Equal with God

I want to invite you to turn with me if you will to the gospel of John and chapter 5 Believe that's page 890 in your pew Bibles. It's John chapter 5 and we saw the first 18 verses of John 5 last week We saw a rather miraculous story where Jesus steps into this place where there's all of these Invalids and these disabled people and he spots out one guy there who has been unable to walk for 38 years and Simply by his grace nothing that the guy did nothing that he at the guy asked Jesus to do Jesus simply by his grace and by the word of his power heals this guy and says get up take your bed and walk And he does it he does it simply by the word of his power now this happens on the Sabbath that he does this and so That bothered a lot of people the bothered a lot of the Pharisees who had invented a whole host of Sabbath rules that were meant to be kept that had no grounds whatsoever in the scripture And so we see a couple of ways in which Jesus was avoided in that passage One was by the guy who Jesus healed who showed no evidence of saving faith in Jesus Christ And so he takes for granted the grace of of God and on the other hand We see a bunch of Pharisees who are trying to earn favor with God on the basis of Extrabiblical grounds of morality that have no basis in scripture whatsoever and Jesus confronts these people and at this stage and in John's Gospel We start to see Jesus moving out of a period of where he's able to conduct ministry without a whole lot of Opposition to a period now where he is undergoing the kind of opposition that's eventually going to leave him to the cross So that's where we're at in chapter 5 and it says in your bulletin that we are going to be exploring verses 18 through 29 this morning, but I want to back up just a hair and begin in verse 15 just to give you a little bit of context as to where we're at John 5 beginning in verse 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him and This is why the Jews were persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath But Jesus answered them my father is working until now and I am working This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath But he was even calling God his own father making himself equal with God So Jesus said to them Truly truly I say to you the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing For whatever the Father does that the Son does likewise for the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing And greater works than these he will show him so that you may marvel For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life So also the Son gives life to whom he will The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son So that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him Truly truly I say to you Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life Truly truly I say to you an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live For as the Father has life in himself So he is granted the Son also to have life in himself And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of man Do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice And come out and those who have done good to the resurrection of life And those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment Amen, this is God's word to us this morning I am by nature a conflict a voyager I don't know if you're a conflict a voyager or not. I'm a conflict a voyager It's not something that I get excited about some people enjoy Picking a fight the enjoy the conflict and Butting heads with someone. I just don't happen to be that kind of person I'm kind of hardwired by nature to want to avoid conflict at all costs and I have had to Retrain myself and be corrected and rebuked and trained and encouraged by my wife Not the least of which to confront issues that are not only unjust but are just simply Wrong in every manifestation Because when a conflict comes into play and there is an issue that is unjust and issue that is just flat out wrong To avoid the conflict Creates more damage. It creates more harm and it creates more relational distance than would have been there if the conflict would have actually been confronted head on And I actually think By looking at all of scripture in the life of Jesus Christ That you can say without question that Jesus himself was not a conflict a voyager You know when when the truth of the gospel and the truth of who Jesus Christ actually was And what he had come to do was called into question as it was in this particular passage Jesus doesn't give some kind of Pat Safe answer to these people He says You're suggesting that I am in essence equal with God the Father But you actually don't even know the half of it and so he goes on This stage where we're in a dialogue into a monologue with these people as to Who he is and what he has come to do and that he and the Father cannot be separated You don't believe in Jesus Christ. You don't believe in the Father That's what Jesus is saying in this particular passage And then you also have the issue of healing on the Sabbath that the Jews were getting Rather upset about He could have avoided conflict by just waiting until the next day to heal the guy He didn't Unable to walk for 38 years. What would one more day do And that wouldn't have been a problem. I think that Jesus comes in and intentionally heals this guy on the Sabbath He brings about the whole issue of who Jesus is And what he's come to do and so there's this transition out of Jesus being in the first four chapters what appears to be somewhat safe To being someone who's not necessarily safe at all And that's what John's trying to get us to see that Jesus is not safe There's a sense in which he's safe If you rest on him alone to forgive your sins and to give you his righteousness and to reconcile you to God And there's no there's no safer place to be than Right there with Jesus Christ So he's safe in that sense, but he's completely unsafe in every other manifestation Because if you identify it yourself with Jesus Christ And you claim that he is the exclusive way and truth and life and that no one comes to the Father But through him And you build your identity upon that truth and you entrust yourself to all of his word And you believe that his commands are good and right and beautiful and true Then you would need to be prepared as a Christian as a follower of Christ to experience something that resembles the pushback that Jesus received from these Pharisees here It's part and parcel of the Christian life Because as a culture We're no longer in a period of assumed culturally accepted Christianity Not even here in the South That's not where we're at anymore At best we're in a period of indifference Gospel for even many self-proclaimed Christians just doesn't even really move them anymore It's not the ground of their lie At best we're in a period of indifference, at worst we're in a period of outright hostility to the gospel And if you're going to stand upon who Jesus Christ really is and not some self-manufactured idea of who he is Then we as a church and you as an individual need to be prepared to experience some measure of pushback And why is that the case? It's the case because Jesus's followers have always experienced that pushback It's never been cool anywhere to believe in the gospel anywhere And so we experience that pushback And the reason why his followers experienced that pushback is because Jesus himself experienced it to such a great degree that he actually went to the cross over it And so that's a sense of what the Christian life looks like Aren't you glad he came this morning? There are a couple reasons why people were ticked off at Jesus He broke their notions of what Sabbath observance was supposed to look like And the second thing is that he claimed to be equal with God Let me tackle this issue of the Sabbath for a minute The Sabbath was something that God created for us, right Something that he that he gave to us. He says that The Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath So what he's saying is that it was created For our delight and for our joy and for our refreshment and for our satisfaction It's a picture of what God himself did on the seventh day when he Finished creating the heavens and the earth and everything in it And he sat back and he just beheld his creation And he took great delight in it because what it did is it testified to his beauty Into his glory and to his power and to his grace And everything that is good and right and true about himself And he took great delight in that and so as his creatures We've been created to enjoy a day out of the week To where we could have an intentional focused refreshing delight in God It's actually one of the commandments the fourth commandment says remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy I mean that should be all of our favorite commandment Because God's commanding you to rest I get real legalistic about my Sunday afternoon nap

It's commanding you to do it. He's commanding us to rest and to take delight In him to to set apart the the common things the good things that we have to do in the in the rest of our life that our Worshipful and to set those aside and delight in him But that there was an ideal situation that these the Adam and Eve are our original parents enjoyed in the garden They enjoyed something that kind of looked like the Sabbath But after the ideal there was the ordeal right The fall comes into place Adam and Eve sin they were bell against God They're kicked out of the garden and the ground produces thorns and fistles and child Birth and child rearing as painful and life becomes hard And so what we've been doing ever since has been trying to get back to something that looks like what the Sabbath rest was intended to be So that's why people pursue casual sex And that's why people build their whole life upon assuming is much pleasure and as much leisure and Chasing after our fantasies as much as we possibly can we chase after comfort with unhinged zeal And why is that the case because we believe that by pursuing those things we'll get something that resembles the Sabbath rest that we were created to to have it every single person knows that they need That that we need this the reason why we're greedy is because we think that if we can just hold on to what we have and we if we can Just get a little bit more than we'll be able to one day accomplish all of that joy and satisfaction in this life that we so deserve But these Pharisees We're trying to enjoy Sabbath rest and kind of a different way they were trying to do it by virtue of their morality by Adding to the scriptures the the number of rules that they could follow on the Sabbath So that they could somehow Stand before God on the basis of how well they've kept those rules and and they had turned the Sabbath into something that they could control Have you ever met people like this? Maybe you are one of these people who Controls their whole life by a whole litany of various and sundry rules You just make up a bazillion rules just to order your private world So that what the Pharisees Seeming to do here and they turned the Sabbath something that was meant to be this beautiful delight this this day of rest and gladness It's that something that points to the eternal rest and gladness that will one day enjoy And they turn it into this monstrosity And there's something that was ugly and something that was burdensome

They knew one thing though and they were right about this They knew that they needed the rest They knew that they They needed that day that eternal hope of rest and gladness And they they needed the pleasure of what the Sabbath was supposed to be They knew that they needed that But the deal is is that ever since then ever since that ordeal came into play and it manifested itself by people who do whatever they please or who create a whole bunch of rules to order their world That we've been trying to get into that rest through work rather than rest We've been trying to get there through work and that's the way that the world works doesn't it The world works by saying that if you want to enjoy a good life On this planet then you have to bust your tail to earn it You have to go to school then you have to go to a little bit more school And in some cases you have to go to a little bit more school And you have to pay your dues And you have to work your way up the ladder And you have to work hard long painful hours so that one day you might enjoy all the joys of retirement That you might enjoy all of the things that life might be able to offer and kick up your heels and eat drink and be marrying And even though that may be the way that the world works in God's economy it works in a completely different way Because the way in which you get the joy and the way in which you get the rest Is by resting It's not by working. It's totally and completely counterintuitive Well, Jesus is saying here in verse 17 is that he and the father they've been working When they are working they're not only to uphold and sustain the world so that all heck doesn't break loose But they're continuing to work That because Jesus has come to do with the father commissioned him to do And that is to bring the work of Christ to bear upon our lives so that we would take faith in that and enjoy the eternal Sabbath rest with him And that's what this miracle In the life of this man who couldn't walk for 38 years is meant to point to Is meant to show that God has created a Sabbath rest me Eternal Sabbath rest for his people where there will be no sin and where there will be no effects of sin And there will be no pain and there will be no sorrow and there will be perfect joy and perfect contentment Forever with him. That's what he's come to do and we get it when we stop Moralizing our way to God We get it when we stop moralizing our way to God and when we stop forgetting that the work of Christ for his people Is something peripheral to our life when we build our identity upon that when we stop trying to have our best life now And we get it when we start resting in his work for us and what he has accomplished for us in the gospel See in the Christian life y'all Is a lot more about rest than it is about work It's a whole lot more about rest than it is about work We'll give you a snippet of what we're going to look at in a couple of weeks if you look at the next chapter chapter 6 and verse 39 What is the work that he's calling you and me to do The work that he's calling you and me to do is to simply believe In the one who the father has sent That's it Yeah, that's it. That's all that's what we're called to do we're called to believe and to rest in the one in whom the father has sent to redeem us To reconcile us to himself He's saying that the work that we're to do is to stand back and to set our gaze upon Jesus Christ And to set our gaze upon the love that he is poured out upon his people in the gospel And to come and to look at what he came to do and look at what he did And look at what he continues to do and look at what he will do for you on that last day and to simply relish in that Because when you do It it just flat out changes you in every manifestation It changes it changes your beliefs It changes your desires It changes what's most important to you And it changes the way that you work You know there might be a day Where I won't be able to remember anything anymore But I don't think I'll ever forget the day in which Sarah was born Rebecca was in labor for 24 hours And if she didn't get the epidural, I was going to get it She pushed for four hours finally outcome Sarah and the moment that I saw her I knew that my life had completely changed I was given a new title I was given a new set of privileges I was given a new set of responsibilities And it was all because this little creature came into my life all the sudden one day And folks when Jesus comes into your life the same exact thing happens you're given a new title You're given the title child of God you're no longer an orphan anymore You're given a new set of privileges You're given a new set of responsibilities It becomes just characteristic of who you are and how you start to live your life because of who has entered into your life Who now defines your life

That's why Jesus can say what he says here in verse 29, isn't it The verse 29 if you look at the end of the passage This is what he says he says that those who have done good they go to the resurrection of life And those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment There's something mildly uncomfortable about that passage because it Seems like there's a sense in which we're either resurrected to lie for to death on the the basis of what we do for works And is a Presbyterian or a form person believes in the Bible and what it has I think that has to say about How we stand before God that makes we feel a little bit uncomfortable And I start flipping the pages of scripture and I look at Matthew 25 and I see that Jesus seems to set up these markers of who's in and who's out on the basis of whether or not they gave food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty and visited the sick And then I Flip back a little bit farther into Matthew chapter 13 and he Says that he's going to reward each person on the basis of what they've done And then I move forward I get out of the gospels I look at see what Paul has to say how did he understand the gospel and in chapter 2 he says that God's going to render each one according to his works And and that it's not just the hears of the law who will be saved but the doers of it And then I get out of the letters all together. I just go to the end of the story I mean I go to the end of the story Revelation 20 And we find out that how are we going to be judged According to our words That makes me uncomfortable Makes me uncomfortable because we're not building our View of how we are justified before God on just one kind of obscure back in the Bible verse somewhere We're building it upon a whole host Of what scripture has to say about this Here's the point There's really two points Here's the first point I want us to see the first point that I want us to see is That we need to never ever ever ever Ever forget that the only ground upon which we stand before God Is not by our works But by Jesus's works That we receive through faith alone period end of sentence I can point you all over the scripture about that So these verses are not denying that reality However though here's the second thing that we need to see that when you and I look upon Jesus And we rest upon him alone And he becomes the source of our self-definition And he defines our past and our present and our future Then you get to see him the way that John is seeing him in this passage And you get to see him the way that I've been trying to bring to bear upon you over the past several weeks And that is that 100% of the time That we will be changed when we cast our gaze upon Jesus When he is come and he is renewed us from the inside out we're gonna be changed We have a whole different set of priorities We have a whole set of different Privileges and responsibilities that come as a result of what he has done for us in the gospel and changes our life We don't look like the world anymore Whirliness is not something that is characteristic of our lives We still sin but that's not what's characteristic of our lives Godliness becomes characteristic of our lives There's no such thing as receiving Jesus's Savior not receiving him as Lord There's just no such thing it's nowhere from Genesis to Revelation There's always going to be evidence of the fact that Jesus lives within you That Christ is in us that we have the hope of glory that the Holy Spirit dwells within us if we have truly rested upon him You know, you heard the questions you heard the questions that we just asked of Michael and Sarah as they became members I just get so excited when people decide that they're going to live their lives in the context of the local church It's just a great thing. It's what we're created to do And those first two questions that were asked of them We're just simple basic gospel questions But the third question that was asked of them is are you going to endeavor to live your life in such a way that reflects That your answer the first question first two questions here was yes Are you going to endeavor to live your life in such a way Because if you truly have answered yes to those questions if that's a reality then the third just comes by default It just it comes That's part of what your life begins to look like Is it reminds me that Christianity is so much more than just walking the aisle Christianity is so much more than The fact that you went to vacation bible school every single summer of your entire youth and you prayed to receive price all 10 summers and a roast you're a Christian 10 times over now It's so much more than that It it means that a big chunk of what Christianity is about Is what Paul said in his letter to the church to the flippian church We said that we're to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling Knowing that it is God who works in us To will and to act According to his good purpose And brothers and sisters when you believe in the reality of who Jesus is And who he revealed himself to be and what he's done for you in the gospel Then it changes what you believe What you think what you say what you do it just does All of this has something to do with the resurrection talk that Jesus is zeroing in on in this passage With this claim to be equal with the God that Jesus is talking about here Because the grace of God that carries us up out of death and hell Also carries us up into heaven It carries us to the eternal Sabbath rest and it creates in us a life That reflects that eternal Sabbath rest and that is appropriate for heaven and for the presence of God Jesus seems to be saying here when he's talking about this issue the resurrection There were all going to be resurrected one day all of us Every single person is going to be resurrected one day and it's going to happen simply by the word of his power It's it's going to be the fact that his voice was powerful enough to heal this guy who couldn't walk for 38 years It's powerful enough to raise Lazarus Whose body was cold and blue To raise Lazarus from the dead it will raise us all from Osama bin Laden to Billy Graham alike We will all be resurrected one day and our soul will be united to our bodies on that day in which he returns And he will judge us He will judge us Based upon whether or not our lives reflected That we confess that Jesus Christ is Savior and that Jesus Christ is Lord That's a basis upon which will be judged Verse 27 it says that the Father is given Jesus the authority to execute judgment And that reality Right there that Jesus will judge each one of us here this morning and everybody else not here this morning Confront us with something profound it confronts us With who Jesus is and who we are in light of that It's meant to get you and me to stop playing little religious games And stop pretending and stop making Christianity something that's kind of a good thing to do when we don't have anything else to do It's meant Is a warning Because if we're pretending And if Christianity is just some kind of convenient add-on to your life He's saying that you will be resurrected one day but the resurrection that you will receive will be one of judgment Rather than a blessing Let me tell you something I realize The unpopularity of what Jesus is saying here It is not popular and it makes me uncomfortable sometimes It makes me really uncomfortable sometimes because I love a lot of people who don't give a flip about Jesus Christ And it's bothersome It's one of the reasons why a lot of people don't like Christianity and why they don't like Christians But if you actually stop and you think and you apply a little bit of intellectual rigor You're going to have to discover the fact that if if Jesus is exclusively one with the father in essence and you just can't separate the two In any meaningful way if he's actually God Then by nature God cannot accept any competitors You cannot accept any any competitors He can't accept people who have devoted their entire life and built their whole life upon competing against God whether they realized it or not This is not the way that God works. That's now would be inconsistent with his character No matter how you imagine God to be just by definition that doesn't work And so again, this is where the conflict and the confrontation lies and this passage This is where the the headbutting that we talked about last week happens Because you either have to accept That Jesus is real and what he said is real and who he claimed to be is real And you have to respond accordingly Or you have to decide that Jesus was a complete Eagle maniacal lunatic and you should just forget about what he has to say And blow him off and ignore it And consider all of his followers to be a bunch of eagle maniacal lunatics too There's no middle ground with Jesus Christ. He doesn't leave us with that convenient position And John is constantly trying to confront us with that And he's trying to confront you with that where you stand with Jesus Christ That's a question. It's a question Where do you stand with Jesus Christ? Because if what he's saying is true And if John is accurate and the other gospels are accurate and the abundant Historical and extrabiblical evidence is accurate When the only response that we can have is to bow our knees to Jesus Christ To give ourselves not partially over to him but fully over to him To build our definition of ourselves and our definition of the world And our definition of the future and the past and the present all that stuff upon Jesus Christ Upon who who he is And when you see him when you see him like that you see him in the same way that Isaiah saw him right Where Jesus just shows up the God just shows up in his life one day and he says whoa is me. I am undone. I am lost I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips because my eyes have be held The kid the Lord of hosts The king When you do that You find Jesus to be much much more And some interesting legendary historical figure You taught people how to live a better life You see him as being more glorious than you ever imagined him to be He's so attractive to you that you're just irresistibly drawn to him

That's what he wants us to see about him and you see him that he is completely true And that he's totally gracious To forgive you of everything even that thing that is so ugly That grim reaper ugly nasty thing in your life that you would absolutely pitifully die if someone else found out about He's come to forgive that but no one at that thing that no one else knows about And when you see him like that he's glorious He's absolutely stunningly beautiful and it changes your life. He just changes you in every way So when your marriage changes So in your relationship with your kids and your relationship with your parents Begins to take on a Christ-like flavor That's when your attitude towards your your work And your circumstances and your neighbors and what you talk about things and people It all just begins to change because of the glory and of the grace and the truth and the light That Jesus Christ is that John was just couldn't get 18 verses into his whole gospel without bringing the bear upon our lives

That's what he's coming to do And that's good news that's good news when you believe it That's really good news when you believe it The folks you got to remember this before we leave in just a minute you got to remember this Before there's a resurrection What does there have to be That's be a death Ask me a death before there's a resurrection. There's no such thing as a resurrection without a death And the reason why If you stopped trying to earn your way into that eternal Sabbath rest You've started resting upon the one who takes you there reason why that's true And that you have the hope of being resurrected to life Is because Jesus first died And he rose again he was resurrected Easter Sunday happened Do you see in verse 20 in this passage that the father loves the son Father loves the son There was a time in history where the Father cursed the son There was a time in history where the darkness Overcame him and the father turned his face away from him and gave him hell And he cursed the son Not because of his rebellion and indifference to the father He cursed the son because of your rebellion and indifference to the father and mine as well Because what Jesus did and hanging on that cross was that he took all that junk in our line And it got Remove from our account and deposit it into his

And all of the judgment And all of the condemnation that we deserve was concentrated in him on that cross And he took the punishment and he took the death And in so doing your sin and my sin was punished and it was paid for and it no longer condemns us And it no longer separates us from God But the good news of the gospel is that death did not hold him down Where O death is thy victory where O death is thy sting Doesn't have it anymore because Jesus rose again Jesus conquered that penalty And when he rose again he gave us the hope that we would rise again as well with him For all who rest upon him When he says in John 11 that He is the resurrection in the life He proved that our sin was a tone for He proved that all who are united to him through faith have the hope of glory And we have the hope of that eternal Sabbath rest that we so desperately want and we so desperately need And we have the hope that just as the father loves the son and says in him I am well pleased He looks at all who are united to hit to him and says You are my beloved son you are my beloved daughter and in you I am well pleased Don't ever ever forget that Don't ever forget it because that's the promise that you have in the gospel That's what you need to take away with you today and that's what will change your life in two hours from now and in 200 years from now That's the hope that we have today take it with you as you leave and if you don't yet believe it Consider it an invitation Let's pray Father, there's no one here Myself included who does not take this gospel for granted nobody And when we confront passages like this it just reminds us of how glorious you actually are It reminds us of what you came to do It reminds us that you're you didn't just teach us how to Live a good life you came to die for us You came to bring about reconciliation when there was nothing but hostility You came to establish peace and so Lord Make me and make us a people Who just build our whole lives upon that Make our church known for that But other people drive down this street every day and look at this church and Say that I don't understand this gospel, but they believe it and then it is attractive to me cause that to happen here because That gospel is so penetrating each of our lives in such a profound and meaningful way that we cannot help But reflect you despite the opposition that that might bring So Lord do that in us this morning and do that in us the rest of this week And we pray it in the name of the one who came such a distance for us a Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ