Gooding, David: 4 - Knowledge of the Living Lord

It is most encouraging to see so many of you coming back after lunch. For my own part, eh, in my university years, I had to attend many lectures in the dead hours of the afternoon, and I found it very difficult. The energy required to keep my eyes open took seriously away from what energy I had to listen to the lecture. You see, I developed the technique, therefore, of sparing my energy and listening with my eyes shut. I give you that same permission this afternoon. From personal experience, there's a danger in that. You could fall off to sleep completely. You're afraid that that might happen to you. Well, I'll help you there too. Give me your name now, and when I see you falling to sleep, I'll call you out and waken you up. So, as you have heard, we are this afternoon in this session to concentrate on chapters seven, eight, nine, and ten. They are the chapters that John spends on our Lord's third journey to Jerusalem and away again. But before we do it, I want just very, very briefly to call to your attention another feature of the Gospel of John. We were talking in our last session about the signs in the Gospel of John, and that led us, of course, to consider the first sign, which was the turning of the water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. Now, we pointed to some features of that story, not to them all, of course. We hadn't the time. One of the features that we didn't say much about at all was the fact that our Lord's mother, Mary, was invited to that wedding along with the other, uh, uh, with Jesus and the other disciples. And it was she who came to him saying that they have no wine, and he had conversation with her in response. Of that we didn't talk in our earlier session today. I would like simply now to point out that the first sign, the miracle of the Cana of Galilee, is the first story in the Gospel of John where a woman is prominent. But John is remarkable, notorious indeed, or no, no, famous, uh, that he has a number of stories that no other gospel writer has, in which women are prominent. And those indeed that he shares with other gospel writers, he adds far more detail than they do. And I have listed those stories here for you on the screen for the moment. I'm not going to expound them in any detail. I just put them there so that in case there are a few people here that have never noticed it before, they might care to notice it and to take it away and think about it and see what they make of it. There's the story of the wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, and the conversation they had. Then in chapter four, there is the story of our Lord's discussion with the woman of Samaria. No one else has that story. Now, please reserve your fire, uh, criticism. I have listed here also the story that in the older English translations stands in chapter eight, the story of the adulteress. Um, all modern translations will tell you that that story shouldn't be, uh, actually was not originally in the Gospel of John. The evidence against its being original to the Gospel of John is exceedingly strong. The manuscript evidence suggests it wasn't originally there. Stylistics seem to show that it wasn't necessarily written by John. And so the common judgment is nowadays it wasn't originally part of the Gospel of John. And I have no need at this, uh, or intention at this moment of disputing that verdict. I simply want you to ask, how fortunate it is that somebody put it in John? Wouldn't you agree it's very fortunate? Well, you'll see in a minute. Let's stand for a moment there. It's a story of a woman, of course, that no one else has. And then there's the story of Martha and Mary at the death of their brother Lazarus. There is the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, at the death of her son. And the story of Mary Magdalene at the tomb. If you care to look at those, I think you will be led to agree with me that they have a something in common to those stories. The theme is set by our Lord's reply to his mother in the first story. When she says they have no wine, he says to her, woman, what have I to do with thee? What between me and me? It's a question of relationship. Yes? And whatever else it implies, I needn't raise it now. This is merely pointing to you a phenomenon that you may care to interpret yourself. Then there is the story of the Samaritan woman, but that expressly involves a question of relationship. When our Lord said to the dear lady, go call thy husband, she replied, I have no husband. And instead of rebuking her and saying, you lie, you, um, you'll see, he complimented her, said, my dear, you said exactly the truth. Yes, you said that very well. You have five husbands, haven't you? And the man you now have isn't your husband. Yes, in that you said truly, you'll see. How gracious our Lord was. It will say, but it's a question of relationship. Uh, and there was no true relationship between her and the man she was living with. The adulteress is one step further in that direction. She had been untrue to relationship. This next story about Mary and Martha at the death of their brother. If you had been here, my brother hadn't died, say the two sisters. And our Lord replies, thy brother shall rise again. Question of what death does to relationship. And if this story is about Martha and Mary at the death of their brother, this one is the story of the mother of Jesus at the death of her son. It is interesting, therefore, that not only is the question of relationship one more, uh, once more raised, they're explicitly mentioned, and a new relationship announced. He says to Mary, woman, behold your son, and to the disciple, behold your mother. They were not physically related as mother and son. But this day our Lord pointed to a new relationship and announced it between the two that took practical effect. And of course, the message to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, what was it but the announcement of a new relationship? Go tell my brethren, notice the term, go tell my brothers, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. It's very easy to perceive, therefore, that these special stories in John in which women are prominent have in their heart a common theme, that of relationship. And if you look at the first one, what on earth is a wedding except the forming, public formation of a new relationship? Hmm. Oh, how tempted I am at this point. I must resist it and leave you with that just for your notebook, that you might care to come back at it at another time and think through the many implications of those, uh, stories. What a useful set of studies they would make, wouldn't they now, in certain circumstances? But now we must come back to real business, and we come to the third, uh, of our, uh, jur- the third of our Lord's journeys to Jerusalem and Babylon. So let us take our Bibles in hand. Uh, this is chapter seven, and I'd like you to notice how it begins. After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the feast of the Jews, the feast of tabernacles, was at hand. His brothers therefore said to him, depart hence and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may behold the works which thou doest. For no man doeth anything in secret and himself seeketh to be made known, to be known openly. If thou doest these things, manifest thyself to the world, for even his brethren did not believe on him. Jesus therefore said unto them, my time is not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify of it that its works are evil. Go you up unto the feast. I go not up yet unto this feast, because my time is not yet come. And having said these things unto them, he bo- abode still in Galilee. But when his brethren were gone up unto the feast, then went he also up, not publicly, but as it were, in secret. And these are the verses that have led me to entitle this particular talk, God's publicity program. It, uh, uh, is a problem, isn't it? At least when you first meet it. And it's a problem that our Lord's brothers raised with him at his level, as you see from the opening verses of the chapter. It was the Feast of Tabernacles coming up, and the Feast of Tabernacles would r- would draw a massive influx of, uh, uh, pilgrims, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, to take part in the festival at Jerusalem, not only from the whole of Palestine, but from the whole of the Roman world. Jerusalem would be thronged with perhaps hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. And our lords had some advice to him. They found their brother, apparently, a little bit odd and different in his way of thinking. They weren't believers, they didn't, weren't intending to get converted, but they had some advice, at which they were very free and they didn't charge for it, as far as I know, had some advice that they offered to him, and that ran sort of like this. I mean, look here, if you are intent on starting a new religion or something, you know you're, you're not going it about the right, going about it the right way. You want to, to get folks to believe on you. What you want to do is not stay up here in Galilee in this one-eyed show of Nazareth. You want to get down to the big population centers. You want to go up to Jerusalem at the time of the feast, you'll see, and get yourself publicity, you'll see. Go up to Jerusalem and do some of your mir- your, your miracle spectaculars, you'll see. You'll get on TV and the radio and everything else. You have to get known, you have to get publicity if you're going to start a new religion, you'll see. You go out to Jerusalem then and do your miracle things, and uh, people will believe on you. You could staying around here. And our Lord replied, it's all right for you to talk like that, Dulce, but I'm not going up yet to this feast. My time has not yet come. So he stayed where he was, and all the others went up to Jerusalem to the feast, and then halfway through the feast, he went up, but secretly. There's a problem, isn't there? And the problem will formulate itself in our minds as follows. If Jesus is the Son of God, if he was the Son of God, and God had sent him into the world, didn't God want people to know that he was the Son of God? Well, you say, surely he wanted them to know. Well, why didn't he go about it a bit better? I mean, if Jesus is the Son of God, why was he, did he spend only thirty three years here on earth, and thirty of them in almost complete obscurity? Well, God wanted people to know. And then he spent just three and a half years in public, most of that up in the north in places like Nazareth that nobody'd ever heard of, uh, and never would have heard of, uh, since had it not been for him. And, uh, then only occasionally did he even go down to Jerusalem. I mean, if God was serious about the matter, why did he s- why did Christ stay here for such a short time? John himself is going to tell us that when eventually he went to Jerusalem on this occasion, the authorities sent some, uh, police to arrest him, you'll see. And when they came to arrest him, he said virtually to them, I wouldn't bother if I were you, I'm going away anyway. And they scratched their police heads and they said, going away? Where's he going to now? Uh, where I'm going, you can't come, he said. Where are you going? They said, are you going off to, um, on a lecture tour down to Egypt to teach the, the, the Greeks, the Hellenistic Greeks in Egypt or something? Where are you going to now? He was, of course, going off to heaven. But that complicates the problem, doesn't it? I mean, if God really wanted to know that Jesus was the Messiah, why didn't he send him not merely to Jerusalem, but all the capital cities of the then world? Why not a, a year or two in Athens and three or four years in Rome, you will see. God was really serious about the matter. Why did he stay such a little time? Why, if he'd have stayed a few centuries, wouldn't people have been compelled to believe him to find somebody five hundred years old amidst their, in their midst, I mean. If we may be, without your reverence, allowed to extrapolate on that. I mean, if, if we're talking about God, the maker of heaven and earth, and Jesus is his son, and God wants the world to know, I have a suggestion to make. Why doesn't God arrange for lights to come on the sky every day, you see, in all the different languages of the world? Jesus is the son of God. And everybody would believe, wouldn't they? Well, the Russians wouldn't, they'd say it was American space war spectaculars. But you see what I mean, don't you? There's no good saying God couldn't do it. God could do anything. Why doesn't he then? If you are a Christian, one of these days you'll have to get round to answering this question. The question that our Lord's brothers raised, you see. Can you show that the way God has gone about it, publicizing Christ and what he stood for and what he came for, and getting this message at home to people, is the very best way that could be thought of. It has to be by definition, doesn't it? If Jesus is the Son of God. What is the answer to the question then? Pray notice that this is not a thi- difficulty I'm making up. It's John the Evangelist putting it under your very noses and saying, look, they had a problem in those days, and many thinking people still have the problem. If therefore Jesus was sent by God and God wants to make him known, what is the answer to that problem? God's publicity problem. This, uh, there's part of John's gospel there for the third journey to Jerusalem and away comprises four chapters. I'd simply like us to notice at this stage that those chapters are carefully integrated wholes. Look how they start and then how they finish. Chapter seven, Jesus walked in Galilee, it says, because the Jews sought to kill him, and therefore he wasn't frequently down in Jerusalem. Notice John tells you that. The main body of his work is about the visits to Jerusalem, but he's also telling you that he spent most time in Galilee. Um, uh, uh, they sought to kill him, you'll see. That's why he stayed in Galilee. The chapter will end with the Sanhedrin discussing among themselves, you'll see, and they come to the conclusion that Jesus can't be the Christ because out of Galilee arises no prophet. Yes. The reason why he stayed in Galilee, because those same men were seeking to kill him. If they had been willing to hear him first, they would have found out he didn't come from Galilee, he came from Bethlehem. It was their very hostility that caused him to stay in Galilee, and then seemed to them to provide the evidence that he wasn't the Messiah. That happens to many people. Their very hostility doesn't let them get near to Christ. Therefore, they come to a grievous misunderstanding about the facts of Christ, and then they take their misunderstanding to be evidence that he isn't the Christ. The evidence that proves to them he isn't the Christ is of their own manufacture. Look at the next one. He came again into the temple, and in that incident he said to the men who questioned him about the adulteress and her punishment, let him that is without sin first cast a stone at her. The chapter ends as they picked up stones to stone him, and he hid himself and went out of the temple. The third chapter begins with a man blind from birth, and the disciples, inquisitive of ever, asked our Lord the question, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Whose fault is it? And our Lord missed a wonderful opportunity to say that it is the man's fault, because, you see, when Adam sinned, he sinned, and, uh, that was his fault he was born a sinner and born blind. And our Lord didn't take the opportunity. In fact, he said the opposite. He said it wasn't his fault, nor his parents either. So the blindness and the question of who was guilty for it is raised at the very beginning, and at the end, here come the Pharisees, and they have been watching our Lord and listening to the discussion. And presently the penny drops in the Pharisaic mind. They say to Jesus, ah, oh, oh, we see what you're saying, yes, uh-huh. Well, thank you very much. Are we blind too? They picked up that the physical healing of blindness has been a sign of our spiritual blindness and how we need our eyes open, and they resent it. And they say, are we blind as well? Oh, thank you very much, you young man from Galilee. They were saying, we're blind, are you? Oh, very nice of you. And our Lord replied, if you were blind, you would not have sin. That is, you couldn't be held guilty for not seeing. God will never blame anybody for not seeing what they cannot see. If you were blind, you would not have sin. That doesn't mean you'd be sinlessly perfect. It means that you won't be blamed for not seeing. If you can't see, the principle of judgment laid down by our Lord, who is to be the final judge. But now you say you see, you're claiming that you can see everything. Now you take the responsibility upon yourselves. Therefore, your sin in rejecting the Savior remains. At least you see how the beginning and the ending of the chapters are related. And similarly, uh, this, uh, beginning in chapter ten is the parable of the sheepfold, and our Lord says, who enters not by the door is a thief, who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep, to whom the doorkeeper opens. Who on earth was the doorkeeper? If you begin to interpret the parable. You'll find out if you listen to the end of the chapter. When our Lord went away to, uh, the place where John was at the first baptizing, that's in the northeast of Britannia, in the Tetrarchy of Philip, and the people came, and many believed on him there, and they said, John the Baptist did no sign, that everything that John said of this man was true. All the gospel has told you in its opening, uh, chapter how that John the Bo- John the Baptist came as a forerunner to Jesus. The appointed official, by God appointed to open the door to the shepherd and to announce that Jesus was the true shepherd of Israel, the lamb of God, the son of God, the baptizer in the Holy Spirit. John was that doorkeeper, of course. Four chapters, very carefully written, and, uh, they give the answer to the problem that we have raised at the beginning of the talk, and they give the answer from four different points of view. You'll say. Let's have another slide. We will notice, first of all, the beginning of chapter seven? Five times John uses a Greek word, it's anabino, it means to go up. And it is used of the pilgrims going up to Jerusalem, like some people talk of going up to London. Jerusalem was the capital city. And then going up because Jerusalem was on the hills, of course, above the plain. It's used of our Lord going up into the temple because the temple was high even within the city. Going up, therefore. But it's more than just going up geographically. It's the manner of his going up. He went up not publicly, but in secret. And now we have to ask, why this approach to the temple? Why the approach in secret? You'll see. What will that tell us? When you come to the last chapter, the verb anabino occurs again in a very significant context. But chapter ten, and its very first verse reads like this. Verily, verily, I say to you, he that entereth not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up. That word, that English word climb up, or whatever you've got in your translation, is this verb anabino. Goes up some other way. The same as a thief and a robber. And now you perceive something. It's the very approach of that man to the fold, the way he approaches it, that tells you what kind of a chap he is. You're standing there by a fold, and you see, uh, uh, in the darkness of the shadows of the evening, a form wiggling its way around the back of the fold and surreptitiously trying to climb over the fence. The very approach will tell you something about that man, the way he's approaching. If he were a genuine shepherd, he'd come to the doorkeeper. The fact he's climbing up, going up some other way tells you he's false. He's not a true shepherd. The very approach, the manner of approach, will tell you something about the me- uh, the uh, our Lord, whether he's genuine or isn't genuine, in both cases, yes? We can leave it there for the time being. You'll notice there are other connections with these two. Oh, I don't know why the slide is on, why not? Somebody, whoever it was, poor old John hadn't got the wit to do it, apparently, but somebody went and put it there. How nice of them, because you see here, our Lord stooped down with his finger, he wrote on the ground, you see. And here, chapter nine, he spat on the ground and made clay. And what's that all about? We'll have to consider in a moment. So we can cut the slides and, uh, uh, just leave it now for a moment. Four chapters answering this question, and it's about our Lord's approach and his publicity. So now, let our Lord remind us of his basic problem that controlled what he did, how he went about it. He said to his brothers, look here, my time is not yet come, your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but me it hates, because I testify of it that its works are evil. That was the problem. The world's hatred because Christ testified of them that their works were evil. How then would our Lord convince them that he was the Christ, the Son of God? You see, uh, uh, i- if, um, uh, I come to you and say, I think you're a rotter, to be honest. I mean, not to put too fine a point on you, absolute rotter you are, wife beater and pervert and all that. And you say, oh well, I, I, I don't accept your accusation, but don't let's fall over about it. We'll hold, uh, you know, each his own point of view. Let's remain friends. But if I come to you and say, look, I think you're an absolute rotter, and what's more, I'm the son of God. You'll say, no, you're not. Because if I'm the son of God, and that's my view of you, you're in very big trouble. Resist to the last inch my claim to be the son of God, for that very reason. The world doesn't hate you, it hates me. You don't necessarily hate Mars bars people for putting adverts on the TV. But when Christ comes and claims to be your creator incarnate, and begins to talk about sin and hell, then it stirs resentment in the human heart, and people are going to resist his claim as long as they can possibly resist it. For that reason... Man is at heart an enemy of God, says Scripture. And sometimes the most religious people are the fiercest enemies. So how will God go about reaching them? We take the first chapter. Our Lord therefore went up, not publicly, but in secret. Why in secret and not publicly? Why? Because if he'd have gone up publicly with all the other pilgrims, the people in Jerusalem were waiting. They'd heard that this Jesus had been up at a previous feast, you'll see. The authorities then had tried to take him, arrest him, and were keen on having him destroyed. If our Lord had come up with the other pilgrims, uh, all of them would have said, here's this Jesus, here's the one that claims to be the Christ, you see. He didn't want it. So he let them go up. And halfway through, himself went up secretly. So when he slipped into Jerusalem, Jerusalem being full, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, the vast majority of them wouldn't have known him from Adam, who he was. And there would have been all sorts of people milling around, and in the temple as well, rabbis and others, and prophetesses like Anna, and bar mitzvahs, and all sorts of things going on in the great court of the temple, you'll see. And if Jesus then went up and taught, the crowd at large wouldn't know who he was. It was done deliberately. Halfway through the feast, he went up in the temple, and he taught. Taught what? Well, we're not told what he taught. We're told the fact he taught. And what he taught was not, look here, get hold of this, I am the Son of God. No, no. If you want to know what he taught mostly when he went to Jerusalem, you have it in the synoptics, for instance. His moral teaching. And they marveled, saying, well, how does this man know letters, never having learned? The first impression that he made on this occasion. The brilliance of his teaching. You know, it's still a way to approach people, you know, and particularly members of the Islamic faith, not first to press the deity of Christ, but because they deny it, but to concentrate on what our Lord taught and to retell some of his beautiful parables. Mm. A- absolute genius, aren't they? The man who told the parable of the prodigal son, he was a world famous genius. And many of his other teachings. Forget who he was, but concentrate for a moment on his teaching and his quality. That first approach. Uh, I was reading just the other day a book by a man who once was an evangelical. He's now an atheist. He calls himself a moral atheist. But he says in the course of his book, of course, I can't disagree with Jesus' moral teaching. Hey presto, that's marvelous, isn't it? That's how our Lord started anyway. And when the crowd said, uh, how how does man, uh, know this stuff without having learned it? He proceeded to ask them to use their moral judgment, first on his character and then on the quality of his teaching. He says, I don't seek my own glory, you know. The man who seeks his own glory is not true, but the man who seeks the glory of him that sent him is true, and there's no unrighteousness in him. I'm not saying these things to boost myself, I'm saying them to the glory of the one who sent me. In other words, our Lord is asking them to use their moral judgment on him and his character. Was he a self-seeking, self-boosting religious leader wanting to, to boost himself as the leader of a new religion? That doesn't come across in the gospel, so does it. The moral quality of Jesus as a person, the character of his teaching. And then thirdly, he asked them to use their moral judgment on the quality of his miracles. On his earlier occasion, he had been to Jerusalem, and he had healed a man on the Sabbath, and the authorities had said that he broke the law because he encouraged the man to work on the Sabbath, and this was against the law, and because of that they sought to kill Christ. So now Christ raises it. He said, I did one miracle, you know, and everybody's marveling, and you're seeking to kill me. The crowd says, pardon, there's nobody around here seeking to kill you. You see, they didn't know who he was. You've gone a little bit, uh, astray in the head. There's no one around here seeking to kill you. What are you talking about? Well, he said, I did this miracle, you see, and you seek to kill me because, uh, I did it on the Sabbath day. But wait a minute. In the law, Moses commanded that a male child be circumcised on the eighth day. Now, if the eighth day happened to fall on a Sabbath, the Sabbath said you wouldn't work on the eight, mustn't work on the eighth day. Circumcision, according to the Jews, was a bit of work. So now what you to do? One law said you shouldn't work on the Sabbath. The other law said you should. How did you decide it? Well, according to the, uh, uh, Orthodox interpretation, the more important commandment took precedent over the less commandment. Circumcision was more important than Sabbath, and therefore the law of circumcision prevailed, and if a child should be circumcised on the eighth day, and the eighth day was the Sabbath, they went ahead and circumcised him on the Sabbath so that the law of circumcision should not be broken. The bigger law took precedence over the lesser law, and they all would have agreed, yes, that is our law. All right, said Christ. You on the Sir- Sabbath day, you circumcise a man and take away a little bit of the man so that in the Jewish concept, the man is now a complete Israelite, you see. Well, if you do that on the Sabbath, how will you criticize me when I dealt not with a tiny little bit of a man, I dealt with the whole man, and I made the complete man completely whole. What's wrong with that? You want to use your moral judgment and judge righteous judgment. And this is our Lord talking to unbelievers. Pray notice it, ladies and gentlemen. The Lord didn't say unbelievers are so morally dead there's no good talking to them. He's asking unbelievers to use their moral judgment and to assess morally the moral quality of his character, his teaching, his miracles. That is a first and important step. Not necessarily the proclamation, I am the Son of God, I am Christ. That would raise all the wrong reactions. But first to get them considering, I repeat, the mora- morality of his character, the moral quality of his character, the moral quality of his teaching, the moral quality of his miracles. And why is that the first step in? Because now when the crowd begin to realize he's claiming to be the Messiah, they've got a background to use, haven't they? It's a method, of course, that many evangelists have used and still use. This Jesus, morally superb, isn't he? It was this Jesus that claimed to be the Christ. It's the Jesus who, on the one hand, could say, I'm meek and lowly in heart, I'm not pushing myself, I seek not my own glory, I'm meek and lowly in heart. Is that meek and lowly Jesus, who nevertheless claimed to be the Christ and none less than the Son of God? What will we make of him? And the old controversy, is Jesus an imposter claiming to be the Son of God, a deliberate religious charlatan? How does he manage to be the author of such moral teaching? And so facing people first with the moral character, a moral character, his moral teaching, the morality of his miracles, the moral quality of his miracles, and their saving effect is the necessary first step on getting people to think about Jesus. And when they have seen his moral quality, then to point out what he claims. And when they realized that he was claiming to be Messiah, they had all sorts of arguments, and eventually the authorities sent officers to take him. And to their surprise, he said, oh, I shouldn't bother, I'm going away. You say, why so soon? Let's get hold of this right now. He's going away was part of the publicity program. It wasn't that God put on a publicity program that only lasted three years and a half and then came to an end because he went away. His going away is a major part, in one sense the most important part of the publicity program. You say, how do you make that out? Well, listen to our Lord standing in the temple and saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and out of his inward parts shall flow rivers of living water. This he spoke of the Spirit. The Spirit was not yet given till Jesus was glorified. The Spirit would not come until Jesus went away. It was when Jesus had been raised from the dead and glorified to the God's right hand in heaven that the Spirit of God came, and the Spirit of God is that major part of the publicity program. You'll see Jesus is God's last word, he's not God's last bit of evidence. Jesus was God's word and manifested God in his character, in his teaching, in his miracle, in his death, in his resurrection and ascension. And now the validating power is the coming of the Holy Spirit, of course. That was always going to be the program. And for me to stand here at the beginning and say, was he, why was he here such a short time, is a little bit silly. Because it always was the program. The convicting power is going to be the coming of the Holy Spirit. Not just the coming of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit given to those that believe Jesus. And then see evidence is available. If I'm prepared to believe Jesus, I will find this next bit of evidence true. The gift of the thirst-quenching Holy Spirit in my heart. Yeah? So the first chapter seven is, I repeat, use your moral judgment on Christ. Chapter eight is the opposite side of the question. I am the light of the world, says our Lord. And this time he asks the people to use their moral judgment on themselves. I am the light of the world, says he. How would you know Jesus is light? Well, you know light is a light because when the light comes on, you see things you didn't see before. That's how you know light is light. In chapter eight, our Lord claims to be the light and demonstrates himself to be the light because as people stand in his presence and he begins to shine his light on them, and they begin to see themselves in his light, and they begin to discover the sinners they actually are. They don't like it, of course, and in the end they stone him. But light on the question of sin, and in the first story of chapter eight, he shows himself to be greater than Moses. The people come to our Lord and they say, look at this woman who's taken in adultery. Ah, you'll see. Moses in the law commanded that such should be stoned. What do you say? And our Lord stooped down and wrote with his finger in the ground, and then he lifted himself up and said, he that is without sin cast the first stone at her. And they thought for a moment, and then they turned tail and went out, stupid men. We're going out, they were admitting they were sinners, weren't they? Why didn't they pick up stones and brazen him out? Something told them in their heart of hearts if they dared to pick up a stone and start stoning, he would have exposed them. Well, here was light, and shining on those men, he exposed them to themselves, and they went out. He was a light, however, greater than Moses, because when the woman was stood by him alone, self-confessed sinner, deserving in Israel the death penalty. He said, did no man condemn you, dear? And she said, no. He said, neither do I condemn you. Go in peace. A light greater than Moses. He not only exposes more than Moses did, he has a word of forgiveness more than Moses could ever pronounce. He wrote with his finger, not once but twice upon the ground. There is another occasion in the Old Testament where God is said to have written with his finger. The first occasion was when he wrote the tables of the law with the finger of God. There was your law of Moses written with the finger of God, how it condemned people. But Israel broke the law, and God threatened them with extinction, and Moses interceded for them, and eventually God pardoned them and told Moses to bring up a second supply of tablets, and the ring was written the second time in the mercy of God. The law given the first time in Israel, rebelling against its very first injunction and setting up a golden calf in the place of God. And God brings down and would bring down upon them the penalty of the law that they should be destroyed. And then God had mercy. And he forgave them. And the second set of tablets were written with the finger of God the second time. Here was the lawgiver incarnate. Exposing men in the way the law of Moses could never do, and yet simultaneously announcing a freedom from condemnation and from sin's penalty in the way that Moses couldn't. In that chapter, then, he is asking men to use their moral judgment on themselves in the light of his presence and teaching. Discusses with them freedom from the guilt of sin, freedom from the power of sin, freedom ultimately from the consequence of sin, which is death. And it is like this. As the crowd began to be more and more angry, he said to them, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know that the Father is with me. He was referring to his cross. And now, once more, we meet the strategies of God. How will God make himself known? God's major prob- basic problem, that men are sinful. And when they're told they're sinful, they resent it. And if Jesus is going to claim to be the Son of God, and Jesus exposes them to be sinful, they will resent Jesus. They will resent God himself because of the guilt of their own hearts. They're defending themselves. How will God get through to them? And our Lord now in chapter eight gives the answer, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know. He was referring to Calvary. God faced with the problem of human sin and guilt, and therefore the hostility of the human heart. How will he get through to them? There is one place on earth where he can do it, with hope of success. And that is when men in their enmity against God have lifted up God's son and nailed him to a tree. There in the dark of Calvary, they begin to stand back and contemplate their work. And God is able to show them that he whom they have put on the tree is God incarnate. This is God. It is still true that there is one place on earth when sinners can meet God and be unafraid. It is at Calvary that proclaims their guilt. And when they have done their worst and crucified God's son, God loves them still. This is God. How shall I know he's God? How shall I know he's my creator? The answer is very simple. This is your creator. While you are his enemy, even suppose you've crucified him, he loves you still. And rather than you perish, he would die for you. While you are still a sinner, while you are ungodly, while you are weak, and God commends his love to you in that Christ died for you. That's why he went away, and went away so quickly. It was not that his publicity had failed. The cross is God's publicity. It is the way that God gets behind the hos- hostility of the human heart and gets through to the human personality and makes himself known as the creator who loves his creatures and would die himself rather than they perish. So that's chapter seven and eight, the tactics. Chapter seven, men are called upon to use their moral judgment on Christ. The ultimate answer to their quest is the gift of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ. Personal union with God. Chapter eight, it is God's technique. God asking men to use their moral judgment on themselves in the light of Christ and his teaching and his exposure of their sin. Ah, but preeminently in this, God inviting men to the cross of Christ, that there they might discover their God, the God who loved them while they're yet sinners and can release them from their fear and their guilt. But chapter nine is going to take the matter further. For now our Lord says, I am the light of the world, and he says it for the second time. He said it in chapter eight, he now says it in chapter nine. Why does he repeat it? Well, for this simple reason. If you're going to see anything, three things are necessary, are they not? Suppose you want to see this pencil that I hold in my hand. Three things are necessary, aren't they? First, the pencil has got to be there. If it ain't there, you'll never see it. Suppose the pencil is there, then two more things are necessary. You'll have to have light to see it with, won't you? Because if we're in a dark, pitch black room and I hold up the pencil, you won't see it. You'll need light to see it with. I am the light of the world, says Christ, in which you see things. But suppose you have light, you still won't see it if you haven't got eyes to see it with. Yeah? You'll need sight. So it is in our spiritual quest. We need the light of Christ to shine upon us. But then we shall need light in another sense. We shall need to be given eyes to see things with, spiritual sight. So now, question chapter nine tells us how Christ gave this man sight. He's giving the man physical sight, a sign of his ability to give people spiritual sight. And here I ask you to notice what it is that the man saw when he got his sight. What he came to see was that Jesus is the Son of Man, is the Son of God. That's spiritual sight. But here, if you're going to see that Jesus is the Son of God, let me point out that that's not just a moral question. This is a something you never will see unless God reveals it to you. When Peter, being challenged, confessed that Jesus is the Son of God, our Lord replied, flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you, but my Father which is in heaven. If people are coming, going to see that Jesus is the Son of God, they will need direct illumination from God. That's why we discussed at mor- this morning the means that Christ used for it. Does that mean because I need a revelation from God, there's nothing I can do about it? I just have to sit there till God is pleased to, to reveal? No, there's all sorts of things I can do to prepare myself for it. But it remains true that when I've read all the evidence available to me and done all I could do, then it will still need Christ to give me sight I never did have before. That raises all sorts of questions. Are people, if they're born blind, are they to be blamed for it? No. Our Lord said no. People will never be blamed for not seeing what they couldn't see. If you were blind, you would not have sin. But when people are confronted with the offer of sight, and Christ offers to give them sight, and then they say, we don't need that, we can see already, and we can see enough to see that Jesus, you are a liar and an imposter, you're not true. But when they take that attitude, now we say we see, and the responsibility for their rejection of Christ remains. And finally, there is chapter ten. And here our Lord uses the analogy of sheep and a shepherd. Sheep are interesting animals. They have a faculty for getting to know shepherds. You notice that, haven't you? But they are very discriminating beasts, our sheep. They just don't follow just anybody. And so our Lord now discusses his own approach to the sheepfold. And that's a long subject, and I haven't now the time to develop it. He points to the fact that he came the right way. He came to the fold of Israel, presented himself to the doorkeeper, John the Baptist, and was officially introduced to the nation by God's appointed forerunner, and he opened the door, and Christ stood in the door and called to his sheep, and the sheep recognized him, and they came out. He went before them, and they followed. He was no thief. He wasn't the religion r- r- leader of some fanatical religious group acting like a tyrant and driving people. No, Jesus is a shepherd. He doesn't tyrannize people. He goes in front of them. They follow, if they follow at all, voluntarily. He's a true shepherd. A true shepherd who sets up a relationship with his sheep and doesn't ask them to die for him, but he dies for them, and so forth and so on. Sheep have a faculty then of getting to know a shepherd. But finally, the Pharisees come round and they say to him, look here, if you are the Messiah, why don't you tell us plainly and we shall believe? And our Lord replies, but I told you already and you didn't believe because you are not of my sheep. That's why you don't believe. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they know me, and they follow me, and I give my sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish, and none shall pluck them out of my hand. My Father that gave them me is greater than all, and none shall pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. At that point, they picked up stones to stone him. They weren't his sheep, you see. They thought he was speaking blasphemy. And now I ask you to notice a wonderful thing. When he said, you don't believe because you're not my sheep, he didn't mean you can never become my sheep because you haven't been elected as my sheep, and therefore you never will become my sheep. No, they weren't his sheep yet, so they had no trust in him. But though they weren't his sheep yet, they could become his sheep. So he talked to these very people that were picking up stones to stone him. Oh, wait a minute, put those stones down. For which of my good works are you going to stone me? They said, no, we're not stoning you for your good works. Oh, good. So they recognized the works were good then, that's something. Why are you stoning me? Well, they said, because you, being a man, make yourself God. Oh, he said, you've got a theological difficulty, have you? Oh, I see. Well, uh, put down those stones a minute. I- I- I had explained that one too, uh, you see. Does that sound blasphemous to you? I said I'm the Son of God. Oh, I see. Well, now in your own law, in the Psalms, it is written, you see, uh, of certain gentlemen there to whom the word of God came. God says, I, I, I said you are gods. That stands in your law, it stands in Holy Scripture. There was a real sense in which God could address those men as, in some sense, gods. Now, if he called them gods to whom the word of God came, it can't be, can it, absolute blasphemy if the one whom God has sent into the world and sanctified says, I'm the Son of God. Gentlemen, your difficult, your theological difficulty isn't quite the big difficulty you thought it was, is it? It's worth thinking about for a minute. I'm not necessarily talking blasphemy, you know. But you're not my sheep. Not yet. And he didn't say, well, no, what's the, what, Peter, let's go. It's no good talking to these people. They're not my sheep, you know, they're not elect, so, ah, it's no good talking to them. Let's leave them. No, he didn't. He said, with that difficulty out of the way, gentlemen, I tell you what, um, if you can't believe me, you can't, can you? You find it very difficult to, to come at this thing that I claim to be the Son of God. You can't believe that. I tell you what, if you can't believe me, start somewhere and start with my works. You just acknowledged that my works were good works, didn't you? Righto, start there. Believe my works. That believing my works and thinking about them, you might gradually come to recognize that I am the Son of God and come to know that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. All that is magnificent grace, isn't it? I go up the mountain sometimes in the island, uh, where I live, to see, for relaxation. I come across herds of sheep. Interesting creatures, aren't they? And when they see me coming, they stand at a respectful distance and look at me. If I attempt to go forward, no, no, they run back. They're not sure about me at all, you see. Don't know why, they're not my sheep anyway. Hm. I can get them to believe me. I pluck a bit of grass, you see, I fling it out there, and I step back. And the sheep looks at that, looks at me, looks at that, and then all of a sudden makes a down for that and runs baggy and gobbles that bit of grass. Ah, nice grass that. Mm, ah, good. So I get another bit of grass and I throw it, but not quite so far, a bit nearer me this time. The sheep look at that and they look at me. I think they grab it and go back, you see. Oh, beautiful grass. Can't be such a bad chap after all. And then I throw it right near, and presently the sheep comes. If you carry on like that, it'll come and eat out of your hand. All the magnificent grace of God Almighty. God had a problem that men had sinned, and it created the hostility in their hearts. How could God get near them? How could God get through to them? Not by putting lights on the sky that would have scared them stiff. How could he get through to them? He came right near to them, timid little sheep that they were, and spread before them his good works and his gracious teaching and the loveliness of the character of Christ. And then he drew back and went to the tree and died for his creatures, that they might contemplate his good works and him himself hanging upon a tree and lose their fear and come near, and near enough to see that he who hung upon Calvary's tree is in fact their very God creator, trying to get near their hearts and behind their sinning and win their confidence so that they might put their faith in him and get to know him and become his sheep. That's God's publicity campaign. When at last they crucified him on the tree and he rose again and went to God's right hand, God sent his spirit, not in flames of glory that might have scared people stiff, but that still small voice talking to the human heart, convicting of sin, and pointing them to the Savior. This is God. He'd do anything rather than you perish. Why can't you come? Start by trusting his works. They will lead you to him, and you will become one of his sheep. Now that's an outrageously rough survey of those seven chap- those four chapters in John's gospel. They are some of the most difficult and closely argued in all the gospel of John. I s- hope I have said enough to show you that they are related in their theme. I hope I've said enough to show you that, uh, they stand together and to have given you guidelines as perhaps how to go about perceiving what the four essential parts of God's publicity campaign have been. Let's break there and have our afternoon tea.