God's Own Testimony to Christ #2

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. Now, God's testimony at Jesus' crucifixion, what does that mean? How did Jesus come to us by blood? Well, what John is saying here is that Jesus came to us by blood in the sense that God testified in a non-verbal manner this time. God testified in a non-verbal but miraculous manner to the reality of His Son at the crucifixion.

God testified to the reality of Christ at His crucifixion, this time He simply spoke in a non-verbal manner. Go back to the gospel of Matthew with me to Matthew chapter 27. Matthew chapter 27, beginning in verse 51. Matthew 27 verse 51, this is God's testimony to His Son at the crucifixion and be looking for the climax to this testimony at the end of the passage.

Chapter 51, actually let's start in verse 50. Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His Spirit. He had shed His blood unto death. And what happened at that moment? What happened at a singularly defining moment for all of history, all of humanity? What happened at that singularly defining moment of the eternal plan of God for the Lamb of God who was slain before the foundation of the world? Did this just pass like any other moment?

Hardly. Look what happened in verse 51. Behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after His resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.

This is miraculous. The earth shook. Rocks were split. Graves were opened. Dead men raised and went into cities and spoke to those who knew they were dead. This was an ordinary moment. This was a supernatural moment unlike any other. This is God's testimony to Christ. You see His hand behind the miracles affirming Christ in His death. And there was a man that God singularly used to seal this testimony to show the reality of it, that what these miracles pointed to gives the conclusion that John is pointing to in 1 John chapter 5.

Look at verse 54. Now the centurion and those who were with Him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening became very frightened and said, truly this was the Son of God. They got God's testimony.

They understood it. They saw these miracles and they said this authenticates the inscription above Him. This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. God's testimony compelled them to that conclusion. Through that supernatural testimony, those supernatural events that accompanied the death of Christ, God certified to the world the same exact message that He certified at His baptism.

This is my Son. This is the Son of God. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. God testified to that at the crucifixion of Christ in a miraculous way. That was His testimony. God testified to Christ at His baptism. God testified to Christ at His crucifixion. God affirmed, get this, God affirmed the bookends of Jesus' public ministry. He affirmed the beginning at the baptism. He affirmed the end at the crucifixion and gave His certificate of authenticity on everything that happened in between. This is God's testimony to His own Son. And I hope that the weight of the holiness of that reality is settling upon your mind.

These are not empty stories from the past. This is what God has said about His own Son. This is how God has certified Christ to the world.

Now, God didn't leave it there. God's testimony goes even further. What is it that gives the power to those historical facts? What is it that leaves us without excuse today if we don't believe those things? I mean, I wasn't there, physically wasn't there when Jesus was baptized. You weren't physically there when Jesus was crucified. And yet, you are accountable to believe that as though you were. You have the same accountability to believe that as if today, as if you had physically been there at that moment.

What is it that gives that power? What is it that brings the history to the present, as it were, and compels us to believe, that makes us accountable to believe? Well, thirdly, it's the third aspect, the third content of God's testimony to Christ. John refers to God's testimony by the Holy Spirit. God testified at the baptism, He testified at the crucifixion, now He testifies by the Holy Spirit. Go back to 1 John chapter 5.

This is so compelling. This is God's testimony. Look at the end of verse 6. It is the Spirit who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are in agreement. God certifies Jesus to us today through the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. When the story of Christ is told, when the Bible is read, when the Word of God is preached, the Holy Spirit is speaking through those things to the hearts of men, saying, this is true, you must believe this. The Spirit gives understanding to our minds and conviction to our hearts of the same manner of testimony that happened at the baptism and crucifixion. He compels us, He testifies to us that this Jesus about whom we read, this Jesus about whom we speak, this Jesus about whom we hear, this is the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world. The Holy Spirit, God Himself, the third person of the blessed Trinity, throughout the world is testifying to the truth of these matters whenever Scripture is read, whenever the gospel is truly preached. The Spirit is, as it were, authenticating that, and He does that in part by the power by which the Word of God and the preaching of the Word of God comes to the hearts of those who hear. That is the work of the Spirit. There is no intrinsic power in a speaker. There is no intrinsic power in the preacher.

But when the preacher is speaking in accordance with and in agreement with the testimony of God, the Spirit of God is laying His affirmation on that, and that brings the power to the spoken word. Now, a brief side note about the text here. The King James Version, the New King James Version, have material in verses 7 and 8 that the modern versions, including the one I'm using here, the modern versions don't include.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. You can pick up any commentary, any book on the canon of Scripture that will address that. The reason that the modern versions have excluded that is because those brief sections in the King James and New King James do not appear in any Greek manuscript before the 14th century. It wasn't something that John originally wrote, and that's why the modern versions exclude it. And you can read about that on your own if you're interested in that.

I just need to make brief mention of it here. Let's get back to what John actually said and what he is saying to us now. Verse 6, it is the Spirit who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. The Holy Spirit assaults our unbelief.

It assaults our dead spirits. It overcomes our unbelief to see the truth. And what I want you to see is that this has been... the Holy Spirit has been an ongoing theme in the book of 1 John. Chapter 2, verse 20. And this ministry of the Holy Spirit to believers has been emphasized throughout.

Chapter 2, verse 20. You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. Verse 27, As for you, the anointing which you receive from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him. The Spirit of God teaches our minds. It instructs our minds that these things are true.

It gives us understanding, illumination to receive the things of God that the natural man in his own flesh rejects. Chapter 3, verse 24. We know by this that He abides in us.

Here's how we know the truth of these things. By the Spirit whom He has given to us. Chapter 4, verse 13. By this we know that we abide in Him, in He and us, because He has given us of His Spirit. The Holy Spirit testifies to Christ. He testifies to the truth of these matters. Now, look at the end of verse 6 with me again. It is the Spirit who testifies because the Spirit is the truth.

Notice something really basic about that. Present tense. Ongoing testimony from the Spirit. It's not a past tense event that the Spirit's testimony represents. It is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit to testify to these things until Christ returns.

And He is doing that now. He is bearing witness. He is testifying. It's not that He testified past tense.

It's that He testifies now. And the fact that you and I cannot see His ministry with our physical eyes does not diminish the truth and reality of what He does. It does not diminish the accuracy and the truth to which He testifies.

It does not diminish the reality of His work. The fact that you and your sinful humanity, you and your limited human flesh cannot see it does not mean that it is not verified. The Spirit of God is His own verification.

There is no higher authority. The Spirit does what He does by the freedom of divine sovereignty and the Word of God tells us that He does that. We see the fruit of it and the reality of the Spirit's work is established by factual testimony from God Himself even though we cannot see it. Jesus said, you know, the wind blows where it wishes, you can't see it, but you see the effect of it. Many of you here today are the effect of the work of the Holy Spirit because you believe in Christ. The only reason you believe in Christ is because the Spirit of God moved in your heart. You are an expression of the work of the Spirit.

You are not the arbiter of its reality. Now, notice in verse 7, there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood. There are three witnesses testifying all in the same direction. God has testified baptism, crucifixion by His Spirit. Think about this.

Think about this. The Bible says in multiple places that evidence is confirmed, the truthfulness of a matter is established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Deuteronomy 19, 15, 2 Corinthians 13, 1, other places in the Scripture, John 8, evidence is confirmed, established is true on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Do you realize what God has done? God testified verbally at the baptism. He testified non-verbally, miraculously at the crucifixion. He testifies personally now by the witness of the Holy Spirit. The truthfulness of these matters is established by the threefold witness of God.

It is established. This is not subject to debate. I don't care what the co-exist bumper sticker says, and neither should you because the profiteers who make money off of that can't contradict God's testimony. They can't by clever slogans bring down God's testimony and make it on a parallel with that which is false.

It's an abomination. God...God...God has testified through water, blood and the Spirit that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And beloved, that's why we're not at liberty as Christians to participate in that postmodern spirit that makes all religions a path to God. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me. We proclaim an exclusive salvation without apology because we cannot contradict God's own testimony. We're not at liberty to do that.

I wouldn't even want to do that, would you? Now that's the content of the testimony, the baptism, the crucifixion, the Spirit. Let's look briefly at the consequences of the testimony.

What does it mean? What are the implications of the fact that God has testified in this manner to the reality of His Son? The fact that this is God's testimony has very important consequences and there's three quick sub-points here as well. First of all, speaking to you as Christians, those of you that know Christ, those of you that share in the common life of the Spirit, that believe in Christ and are trusting Him alone for your salvation, those of you that have repented of sin and submitted your life to Christ and embrace Him as your only righteousness before God, denying all merit of your own that would give you any standing before God, you say, no, no, my righteousness is in Christ alone and in Him alone I trust.

To you, what does this mean? First of all, it means that your salvation rests on certain testimony. As Peter said elsewhere, you have not believed cleverly devised tales.

You haven't believed fables that men have spun up or that old women have put together in their excess time. The salvation that you have received as a Christian is based on, is premised on, it rests on the absolutely certain testimony of God Himself. It's not what some man told you, this is what God has said and you have believed God Himself and that means that your salvation is indestructible, it could never go wrong, it could never fall away because it's based on the truth of God Himself. Look at what John says in verses 9 and 10 here, it says, if we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for the testimony of God is this, that He is testified concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. What John's saying here is that if you can believe a man about matters of daily life, which we all do, can you give me the directions to the gas station, two streets down, turn to the right? I believe you, I'll act on that. If you can believe a man who speaks to you about matters of daily life, how much more should we, do we, believe and receive the testimony of God when He says that Jesus Christ is the true and only Savior of mankind?

It's an argument from the lesser to the greater, unless you have reasons to question the credibility of a man, you believe what he tells you. What time is it? It's 9 45, well actually it's 9 55.

See I'm in a little tension there, I want the extra ten minutes, but I corrected myself. It's 9 55, you say, okay, I believe that, I'm glad you had a watch, I believe what you say. Well if you'll believe a man on earthly matters, how much more to believe the eternal God about eternal matters? He has testified, if you receive the testimony of man, you receive the testimony of God, and when you believe in Christ, that testimony is in you, it belongs to you, it is your possession because God has given it to you. He has made that which He has testified a matter of personal possession to you by faith. What a wonderful thing salvation is, huh?

Now he goes on and he states the negative side of this. The second consequence of the testimony, the first one was that your salvation rests on certain testimony. Secondly, the second consequence of this is that denying Christ is a great sin.

This deserves far more treatment than I'm going to give to it. Just understand, understand that as an objective matter, God has testified concerning His Son, God has given testimony, God has spoken in a three-fold way that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is what God has said. This is what is preserved for us in Scripture. Now for someone to say, I don't believe that, understand what's going on there according to what John says here in verse 10. Look at the middle of verse 10 with me, the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar because He has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. Listen, rejecting Christ, not being a Christian, the ambiguity of postmodern thought is not a matter of bad choices or bad philosophy. It is that, but at the heart of that there is moral culpability of great consequence. There is the moral culpability of blasphemy. To say that you don't believe this when God is testifying to it through the ages is to call God a liar. Say I hear what you say, I hear about Christ at the cross and at His baptism, I hear the Scriptures but I don't believe it. God, you're a liar.

I don't believe you. Listen, the consequences of that will be great and they will be eternal. The writer of Hebrews says, how much severer punishment will they deserve who have trampled on the Son of God? It is an eternal sin, unbelief is an eternal culpable sin. It's not a matter of someone having struggles, unbelief is an eternal sin.

Don't stop, put it this way, and you need to hear his words carefully. He says unbelief is not a misfortune to be pitied, it is a sin to be deplored. Its sinfulness lies in the fact that it contradicts the word of the one true God and thus attributes falsehood to Him. If you're here and you've been spurning Christ, rejecting Christ, oh, I trust that this will bear weight on your conscience. Because to reject Christ is to call the one true God a liar and believe the Word of God when it says that it will not go well for you on Judgment Day if you have that sin, the blood of that sin on your hands. God will not treat that lightly. For now He's given you a window to repent.

For now the gospel goes forth to you one more time, repent and receive Christ, turn to Christ and be saved, believe in Christ and have the forgiveness of your sins, but your continued stubborn unbelief is an eternal sin of blasphemy against the one true God. And for those that say this kind of certainty is not tolerated in today's world, those within the church that says we need to be a little bit more humble about our convictions on central matters, James Boyce addresses that. He says, no, the real presumption, the real arrogance is in questioning the assurance and thus casting doubt on God's Word. Who are we to question the certainty and clarity of God's Word? That's shameful. And it's a false humility, it's a false modesty that cloaks itself and says, well, maybe these things about salvation aren't so clear.

They're clear. And the arrogance is not in the preacher who declares with certainty the things that God has revealed in His Word. The arrogance is with those who would question God's Word and make it less clear and less certain than it is. And those men should be condemned. Now final consequence of this testimony is this. We have seen that the consequences of this testimony is that your salvation rests on certain testimony. We've seen that denying Christ is a great sin.

It's a sin of calling God a liar since it's God's testimony that certifies Christ. Finally, just in a summary form here, salvation is God's gift in Christ alone. Salvation is God's gift in Christ alone. The life that God gives is available only through His Son. Jesus is, in fact, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and only those who believe in Christ have eternal life. Look at verses 11 and 12 with me. John says, the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life.

It's a gift, not a wage for things you have done. The testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life. Salvation is God's gift and this life is in His Son.

It's not in anyone else. There is no other name among men given by which we must be saved, Acts 4 and 12. God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. Verse 12, he who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. Jesus Christ is the dividing line between humanity. Those who have Him have eternal life and have believed God. Those who do not have Him are condemned under judgment and are calling God a liar. The consequences of these things are vast.

The implications of these things are enormous. Eternal life is a gift in Christ which promises a reward yet to come. God has certified salvation to us. You should cling to Christ and proclaim Him no matter what the opposition, your family or the world at large brings to you.

You cling to these things because you're clinging to the truth of the Word of God. Unbeliever in this room, the Spirit is calling you. God is certifying His truth to you this very moment. And receive this gift of eternal life that God has made known, that God has certified. Jesus said, the one who comes to Me, I will certainly not cast out.

Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your testimony. You haven't left us with an unattested philosophy and told us to believe in it. You have certified with your own character, with your own voice and with your own works that Jesus Christ is Your beloved Son in whom You are well pleased. You Yourself have certified to us that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You have certified to us that You sent Him into the world so that we might live through Him. You have certified to us that He is the propitiation for our sins. Father, we thank You for Your testimony. We could receive it on no higher word, there is no higher authority to appeal to.

When You have spoken, the matter is settled. We receive that and we rest in that here this morning. Those of us that know Christ, rest in Him with absolute assurance of truth because we receive Your testimony. Father, those who have not believed in Christ, those who question the gospel, Father, we realize that they're calling You a liar.

Your word is just so plain and clear and direct on that. I pray, Father, that the startling reality of an eternal blasphemy is one that would strike their conscience and cause them to repent and come to Christ. We thank You for the glory of the gospel and we thank You, Father, in particular today for the glorious way in which You have testified and certified it to us. You have certified our Savior to our hearts and we love You for it. In Jesus' name, amen. My friend, just before we close today's broadcast, I just wanted to give a special word of greeting and thanks to the many people that listen to our podcast internationally. It's remarkable to me. The last report that I saw listed 83 different countries that in one way or another are listening to us and I just want to send a special word of greeting to those of you that are in lands that are distant from my own home here in the United States.

You know, we've seen people from every continent except maybe Antarctica and people from countries like Ireland and Australia and Singapore, Canada, the UK, India, I have friends in all of those countries. And whether you've met me face to face or whether you only know me as a voice through your favorite device, I just want to say God bless you. Thank you for your interest in the Word of God and may the Spirit of God work deeply in your heart as you continue to study God's Word. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you. My prayers and love are with you as well. And we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.