What exactly was Jesus saying when he said, Truly, truly I say unto you?
Well, today on Truth for Life, Aleister Begg begins a brand new series where he'll be taking a closer look at these revealing statements from Jesus. We begin by considering the context behind Jesus' proclamation in John one, verse fifty one. Uh Um Genesis twenty eight and verse ten. Jacob left Beersheba. and went toward Haran.
And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed. And behold, There was a ladder set up on the earth. and the top of it reached to heaven.
And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, I am the Lord. The God of Abraham, your father. and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie.
I will give to you. and to your offspring. And then in John's Gospel and in chapter 1, And from Verse forty-three. The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip, and said to him, Follow me.
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote. Jesus of Nazareth. the son of Joseph. Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Philip said to him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, Behold, an Israelite in the indeed in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael said to him, How do you know me? Jesus answered him, Before Philip called you, When you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, You are the Son of God.
You are the king of Israel. Jesus answered him, Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, Truly. Truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened.
and the angels of God ascending and descending. On the Son of Man. Amen. Father, again, we acknowledge that you are the Lord of the nations. All of those European nations, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic.
Italy, France, Germany. The whole world. Under your care. And your word has gone out to the ends of the earth. And it is to your word we now turn.
In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, all of us are routinely aware of how important it is to have a balanced diet. It seems to be a a prevailing emphasis all the time uh a constant struggle A reminder by sometimes our friends and sometimes our family of what we are supposed to be eating and what we are supposed to be putting aside. That uh in Nutritional in physical terms is also true in spiritual terms.
that as surely as it is important for us to balance our diet physically, so that means that our biblical diet, if you like, needs to be equally balanced. And I realized as well that it had been more than a decade since we had been in any of the Gospels. We have not actually done very much in the Gospels at all. And that combined with the word that my old boss used to say to me, Derek Prime. He said, you know, if you are in doubt about where to go or what to do, make sure that you always take people to Jesus.
You can never go wrong if you go to Jesus. And so I said, all right, well I I think I can perhaps do that. And so it is to John that we turn.
However, We're not going to work through it from verse 1 through to the final verse. We're not going to go through it systematically, verse by verse. What I want to do, and we'll see if we can do it. But what I want to do is to expressly look at the twenty-five occasions in the Gospel of John Where Jesus makes a pronouncement which begins with the words, truly, truly. Or if you are of the King James Version variety, then verily, verily.
John actually is the only one of the Gospel writers Who has truly, truly. Matthew, Mark and Luke all have trulies, but none of them have truly truly's. Matthew has thirty-one truly's, Mark has thirteen truly's, Luke has six trulies, but John has twenty-five truly trulies.
Now we're used to this word truly because it is the word amen. is the word amen. And we are familiar with saying Amen. at the end of a statement, particularly the end of a prayer. Thereby giving our affirmation, our confirmation, our participation in what has just been said.
And Jesus uses it. That way, but he uses it particularly this way in order to highlight or to confirm. the trustworthiness and the importance of what then follows from that introduction. Jesus, of course, says in Matthew's Gospel: heaven and earth will pass away. But my words will not pass away.
We may be confident that we're dealing then with the words of Jesus which have been preserved for us in Scripture by the enabling of the Holy Spirit in order that we might pay attention to them.
Now as I was thinking along these lines, I was reminded too of the fact that in the nineteen nineties it became quite popular, particularly amongst young people, to go around wearing bracelets. And it wasn't just any bracelet, but it was a bracelet that was stamped with the letters What would WWJD? What would Jesus do? And some people participated in that very excitedly, some people got themselves off the tracks by conjecture. And I remember thinking variously about it myself.
Um It's along the lines of the famous book, The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas Akempis. The importance of recognizing that Jesus is an example and so on. But on the wrong side of it, it became a kind of form of moralism whereby we just try and be what we're actually not. Which, of course, is the very antithesis of the Gospel, whereby, on the basis of what Christ has done and is doing in us, we become what we are not by His power. And various people made all kinds of stabs.
A friend had sent me a note along those lines when he said he had decided he wanted to be more like Jesus, and he wrote down seven things that would need to take place. Number one, hanging out with sinners. Number two, ups upsetting religious people. Three telling stories that make people think. Four, choosing unpopular friends.
Five, being kind loving and merciful. And six taking naps in boats.
So that just shows you that th the there's a a measure of futility in dealing with conjecture, but we're not doing WWJD, rather we are doing W DJS. What does Jesus say? And that will essentially be the overarching framework of this series of studies. What does Jesus say? And in order to understand These On isolated statements to which we will come.
It is important, it is vitally important, that whenever we consider a verse, that we consider it in the context in which the verse is said. Both immediately and expansively, and indeed within the entire framework of the book itself. Failure to do that will lead into all kinds of dangers. For example, uh you remember the the occurrence of the encounter between Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the Victorian Baptist, and a friend of his who was an Anglican clergyman. And they were talking about the nature of baptism itself.
And the clergyman said to Spurgeon, why don't we just choose a verse to explain to each other why we baptize in the way that we baptize? And so Spurgeon said, fine, he said, go ahead. And so the Anglican clergyman said. I suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Spurgeon said, Is that it?
He said yes. He said, okay, your turn. Spurgeon said. there was a man from Oz whose name was Job. The Anglican said.
But that's got nothing to do with baptism. Spurgeon said, Exactly. Neither of the two verses had anything to do with baptism. You can take a verse and do all manner of things with it if you rest it out of its context.
Now, this is vitally important because look at what our verse is. It's the 51st verse of John chapter 1. And he said to him, That's to Nathanael, truly, truly, I say to you. You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
So we come to this within the context in which it is said. It is said actually in its largest context within the context of the entire Bible. And that is why, incidentally, that we just read from Genesis chapter 28, which I hope will become apparent as we go. But first of all, let's consider this. That it is to be considered in light.
Of the stated purpose of John's gospel. The stated purpose of John's gospel. In other words, why is John even writing a gospel?
Now we don't need to be in any doubt about that, because the answer to that is found in the 31st verse of the 20th chapter of John. And if you turn to it, you can confirm that it is actually there. Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, says John. But here we go. But these are written.
So that you may believe. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. and that by believing you may have life. In His name.
So John is telling his readers that He has recorded these things as an eye-witness. And he has done so with a clear objective Of commanding to his readers A consideration of the identity of Jesus. And making sure they understand the absolute necessity. of a correct response to Jesus. in order that they then might have life.
And that's why you will not be surprised that if your Bible is open, you will see that he immediately goes then to the first of the signs. Because his pattern is straightforward. signs or if you like evidence. Evidence Two Command belief. Belief Which is to issue in life.
And that's the pattern in which the whole gospel unfolds. In chapter 5 and in verse 39, we realize that people would. Go to the scriptures and search the scriptures for eternal life. Because Jesus says to the Pharisees, You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And you're right about that.
It is they that bear witness about me. But You refuse to come to me. that you may have life.
So, simply the awareness that Jesus has presented this evidence. The ability of an individual, you or myself, To read and to understand that. is not the end of the equation. That's not where it resolves. No, it is evidence giving rise to belief.
the kind of believing that issues in life.
So that's the first thing. That when we consider these truly, truly statements, we need to consider them in light of the stated purpose of the gospel in which they're set. Secondly, We need to understand this statement, verse 51, in light of the preceding 50 verses. That is an immediate challenge. Because these are Rich verses.
And the reason that I want to delay on this a little bit is because this is important not only for the first of these truly truly, but it is important for all of the truly truis. And you would not want me to To do this every time that we come to another one, because we'll be in another one, God willing, next Sunday.
So we need to have some at least overarching grasp of what is being said in these first 50 verses. Incidentally, I do hope that these studies will actually stimulate a genuine interest in John's Gospel on our individual parts. That we will find that the gaps that are left by moving in this way, we will want to fill in because we're just those kind of people. And we want to make sure that Beg is doing his homework and so on.
So I understand that. If you're new to the Bible, And you may be new to the Bible. You may be surprised. You should be surprised. That if you have had any knowledge of Christianity, if you've ever been invited to a Christmas service and so on.
You're familiar with the story of Bethlehem, you're the story of angels, the shepherds, the wise men. And so you would imagine that anybody that's going to start writing a gospel record, a historical identification of Jesus of Nazareth, goodness, why wouldn't they start just there?
Well, you'll be surprised. Because John doesn't start there. He starts beyond there. He introduces Jesus in an entirely different way. In the beginning, was The word.
In the beginning. Before the beginning. Before creation, Before time. In the beginning, Was the word. That's what he's saying.
So he's not starting in Bethlehem. He's starting in eternity. And I said that we're not working through this verse by verse, and therefore you must hold me to that. But just allow your eye to scan the opening four or five verses and look at what he says. The word is eternal.
The word is God. The word is a person. Notice, he. Was in the beginning. with God.
All things were made through him. The word made absolutely Everything. That's what he's saying.
And in him was life Remember? Evidence Belief? Life? Not life found in a religion. Not life found in a strategy.
Life found in a person. Life found in the life giver. In him was life. And the life was the light of man. That light shines out into the darkness, he says, and the darkness has never been able to put it out.
It hasn't. Throughout the world today. Despite the demise of religion, as reported in contemporary press in the Western world, there are more believers in the world today than there have ever been in the world. The light has gone out into the world, and the darkness can't put it out.
Now, then we are introduced to the set-up man. The warm-up act, John the Baptist, we can't take time with him, fascinating character, an interesting duck by any standards. And he was not the light. But he came to bear witness to the light. He's the set up guy.
And so he points to Jesus, but as you will notice in the text, verse 10, Jesus is unrecognized. He was in the world. We've been singing about it. You step down into darkness. He was in the world.
Historic reality, Jesus of Nazareth, he was in the world, the world didn't recognize him. And in fact, the people that most would have been most likely to receive him. They actually rejected him. But He says there are exceptions. There are exceptions.
But those who believed in him He gave them the right to become the children of God. We'll learn more about that as we go on. But verse 14 is in some ways the fulcrum of this opening statement, and it is quite staggering. And the word, the word, became flesh. And dwelt among us.
Now this is foundational Christianity. God, the Creator of the universe. became human and moved into our time-space. Capsule. And says john We have seen something of his glory.
And we have learned something of His grace. He's immediately making the point that would be understood by people who were fastidious in their religious observations. that this was not about a list of rules and regulations. This coming of Jesus into the world was about grace. That is undeserved favor.
And it was about truth. The answer to the question. to the riddle of life. The answer to the longings of the human heart. Met In a person.
met in the person whom we meet here. And so he says, I have seen and bear witness That he is The Son of God. That takes you all the way to verse 34, which should be a great encouragement to you. There you have it. There's his summary statement.
There's John. and I have seen And I'm telling you. that I have borne witness that he is the Son of God.
So he is fulfilling his calling. He is pointing to Jesus as the Lamb of God. Jesus will die for the sins of the world, he says. And he will do this in order to make us right with God. He says it on two separate occasions.
He is fulfilling his role as the said old man, pointing away from himself, pointing to Jesus. You see, when we tell other people about Jesus, we're supposed to be telling other people about Jesus, not telling other people about ourselves. Because the reality is that what happened to us is not the same as what happened to the person sitting next to you. The way that you came to faith will not be the same way that your mother came to faith, or whatever it might be. You came to the same place.
So, what we want to do is tell people about Jesus. Who is Jesus? He's the creator of the universe. He stepped down into time. He's the Lamb of God.
He bears sins. He grants forgiveness to those who come to Him. There is life in His name. We're telling Him about Jesus. Telling him about our own personal story.
It's not wrong to do that. But people can dismiss that. I used to wish, since I became a Christian in my infancy, that it could have been different, that I could have been like a hell's angel and I fell off a bicycle and I would have an amazing story to tell. You know, you should have seen my tattoos, what a wreck I was, and so on. But I've got no story like that to tell.
But either a story to tell about Jesus And so do you if you're in Jesus. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alastair Begg. We'll hear more from Alastair on Monday. Our mission here at Truth for Life, as many of you know, is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance. One outcome of this mission is that unbelievers who hear God's Word may be transformed, save for all of eternity.
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So, if you're able to add a donation when you make your purchase, we would be grateful. Thanks for studying God's Word with us this week. Monday, we'll learn what Jesus was revealing about himself in John chapter 1 when he said, Truly, truly I say unto you. I hope you'll join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life.
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