The Bible's pretty clear: in our natural state, we are spiritually dead.
So, what does that mean for us, and how do we become spiritually alive? We'll find out today on Truth for Life as Alastair Begg continues our study of Jesus' truly truly statements. John chapter five And Worse. Nine We'll read from there to verse 29. John chapter five and Verse 9.
The man has been healed, he has taken up his bed. And he's gone walking away. And we pick it up from the final sentence of John 9.
Now, that day was the Sabbath.
So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath. And it is not lawful for you to to take up your bed. But he answered them, The man who healed me, that man, said to me, Take up your bed and walk. They asked him, who is the man who said to you, take up your bed and walk?
Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you're well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was 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 will he 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.
For the Father judges no one. but has given all judgment to the Son. that all may honour the Son just as they honour 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 has 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. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life. And those who have done evil. to the resurrection of judgment. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Well, our truly, truly, for this morning is John 5, 25. 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. Our father, we Pray earnestly and humbly for the help of the Holy Spirit.
Two Faithfully say what the text says. to understand it. to believe it. and to live in the light of it. And we pray in Christ's name.
Amen.
Now, by this time, you know that we're going to say. almost without exception, That every one of these truly truly has to be set within the context, obviously, in the context of the whole Bible, certainly in the context of the purpose of John in his gospel. John 20, 31, many more signs have been done. That are not included, he says, in this gospel, but these are included in the gospel in order that you might. believe, and that by believing you might have life in His name.
So, all the way through, he's writing not a biography, he's not writing a history. He is providing us with a gospel. And his purpose is straightforward. And we have to keep that in mind always so that we don't go astray. We also have to set every one of these verses within the wider context of what is being said.
And uh that demands that we are able to look back as well as looking forward. And so I encourage you to be diligent in looking into the text, if you can, to make sure that if I'm saying it's in a certain verse, it's actually there. Or you can come to me afterwards and say, No, you had that completely wrong, it's somewhere else. But that would be okay. It happens to me all the time.
But anyway, here we go. It it all began, as we now know. Because a man who had been an invalid for 38 years Was seen in the community walking along the road carrying the mat that he'd been lying on for virtually all of his life. People that we might have expected to say, what a wonderful, joyful reality this is. Had actually taken upon themselves.
to oppose what had happened. to speak unkindly to the man. These individuals are identified here in the text as the Jewish folks. who were obsessed with rules. They were so obsessed with their rules that they couldn't find it in themselves to rejoice in what had happened to this man.
And when they finally manage to discover who it is that spoke to the man in this way and find out that it is Jesus of Nazareth. then they are now completely committed not only to trying to silence him, but actually to kill him. And they are concerned that this Jesus is not only a breaker of the Sabbath, but he is guilty of blasphemy. They were in no doubt that he was making claims to deity. And so instead of acclamation, Their response is persecution.
Now, last time, in seeking to handle this or be handled by this. We delved somewhat into the doctrine of the Trinity, and I quoted from the Athanasian Creed and so on. In that experience and in response to the experience, I was fearful that I was perhaps guilty of dealing with it in such a way that we couldn't see the forest for the trees. And in reflecting on it as the day unfolded and then into the beginning of the week, I was still really there in my thinking. And I was saying to myself, I wonder if anybody really got the connection between that question, do you want to be healed?
And then everything else that followed from that. I said, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. And then wonderfully I got an email, just a little encouragement from God. Uh written by somebody, I won't tell you who it is. But it's from far away, from, I don't know, 2,000 miles away.
And this person wrote to say, I woke up on Sunday morning overwhelmed with a sense that I should be in church. I decided that since I was not in a place where I was immediately accessible to a church. To tune in to what used to be my church, namely Parkside Church. She's writing in real time, and she says, Today was the first service in 12 years that I have attended. I won't go into the details of it.
But she essentially says this. When you ask that question, The question that Jesus asked, do you want to be healed? I said Yes, Lord Jesus, I desperately want to be, and I need to be. And she realized that what Christ had done in the transforming of the man was setting the scene for the radical transformation, which was not taking place first of all in physical terms, but in the great need. That is spiritual.
And that reality we need to underpin once again the link between the man's physical predicament and our spiritual predicament. that it is emblematic of the problem that we face. By nature, the Bible makes clear we are helpless spiritually. We're not in a position to fix ourselves. We are as helpless spiritually, the Bible says, as this man was physically.
And that's why when Jesus asked him, do you want to be healed? You remember, he said, I've got nobody to help me. I'm completely alone in this situation. I couldn't reach out and find somebody around here who could do for me what needs to be done. And of course, we then considered Jesus' response to the objection of his opponents.
My father is working, he says, and I'm and I'm working. Down in verse 21, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. And Jesus is explaining to these individuals that what he's doing is the work of God. It is God who gives life. It is only God who saves from judgment.
And the question then would be, how does that happen? How is somebody granted life? How is somebody set free from the prospect of judgment on the last day? And we don't have to imagine the answer. It is clear in verse 24.
Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me. Has eternal life, does not come into judgment, but has passed from death. to life. That is why the Bible says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. That is why God says to Moses, there's going to come a prophet after you.
And I want everybody to listen to what it is he has to say. And of course, that is Jesus himself. And now Jesus stands in this context. And he affirms that which the prophet anticipated. And he does so in the ears of those who are actually unwilling to hear.
You remember in Paul Simon's song The Sound of Silence, he speaks about people who are hearing without listening. I'm not sure what he meant by that. But here, these people are listening without hearing. They're listening without hearing. It is everyone who hears and then believes.
I've said this to you before, but if you remember in childhood, at least I do, I didn't have an alarm clock, I didn't want one, it might wake me up. And it was the responsibility of my parents to do that job, and often my mother. And and as you're in coming just out of your slumbers, it just sounds like there's somebody somewhere shouting something. There's just a noise. And then as you come a little further into the real world, you see there's someone shouting about something.
They're shouting, they're sounding, they're trying to wake somebody up. And uh Oh It's my name that's being called. They're awakening Neoch. I think that would be the testimony of some of you. You came around this church or another church.
You said somebody's shouting about something. Wonder why they're shouting about?
Somebody seems to be calling somebody. Calling them to faith. And who's the one calling? Not the preacher. Jesus.
Jesus. That's what he's saying to these folks. My father is at work. I'm at work. And whoever hears and believes my words will pass from death to life.
The hymn writer captures it perfectly in a wonderful hymn. I don't think that we have ever sung, I'm not sure. But uh hopefully we will now. But it begins, I heard the voice of Jesus say, Come unto me and rest. And then a subsequent verse goes, I heard the voice of Jesus say, I am this dark world's light.
Look unto me. Your morn shall rise, and your And all your days be bright. I look to Jesus. And I found in him my light, my sun, And in that light of life I'll walk. till traveling days are dawn.
That's a testimony of somebody who has heard the voice of Jesus say, Come to me. You see, that's what Jesus is doing. He's inviting us to himself. You're not inviting us to church. He is the head of the church, to invite him to himself is essentially the same.
But, nevertheless, that is not the invitation. The invitation is to come to him.
Now let's pick up on this notion of my father is working and I am working. The question is when is this taking place? When are you working? When is the father working? And Let me suggest He is working now and then.
Now and then, Now I don't mean that. In the colloquial way that we use it, which means Essentially, if we say, well, do you brush your teeth? And your grandson says, now and then. And you say, well, now and then is not going to be good enough. We need now and now and now and now and now.
So we're not using it in terms of intermittently or occasionally. We're using it in light of what the text says. And I'll point it out to you. Verse 25: Truly, truly I say to you, an hour is coming. Notice, and is now here.
Now and is now here. Verse twenty-eight Do not marvel at this, for For an hour is coming. Then You see the distinction? Twenty-five. An hour is coming, and it's now.
An hour is coming. And it's then.
Now this now In verse 25, Is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. An hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.
Well None of us Jesus has already pointed out, none of us honor The sun As we should. You see, if people say, I think that my big problem with religion is that I just don't do enough good things, or I haven't been good enough, or I haven't fixed myself, or whatever it is, or I've got a whole litany of bad things that I've ever done. That actually is not the greatest problem. The greatest problem is that by nature we do not honor Jesus as the Son. We do not.
We use his name as a cuss. We knew his name as a byword. We make reference to him as a figure of history. We may damn him with faint praise by suggesting that he was a great man, but we don't honor him. We don't call him Lord, we don't call him Savior, we don't call him King.
That's the problem. You do not believe.
Now you'll notice that it's there in the text. People say, well I know that it says that, but I'm quite a decent person, you know. Let me ask you, do you honor the sun?
Well, I believe in God. Let me ask you. Do you honour? The sun. The Bible explains that our natural state.
is spiritual. Death. The idea that pervades our culture is that somehow or another we live in a middle ground in between life and death, between truth and error, and so on. And it is up to us to decide along the way which of these places we want to spend our time and give our energies. As if somehow or another we live in some quasi-unequivocal state or a state of equivocation.
So we have the option, this one or that one? No, says the Bible. No, we are on a broad road that leads to destruction. And there is a road that leads to life. And the pathway from the broad one to the narrow one is through a person.
That person is Jesus. He stands at the crossroads, inviting us to honor him. to believe him. to hear him. and to trust him.
We've got no one to help us in this regard. We are no one to help us. If you think about the predicament of modern man in relationship to the things that are before us in our world today, Who's going to help? Who's going to fix these things? Who can transform?
Who else can do this? Who else? Who else? Only a holy God. How do we meet the Holy God?
In the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you want to be healed? I have no one to help me.
Well, you can surely get yourself out of your predicament, can't you? No one. No one gives me anything. Here it is. Can dead people bring themselves to life?
No. That's why in chapter 3 Jesus is making clear in the truly truly You must be born again. You're in need of regeneration. You're in we're in need not of doing something But of having something done. That the work of regeneration is not something that we do to put ourselves in a place with God, but it is something that God has miraculously done in Jesus in order to reconcile us to Himself.
Now, when you go forward into the epistles, this comes across clearly. Ephesians chapter 2. And you were dead, he says, in your trespasses and in your sins. We're all dead men, as the walking dead. dead in your trespasses in your sins.
You read on, but God, who is rich in mercy, According to the great love with which He has loved us, made us alive together with Christ. That the second person of the Trinity has united himself with humanity in the incarnation. And in the miracle of regeneration, We are united with Christ, in Christ. We are not simply people that have become religious and decided to follow Jesus. We are in Jesus.
If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. What is the new? It is the reality of the Spirit of God filling the life of one who has been made a child of God. And that is why we have a hope of a resurrection.
Because we are united with him in his death, in order that we might be united with him in his resurrection. I mean, it is ontologically impossible for a person who is in Christ. to be lost for eternity. Why? Because Jesus isn't lost for eternity.
That's what he's saying here. And you who were dead. Colossians 2, 13, and you who were dead, God made you alive together with him. You and I weren't made alive in abstraction. We were made alive by being united with Christ.
You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. He's titled today's message A Matter of Death and Life, and we'll hear the conclusion on Monday. A message like the one we've heard today makes it clear why it's so important for everyone to hear the gospel. If you've begun your holiday shopping, I want to encourage you to consider giving gifts that will point others to Christ. And what could be better than giving someone a Bible?
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Thanks for listening this week. Hope you enjoy your weekend and are able to worship with your local church family. Monday, we'll find out why death is not the great equalizer that so many claim. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
