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Welcome to Acts Church! Listen to all of our sermons here, they are released each week.
All right.
This is Acts Church, by the way.
If you're new, if you're relatively new, I just want you to know that we love you.
We care about you.
We want you to be here to be a person who is experiencing the love, the peace, the joy of salvation in Jesus Christ and growing in righteousness as he's called us to do.
That is our desire for you.
That is what we want for you.
And we will probably, if you keep coming, we will probably try to draw you further and further in to relationship with the people in this church who can love you, pray for you, serve you.
So if you don't have a life group, I highly recommend looking into that.
That's kind of the first step that we have for folks to get engaged because you can only do so much on a Sunday morning. in terms of relationship.
And so if you don't have a life group, we have a number of them.
If you fill out one of those little orange cards and put, I want to be in a life group, we'll get in touch with you, talk to you about what we've got going on.
You can also look online for that.
All right, let's pray as we get started with reading the word this morning.
Father, we just pray you'd open the word to us as we continue to study your word.
Lord, that it would be none of us and all of you in this.
Lord, that the teaching would be what you want us to hear.
Holy Spirit, that you would be the teacher.
And that you would open up the scripture to help us to know you.
To help us to truly know you.
To understand more of who you are, deeper and deeper truths about who you are.
Lord, in that I pray you would shape us, mold us, and transform us into the people that you have created us to be, designed us to be, predestined us to be.
Before the foundation of the world, you had a plan for each one of us.
And I pray that we would walk in that plan.
In your name, amen.
Peace on earth.
That is what we talk about at Christmas time.
You hear that saying a lot, peace on earth.
We sing about it.
It's kind of a Christmas time classic.
And it's interesting because we sort of sing about it as if everything's jolly.
But the fact is, Jesus Christ will bring peace on earth.
We actually sang about it this morning.
There will come a time when he brings peace on earth.
But Jesus brings a sword, both now and then, in a particular way.
Jesus came to earth and he died on a cross as a ransom. for us, for our sin.
And he rose again on the third day, bringing peace between God and men.
He paid for our peace with his broken body and his shed poured out blood.
That's the peace that he brought for you and I who believe in him, who love him,
God's righteous, necessary wrath and judgment on sin was all placed on Jesus for our peace.
And because of what God has done for us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we can have peace with God.
That is true.
But peace on earth, the kind where there's peace everywhere, that comes with judgment on with a real sword, and with blood up to the horse's bridles.
That's not a thing that we enjoy thinking about, nor should we.
It's a necessary thing, but we shouldn't desire to see it because it's a terrible thing.
But a necessary thing.
When Jesus comes and returns to rule and to reign, and we eagerly wait for his return, those of us who are in Christ.
We eagerly wait for his return.
He's the bread of life who gives us life.
And so we evangelize.
We bring the gospel because those who believe on Jesus are forgiven and free and don't have to experience any of what's going to have to happen when he brings peace on earth.
You're not made for wrath.
Wrath's already been poured out on him.
It's those who refuse to accept his free gift of salvation that he already paid for that will experience the wrath that he had already taken on, but that they will take on because they insist upon it.
And so we evangelize, we bring the gospel because those who do not believe are condemned and we don't want that for anyone.
We are not in the peace on earth part of history.
I don't know if you've noticed that.
Do you guys have the news?
Okay.
We are not in the peace on earth part of history.
It's not where we are right now.
We will not be on the peace on earth part of history until Jesus returns.
We are in the peace with God part of history and praise God for that.
No longer having the law and the sacrifices and all that because Jesus has fulfilled all of that.
While the world is broken with sin...
And we are here experiencing peace with God.
It's our job to proclaim that to others so that they can also have peace with God.
But in doing that, Jesus brings another sword.
It's a sword of division between those who love him and praise him for saving us, those who love his righteousness and recognize and come to his light,
And those who don't, those who love darkness rather than light, there is a division.
There are people who, if they heard this study of the Bible today, would hate me and would hate you for believing in Jesus, for believing in what Jesus says.
That's a reality.
And for some, that causes fear.
For some believers, for some people,
Out there, it just causes apathy.
For some, it causes jealousy towards Jesus.
It's just all kinds of feels go into Jesus.
For us, the message of the gospel gives a living hope unto life.
For those who reject and or ignore Jesus, it is a dying death.
Just an experience, just a long road to death.
Now, there are Bibles in front of you.
We're going to study in the Bible this morning, Lord willing.
You can use those if you want to while we study.
It will, Lord willing, also be on the screen up here.
And if you want one of those Bibles to take home and read and study, we want that.
You would have that as a free gift to you.
We want you to learn the Word of God.
Let's start, though, in Matthew chapter 10.
And we're going to look at verse 32.
So if you want to turn in there, fine.
It will also be up here.
Matthew 10, 32.
This is what Jesus said.
Therefore, whoever confesses me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven.
But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.
Now let me tell you something.
It is not easy to confess him before men in a broken and fallen world because as I just told you, he brings a sort of division and they hate him.
Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth.
That's later.
Verse 1. a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
I think that already happens.
And a man's enemies, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
And a man's enemies will be those of his own household.
He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
And he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.
He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.
What's Jesus saying here?
He's saying that you, in order to confess it before men, are going to have division and difficulty and conflict in your life.
With your own household.
Some of you are believers and some of you have experienced this.
Within your own house.
Your spouse, your father, your mother, your sister, your brother, whoever it is.
Sometimes they just are kind of like, you do your Christian thing, whatever.
And sometimes they're quite harsh about it.
It just depends on what you're dealing with.
But some of you have seen this.
But it's not even just this.
We get upset with him.
It's just some dude we work with.
Well, I don't want him to be mad at me.
Well, I don't want him to be mad at you either.
But who would you rather have upset with you, that dude or the God of the universe?
We're thinking about it.
Think about it.
Now, we've been studying the book of John in our family service, which is what we call this 1030 service.
And we are beginning chapter 7.
We've gotten through it.
And you're going to see the reaction and attitude of several groups of people towards Jesus in this chapter.
You're going to see his brothers, who are kind of irreverent, kind of meh.
You're going to see most of the leaders, other than one if we get to the end of the chapter that we'll read about, who are mostly jealous of him and self-righteous.
And then you're going to see the people, and you're going to see a number of different people reactions to Jesus.
Some are afraid.
Some are hopeful.
Some are amazed at his authority.
Some believe, based on the evidence of the timing of the things that are happening with Jesus, of his miracles, the reaction of the leaders towards him, things like that, lead them to believe in him.
Now, you could fall into any number of these categories.
If you are not currently a Christ follower, you may be in any number of these categories. kind of the brothers, sort of like men, almost like making fun of it, almost irreverence.
You may be jealous of him, self-righteous, which is to say, you want to be in charge of the idea, I will not have this man as king over me.
I'm in charge of my own life.
That may be you.
You may be afraid to make a decision, or you may be moving in his direction, seeing that the evidence that Jesus Christ is God and rose from the dead on the third day is true.
Whatever the case, Jesus is forcing you to do something with his claim to be God and the Savior of the world.
He is forcing you to do something with it.
And that he intends to do that.
He brings a sword of division.
Will you go to the light or will you walk in darkness?
And he makes it very clear which one is which.
He's the light.
The world is the darkness.
What are you going to do?
Now, you can reject the whole thing, but in doing so, you're rejecting him.
That's your choice.
I do not recommend it.
I desperately don't want you to do that.
But you will have to make a choice.
So let's get into the word.
John 7.
Start with verse 1.
Let's get after it.
After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he did not want to walk in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him.
Okay, let's remember what's just happened.
Chapter six, we had the feeding of the 5,000, 5,000 men plus women and children.
Then everybody followed him to Capernaum.
Then he's preaching and he says, I'm the bread of life who came down from heaven.
And they're offended, right?
They're upset.
And so a lot of the disciples, not the 12, but a lot of his other followers and disciples walked away because he's saying, I'm the bread of life.
And he said, you're going to have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.
It's given a spiritual truth about being nourished in Christ.
And they're like, ah, this is too hard.
And off they went and walked away.
Now, Jesus spends time in Galilee because that was the timing that God had for him.
He didn't go into Judea because they wanted to kill him.
Now, remember, he knew he was going to die.
It wasn't time yet.
It wasn't time yet.
So what we have is we have Jesus possibly for a number of months just back in Galilee, chilling.
We have, so this year, I'm going to tell you so you have an idea of the time.
This year, Passover was April 12th through 20th, the Feast of Passover.
And the Feast of Tabernacles is October 6th through 13th.
So from April to October, that's how long between those two feasts.
Now, when we were reading this, it sounded like it was the Feast of Passover around the time of the feeding of 5,000, all that happened.
People were headed to Passover.
And the next thing we're going to hear is that it's the Feast of Tabernacles.
So however many months that is, don't ask me to do the math.
April to October, I don't know, five months?
Six months?
I don't know.
Don't email me.
You should know math better.
I'm a lawyer, okay?
Not a math person.
So anyway, that's how long he could have been just chilling in Galilee.
Maybe back with his parents, doing carpentry.
We don't know exactly.
But he sort of steps back at this point, partially because things had heated up so much, and people wanted to kill him, and it wasn't time for that.
But during this part of Jesus' ministry, all we know is that he stayed in Galilee during that time for a number of months.
And now, let's see what happens next.
It says...
Now, the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand.
Feast of Tabernacles.
Now, there's a number of feasts, okay, three of which all the men, all the Jewish men were to attend, to go to, to do the thing.
And in this one, they would actually go, and then they would make these, it's like camping, okay?
They'd make these tabernacles, these tents, and these little shelters out of bows, out of like wood, whatever.
And basically they're going camping for a week, okay?
And they did that because they're to remember that when God brought them out of Egypt, that that's how they lived, right?
Through the wilderness that God sustained them.
And so the Feast of Tabernacles was to remember God bringing them out of Egypt.
And so I'm going to read to you about it.
It's in the book of Leviticus, starting in chapter 23, verse 33.
Let's read this real quick.
This is the setting up of that feast.
But then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days to the Lord.
Their calendar is different than ours, so the seventh month for them is not the same for us.
On the first day there shall be a holy convocation.
You shall do no customary work on it.
That's a Sabbath.
For seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord.
On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation, and you shall offer an offering made by fire.
So there's two Sabbaths in that day.
They would not necessarily be Saturdays, because whatever the 15th day of that month was, was going to be a Sabbath, and then eight days from then, there'd be a Sabbath.
Probably a Saturday Sabbath happened at some point in between there.
So these are different kinds of Sabbaths, feast Sabbaths.
These are the feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire of the Lord, a burnt and grain offering, a sacrifice and a drink offerings, everything on its day, besides the Sabbaths of the Lord, besides your gifts, besides all your vows, and besides all your freewill offerings, which you give to the Lord.
So this is a separate thing from all that.
Also on the 15th day of the same month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, so this is after harvest, right?
It's taking place September, October normally.
You shall keep the feast of the Lord for seven days.
On the first day there shall be a Sabbath rest.
On the eighth day a Sabbath rest.
You shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.
You shall keep it as a feast of the Lord for seven days in the year.
It shall be a statute forever in your generations.
You shall celebrate in the seven months.
You shall dwell in booths.
Why do I read all that to you?
Well, because I want you to have a background in what's going on here.
This is what's happening.
This is the feast that's going on.
People are going to be going to Jerusalem.
They're going to be staying in booths, in these tents, in these temporary dwellings.
They're going to be having these Sabbaths.
It's a week long.
Now, one thing that we do not do in this country generally is have feasts that last a week.
Weddings used to last like a week, right?
If it's past 15 minutes, I'm like, man and wife, man and wife, man and wife.
Let's do this thing.
There's food downstairs, right?
I'm not into the seven-day-long feast.
I'm an American, for goodness sakes, right?
These guys were doing like, hey, let's go celebrate the Lord for seven days straight and have services every day and sacrifice the Lord and praise him and honor him and just celebrate the harvest that he's given us. this year.
And so, and this is what they would do.
And so this is what's going on.
And this is what the Jews did.
Now the Jews, what I just read you is the Mosaic law, and they were big on that.
So they would have been like to the letter doing all these things.
Plus they would have had a whole nother group of rules about all the things that they're going to do and so on.
And this is the context that's going on for them.
Now it says,
So his brothers, nice guys.
They said, hey, you did these things in Galilee.
Remember, this is like the country.
He's up in Yakult doing, feeding 5,000 people.
And they're like, head into Portland and do it.
That's the context, I guess, for you.
It's more like, because Jerusalem's the center of the Jewish world.
This is where the temple of God is.
It's more like, you know, whatever you would consider the biggest city in the world.
To us, right?
You know, New York, London, something like that.
It's a big Western city for us, for them, Jerusalem.
Hey, you did this out here in the sticks.
Now go do it there if you're all that.
If you want people to see you, if you're saying you're the Messiah, go and do all these works in front of all these people.
Now, I don't think that they necessarily, we don't know what was in their hearts.
It doesn't say, it doesn't give us that.
But it wasn't, Jesus wasn't having it.
He obviously wasn't like, hey, that's good advice, brothers.
What does it actually say?
Why did they say this stuff?
Well, verse 5, for even his brothers did not believe in him.
Now, this is interesting because, presumably, they would have heard testimony from Mary that Jesus was the Messiah and she had him as a virgin.
They would have been aware of or had been there for the feeding of the 5,000, for the wedding at Cana, for the different miracles that he had done.
And yet, they didn't believe.
So much so that they're kind of scoffing here.
Hey, why don't you go do all this in public?
Why don't you go do it in Jerusalem?
It's one thing to do it out here with all these people who, like you know, and whatever.
It's another thing, go into the big city.
You're the big man.
I think they're just kind of scoffers.
It's just kind of the feel I get.
Well, I see that with people.
It's one way people react to Jesus.
They don't believe in him.
They just kind of scoff.
Just kind of make fun of him.
Kind of make fun of people who believe in him.
They're too smart for that.
They're too cool for that.
They're too apathetic for that.
We see that type.
Then Jesus said to them, my time has not yet come, but your time is always ready.
Jesus knows the timing of his life.
The timing of his death.
It was not time for him to go to the cross for the sins of the world yet.
Remember, they're looking to kill him.
That's why he's chilling in Galilee.
It's just not time yet.
The Jews wanted to kill him.
His brothers, it's always their time.
Why?
Because they're with the majority.
The majority who didn't believe in him.
They fit in with the culture.
It's always your time.
You can do whatever you want.
No one's looking to kill you.
You're not standing against the world preaching righteousness so nobody's causing you any trouble.
Somebody comes to you and goes, I'm a Christian.
I never run into any trouble.
And you go, I don't know that you're living like a Christian then.
Because you just simply cannot live the Christ life and never end up with conflict.
It's impossible.
It's impossible.
It's impossible.
But they can go to the feast in Jerusalem.
Everything's going to be fine.
No danger for them.
They're not calling the world to righteousness.
He goes on to say, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil.
Why can't the world hate them?
Well, they're of the world.
The world doesn't hate its own.
As far as they're concerned, they are not believing in Jesus.
So they are walking with the culture.
They're going with the flow.
The world's not going to hate them, but it hates Jesus, he says.
And why does it say it hates him?
Because I testify of it that its works are evil.
Here is the rub.
The world hated Jesus, and the world still hates Jesus.
When I say the world, I'm talking about unbelievers, the whole world, they hate Jesus.
The world is full of darkness, and men love the darkness and hate the light.
This is a reality.
And I know sometimes people are like, oh, the world doesn't hate Jesus.
Generally, like people are sort of reverent-ish about Jesus, like, oh, yeah, okay, Jesus, that's cool, whatever.
Some people may make fun of Christianity, but they don't hate him.
They do.
They do.
The real Jesus, the God of the Bible, is hated wherever he is faithfully preached.
When you actually proclaim the things Jesus proclaimed in the word, they hate him.
Jesus says, believe on him or you're going to hell.
People hate that.
Jesus calls us to holiness in living.
People hate that.
Jesus is the Lord who we must submit to and follow.
People hate that.
The cultural Jesus that has been invented by lies and cowardice of those who don't want to face the hate, or those who have truly devious plots.
That Jesus that's been invented, this sort of Jesus meek and mild, kind of go with whatever, and really he's just kind of this good teacher, like he's a yoga teacher or something, like he's just hanging out on a yoga mat with the goats.
I don't know how they do that now, but that's not Jesus, okay?
That Jesus is a lie, okay? from hell.
That's not who he said he is.
Jesus is not your homeboy.
He is the God of the universe who created everything that has been created.
He is not your grandpa who, as C.S.
Lewis says, just wants to be able to say at the
That's not the consuming fire.
He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
His name is above all names, above every name and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess on the earth and above the earth and below the earth that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.
That's who Jesus is.
That's the one they hate.
They don't mind Jesus the hippie that people invented.
That Jesus is just like, kind of like, man, it's just love, man.
Love meaning tolerate everything.
There's no Jesus in the Bible that looks anything like that.
What did he just say?
They hate me because I testify that the works of the world are evil.
That's why they hate him.
They don't hate him because he's a hippie.
They hate him because he's the God of the universe calling people to repentance, right?
He is God.
He made us to live in peace and love with him in holiness.
That's what we were made for.
Submitted to the king of kings.
Not for us to be in charge.
We are not in charge.
It is not all about us.
You and I, you might want to write this down, are not the main character.
Okay?
I understand.
Everything about our culture right now is about you being the main character.
Every kid has got to have that YouTube channel.
Hey, like and subscribe.
Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with YouTube.
I'm just saying if it's about you being the main character, if you go and you look at your social media and there are 835 selfies of you in the last year, you think you're the main character.
I'm sorry.
Did I offend you?
Get over it.
I'm not the only one who thinks that, by the way.
People are starting to walk out right now.
They're just like, I can't even believe that he would say that to me.
Anyway, you're not the main character.
I'm not the main character.
Jesus Christ, the righteous, is the main character.
And people hate him, make no mistake, they hate him.
They hate him because they love the darkness the world has to offer and they hate the light that Jesus brings.
It exposes them.
Cockroaches hate it when you turn on the light.
We, in sin, are all like that.
I wasn't looking for the light.
When the light came, it showed me who I was.
And then I had to submit myself to Jesus who saved me.
He did all the work and saved me.
But I was certainly not one who was like, yay, Jesus, how about show me all the things that I'm doing wrong.
I was scurry, scurry, scurry under the refrigerator when the light came on.
And that's how we all are until we submit ourselves to Jesus.
Let's look at a very famous passage.
It's right in John, so you only have to go back a couple pages.
John 3, and we'll start with verse 16 just to get some context here.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Praise God.
What has God done?
Everything for you.
Everything to save you.
For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
Again, come back to me with this.
The first time he comes is not the peace on earth time.
He is going to come and condemn.
He is going to come and judge.
That's going to happen.
That's why now is the time to come to him and believe in him that the world through him might be saved.
He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
That's a condemnation.
For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come into the light lest his deeds should be exposed.
That was me and that was you before Christ.
But he who does the truth comes to the light that his deeds would be clearly seen that they have been done in God.
That's hopefully you and me now.
Because he's cleansed us.
So when the light comes on, they see Jesus instead of me now.
Because if you're still looking at me, it's a mess.
But if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
1 John 1, 9, right?
And so because of that, I'm free and I'm clean because of Jesus.
But without him, I was walking in darkness and I didn't like the light.
And that's the world.
So when Jesus says, they're not going to hate you.
You're not going to be hated.
You're running around in the dark with them.
They hate me because when I come in, the light comes in.
And they hate it.
Verse eight, you go up to this feast, says to his brothers, you go on.
I am not yet going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come.
When he had said these things to them, he remained in Galilee.
But when his brothers had gone up, then he also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
Then the Jews sought him at the feast and said, where is he?
So they're looking for him. right?
The Jewish leaders, they want to kill him.
They're not happy.
They're looking for him.
It says, and there was this verse 12, and there was much complaining among the people concerning him.
Some said he is good.
Others said, no, on the contrary, he deceives the people.
However, no one spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews.
Now, here's the deal.
This is how it is now too.
Some say he's good.
Some say, no, that's a deception.
Some say he's just one way, one of many ways, right?
Which Jesus is like, no, I didn't leave that option for you.
I said, I'm the way, the truth, and life.
No one comes to the Father but by me.
You can reject that and reject me, but you don't get to stick me in with everybody else and act like I said I was just one of the ways.
I'm either the only way or I'm not, right?
And so we have this arguing.
And it says, no one spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews.
We know the Jews hated him.
And so people were kind of like, hey, is this him?
Is this the Messiah?
But they're afraid to say anything because they don't want to get on the wrong side of the world, of who's popular.
Sound familiar?
A lot of Christians today, they don't want to talk about their faith.
They don't want to make it obvious that they know Jesus, that they follow Jesus.
It's embarrassing.
They're afraid.
They're afraid.
And I'm not, by no means am I saying that you need to walk around everywhere you go saying, I'm a Christian.
I'm a Christian, everybody.
You don't need to do that.
Unclean, unclean, like the lepers used to yell, right?
You don't have to do that.
You don't have to wear a shirt and like a hat and whatever that says like Christian Jesus.
You don't need to do that.
People will know by the way that you live.
And then when you have opportunity, you also proclaim with your mouth the Lord Jesus.
What you don't do is cower in fear because you won't be cool.
If there's anything I can tell you right now, it is not cool to be a Christian.
That's what Jesus is saying.
You guys can be cool.
You're with them.
Your time is always, you do whatever, you have nothing to fear, no one hates you.
You can go be cool.
What is cool?
It's being the way the world is so that other people think you're doing the things that they think are cool.
Okay?
Now, the true meaning of cool used to kind of be like that you actually did stand apart and whatever, but you follow me, right?
You are not going to be accepted in the mainstream if you're a Christ follower.
Deal with it.
You're on the narrow road.
They're on the wide road.
Jesus says, you're gonna have to be willing to reject even your own mother and father.
You're gonna have to pick up your cross, meaning die to yourself to follow him.
You think you can sort of do that and be cool at the same time?
Sometimes we get like Christian bands or Christian movies or Christian whatever, and they're really trying, bless their heart, some of them are really trying to like look as much like Jesus
Cool bands, it's possible.
Or you find Christians who are in bands, and they're like, yeah, we're a band, but we're not a Christian band.
Like, we're Christians who are in a band, but we don't want to be known as a Christian band.
Now, they may not want to be known as a Christian band because a lot of Christian bands have had issues and whatever, but more likely, they know they're not going to be accepted by the world if they start proclaiming in their music the King of Kings.
As long as it's kind of back here, it's okay.
People can deal with there's a Christian in the band, right?
But when you start proclaiming the name of Jesus, it's a sword that's brought and division is brought.
Now, chapter, verse 14.
About the middle of the feast, Jesus went up to the temple and taught.
So he's gonna, he wasn't there right at the beginning when they were all searching for him and then he pops out, right?
He's been kind of hiding.
And the Jews marveled saying, how does this man know letters having never studied?
So Jesus is teaching, and clearly he is teaching deep, scriptural, theological truths.
And they're going, this guy didn't go to seminary with us.
He didn't do the stuff that we did.
He's not a man of letters.
They would have had English accents.
I've seen all the movies.
They always do.
They're saying, how does he know?
Well, let me just tell you.
He was God.
He is God.
He knows all of it.
And so he's speaking, and they're amazed.
How does he know?
We didn't teach him this stuff.
It's not like there were a thousand seminaries, right?
You learned these things kind of within the context of these folks, these Pharisees, these Jewish leaders, and so on.
Jesus was from Galilee, okay?
Just think, somebody came from Bumble Stink, Alabama, right? right, Galilee, and comes out and is this like explicating string theory in physics.
Some of you are like, I don't know what that is.
I don't really know what it is either.
I've just heard of it.
Something about strings and theory.
I don't know.
But doing that, and you're just like, how does this person know about this?
They're from Bumble Stink, Alabama.
I can barely understand them when they talk because of their accent.
Well, because he's God.
Jesus answered and said to them, my doctrine is not mine.
Doctrine, teaching, okay?
But his who sent me.
If anyone wills to do his will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, the teaching, whether it's from God or whether I speak in my own authority.
Remember, Jesus as the son is always submitting his will to the father.
So one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Within the Trinity, Jesus is always submissive to the Father.
Eternally submissive to the Father.
So we're saying, hey, this isn't my teaching.
This is the teaching of the Father.
The one that you guys say you know.
It's his teaching.
It's his teaching.
Whether it is from God or whether I speak on my own authority, he who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.
Even Jesus, the Son of God, God, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, expressed in flesh, right?
Who sits down at the right hand of God, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, expressed in spirit, right?
Jesus is submissive to the Father and always glorifying the Father.
Read it.
He's always saying, my Father, my Father, my Father, my Father, my Father.
That's the nature of the way the Trinity works and what Jesus always does.
And this is true.
If you are teaching to glorify yourself, I wouldn't buy into that.
But if you're teaching to glorify God, maybe what you're saying is true.
Maybe what you're saying is true.
There's a really easy way to hold men like me, pastors and teachers, accountable to God and his word.
Do I speak about myself and lift myself up, or do I lift up God?
It's that simple.
Do I seek my own glory or the glory of God?
If you hear me teaching, any teaching that glorifies me, discipline me hard and fast.
But if I teach the word of God, and what I'm saying is glorifying him and not myself, then I would ask you, don't aim your frustration at me.
It is the word of God that you're at odds with.
You can get mad at me, righteously so, if I'm up here glorifying myself.
But if I'm teaching what the scripture says, and then you're mad at me, it's not me you're mad at.
It's not me you're mad at.
It's the one I follow that you're mad at.
Next, Jesus says, did not Moses give you the law?
Yet none of you keeps the law.
Why do you seek to kill me?
Now, he's setting them up here.
Jesus, by the way, is God.
Brilliant, brilliant guy, okay?
It's God, and he's about to set these guys up hard.
Okay, so I want you, but you gotta pay attention to follow what he does.
So let's follow, because he's setting them up to catch them in their fallacies, okay?
There's some nonsense going on.
The people answered and said, you have a demon.
Who is seeking to kill you?
Real nice.
First of all, everybody knew they were seeking to kill him.
It was no secret.
It's well known they were seeking to kill him.
So they're like, who's, what?
How dare you?
Sir, you know, whatever.
So ridiculous.
They know the Jews want to kill him.
Jesus answered and said to them, I did one work and you all marvel.
Now the work he's talking about here, we read about when we studied chapter five, okay?
There was a miracle some weeks back that we studied in chapter five.
You can find the passage there.
He healed this man who had had an infirmity for 38 years.
And Jesus healed him on the Sabbath.
And if you understand how the Jews were, particularly these Jewish leaders, it was letter of the law, baby.
Like, you can only walk this far on the Sabbath.
You can only do this on the Sabbath and that on the Sabbath.
I mean, just rule after rule after rule after rule after rule about how to keep the Sabbath.
Just lots and lots of rules.
So the Jews were angry.
Let's just go back to that passage real quick for a second, a few verses.
Chapter 5, verses 12 through 17.
So, here we go.
It says, then they asked him, what's happened is the man's been healed, and they're asking this man.
They all know he was infirm for 38 years and he got healed.
There's no question about the healing, but it happened on the Sabbath, so they want to know who did this.
Then they asked him, who is the man who said to you, take up your bed and walk?
But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place.
Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, see, you have been made well.
Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.
So, were they trying to kill him?
Yes.
When they found out he had healed on the Sabbath, they were trying to kill him.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Well, because he's turning people away from them at the end of the day.
But let's see what Jesus does here.
I did one work and you all marvel, right?
Then he says, Moses, therefore, gave you circumcision.
And it says parenthetically here in Scripture, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers.
And you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.
If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?
Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.
Now, that's kind of hard to follow, so let me walk you through what Jesus just did.
They would have gotten it, but it's kind of hard for me to follow.
I had to think about it and look it up a little bit to understand this argument.
Moses wrote the law about circumcision on the eighth day, et cetera, et cetera.
So if the eighth day fell on the Sabbath, they would circumcise a child on the Sabbath, which is work, by the way, okay?
I've never done it.
Anyone who's interested, I'll give it a shot.
No, I'm not gonna do that for you.
That is not one of our services here at the church.
But it's work, right?
But they would do it on the Sabbath if that child's eighth day fell on the Sabbath.
And Moses wrote about it, but it wasn't Moses who instituted circumcision.
Circumcision existed back with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, long before Moses.
So this thing existed long before all the rules about it.
And long before that, the Sabbath was established at creation. on the seventh day.
So these are much older than this Mosaic law, which then they took and made lots of other rules for, and one of the exceptions they make to the Mosaic law on circumcision is that you can, I'm sorry, on the Sabbath is that you can do circumcision on the Sabbath, but they didn't want to allow an exception for literally healing a man who had been infirm for 38 years.
If you can put aside the rules of the Sabbath to circumcise a baby, certainly you can put aside the rules of the Sabbath to make someone well.
And to heal them.
So Jesus is basically calling them out.
And the people hearing this would have understood.
He made them look foolish.
The rules had swallowed up the spirit.
And for those rules, they literally wanted to murder him.
Because he had violated the Sabbath by literally healing this man.
Verse 25, now some of them from Jerusalem said, is this not he whom they seek to kill?
But look, he speaks boldly and they say nothing to him.
Do the rulers know indeed that this is truly the Christ?
So here's some more evidence.
Jesus is there.
Again, they all know that the leaders want to kill him.
And people are like, wait a sec, this is the guy that from back in, they would have said chapter five, that chapter wasn't written yet.
But from back a little ways back, who healed that dude on the Sabbath, and they want to kill this guy.
Isn't that this guy?
But they're not doing anything.
They're not doing anything.
He's boldly speaking to them.
He just called them out in public.
Are they afraid of him?
Do they indeed know that he's truly the Christ?
This is evidence that's starting to build for them.
This man who they say is a bad dude, they seem to be afraid of him.
He's calling them out.
Why aren't they doing anything about it?
Maybe they know he's the Christ.
Maybe they're scared.
So the evidence is starting to build with some people.
If this is just some guy who should be punished and killed, why are the rulers afraid to do anything to him?
Maybe they're afraid because they know Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.
Verse 27, however, we know where this man is from, but when the Christ comes, no one will know where he's from.
You know, I don't know exactly why, and I don't know that anybody knows exactly why they thought this, that this was a popular thought at the time.
It's not in the scripture that no one would know where the Messiah came from.
But this had come up, apparently, to where at least some people thought, we won't know, the Messiah's just gonna appear out of nowhere.
We're not gonna know where he came from.
It's not in the scripture, it doesn't say that.
But for some reason, they had that thought.
And Jesus knows it and he responds to it.
Verse 28.
Then Jesus cried out as he taught the temple saying, you both know me and you know where I am from.
And I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true whom you do not know.
But I know him for I am from him and he sent me.
So they know where he is from in the sense that he's from Galilee.
He's the son of the Virgin Mary.
They wouldn't have necessarily believed that that happened, that there was a virgin birth.
But they know sort of his human origin, his family.
But they do not know God.
It says right here, whom you do not know.
They don't know God.
And therefore, they don't know his only begotten son, Jesus.
They don't really know where he's from.
Where he's from, he says, he was sent from heaven.
Yes, he has a family of origin, but where he's from, you really don't know because you don't know God because you don't really read the scriptures.
Therefore, they sought to take him, verse 30, but no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come.
This is an important thing to think about.
Nothing can happen to you that God does not know about you and all things will work together for good.
Romans 8, 28.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.
It was true for Jesus, and it's true for you and me.
Why didn't they lay a hand on him?
Because his time had not yet come.
Now, there's gonna come a time when they're gonna lay hands on him.
That time is gonna come.
But when it wasn't time, it didn't happen.
And if God has a plan for you where you're going to have hands laid on you, where something bad is going to happen to you, then it's going to happen and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
What you can know is that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Just like when they did lay hands on Jesus...
It was for the crucifixion and the resurrection and your salvation and my salvation, the salvation of hundreds of people here, thousands of people just in this city that will be with him forever because of his death.
It worked together for good.
But before his time was coming, nobody could do anything to him.
It could not be done.
And nothing can be done to you
You do not need to walk around fearing all the things that can happen to you.
Nothing can happen to you except that which God is going to allow, which may be bad, but there's no point in worrying about it.
Because it's going to happen and all things are going to work together for good.
Someone's going to get in an airplane.
That plane's taking off.
And it's just that pilot looked a little young.
Right?
And it's just a little wobbly on that takeoff.
And you get in and it's starting to get a little turbulence.
And I'm like, hmm.
I'm going to die.
That's just what's going to happen.
Terrible plane crash.
We're all dead.
But what happens is, I will just say to myself, and it doesn't really happen these days, but I say to myself, if that's the time and that's what's going to happen, so be it.
Whatever will happen, all things will work together for good.
It may be very painful for me for a hot minute.
I think this thing's crashed pretty fast.
So hopefully I just right through the thing.
But anyway, we don't want to talk about that.
What I don't want is to be horribly maimed and still live in that situation.
So I'm, you know, seatbelts off.
I'm ready to go.
It's not true.
My point is, nothing's going to happen that's not time for it to happen.
Nothing's going to happen that's not time for it to happen.
And if it does happen, all things will work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to His purpose.
You don't have to fear.
We do not have to fear.
And Jesus didn't.
Instead, He knew that the timing of God was there.
And because it wasn't time yet, they couldn't do anything to Him.
I'm running out of time.
No, there's no way.
We're not going to get through all this.
Hmm.
Look, I'm going to end with this.
When you understand that all things work together for good, when you understand that nothing can happen to you, that God's not going to allow it to happen to you, anything that he allows to happen to you, no matter how bad it seems in that moment, will be worked together for good.
God isn't doing the things to you.
The fallen world is what's happening.
Why did Jesus die?
Because we're sinful and the world's fallen and he had to die.
But that was still planned before the foundation of the world because he knew we would be sinful.
And he created us anyway, knowing that in order for us to be with him, he'd have to do that for us.
That's how much he loved you.
There are also things that may happen to you.
The Lord may come back soon or he may tarry for a while.
If he tarries for a while, some or all of us are going to die.
For some it will be painful.
For some it will be quick.
We don't know.
But all things will work together for good.
You may go through financial tragedy. difficulty, whatever.
And we're here to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice.
That's all part of it.
But you don't have to be afraid of it.
Because it's not gonna happen unless God knows already that it's gonna happen, has a plan for it, for all things to work together ultimately for good.
Once you understand that, and then you understand 1 Corinthians 2, 9.
But as it is written, I have not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him.
Then things get even easier.
When you know those two things...
God's going to work all things together for good.
Nothing's going to happen outside of his timing.
And at the end of it, really the beginning of it, the beginning of all real things, as C.S.
Lewis says, it's the beginning of a book that goes on forever and ever, and each chapter is better than the one before.
That's what's going to happen, right?
As it is written, I has not seen nor ear heard nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him.
You can't even conceive it, how good it is. then you don't have to walk around in fear.
None of us like pain.
None of us like discomfort.
None of us like tragedy.
None of us like trauma.
You shouldn't.
You weren't made to like those things.
What you can do is not fear them, as Jesus did not.
We'll come back in verse 31, where many of the people believed in him.
But it's 1156.
Some of you look like you're hungry.
Let's pray.