John 5:31-45
In politics, the preferred ground on which to stand is something called, “Moderate.” Some of you may remember the fight in the Presidential election of 1964 over the word “extremism.” Politics is the art of compromise, and extremism is a threat to compromise.
Barry Goldwater came about as close as anyone has in my lifetime to declaring politics a legitimate search for truth. He was beaten in one of the worst routs in American history. This is his famous quote: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
We seek the middle ground out of fear of becoming the target of those who, like Rodney King, want to “just get along.” I remember one controversial political stand I took on behalf of the leadership of two of the towns I represented. After I went public with the legislation, I looked around, and they had scattered – there was nobody there to back me up. Not believing that this was a cause worth falling on my sword over, I pulled the legislation.
The point is that in every ideological frontier in human history, people back away because it is out of the mainstream. We make the decision that we don’t want to die on that battleground, so the battleground that we all seek to make our stand keeps moving away from us as we become skilled at moderation.
Now, moderation is not a bad thing. In fact, the Bible says that we as Christians are to live our lives in moderation with regard to our pleasures and our habits. The pursuit of truth, however, is another matter. In that regard, we are called to a radical discipleship – the kind that Jesus quietly demonstrated through good works and the pursuit of a Kingdom that stood 180 deg out-of-phase with the popular religion of His time.
In fact, the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ remains 180 deg out-of-phase with popular religion of our time – in every generation down through redemptive history.
Radical discipleship is something to which every one of us is called. Moderation, however, is our habit, a habit that is, I believe, stifling the cause of Christ. The only time we are willing to step outside the bounds of moderation is when we are reasonably certain that to do so will attract crowds. We don’t want to take the risk of being radical and standing alone.
Last week, I shared with you the rather radical speech I gave at a conference in Washington, DC. What was interesting about that speech is that in order to resonate with the very few, I had to violate the comfort zones of the many.
There were two reactions to my speech of last week. The first was in the form of an email that I received from a fellow Christian in CA. He was ready to stand up and proclaim the “Second Reformation.” I emailed him back saying something to the effect that the road to reformation was in repentance. The other reaction was that because there might be a remnant of true believers within the churches of the Christian Right, I ought to moderate or scrap my rhetoric. At that, I bristle.
I ask, this morning, what would have happened if Martin Luther had decided that because there was a remnant of believers in the Catholic Church, he ought to hold his tongue? You and I probably would not be worshipping here this morning. In fact, there might not even be an America.
What if Jesus had decided that He could have compromised with the Devil in the desert, or caved into the attempts of the Pharisees to compromise Him, or listened to Peter when he wanted to raise up an army to defend Him, or listened to Judas and used His power to take the throne in Jerusalem, or listened to the thief and come down from the cross? No Christianity/no hope!
The course of history has never been corrected through moderation. Galileo and the great scientists who succeeded him stood alone and were condemned by the church. The Old Testament is replete with stories of God condemning the entire nation of Israel at the expense of the faithful remnant in order that He might display His glory through that remnant.
The fact that there may be a few righteous people among the Christian Right is no justification for backing off judging the church. We are told in Revelation 3 that God would spew the entire Church of Laodicea out of His mouth for what reason? For the reason that they were neither hot nor cold – they were moderates, you might say. They were smug in their wealth and success. Jesus called them “…wretched, pitiful, blind, poor and naked.” “Those whom I love, I rebuke,” He said (v.19).
To those of the righteous who remain in the Church of Laodicea, I would suggest that they get out while the getting is good. The same is true of us here at the NMMH Church. If we are icons of moderation – going along in order to get along, we are in danger of being spit out of God’s mouth. The formula that Jesus offers to us and the Laodiceans is this: “Be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (v. 19, 20).
We are not called to fill these pews with worshippers. We are called simply to open the door for Jesus as He knocks and to hear His voice when He speaks and to fellowship with Him and provide for Him when He is hungry, thirsty and naked.
The 5th Chapter of John has a lot to say about the difference between moderate and radical Christianity. It is embodied in a distinction between the Word and the Scriptures. That is the very conflict that plagues the Church of Jesus Christ today – the inability or unwillingness to distinguish between the Word and the Scriptures.
Jesus begins this lesson by saying that even His testimony about Himself is not valid – that there is someone else who testifies in His favor, verifying that His word is truth. The testimony of John the Baptist was insufficient to validate Jesus’ divine nature. The light that the Baptist gave out was only for a season – an entertainment for a short time. Jesus says that He has a testimony that is “…weightier than that of John.” Somehow, the work that He was sent by the Father to finish is what testifies of His role in the salvation of mankind.
We have never heard the Father’s voice, v. 37. We have never seen the Father in person. We diligently search the Scriptures, v. 39. Yet, in all this many professing Christians refuse to come to Jesus for life. Why is that?
It is because they have God in their heads but not in their hearts, v. 42. It is because they are ready to listen to and accept somebody else but not Him, v. 43. It is because they honor the praise of men over the praise that comes from God, v. 44. They live by the law. Therefore, Moses and the law will be their judge, v. 45.
They put their trust in what Moses wrote rather than in what Jesus says, v. 46. Moses and the law become their hope. Because the law of Moses points to Christ, at the end of the day they don’t believe in Jesus, either.
Let’s get into this in a bit more detail.
What Jesus is doing here is distinguishing between the Scriptures and the Word of God:
• You diligently study the Scriptures, but God’s Word does not dwell in you…
• You diligently study the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life if you study and believe the Bible…
• You diligently study the Scriptures, but you do not believe in the One to whom the Scriptures point…
• You diligently study the Scriptures, but you refuse to come to Me to have life…
What I get from this, then, is that a person can study the Scriptures – even memorize them – and yet not have the Word of God dwelling in him. A person can study the Scriptures and yet not know Jesus Christ, no matter how many times he repeats the Sinner’s Prayer. A person can study the Scriptures and not have eternal life. A person can be a regular church attendee and not know Jesus.
There is, then, the potential for a false assurance that we are saved through hearing Gospel sermons and agreeing with biblical doctrines about Christ. It is clear, however, that the way to salvation is not through what someone else is saying about Christ, nor through obedience to the moral and ethical precepts of the law. In fact, if this passage is correct, adherence to a doctrine or a biblical way of life may be evidence of denial of Christ.
It somehow is easier to obey a select law or laws than it is to believe in Jesus, the “Word made flesh.” Belief in the Scriptures gets in the way of belief in the Word. Show me a person who rants and raves about the sexual deviancy of the non-Christian world or about those evil abortionists out there, and I will show you a person who does not know Jesus and who may very well not be a Christian.
Very simply, the Scriptures are not the way to life. The Scriptures point us to the way of life by bearing witness to the truth of who Jesus is.
Take a look at Jesus’ teaching of His disciples. Do you see Him pushing for them to memorize the Scriptures to find formulas to make the world a better place to live? No! Do you see Him pushing books on prayer? No! It is not that these things are bad in themselves. It is that Spiritual truth is not a science to be learned through books. Spiritual truth is experienced through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit speaking through the Scriptures, pointing us to the “way, the truth and the light.”
We have been talking in the past few weeks about bearing fruit in our Christian lives. Bearing fruit will never happen through those who are spouting Scripture to build their own pride of life or tell others how to live. Fruit bearing comes from living in the power of the Word – not the words. It comes from picking up our crosses daily and following Jesus. It comes from learning to live by the Scriptures because that has been made possible through the Word.
Some believe that you can have Jesus as your Savior if your belief goes no further than Jesus as a fireman who rescues you from burning in Hell. In light of this passage of Scripture, I would reject that thinking. Jesus as a fireman is Scriptural, but Jesus as a fireman is not the Joy and Delight of our hearts. We can know about Him – perhaps even have accepted what the Scriptures say about Him, but if we have no life in our walk, we do not know Him. Jesus the fireman is not Jesus our Savior.
In the 7th chapter of John, vs. 37-39, Jesus stood and said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”
That’s the difference, isn’t it? Streams of living water will flow from those who make the transition from the Scriptures to the Word.
As Christians, we have a duty to search the Scriptures. In fact, it was the Scriptures that pointed our way to Christ. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were so bound up in the Scriptures that they could not get beyond such things as trying to figure out whose wife a woman would be in the next life if she had had several husbands. It’s irrelevant. The very foundation of the Scriptures is not a list of rules to make ourselves build favor with God. The Scriptures are a fountain of God’s revelation of Himself to fallen man, first through the holy law and then through new birth in Jesus Christ.
That is the sum and substance of the Scriptures. If you can’t get beyond the words, you will never get to the Word. If you can’t get to the Word, you will never “…have life and have it more abundantly,” the very purpose for which Christ came – “I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
The Christian who is proud, angry and vengeful lives contrary to the purity, holiness and long-suffering of God. The Christian who believes that being amiable, courteous, good natured, easy going and “moderate” are the fruits of the abundant life needs a radical transformation of the spirit. Getting along with your neighbor is great, but it isn’t love. Love of neighbor is not satisfied until you can cry over your enemy – weep over “Jerusalem,” the locus of your heart, as Jesus did.
We search the Scriptures, not because we want to know how to behave better, but because the Scriptures are the grand charter of our salvation and a light to guide us into the way of peace. When study of the Scriptures creates new and more enticing prophets, such as we have in the Word of Faith movement in America today, it is creating infidels who look for new signs from Heaven. America is lurching from one new prophet to another. Overlooked is the Scriptural warning that one false prophecy invalidates the prophet.
We search the Scriptures because we want to find that treasure hidden in the field through prophesies, types, sacrifices and shadows. We want to find this Jesus who comes to us as Prophet, Priest and King. We search the Scriptures as our star in the east, guiding us to the promised Messiah. We search the Scriptures with a humble, childlike attitude because we know that the mysteries of the Kingdom are hidden from the wise, learned and proud of this world.
And we do indeed search the Scriptures to put into practice what we read so that we may live in the will of God. Those are the Scriptures that the woman at the well in Samaria heard from Jesus, recognizing Him as the promised Messiah. She recognized Him because she listened to the Scriptures with a desire to find Him there, to know Him and to worship Him. His words, “I that speak to you am he” changed her life that day so that she was empowered to go forward and “sin no more.”
Notice that Jesus said nothing about getting rid of the guy with whom she was presently living. He did not preach about adultery or homosexuality or abortion. He met her where she was with no conditions. Those things would take care of themselves as she began to walk by faith and, indeed, to desire to sin no more.
Transforming grace moves us from the Scriptures to the Word. The Psalmist said in Psalm 139, “Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” See the distinction? The words will not insulate us from our sin, not matter how many Scripture verses we memorize. It is the Word – Jesus – who insulates us from our sin and makes us want to “sin no more.”
God, being a spirit, can only communicate with our hearts by spirit. If we are strangers to His Holy Spirit, we will continue to be strangers to the Word, even though we may be walking encyclopedias of Scripture.
The evangelical church in America believes in the American Dream – that prosperity and good health can be named and claimed by Christians. Jesus’ warning, however, was that unless we are willing to follow Him into death and Resurrection, we will never even see the Kingdom of God. That is why, I suspect, that for most American Evangelicals, the Kingdom of God is not a present reality but is a future promise.
They can’t see it because the words of the Scriptures have not been transformed in their hearts to become the Word: “You diligently search the Scripture because you think that by them you have eternal life” (v. 39).
That great evangelist of the First Great Awakening, George Whitefield, said it this way:
Search the Scriptures, my dear brethren; taste and see how good the Word of God is, and then you will never leave that heavenly manna – that angel’s food – to feed on dry husks, those trifling, sinful compositions, in which men of false taste delight themselves…The Word of God will then be sweeter to you than honey and the honey-comb and dearer than gold and silver…Your souls by reading it will be filled with marrow and fatness, and your hearts molded into the spirit of its blessed Author. In short, you will be guided by God’s wisdom here, and conducted by the light of his divine word into glory hereafter.
This is a radical way of life, is it not? While the world wants to put human behavior and belief into a formula or a political agenda, the church is apostate when it tries to accommodate or promote that formula or political agenda. The notion that we must accomplish politically what God cannot accomplish spiritually in His people indicates that many of our spiritual leaders do not know the Word.
There is no room here for moderation. Each of us who has come face-to-face with the Word through the Scriptures must prepare for the wedding feast, the Bride of Christ.
Extremism in the defense of Christian liberty is truly no vice.
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