John 5:16-18
A Titanic Struggle
A few years ago Madison did a project on the Titanic. She
had to study, read, research and write a report. She enjoyed it, and continued
to read about it long after the project had been turned in. Just recently, in honor
of her 12th birthday, she and Lindsey went to the Titanic museum in
TN. When you go into the museum you are handed a card that gives you the name
of a passenger from the Titanic. When you get to the end of the museum you get
to look on the memorial wall and see if you survived or not. Madison’s
passenger was in 1st class, Lindsey’s passenger was in third class. Lindsey
noted that since she was in third class it was unlikely that she survived while
Madison being 1st class had a good chance of making it off the boat.
If you’ve ever studied the Titanic you know it was an
impressive string of selfish, prideful, and bad decisions that lead to one of
the greatest tragedies in American history as over 1500+ people died in the ocean that night. You also
know that there was a significant amount of discrimination based on wealth,
race and ethnic background that contributed to that loss of life in the name of
doing the right thing.
As you all know the world is a mess right now. How much of
our own biases have contributed to that mess in the name of doing the right
thing? Tonight’s message is entitled A Titanic Struggle.
For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, [a]and
sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath. 17 But
Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I
have been working.”
18 Therefore
the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the
Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with
God.
The last two Wednesdays we have talked about Jesus healing
the paralyzed man. Take up your bed and walk. Our best estimates place this as
the halfway point of Jesus ministry. The man (who had been paralyzed for most
of his life) was spotted by the religious leadership (Pharisees and Sadducees)
and they didn’t care that he was healed, or how he was healed, just that he was
carrying a bedroll on the Sabbath. That violated their tradition and they
wanted to know who did it. He told them that Jesus was the one who had healed
him.
This is not the first miracle accredited to Jesus. After all
He’s been on the scene for 18 months. We’ve seen all manner of healings,
teaching, and miracles from Jesus. There’s more than enough factual evidence
and eye witness testimony to at least make someone pause to consider the Words
of Jesus and If He is really who He says He is.
With this in mind and the Pharisees & Sadducess being
the highly educated and intelligent people that they were they called a
meeting. They all sat down and said “Hey, let’s really think and pray about
this Jesus fellow. There is definitely something different about Him. Could
this be the Messiah?” haha! That would have been great wouldn’t it?
As anyone whose ever had the misfortune to read the comments
on a website or social media knows, that’s not how people act. What does it
say? For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him. Just a
reminder, in the gospel of John when John refers to the Jews he is not
referring all of Israel. He is specifically referring to Jewish leadership at
the time.
They want to kill him. Why? Because at first He was a
novelty, now he’s become a problem. They can’t refute his teaching, they can’t
deny his miracles and they can’t accept the truth of the situation. What do
they do now? He won’t go away they are just going to have to kill him.
In the first four chapters of John, it was the deity of
Christ on display by His omniscience, by His miracle power, by His
authority exercised in the Temple and even by the declarations of John in
chapter 1 of His deity as the Creator. All of the first four chapters
focus on the person of Christ and His deity, and focus on His
words, the things that He said. Now we come into chapter 5 and you
see the opposition begin to rise. That will on increase from here on out until
the crucifixion. Why though?
Well there’s the reason they sought to kill Him and the
reason they used as their excuse. The excuse? “Because He had done these things
on the Sabbath.”
There are a few things that really upset me in this job.
#1 when ya’ll break the 11th commandment “Though
shall not misquote the pastor” which is one of the 1,000 reasons I’m grateful
for Todd and the AV crew because they make it real easy to go back to the video
tape.
#2 I get mad when you quote a single bible verse out of
context that you found by doing a word search on your Bible app. Take the time
to read the entire passage! You have the time! The average adult can easily
read 200 words a minute. This means you can read most books in the NT in less
than an a hour. You can easily read a chapter of a book in less than 5 minutes.
You have time to read the whole passage!
#3 and this is the
most frustrating, when people try to use God as an excuse to do the wrong
thing. W.C. Blalock likes to say in Sunday School Class “My mom always said,
“You’ve successfully mad God in your own image when He hates the same people you
do.” “ That’s what is going on here with the religious leadership. We often cover our hatred for the power of God
with a pretend zeal for the form of it.
Jesus gives an odd answer “My Father has been working until
now, and I have been working.” God has
never stopped working. An ancient quote from Philo of Alexandria tells us “God
never stops working, for as it is the property of fire to burn and of snow to
be cold so of God to work.”
Wait a minute Pastor Glen! I may not know much about the
Bible but I know that on the 7th day God rested and If He was resting He was
not working. He rested yes, He rested from His acts of creation. He has never
once rested from His work of sustaining us.
Psalm 121:3-4, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor
sleep
Hebrews 1:3 "who being the brightness of His glory and
the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His
power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of
the Majesty on high,"
Beloved we must never forget that every breath we take is an
act of mercy from God. The ruling class at the time viewed work as something
the lower class did because they were not blessed like the upper class. You saw
that on the titanic when some of the 3rd class passengers were locked in and
drowned to death to allow the first class passengers plenty of time to load
into the life boats. We still see that today with examples to numerous to
mention.
Jesus says a two fold offensive statement in this way 1)
that God works actively and 2) that Jesus is on equal footing with God by
referring to God as His Father. To be on equal footing with God is to claim
that He and God are one and the same.
The Pharisees understood and refused to except it. In fact,
they used it as grounds to have Him executed on the charges of rebellion and
blasphemy.
Now if it’s true, it’s true and He is
God. If it’s a lie, He’s not God, He’s the devil. He’s the
ultimate deceiver. What you can’t say is something in the
middle. You can’t say He’s a model of spiritual life, because models
of spiritual life don’t call themselves God. Crazy people do,
lunatics do. You can’t say that He is a noble teacher because
everything starts with a massive preposterous lie if He’s not
God. This is the most staggering claim anybody has ever made and
then supported it. So you don’t come to Jesus with the option that He’s a
good teacher, that’s what the skeptics have sort of landed on just to be
kind, and that’s what the pseudo-scholars of fake Christianity have
perpetuated through the years so that they can still have Christianity and
still have a comfortable Jesus.
But that’s not an option. He said He was
God. If it’s true, He is God. If it’s a lie, He’s the
ultimate deceiver and He’s insanely deceived Himself. We have to
make a choice. There’s no middle ground. The choice needs
to be informed by the truth, the truth is here, let Him give His own
testimony. And then let Him substantiate it which He will do in
this chapter by more than two or three witnesses.
If you’re going to reject Christ, then reject the
Bible. You have to reject it all. If you reject the deity
of Jesus Christ, you have just detonated a bomb that has exploded your
Bible, throw it away. You have demolished the
Bible. There is no such thing as well-intentioned scholarship that
denies the deity of Jesus Christ. That is devilish and it
disintegrates the Scripture completely. If Jesus is not
God, there is no Christianity, the Bible is all a fabrication from hell
and we all still hopelessly lost in our sin.
If what Jesus said is true, and I believe that it is. Then
that’s a game changer. Our whole way of life has to change. 18 year old,
unsaved Glen had a lot of strong thoughts and opinions on just about
everything. Then I got saved and found that pretty much all of them were wrong.
Do I change or does God change? Well God is the same yesterday, today and
forever so I had to change. 27 year old newly married newly hired hired Pastor
Glen had a lot of strong thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of Biblical
topics. Such as politics, worship music, marriage and parenting. Bear in mind I
had little to know real world experience in any of those at the time. The more
I have walked with the Lord the more I have been conformed to His image because
all my attempts to conform Him to mine have gracefully failed miserably.
Today, almost 41 year old Glen still has lots of strong
thoughts and opinions on things. Yet, now I know to stop and Pray before
voicing them. Since we have been using acronyms a lot in sermons recently I
want to give you a new one for PRAY. Pause, Reflect, Ask and Yield. Pause,
before you send that text, email, comment. Reflect, think about what you are
doing and why. Ask God what the gospel centered response should be, Yield, surrender
to God’s Word and God’s will as the superior power in our lives.
What is your choice going to be? The struggle between the
flesh and the spirit is real, it is an everyday titanic struggle. Do we follow
the things of God or follow the things of the flesh?
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