Troy a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who`s child are you?
This going to be a three(3) part series, I`m sorry for the length, I`m really trying to keep the interest but it just becomes a passion to expose as much of the truth as I can, Enjoy.
From the Gospel of John 8:37-47.
We are going to consider verses 37 to 47 in John's gospel.Jesus is in direct confrontation with the Jewish leaders again and they have completely rejected His claims to be Messiah and Son of God. Christ has been making these claims since He first arrived and they have continued to reject them.
But one thing that is very, very important to understand as we approach these verses is the fact that as the antagonism of the Jewish leaders has grown, so has the directness of the statements of Christ.
Whereas initially He rather presented Himself at a positive way. As their rejection became more obvious, He turns on them in a very negative way. And so the stronger the rejection, the stronger His invectives against them. The more they show Him hatred, the more He strikes piercing blows into their hypocrisy. The harder they are on Him, the harder He is on them. He never backs off. He never slows up. He never tries to patronize them. He never gets the idea that He's losing His audience so He has to cajole them or patronize them at all. He came to condemn sin and the more open sin becomes the more open condemnation becomes. The more directly and devastatingly they blasted Him, the more He does at them. The more clearly they reject, the more fiery He condemns because the only way that He's ever going to communicate with them in terms of their sin is to be honest and straightforward about it. And the more blatant the sin is, the more obvious the condemnation must be. And He has never been any more devastating, and He has never been anymore direct than He is in this passage.
This passage comes to the real nitty gritty and He really hits them where they are. They have come to the epitome of their rejection and are ready to murder Him, and so He reaches the climax of His condemnation of their sin. In fact, He hits them so hard with this condemnation that they react by completely losing their cool, in the vernacular, they react in an intense kind of emotional hate that allows Him to lose the whole subtlety of the murder plot that's brewing and they find themselves picking up rocks to throw at Him. Only He disappears out of their midst. They are so incensed at what He says that they completely lose their cool, they completely depart from the idea of a secret plot to murder Him and they start grabbing the nearest stone to throw at Him. Rejection is a serious thing and it must be dealt with by serious measures, and so the more obvious the rejection becomes, the more direct becomes the condemnation of that rejection from the mouth of Jesus Christ.
And you know, that's really love in action because it is only the stern, harsh, decisive statement against sin that is going to reveal the character of sin. You can't talk softly about sin. You can't patronize sin. You must deal as harshly as the sin is and Jesus always does.
If you look closely you can see this happening all around us today. There are certain people, secs, that say for instents that this or that isn`t 'CHRIST LIKE", you know that some people think that Christ was always the easy going, passive, non-confirnational type of person. But in fact thats not at all the truth. Listen to me , when Christ knew that a certian doctrine was being tought wrong He didn`t muttle around in conversation about it, He drove the nails in and corrected the matter. As I said above it was always out of love and thats really the beauty behind His actions, that ity was always out of Love.
Now it's very obvious, if you know anything about the Bible, if you know anything about God at all, that God hates sin. And man has always tried to hide his sin. He may deny its existence. He may try to hide it from his mind by escaping through some psychological avenue. But whether man denies it or not, it is there and God hates it. And God is in the business of destroying man's false security that he throws up to cover his sin. And man always does this. When Adam was first confronted with his sin, he had kind of the standard remark, "The woman Thou gavest me." And since then everybody's been passing the buck, hiding behind some kind of a security. It wasn't my fault, I didn't understand, I didn't know the law, it was his fault, it was her fault, I didn't really sin, that was just this or that or the other thing, there's no such thing as sin, and there's always this denial. But God has always dealt harshly with sin.
And these Jews never even conceived of the fact that they were sinners. They had covered over their sin with a giant security blanket and the security blanket they had was their Abrahamic ancestry. They felt that because they were the children of Abraham, that meant they were automatically guaranteed a gilt-edged promise that they were going to be the sons of the Kingdom and they would have salvation just by birth into the line of Abraham. That is, because they were Jewish they automatically received all the promises of God and sin was no problem to them. They had their security in that. Of course, if there's anything that Jesus has to do, it's shoot down a false security. If a man has a false security, it's got to be eliminated before that man is going to see his need of Jesus Christ. Nobody is going to come to Jesus Christ, as I've said many times, until he knows he needs Him. And so Christ must destroy their false security and their security is in Abraham.
Now you remember over in Romans, and you might look at it for just a moment, the first chapter, we have here the words of Paul in dealing with man's false security. In chapter 1 he deals with the security of the Gentile. The Gentile comes along and says, "Well how can God punish me? I mean, how can God condemn me for my sin, I didn't know anything? I mean, I'm not like a Jew, I didn't get the law and the promises and all that stuff, the Bible, the Old Testament, how can God hold me responsible? So my security is ignorance," the Gentile says. So in answer to the security of ignorance, Paul says in Romans 1:18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men...here comes the key...who hold the truth in unrighteousness because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shown it unto them, for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are...what?...without excuse." To the Gentile He says your ignorance is inexcusable. You have enough knowledge of God within you and around you to be responsible.
And then the Gentile says, "Well, maybe my cop-out isn't my ignorance, it's my I-couldn't-help-it deal. I'm sorry, what do you expect out of me? I couldn't help it or I would have done different, I couldn't help it." Verse 32 of chapter 1 deals with that. "Who knowing the judgment of God that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have...what?...pleasure in them that do them." Don't tell me you would have done different, you loved it. That's what Jesus said in John 3 when He said, "Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil."
So the Gentile can't plead ignorance. He's inexcusable. He can't plead that he would have done differently but he didn't have any ability to do it because God says through the Apostle Paul you did it and you loved it. So the Gentile has no sin shelter. No man is ever going to come before God and say, "Well I'm sorry, God, I didn't know." God's knowledge has been given to every man. And no man is going to come before God and say, "I'm sorry, God, I couldn't help it." God's going to say, "Yes you could, and you loved it when you did it." So He deals with the Gentile.
Then you come to chapter 2 in Romans and he deals with the security of the Jew. The Jew comes along and says, "Well, I'm certainly secure because we were given the Law," verse 17 of chapter 2, "But if thou art called a Jew and restest in the Law and makest thy boast of God and knowest His will and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the Law." In other words, the Jew was resting in the fact that he had the Law. But Paul quickly adds to the Jew this fact, "Having the Law doesn't make you secure, it only makes you infinitely more responsible." All the Law does is make you absolutely responsible. And that's really the key. You go down to verse 12, "For as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law." That's the Gentile. "But as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law." The law is no guarantee of security. Just because the Jew happened to be in the line of those to whom God gave His Law does not secure them at all. That only brings infinitely greater responsibility.
Then the Jew says, "Well, okay it's not my connection with the Law, it's my connection with Abraham, circumcision." And you remember circumcising a baby on the eighth day was the sign that he was a descendant of Abraham. And they felt that this was a guarantee that nothing could ever happen to them, nothing could ever go wrong. God had them right on the top on all of His promises, they were the first ones to get everything. They were secure. They were right on the inside. Down in verse 25 the Jew that's arguing with Paul, the hypothetical antagonist here, in verse 25 Paul answers him by saying, "For circumcision verily profiteth," it's a great thing, "if you keep the law. But if you be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision." You call yourself a child of Abraham, that's good if you keep the law. If you don't keep the law, it doesn't mean a thing. Verse 26, "Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law," that is if an uncircumcised non-physical child of Abraham obeys God, then spiritually it counts for him as if he was a circumcised child of God.
What he is saying is simply this. Being the children of Abraham and having the circumcision, the sign of the fact that you're a child of Abraham, a true Jew as was the sign originally, does not secure you unless you're a true Jew before God in your heart. That comes in verse 28 and 29 and that's the key. "For he is not a Jew who is one...what?...outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he's a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God."
So, you see, there he explodes the basis of Jewish secure security. The Jew says, "Well, how can I miss out on God's promises because I received the law?" Paul says, "The law doesn't do you any good unless you obey it, it only makes you infinitely more responsible."
Then he says, "Well, it's my lineage to Abraham, the circumcision, the sign of my Abrahamic ancestry." Paul says, "That doesn't do you a bit of good unless your heart's right before God."
So Paul in this chapter in Romans 1 and 2, these two chapters, has exploded those securities as well. Now when you go back to John chapter 8, you will find that that's exactly what Jesus is doing here. He is demolishing the Jewish security of being related to Abraham. And they felt that automatically just because they were the seed of Abraham they would have the blessings whether they sinned or whether they didn't sin. And Jesus says that's not how it is. There is no security in religion. There's no security in race. There's no security in good works. Only in Christ is sin forgiven and a man placed righteous before God. It has nothing to do with his ancestry. And Jesus has told them they need forgiveness, and they deny it. And Jesus told them that they need to repent, and they refuse. And Jesus told them they don't know God, and they don't believe that. And Jesus told them they'll die in their sins and they laughed. "We are Abraham's seed. What could happen to us?" And so Jesus gets right down to the real issue. You see, the Jews had all their eggs in one basket, the seed of Abraham. That was their gilt-edged guarantee that they were in forever. Jesus has already said, "I can give you truth, and I can make you free," they said, "Us? We know the truth, we're already free. We're Abraham's seed, what do we need?" See, they never recognized their need ever. That's so common for people to think they are secure when in fact they are damned by the very thing they hold on to is their security.
Everybody has a security, no man can live without a security. You have to have it. And if you're not so infantile as to suck your thumb and rub your nose with a blanket, your security is something else. Everybody has to have a psychological security. You can't live without it. And tragically most people's securities are going to be that which damns them to hell forever because they're false securities. And we're in the business of trying to explode those false ones and give to a man the only real security, faith in Jesus Christ.
So Jesus knows that He must take direct method and attack those securities because only when that security is shattered can the true security of Christ be presented to them and received. And they always considered themselves privileged. I have picked up some quotes from some of the old rabbis. One of them says this, quote: "Abraham sits beside the gates of hell and does not permit any wicked Israelite to go through," end quote. When Justin Martyr was arguing with the Jew in the dialogue of Tripho[??], the Jew said this, quote: "They who are the seed of Abraham according to the flesh shall in any case, even if they be sinners and unbelieving and disobedient toward God share in the eternal Kingdom," end quote. Now they actually believed this because of the lineage of Abraham they were guaranteed all the promises of God. And so Jesus has to deal a death blow to that idea and He does it in this passage. You say, "Well how does that apply to us?" Just this, check your own life to see where your securities are because if they're not in Jesus Christ, they're false securities.
Now in this passage as we take it apart here, we'll find the Jew makes three claims. Now these are the Jewish leaders primarily and they make three claims that they hold on to as their security. And they're all really the same claim in different words. But each time they make a claim, Jesus destroys it. He shatters it, stripping them of their security.
The first claim is in verse 33, "We are Abraham's seed." The second claim is in verse 39, "Abraham is our father." The third claim is in verse 41, "We have one Father, even God." Those are the three claims they make. We'll consider each claim and how Christ dealt with it. And you'll notice that they get progressively greater. First they say in a general way, "We're Abraham's seed." Then they get specific and say, "Abraham is our father." Then they really get specific and say, "God is our Father. And to each claim Christ replies finally saying, "You really want to know who your father is? Your father's the devil."
OkayI`m going to leave it there and hope that you`ll move on to part two (2).
Amen
Troy
Who`s child are you?
This going to be a three(3) part series, I`m sorry for the length, I`m really trying to keep the interest but it just becomes a passion to expose as much of the truth as I can, Enjoy.
From the Gospel of John 8:37-47.
We are going to consider verses 37 to 47 in John's gospel.Jesus is in direct confrontation with the Jewish leaders again and they have completely rejected His claims to be Messiah and Son of God. Christ has been making these claims since He first arrived and they have continued to reject them.
But one thing that is very, very important to understand as we approach these verses is the fact that as the antagonism of the Jewish leaders has grown, so has the directness of the statements of Christ.
Whereas initially He rather presented Himself at a positive way. As their rejection became more obvious, He turns on them in a very negative way. And so the stronger the rejection, the stronger His invectives against them. The more they show Him hatred, the more He strikes piercing blows into their hypocrisy. The harder they are on Him, the harder He is on them. He never backs off. He never slows up. He never tries to patronize them. He never gets the idea that He's losing His audience so He has to cajole them or patronize them at all. He came to condemn sin and the more open sin becomes the more open condemnation becomes. The more directly and devastatingly they blasted Him, the more He does at them. The more clearly they reject, the more fiery He condemns because the only way that He's ever going to communicate with them in terms of their sin is to be honest and straightforward about it. And the more blatant the sin is, the more obvious the condemnation must be. And He has never been any more devastating, and He has never been anymore direct than He is in this passage.
This passage comes to the real nitty gritty and He really hits them where they are. They have come to the epitome of their rejection and are ready to murder Him, and so He reaches the climax of His condemnation of their sin. In fact, He hits them so hard with this condemnation that they react by completely losing their cool, in the vernacular, they react in an intense kind of emotional hate that allows Him to lose the whole subtlety of the murder plot that's brewing and they find themselves picking up rocks to throw at Him. Only He disappears out of their midst. They are so incensed at what He says that they completely lose their cool, they completely depart from the idea of a secret plot to murder Him and they start grabbing the nearest stone to throw at Him. Rejection is a serious thing and it must be dealt with by serious measures, and so the more obvious the rejection becomes, the more direct becomes the condemnation of that rejection from the mouth of Jesus Christ.
And you know, that's really love in action because it is only the stern, harsh, decisive statement against sin that is going to reveal the character of sin. You can't talk softly about sin. You can't patronize sin. You must deal as harshly as the sin is and Jesus always does.
If you look closely you can see this happening all around us today. There are certain people, secs, that say for instents that this or that isn`t 'CHRIST LIKE", you know that some people think that Christ was always the easy going, passive, non-confirnational type of person. But in fact thats not at all the truth. Listen to me , when Christ knew that a certian doctrine was being tought wrong He didn`t muttle around in conversation about it, He drove the nails in and corrected the matter. As I said above it was always out of love and thats really the beauty behind His actions, that ity was always out of Love.
Now it's very obvious, if you know anything about the Bible, if you know anything about God at all, that God hates sin. And man has always tried to hide his sin. He may deny its existence. He may try to hide it from his mind by escaping through some psychological avenue. But whether man denies it or not, it is there and God hates it. And God is in the business of destroying man's false security that he throws up to cover his sin. And man always does this. When Adam was first confronted with his sin, he had kind of the standard remark, "The woman Thou gavest me." And since then everybody's been passing the buck, hiding behind some kind of a security. It wasn't my fault, I didn't understand, I didn't know the law, it was his fault, it was her fault, I didn't really sin, that was just this or that or the other thing, there's no such thing as sin, and there's always this denial. But God has always dealt harshly with sin.
And these Jews never even conceived of the fact that they were sinners. They had covered over their sin with a giant security blanket and the security blanket they had was their Abrahamic ancestry. They felt that because they were the children of Abraham, that meant they were automatically guaranteed a gilt-edged promise that they were going to be the sons of the Kingdom and they would have salvation just by birth into the line of Abraham. That is, because they were Jewish they automatically received all the promises of God and sin was no problem to them. They had their security in that. Of course, if there's anything that Jesus has to do, it's shoot down a false security. If a man has a false security, it's got to be eliminated before that man is going to see his need of Jesus Christ. Nobody is going to come to Jesus Christ, as I've said many times, until he knows he needs Him. And so Christ must destroy their false security and their security is in Abraham.
Now you remember over in Romans, and you might look at it for just a moment, the first chapter, we have here the words of Paul in dealing with man's false security. In chapter 1 he deals with the security of the Gentile. The Gentile comes along and says, "Well how can God punish me? I mean, how can God condemn me for my sin, I didn't know anything? I mean, I'm not like a Jew, I didn't get the law and the promises and all that stuff, the Bible, the Old Testament, how can God hold me responsible? So my security is ignorance," the Gentile says. So in answer to the security of ignorance, Paul says in Romans 1:18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men...here comes the key...who hold the truth in unrighteousness because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shown it unto them, for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are...what?...without excuse." To the Gentile He says your ignorance is inexcusable. You have enough knowledge of God within you and around you to be responsible.
And then the Gentile says, "Well, maybe my cop-out isn't my ignorance, it's my I-couldn't-help-it deal. I'm sorry, what do you expect out of me? I couldn't help it or I would have done different, I couldn't help it." Verse 32 of chapter 1 deals with that. "Who knowing the judgment of God that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have...what?...pleasure in them that do them." Don't tell me you would have done different, you loved it. That's what Jesus said in John 3 when He said, "Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil."
So the Gentile can't plead ignorance. He's inexcusable. He can't plead that he would have done differently but he didn't have any ability to do it because God says through the Apostle Paul you did it and you loved it. So the Gentile has no sin shelter. No man is ever going to come before God and say, "Well I'm sorry, God, I didn't know." God's knowledge has been given to every man. And no man is going to come before God and say, "I'm sorry, God, I couldn't help it." God's going to say, "Yes you could, and you loved it when you did it." So He deals with the Gentile.
Then you come to chapter 2 in Romans and he deals with the security of the Jew. The Jew comes along and says, "Well, I'm certainly secure because we were given the Law," verse 17 of chapter 2, "But if thou art called a Jew and restest in the Law and makest thy boast of God and knowest His will and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the Law." In other words, the Jew was resting in the fact that he had the Law. But Paul quickly adds to the Jew this fact, "Having the Law doesn't make you secure, it only makes you infinitely more responsible." All the Law does is make you absolutely responsible. And that's really the key. You go down to verse 12, "For as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law." That's the Gentile. "But as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law." The law is no guarantee of security. Just because the Jew happened to be in the line of those to whom God gave His Law does not secure them at all. That only brings infinitely greater responsibility.
Then the Jew says, "Well, okay it's not my connection with the Law, it's my connection with Abraham, circumcision." And you remember circumcising a baby on the eighth day was the sign that he was a descendant of Abraham. And they felt that this was a guarantee that nothing could ever happen to them, nothing could ever go wrong. God had them right on the top on all of His promises, they were the first ones to get everything. They were secure. They were right on the inside. Down in verse 25 the Jew that's arguing with Paul, the hypothetical antagonist here, in verse 25 Paul answers him by saying, "For circumcision verily profiteth," it's a great thing, "if you keep the law. But if you be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision." You call yourself a child of Abraham, that's good if you keep the law. If you don't keep the law, it doesn't mean a thing. Verse 26, "Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law," that is if an uncircumcised non-physical child of Abraham obeys God, then spiritually it counts for him as if he was a circumcised child of God.
What he is saying is simply this. Being the children of Abraham and having the circumcision, the sign of the fact that you're a child of Abraham, a true Jew as was the sign originally, does not secure you unless you're a true Jew before God in your heart. That comes in verse 28 and 29 and that's the key. "For he is not a Jew who is one...what?...outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he's a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God."
So, you see, there he explodes the basis of Jewish secure security. The Jew says, "Well, how can I miss out on God's promises because I received the law?" Paul says, "The law doesn't do you any good unless you obey it, it only makes you infinitely more responsible."
Then he says, "Well, it's my lineage to Abraham, the circumcision, the sign of my Abrahamic ancestry." Paul says, "That doesn't do you a bit of good unless your heart's right before God."
So Paul in this chapter in Romans 1 and 2, these two chapters, has exploded those securities as well. Now when you go back to John chapter 8, you will find that that's exactly what Jesus is doing here. He is demolishing the Jewish security of being related to Abraham. And they felt that automatically just because they were the seed of Abraham they would have the blessings whether they sinned or whether they didn't sin. And Jesus says that's not how it is. There is no security in religion. There's no security in race. There's no security in good works. Only in Christ is sin forgiven and a man placed righteous before God. It has nothing to do with his ancestry. And Jesus has told them they need forgiveness, and they deny it. And Jesus told them that they need to repent, and they refuse. And Jesus told them they don't know God, and they don't believe that. And Jesus told them they'll die in their sins and they laughed. "We are Abraham's seed. What could happen to us?" And so Jesus gets right down to the real issue. You see, the Jews had all their eggs in one basket, the seed of Abraham. That was their gilt-edged guarantee that they were in forever. Jesus has already said, "I can give you truth, and I can make you free," they said, "Us? We know the truth, we're already free. We're Abraham's seed, what do we need?" See, they never recognized their need ever. That's so common for people to think they are secure when in fact they are damned by the very thing they hold on to is their security.
Everybody has a security, no man can live without a security. You have to have it. And if you're not so infantile as to suck your thumb and rub your nose with a blanket, your security is something else. Everybody has to have a psychological security. You can't live without it. And tragically most people's securities are going to be that which damns them to hell forever because they're false securities. And we're in the business of trying to explode those false ones and give to a man the only real security, faith in Jesus Christ.
So Jesus knows that He must take direct method and attack those securities because only when that security is shattered can the true security of Christ be presented to them and received. And they always considered themselves privileged. I have picked up some quotes from some of the old rabbis. One of them says this, quote: "Abraham sits beside the gates of hell and does not permit any wicked Israelite to go through," end quote. When Justin Martyr was arguing with the Jew in the dialogue of Tripho[??], the Jew said this, quote: "They who are the seed of Abraham according to the flesh shall in any case, even if they be sinners and unbelieving and disobedient toward God share in the eternal Kingdom," end quote. Now they actually believed this because of the lineage of Abraham they were guaranteed all the promises of God. And so Jesus has to deal a death blow to that idea and He does it in this passage. You say, "Well how does that apply to us?" Just this, check your own life to see where your securities are because if they're not in Jesus Christ, they're false securities.
Now in this passage as we take it apart here, we'll find the Jew makes three claims. Now these are the Jewish leaders primarily and they make three claims that they hold on to as their security. And they're all really the same claim in different words. But each time they make a claim, Jesus destroys it. He shatters it, stripping them of their security.
The first claim is in verse 33, "We are Abraham's seed." The second claim is in verse 39, "Abraham is our father." The third claim is in verse 41, "We have one Father, even God." Those are the three claims they make. We'll consider each claim and how Christ dealt with it. And you'll notice that they get progressively greater. First they say in a general way, "We're Abraham's seed." Then they get specific and say, "Abraham is our father." Then they really get specific and say, "God is our Father. And to each claim Christ replies finally saying, "You really want to know who your father is? Your father's the devil."
OkayI`m going to leave it there and hope that you`ll move on to part two (2).
Amen
Troy
