Turn to John chapter 5. You don't have a Bible today, that's fine. You can find today a text on the back of your order of worship From John 5 verse 24. I say to you, you hear the word of God truly truly. I say to you He who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life Through men. I'm coming to the dead God and those who fight in himself. So he gave to the Son also to have life in himself And he gave him authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man Do not marvel at this for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come forth Those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life and those who did committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment Let's pray Jesus I pray now that you would come by your spirit and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf so that they may see and hear You're gospel, but also I pray for those of us who sleep in our faith that you would wake us up. I pray for me Myself that you would be in my head and in my thinking and in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking Your name we pray. Amen. Amen. A few years ago now Jim Dancler one of your elders and I went to an afternoon Matt May which was not uncommon. We both liked movies and depending on the movie though. I'm a horrible date And I remember this particular movie I was having a particularly hard time of maintaining attention In fact the whole movie I was gone. Should we get up should we go? What are you doing and Jim was gone? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know and the movie was six the sixth sense The whole time we're I'm wondering like this is the like most horrible movie what first was got to do with his kid I don't understand anything He didn't even change his clothes By the end of the movie If you've seen the movie this is the ending is like fam and I thought Man, I should pay attention. I wish I don't watch the other and so I said I have to see this movie again And then of course I watched it with my wife Judy and the whole time she's paying attention and she's going I don't understand I don't understand and before I had to spill the beans. I couldn't help She said that you're so antsy over there. Just tell me what's gonna happen? And having seen it twice as with every great story every great story in some way shape or form always makes its way back to the gospel If it's a great story and if it's a true story I guarantee you that some way shape or form it finds it's it's Genesis in the gospel You see we're looking at John chapter 5 and in this chapter Jesus if you remember that he's in a fight now We sort of or we parachute it into the middle of a fight with Jesus and the religious leaders in the fight starter because Jesus healed a man Who's very ungrateful? Where he walked up to a guy earlier in the chapter and he says do you wish to be healed? And the guy said, yeah, you know, I don't have anyone to take me down to the water. They angels come. I gen out In Jesus healed him anyway and the religious leaders say who healed you and he rats Jesus out of it with Jesus who healed me It's that he can do attack Jesus about doing things on the Sabbath and Jesus basically says well, you know I can do things on the Sabbath because I'm God You know trapdoor and This week Jesus takes a step further You say I can do things on the Sabbath because I'm God, but also I can judge on the Sabbath I can judge anytime because I'm God You see to this week text Jesus talks about judgment But you can't understand judgment unless you understand death and the reason what this has to do with the sixth sense is because what Jesus is basically saying here to these people If you remember in the movie Bruce Willis comes and he's gonna he's going to is Malcolm the psychologist He's gonna help the little boy Cole and the Holy Joel Osmond and he goes and he's trying to help him And he says what's your problem and Cole says I see dead people Really He says that they can't see each other they don't know they're dead He said they can't see each other and they only see what they want to see and Bruce Willis asks him a few more questions Remember he says you're nice, but you can't help me. Why can't he help him? You know the ending. You know why he can't help him Because you're dead you can't help dead people Sorry if you haven't seen it. That's what Jesus is saying here He looks out on this crowd the religious leaders who think they have it together and he basically says I see dead people You're all dead in your trespasses and sins and you can't even see each other and you certainly can't see me Because dead people can't see anything and instead of saying you're nice, but you can't help you He's just saying I understand death first because death Biblically speaking is always couched in terms of separation So when Jesus says you are spiritually dead. He doesn't mean you're you're you're you don't have a pulse What do you think is that you're separated from something and you're spiritually dead because you and I by nature and by choice are Separated from God and so when Jesus says you are dead and when the Apostle Paul says we were dead in our trespassion Transgressions and sins what he's saying is we were separated from God with no way to get back Death is couched in terms of separation That's the only way you can understand judgment because judgment in Christianity as with any other religion that I know of Judgment is nothing more than a rubber stamp on on the choices you've made during your life Judgment is just a validation of your choices And so if your whole life you've chosen to be dead and you've chosen not to trust you If you're chosen chosen not to follow God then that will just be validated at the last judgment It's a little he'll just put a validation stamp on the choice you've made your whole life the choice to be dead That problem with the way I put that because you really you and I don't have a choice as to whether or not we're dead That does just means that God's gonna validate the choice we made and the only choice we have is to be dead because we are what we are That means every one of us have no choice but to stand before Jesus someday and be have the choice that we were born into validated Dead separated from God Adios That's a problem Now the only way you could solve that problem is if somehow you could be made alive You see because you can't choose anything unless you're alive and if you're dead You don't have a choice anyway, so you're just sitting there you and I You know as the girls would call Sophie just sort of three-dimensional rugs, right? We have no choice. We can't move We need something else. We need someone or something that could actually make us alive You know see the only way you can face judgment is if you've in fact been made alive first and so that's all we're gonna look at today It's two things not just Jesus as judge That's the second point, but Jesus is the one who actually gives us life. So think about that look at verse 24 and 25 Verse 24 says truly truly I say to you he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life And does not come into judgment, but it's passed out of death into life I'll stop there Now verse 24 is is one of these great beautiful Promises of God right whoever he's my word whoever believes me has his does not die You have eternal life. That's the life of the age to come Jesus says right now I sort of raise you up spiritually right this second you have the life of the age to come and not only that but you will never be condemned Now that is great and glorious, but if he had stopped there it would be nothing but a cruel joke You see if you and I are dead and we have no ability to choose we have no ability to move we have no ability to even hear and He said whoever hears and believes will have eternal life and not be condemned and you and I would be sitting there at this cruel Joke so you're saying if I hear and believe then I'm gonna be okay But I've no ability to if he stopped that that verse would be nothing but a cruel Sort of carried on the end of a stick that you had never obtained That's how most of us go through life by the way Looking at Jesus as this thing we can never attain But the beauty of the gospel see it doesn't stop there You see because if you were in despair and say well, okay, these things are off, but I'm dead I have no choice. How am I supposed to choose Jesus dead people can't hear Verse 25, you know what Jesus says? Truly truly I sang to you The dead will hear The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and Whoever hears will live now. That's beautiful The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God now There's actually a paradox here because of one hand you can't hear unless you're alive and Jesus says you can't live unless you hear So which comes first the chicken or the egg Neither they just happen because Jesus is now Jesus just did and you see that because Jesus is the only one who has Life in and of himself You can only give life to something else if you have it to give and Jesus says this He qualifies that statement by saying just as the father has life in himself So the son also has life in himself in other words if you remember at the original creation God created Adam And most of us just go off over the fact that God created Adam and for a time Adam was inanimate He was just sort of this lump of flesh She was like yellow dog just a three-dimensional rug laying there He couldn't do anything until God came and it says breathe the breath of life into him That Adam he wasn't dead He was just there until God came and breathed into him and when he breathed into him then Adam will lie Then he could worship then he could work then he could obey and the same is for you and I Jesus says that you and I are dead and our trespasses and sins but here's the glory of the gospel The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and will live and if you hear the voice of the Son of God What that means is that he has unto breathe life you can almost use this line every single week though I'm from the matrix where where Morpheus Call and Neo walks in and he says I've been looking for you my whole life and Morpheus says the only reason you were looking for me is because I was looking for you first So the question is are you do you hear the voice of the Son of God because if you do that means he has made you alive And is making you alive and if you have heard his voice will you respond? Or do you treat Jesus like I treat my alarm clock? You know one of my greatest sins I've got many of them My greatest sins is frustrating my wife Because I I'm sure I have the world record for the number of times someone can hit snooze on any given morning This morning the clock was set for five. I rolled out a better about 6.30 Now the irony to that is Judy has figured out how she can enable me to exercise at the same time to say to my snooze because the clock is at the other side of the room So for hours on end I can get up hit the snooze walk back get up. I'm like dead man walking and you know what's interesting is during that time that's the sleep feels so good I mean that extra nine minutes That's the difference between life and death. That's the difference between heaven and hell that extra nine minutes And you know what though at the end of the day when I finally do wake up I was pay for it I don't accomplish the things I needed to accomplish or something goes wrong every single time At the foot side to that it's not only do I hit the the the snooze myself over and over and thereby shoot myself in the foot Is I've got a very well intentioned for your old The last week Judy and I had a minor disagreement because she came home at 7.15. I wanted to wake up at about 5 and 30 in the morning Judy came in at 7.15 and I was asleep and she said why didn't you get up? Of course I woke up in my most wonderfully accommodating way That's it. Why did you turn on the alarm before you left the area and you did it again? It's your fault. I'm gonna be late and Judy said I put I turned up the alarm before I left I don't know what happened and then as soon as we said that Mercy came walking in I love my daddy and Both of us just looked at us at Mercy. Did you come in here turn off the alarm clock? Yeah, why? Don't want you to sleep, but how do you discipline that? You can't my point is however, although Mercy was well intentioned She didn't do many favors by turn off the alarm clock In one hand we shoot ourselves in the foot by just So you're sort of wasting your time through the game with the other problem is that you and I every one of us No people who don't need Jesus and who are sort of around the edges and instead of actually Communicating to them the urgency of Jesus that Jesus is wake up now we hit the snooze for them Say there's always time think about it. There is time you if you're not a Christian You need time to think through things and consider the cost and now is When the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God in other words what Jesus is saying in this passage Is he saying wake up now or wake up too late? You wake up now or you wake up late and you wake up late. It's too late every time And the reason it's too late every time is because while Jesus comes as the Son of God to sort of Communicate and make a life he comes as the Son of man to bring judgment Notice he says he is it was given to him to perform judgment because he is the Son of man It didn't say that the Son of man will come it says that he is the Son of man Now this is a huge thing goes would have thought immediately of Daniel 7 and in Daniel 7 You have the throne of God seen and all of the nations coming for judgment and God turns over judgment to this one Who is like the Son of man and Jesus said the one who stands in front of you He is the Son of man and you see that would have been the dissonance for the Jewish leaders and the dissonance for us because the Jews Certainly believed in judgment They believed that there was any a judgment day and that God would judge the sheep and the goats and the goats and the goat from the evil all that they believed that And many of the Jews believed in a resurrection from the dead a physical bodily resurrection from the dead But what they couldn't get past was the fact that the one who claimed he was going to be the facilitator of this judgment Was out of work Carpenter named Jesus Whose followers were simple rotten fishermen tax collectors all these guys So you're telling me you Jesus you're going to be the one who not only raises people from the dead and You know you wish you could say well wait till chapter 11 to watch the Lazarus but You're also going to be the one who sits in judgment at the end of the age But the question is whether or not you believe that Jesus says that's true And if he is you have to believe that you someday will stand before Jesus to face judgment That's just the fact if what Jesus says is true And so we say Jesus as the life giver is the son of God, but as the son of man We see him as so look at the last Do not marvels Then he will know those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life and those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment There's a couple things you need to notice here It's Jesus says at the end at the very end at the last hour For one thing all will hear the voice of the son of God At some point Jesus voice will be so loud that there will not be any human living or dead who is able to escape it And at that time it will be revealed that there are only two kinds of people period There will either be those who have committed the good deeds and those who have done the evil deeds now He's certainly not teaching salvation by works here. He's basically saying a tree There's certain fruit and if you are redeemed by Jesus you will have been good and if you don't you will have been evil generally speaking So you say there's two kinds of people the reason there's two kinds of people is this is because and if this is a cliche is that God doesn't grade on a curve He just doesn't It's a thing to see when when the trade center was bombed you have all the sudden the most liberal people in the world crying out for judgment And there's then then the people who have just committed this crime are somehow worse than they are are they really? And if you work your way back sort of from Hitler and you sort of start taking your way down at what point does the curve stop? Is it with your sharp language to your spouse is it with your evil thoughts is it with your lust at what point is the So it's my luck what would happen if God was arbitrary? It would take a 90 to get into heaven and I get an 89 How did she stand right there going but I just was one point short You know the gospel says is that every one of us is short as fallen short of God's glory period God doesn't grade on a curve That's the bad news of the gospel Let me tell you the horrible bad news of the gospel the bad news of the gospel is this that every human being someday will stand before Jesus
Every human being will stand before Jesus and have to give account for every thought word Deed in action that they have done and all of their their righteousness or lack thereof for every single second of their life You'll stand before Jesus Depending on your answer Resurrection of to life resurrection to death. That's the horrible news because in and of ourselves every one of us would stand before him And we would go ahead and now here's the beautiful good news of the gospel the horrible news Who would be your judge the very one who has the right to say I expect a hundred percent perfection? If the one who bore all of your sin and guilt He's the one the very one who bore your sin is the one who stands as judge so the one who stands as judge simply says look to me Trust me. That is the good the one who stands as your judge has already gone through your hell for you The question is whether or not you will hear his voice and respond It's like this this week. I was if you remember at the organization. I was give a print of Rembrandt Painting of the parable of the prodigal son and there are actually two versions of that in Rembrandt's life The one you gave me if you haven't seen it is when Rembrandt was an old man And if you remember the painting shows a very broken prodigal hugging the father and the father hugging the prodigal Well in his early life his version of the prodigal son was a picture of a self-portrait of himself as the prodigal son hoisting a glass with a cap with a feather in it and his hand on a prostitute's Bottom the prodigal lives it up and I thought you know, I'm gonna show sellers this I just thought I want to show that today We've been talking about it and so I started flipping through my Rembrandt portrait books and Was punched in the face by something even bigger than both of those You say I opened up to a portrait and I saw the portrait and I was almost physically sucked into it and started to weep You see it was a picture And it was a portrait of the one in cotton adultery wherein Jesus was standing in front of her And she was on her knees with her head down and all of the men were standing around her pointing fingers And that's the moment he captured And as I saw this picture I started to cry and I literally wanted to scream out to her look up Look up. He is going to forgive you. I know the story I've read it a hundred times You're gonna look up and he's gonna forgive you and say go and send no more It's gonna be beautiful and it's gonna be known forever and you don't even know it. She's trapped there She's trapped wondering if Jesus is gonna condemn her like everyone else has condemned her That's where most of us are Whether you're a Christian or not a Christian most of you are Standing sitting with a knee before Jesus with your head down afraid to look up because if you look up He might be pointing his finger at you just like many people around you might be pointing their fingers at you Or to be pointing your fingers at yourself and what the gospel says is this look up Would you just look up and because if you look up at his face you will not see a judge You will not see harshness you will not see sternness you will not see anger you look up at his face And you see joy and glory and mercy and acceptance and one who says what took you so long look up You see we when you when you preach judgements in the church too often We preach the reason you need to trust Jesus is to escape hell And the reason you need to trust Jesus is because when you look up in his face You see the only one whoever will care for you the way you need to be cared for in the way you want to be cared for The lover of your soul you do you trust Jesus not to escape judgment, but in fact because he is beautiful You know this week I was talking to a friend of mine about this picture and I told you you need to look up I said you know Jesus is the only one who's ever going to love you like this Jesus is the only one who's ever going to encourage you She said you're very encouraged to see what you get from Jesus Don't look to me look to him You see your job if your Christian is to look up at Jesus That's it your job if you're trying to encourage someone is to point them to Jesus if you just point at them it means nothing And you know at the end of the age the only thing that will separate you from sort of being this resurrection under Confirmation or this resurrection of the life is whether or not you looked up And so I beg you this morning if you don't know Jesus, please look up please If you do know Jesus, please look up It's the same for both of you think about that. Let me pray Father, we thank you that you have seen fit To judge us in the person of Jesus that now when we come before him we see nothing but grace Certainly he disciplines those whom he loves but even his discipline and Suffering that we endure takes us only to his cross and so I pray that you would hammer all of us to the cross I pray that we would see in his face glory and joy And I pray seeing his glory enjoy it would become our glory and we thank you so much Jesus So I pray that you would do that in our congregation and your name I pray all these things amen