consider how many people will say today around the world, our father, our father, our father, our father and not be his child.

But of course so many will, say our Father, having come to him through Jesus.

The second test here in John chapter 8 is the reaction to Jesus’ message, verse 43.

He says you’re unable to hear what I say, you don’t hear, you don’t understand, it doesn’t go in, it doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t change you, you’re deaf.

And wasn’t it great this morning to have prayers for the politicians?

And we do give thanks to God that there are believers in our political arena, who really do believe in the Lord Jesus, but friends, I wanna ask you, we really also have to ask which Jesus do they believe in?

Because there are so many ‘Jesus-es’ out there.

Many of them just invented, but the question that we want to quickly ask is, do they believe in the Jesus of the New Testament?

Test 1, Jesus Christ, test 2, the Word of God. These two are always coming together, Jesus is the light of the world, his word is the light, the lamp for our darkness.

And here says Jesus, the second test that God is your father is that you really do value his message.

He says in verse 43.

You’re pretty helpless, I get the impression, you’re unable to hear what I say, you’re not that powerful, you’re walking past the treasure.

I was in a seminar recently and I was with a man who has written a 600 page textbook on a certain subject. And there were 8 of us sitting around the table.

And of course none of us were doing much talking because all of us recognised that we had a very great authority at the table.

And so we didn’t find that the seminar was marked by a whole lot of people, yak yak yak, this is what I think, I know nothing, please listen to me.

The seminar was marked by a great deal of silence and a great deal of scribbling because this guy spoke hour after hour and we wrote down everything he said because he was a very great expert and authority.

And the mark of the Christian, when you come to Jesus Christ is you begin to recognise that he is the great authority.

When you come into God’s family, you’re born again, you have a new life, you have eternal life, you want to know what Jesus says, you don’t get out your marketing textbooks to explain Christianity, you don’t rave on and on and on about what you think, although that’s extremely interesting no doubt to you.

But you find that you’re a man or a woman who gets down and you kneel at Jesus’ feet and you start reading through the scriptures.

Because you recognise he is the authority. Now these are, as I say, wonderfully comforting tests for the many here this morning, who have been woken up to Jesus Christ and to the scriptures, that is an absolute sign that God is at work, he has actually changed you, he’s transformed you, he’s transferred you.

We really should rejoice, what a what a miraculous thing that I’d be interested in Jesus, when I never was, and what a miraculous thing that I’d be interested in the scriptures when I never was.

And then he turned me around and turned so many of you here around.

We rejoice at Saint Thomas’s don’t we, to see all the little versions of you walking around this church. So many of you’ve produced little versions of yourself, and it’s always extremely cute for me to see little cute versions of you walking around and very comforting when I see you holding the hand of somebody who looks exactly like you, it just solves so many problems in my brain, yes, that’s the real father, yes, that’s the real mother of this child.

And then eventually of course they wanna disown you, but they still look like you and they start crying out, I’m like my mother, I’m like my father, but they still, they still look like you, they’re like you, and the mark of being God’s children is that you love his son and you love his word.

Not perfectly, of course, we’ll always despair.

That we have some comfort, that we’ve been drawn to his son and drawn to his word. Now there’s a serious side, of course, to paternity as well, the legal battles, to prove paternity, the DNA tests, to get custody of children, and Jesus has a deadly thing to say to the people around him in John chapter 8,

They’re very religious, but they failed both tests.

They claim that God is their father, they do not love Christ, they do not love his word, the shocking reason in verse 44, your father says Jesus is the devil.

It’s gotta be just about the most shocking verse in the New Testament, hasn’t it?

For Jesus to look at these people who are religious, believe in God, keep laws, go to church and for him to look at them and say, the reason that you refuse me and the reason you’re not interested in the word is because you have a father and your father is the devil and he might have gone on to say, and I’m not exaggerating, I’m not speaking over the top, you’re like him, you’re like the devil.

Because the devil is opposed to me and the devil is opposed to the truth.

Or you can imagine a white man saying to you over coffee this morning that he hates exercise and he’s, he looks like he hates exercise too, but he then says to you, you know, it’s very ironic cause I happen to be the son of two brilliant black athletes.

It’s a very odd conversation, isn’t it? Very odd conversation.

The person who says to you over coffee, you know I’m one of God’s children, ah yes I am. But privately I have no real interest in Jesus, and privately I have no real interest in the scriptures.

It’s a very odd conversation, isn’t it?

Now Jesus doesn’t spit the words – your father is the devil, he doesn’t curse the words of the people, he just explains to them – you’re like your father, the devil.

And he reveals something which is incredibly significant, and that is that although the world maybe one big human family, the world is not one big divine family.

There are 2 spiritual families in the world.

There are those who have received Christ and belong to the Father.

And there are those who have refused Christ and belong to the devil.

That’s what Jesus says, I wouldn’t dare to put it like this.

I’m shocked to say this to you from the pulpit, I’m shocked to quote Jesus. I’m only saying this because he says it.

I was reading the book this week by Ray Gala which is called Nothing in My Hand I Bring, which is the story of him coming to Jesus out of a very religious background.

And he quotes a song of Bob Dylan in the song, and now I could never quote Bob Dylan to you but he does and so I’m going to quote to you from Bob Dylan’s song called Saved.

And Bob Dylan says this.

I was blinded by the devil, I was born already ruined, I was stone cold dead as I stepped out of the womb. By his grace I have been touched, by his word I have been healed, by his hand I’ve been delivered, by his spirit I’ve been sealed. I’ve been saved by the blood of the Lamb.

I don’t know where Bob Dylan stands in terms of the kingdom, but he’s put things extremely clearly hasn’t he? He’s saying in those few words, I have moved from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of light, I’ve moved from the grip of the devil into the into the arms of God himself. It’s a very clear shift, and this is what Jesus is saying in these first verses, verses 42 to 44, there are two strange refusals, behind them is the devil.

And now secondly, we come to two strange reactions, and behind them of course is another reason, verses 45 to 47.

The people Jesus is speaking to have got a very strange reaction to a good man and a very strange reaction to a good message.

Look at verse 44.

You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire, he was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there’s no truth in him, when he lies, he speaks his native language, for he’s a liar and the father of lies.

What is the devil like according to Jesus, there are many descriptions in the New Testament here, Jesus says he’s a murderer and a liar. He’s a murderer because at the very beginning of time, he robbed Adam and Eve of their life, of their eternal life, you remember he tempted them and they turned away from God and they lost their eternal life.

And then of course the devil began to tempt Jesus repeatedly, not to go through with the cross, and therefore the rescue, which would bring people back to life.

And now in John chapter 8, the devil is working through these opponents of Jesus because they want Jesus removed.

Now of course the irony and the very great news of this is that in wanting to get rid of Jesus, they’re going to kill him and in killing him, God is going to bring about salvation for sinners and a solution to the spiritual death which we’ve inherited from Adam, but the point in these verses is that Jesus is warning his listeners that they have a very strange opposition to him, they don’t want to have anything to do with him.

They would actually like to totally get rid of him.

You remember the story that I’ve told many times of a friend of mine who was preaching on Good Friday in a foreign country.

And the translator said to him, you know, you wanna give me a rundown of your talk, and the translator was pretty bored with the whole subject, not very interested, didn’t seem to be a believer, just said to the translator, my message is that given half a chance, mankind will do away with his Maker.

And he said the translator suddenly sat up and looked extremely interested and thought for the first time this could actually be interesting.

And that’s what Jesus is saying here, the mark of the opposition to Jesus is that they would like to get rid of him.

And of course ultimately they’ll get rid of him by killing him and by killing him they’ll actually do the work of God in bringing about salvation.

But you see the strange reaction to Jesus in verse 46, he says to them,

Can any of you prove me guilty of sin, why are you so against me?

He doesn’t ask them, can you say I’m guilty of sin, that would be easy to do, but can you prove me guilty of sin, and of course they can’t and therefore they ought to be asking themselves the question, what is it about Jesus that we don’t like, why do we want to get rid of him, why are we so against him, why are we strangely opposed to Jesus, the best person who’s ever lived, there’s something odd about this, yes, there’s something devilish about this.

And the second strange reaction in verse 45, because I tell the truth, you don’t believe, the devil is a liar, you see, it’s his native language to lie, he doesn’t like the truth, he’s the liar, he’s the father of lies, and therefore when Jesus speaks the truth, they hate it. He says, because I tell you the truth you don’t believe, you hate the truth, you don’t want it.

Very strange reaction isn’t it, except I completely understand.

Because when I was an unbeliever, I didn’t want anybody to tell the truth to me, I didn’t want to read any of the books people gave me, I didn’t want to go to any of the sermons people invited me to, I didn’t want to go to any of the conferences, I didn’t want to listen to any of the CDs, although CDs weren’t around in those days. I didn’t want to take in any truth, I was not wanting to believe it, it was unwanted truth.

I was reading an obituary in the papers of a man who founded humanistic Judaism.

Apparently a brilliant man with an encyclopaedic brain, and he was an atheist rabbi.

He set up synagogues, apparently 30 of them around the world, which rejected God, he removed all prayers, and all references to God, and he ran services for people who wanted liturgy and sort of prayers, in Hebrew and English.

I was reading this brilliant man doing this lifetime work of setting up synagogues where there was no reference to God, I was scratching my head and I think to myself, why would you do this? Why give yourself to this if you’re so clever and you’ve only got one life in this world?

And then I read on in the article and I came to the point which said that he lived committed to an immoral lifestyle. And I thought, well, that’s just got to be, that’s just got to be a big part of the reason, hasn’t it?

What is driving his unbelief is that he does not want the truth because the truth will muck up his lifestyle. And of course what is driving his unwanted truth is actually the very sinister world of the devil.

So see how Jesus puts this in this very climactic section of the conversation.

He finishes verse 47 by saying, you see, actually you don’t belong to God. I’ve already said verse 44, you belong to the devil, and now I have to say to you verse 47, you don’t belong to God.

So there are 2 refusals, very two very strange refusals, a refusal about Jesus and a refusal about the word, and the reason is of course the devil is at work.

And then there are two very strange reactions, there’s a hostility to the goodness of Jesus and there’s a hostility to the word of Jesus, and the reason is they do not belong to God, very confrontational.

But it’s an incredibly important passage because it pulls back the curtain on the battle.

I wanna finish by just giving you a few closing thoughts. I want you to notice from this passage this morning that Christianity is not some little convenient neutral issue in life. Christianity is not one shop in the street. You know, you can call in if you want, you can ignore it if you want.

It’s not one stall in the markets.

Jesus stands up, you see, and he says I run the world, I own the markets, I own the universe, everything, absolutely everything hinges on how you deal with me, everything hinges on that.

And the really wonderful but alarming thing to say is that he’s not in the slightest bit of danger.

I know the world thinks that he’s in terrible danger and that he’s about to completely lose and the world is gonna give up on him and he’ll have nothing to do and he’ll be neglected and he’ll be thrown out.

But he’s not in the slightest bit of danger.

He’s absolutely secure on the throne of the universe.

But people are in danger, and people are in danger of being left out. He’s not in any danger of being left out.

He’s actually the king of the battle.

Francis Schaeffer used to say in his books that he wanted Christians to speak often of the powerful angels of God. I don’t know whether you’re ever brave enough to talk about God’s powerful angels, but Francis Schaeffer, who was a great thinker, said it would be good if Christians spoke more often of God’s powerful angels because then the people we’re speaking to know that we’re not talking about morality.

We’re not talking about ‘be good.’

And Jesus here speaks of the devil and I suppose if we spoke of the devil a bit more often, people would know that we are really in a spiritual battle that we’re not talking about some morality system.

The message from today you see is not, please go home from church and be good and love Jesus and read your Bible. The message this morning is, do you belong to the person who is able to deliver you from the one who has all the darkness, and all the death and all the lies and all the murder.

Are you able to be delivered from him, because there’s only one person who’ll get you out of his clutches, and that’s Jesus Christ.

And then do you see how Jesus will do this or did do this, it’s all written in John’s Gospel chapter 12, where Jesus says the prince of this world, that’s the devil will be driven out, and I, when I’m lifted up on the cross, will draw people to myself. When I’m lifted up, said Jesus and I draw people to myself, that’s the moment where the devil himself will be driven out.

That’s the moment where he will be disarmed, he’ll be mortally wounded, or Paul says in Colossians 2, that when Jesus triumphed at the cross, he disarmed the spiritual powers, he took away their swords, he took away their guns.

The wonderful thing about the cross you see is that at the cross, Jesus exhausted everything which God’s justice could throw at him.

In my place, says the hymn, condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah, what a saviour.

The last thing I want to say to you this morning is that as we go away with a little bit of John 8 in our memory, hopefully for the next few minutes at least, I think you’ll find that these verses are very tempting. I think these are very tempting verses.

There’s just 1 or 2 this morning who will be tempted to treat these verses as if you’re a bit of a redneck.

You’ll take these verses and you’ll say, yep, it’s Jesus or the devil, it’s Jesus or the devil, and you get sort of excited saying that, don’t you?

Strangely excited.

And there’ll be some other people who go away from this passage this morning and you’ll say that’s just too hard. Jesus or the devil, that’s too difficult. I’d like to avoid this passage. I’d like to stick my head in the sand and just forget this passage.

Because we maybe just a bit embarrassed by the verses.

We, we really would like to invent some middle ground. We’d like to say well there’s us, and then there’s dreadful people and then there’s just most people.

But you see Jesus says in chapter 8 verse 12, here’s the light of the world.

And it’s only by following him that you’ll have the light of life.

And so Jesus sets the scene for this very chapter and he sets the scene for the world, and we’d never dare to set the scene for the world, but Jesus does set the scene for the world, and he puts it in two camps, he says it’s light or darkness, it’s life or death, it’s Lord or devil. We’ll have to hold onto these verses, and we’ll even have to repeat them.

Yep, we’ll have to hold onto them, and we’ll even have to repeat them.

And we’ll also go from this building this morning, so many of us here this morning, eternally grateful for Jesus that he through the cross has actually delivered us from darkness to light, from death to life, from the devil to the Lord.

And time will prove what an absolutely incredible transfer that is from the greatest person the world has ever seen.

Let’s Pray

Our gracious God, we thank you for sending into the world, one who has brought us crucial information, And also crucial salvation. We pray that you would save us this morning, from being overexcited about these verses, and loveless.

And we pray that you would also save us from being embarrassed by these verses and truthless.

But we pray that you would help us to be faithful to this teaching and to be marked by the truth and the love which is seen in the Lord Jesus, and which has come to us at great cost, and brought us new life.

And we pray that You would help us to be your representatives of truth and love.