Believe in the Son

As we think about our text this morning, we're in John chapter 3, verse 31 through 36. If you don't have a Bible, there are a few Bibles available. They're either underneath your pew or right in front of your pew. Please grab one or find a Bible. We're on page 888, John chapter 3. One of the things is we're focusing on this passage and we continue to study John. I've really wrestled with this question. What is faith? Someone emailed me recently in response to a sermon. What is faith? What is faith and belief? Those are actually kind of tricky words to define simply and clearly. As I wrestle with it, what is faith? There's a couple things we can lay out. When we think about faith, there's the subject and the object of faith. There's the person who has faith, and then there's the object of what they're believing in. So faith has two parts. The person who is believing and having faith, and then what they have faith in. As we think about that just generally, everybody has faith in something. Everybody has something they believe in as a greatest good, as a greatest purpose, as the ultimate end. We're all trusting in something. The real question is, what are we trusting in? What is the object of our faith? We come together this morning to say we're trusting in Jesus Christ, the church of Jesus Christ. That is the ultimate end, the ultimate good, the highest good, the highest end. We are to place our faith in Jesus Christ. And if you think about the specific faith in Christ, it is a unique faith. Because it requires the intellect, there's there's facts, there's truths, there's there's content, it's an intellectual faith, there's a there's an aspect of faith in Christ that involves the intellect. There's also a part of the faith that requires volition, choosing and committing, giving oneself over, saying, I am his because he has declared that he is mine. There's also the part of the faith, there's an aspect of faith that's the affection, it's a desire, a love. And then the other part of faith is adoration. Once we see that he loves us, we love him, and once we see him in his glory, we worship him. So faith has a subject, our own commitment to Christ, and then the faith we have in Christ has different parts, the intellect, the volition, the affection, the adoration. Now, if we think about faith, I want to give us a caution. We need to be careful in putting too much weight in the quality of our faith. We need to emphasize and keep focus on the object of our faith. See, it's Christ and how reliable and how truthful and how ultimately powerful he is that will actually strengthen a weak faith. I'm not saying we need to stay in an immature state as Christians with weak faith, but if we want to grow in faith, we don't focus on how can I make my faith stronger? No, we focus on Christ who is so ultimately reliable and trustworthy. As we think about how dependable and reliable and trustworthy Christ is, that will grow our faith. And this morning, our passage points us to the greatness of Christ that will strengthen our faith. Now, if you're new and I do see many new faces, so I want to give some background as to where we are. We're in John chapter three. We're in this very last section. So far, John 1, 1 through 18, what we gave you is an option of what you can meditate upon during the offering. That's the prologue. John really is setting up everything he's going to say radical right there. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God, that's radical. That is a major change, redemptive history that is revealing something new to God's people. There's one God and it's the father and it's the son. And then we're going to get even more radical. It's the Holy Spirit. He revealed something even more radical. That word, he became flesh. God became man. God humbled himself and came down to us. And even more radical, in him you can truly see God. Something Israel knew they could not because of the Moses event on Mount Sinai. So the prologue really sets up everything he's going to introduce radical. And so the prologue tells us A lot about Christ and God's plan of salvation. Then we hear the testimony of John. John says, I'm not the Christ. That one's the Christ. Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. John begins to identify who the Messiah is, who the Savior is. We saw the first son, the wedding at Canaan, where Christ represents himself. He presents himself as the ultimate bridegroom, the one who has come to redeem his bride, who he loves. Then we saw that Jesus said, my body is the temple. It will be destroyed. It will be risen up in three days. That the power of the gospel there and who he is and how he was replacing the Old Testament order of worship. Then we saw that Jesus taught the popular teaching there in John 3. You must be born again. He corrects the Jewish leader, Nicodemus. You must be born again to see the kingdom of God. And last week we saw John the Baptist saying, I rejoice because I'm the friend of the bridegroom and I'm rejoicing that everyone is going to him. He must increase. I must decrease. And now we come to our passage, which I do not think is the words of John the Baptist. I believe this is John the evangelist. I believe here because John has introduced so many radical new concepts. He's taking a break and he's giving us a review. So if you're a professor, this would be like you're introducing a new class to students. They've never heard these concepts before. You realize that for four days they just need a review course. So he's going to go back and review all the major points he's tried to make to make sure you're getting it before he moves on. So here we're in John 3. I believe it's John the Evangelist, not John the Baptist. It's not a continuation of John the Baptist. It's John the Evangelist, the author of our gospel. Giving us a review so we can see how great Christ is. John 3, beginning in verse 31. He who comes from above is above all he who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever received his testimony sets it still to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the spirit without measure. The father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life. But the wrath of God remains on him. As we look at our passage this morning, we're going to see five reasons to believe in Jesus. We're going to look at the content of what our faith should be, the object of our faith. We're going to see five reasons to believe in Jesus. First reason is because Jesus is above all. He is above all. Secondly, he speaks with final and ultimate authority. He is above all. He speaks with final authority. He's the one who has the spirit without measure. He has final authority. And he gives life. Now, the reason we're focusing on belief here, the focus of our passages were to believe in this Jesus that John is proclaiming. It's because everything John writes is that we believe in Jesus. We know that it's John's one of the most hopeful writers that he tells exactly what he said. Everything he's going to say. so that you might believe. You see that there in John chapter 20. Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Here, John is summarizing again the things that we're looking to believe in in Christ. I want to emphasize here, belief in Christ, it's not a blind faith. It's not a blind leap. There's clear content. There's a clear object. There's a clear revelation that we can know and have assurance of. It's reliable as a foundation. God has spoken, and so we know who we're trusting in. Our first point, believe in Jesus because he is We're to believe in Jesus because he is above all. He who comes from above is above all. He was of the earth, belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. Now, did you hear the parallelism in that passage? This one verse it's set up as a chiasm. That's a big fancy word, a chiasm. There's the first line, the second line and a third line. The chiastic structure is clear because the first and the third line, they parallel one another. Listen, he who comes from above is above all. He who comes from heaven is above all. He's repeating the same concept. And then what's in the middle is usually what's most emphasized and focused upon. But let's think about this first and last line. He who comes from above and he who comes from heaven. Now, obviously, those are parallel. Heaven is above. He's coming from earth, from heaven. to earth. They're synonyms. And what John is emphasizing with these two sentences that it's repetitious. We need, we need to pay attention is that Jesus's origin is why he is superior and supreme overall. He is above all because of his origin. And there's two ways that John has emphasized Jesus's origin, where he has come from. The first is in relation to creation, Jesus has no beginning. Jesus has no origin, he was not created, we go back to John one one again in the beginning was the word he was with God, he was God, he created everything. Nothing was created apart from him. All that is created is created by him. Therefore, he is the creator, not the creature. So we see here that this one we're speaking of, Jesus, he's above all because he is God Almighty. His origin is that of not created. He is the creator. The second way we see his origin, it's in relation to the father. So within the creator, within the Godhead, it's the father who has sent his son. The father and the son have lived forever in eternal love, and it is the father who has sent down his son, who has no beginning, but is begotten of the father. He has sent him down. We see here that the power of the love, because it's the father who sends his most beloved son out of love for us. Jesus is above all because he's God. Now this is important because the two lines, he is from heaven, he is from above, the centerpiece really helps us make sense as to why he's emphasizing this. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. There's a contrast here. Jesus who is from above and from heaven, he's being contrasted with he who is of the earth. Now, the word earth. That's speaking of the created order. God is he created. World was a very technical word earlier in John 3 16. God so loved the world. The world is like that passage in Psalm 2 that I read earlier. The world is the nations that rage against God. The world is used by John to emphasize that system of people, us, who hate God. who resist him, who rage against him, who rebel against him. But earth, he uses it in a very different technical sense. It's just a created order. And so what he's emphasizing is he's God, he's not created. He's a creator. He's not just any man. Here we see that the contrast is very important. What he says is superior because he's God. He's not just any old man. It's not the sinfulness of man that makes his word superior. It's the fact that he himself is God. Now, why is it important that he's superior? Why is it important that he is above all? Paul will emphasize this. His name is above all names. He is the one trustworthy, reliable God. He is the strongest. He is the wisest. He is the most worthy. He has absolute authority. He is the most loving. He is not the creator. He is not the created, he is to be worshipped by the created. Now as we think about who is he speaking of? Who is earthly that he is speaking of? He could have in mind here specifically John the Baptist, who is earthly. So the passage beforehand were people concerned that the disciples were leaving John the Baptist and going to Jesus. And so John the Evangelist could be saying, Jesus is greater than John the Baptist because John the Baptist is earthly. Jesus is heavenly. He's divine. That's a possibility. It could be Nicodemus. Remember what Jesus says of Nicodemus. Nicodemus, I have told you earthly things and you have not believed. How will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? That's another possibility of who he could be focusing on. Really, I think this is setting Jesus apart from everyone else. Every other human being is being set apart from Jesus Christ, who was the one God man. And this is important. No one can ever claim to improve upon or add to what Jesus Christ has said. He is the final and most important prophet. He is the final word from God. Friends, this is why we believe Mormonism is a false religion. Their leader, their prophet, has claimed to correct and improve upon what Jesus Christ has said. This is why I believe Jehovah's Witness is a false religion. Their leaders claim to improve upon and correct and modify what Jesus Christ has said. This is why I believe Islam is a false religion. It's because they sought to improve upon and correct and modify what Jesus said. Now, we want to be careful of those religions, but I actually think that the person that we need to be most careful about and most concerned about who corrects and modifies what Jesus does is us. We have this simple tendency. We need to first think, how do I read God's word and how do I seek to soften it where my sin looks so clear and obvious? So we want to modify God's word because we want to justify our sin. We want to be comfortable in our sin. We want to make God comfortable with our sin. So we modify and justify and we change. This is why denying yourself is such a key component of discipleship. As we read God's word, it should correct us. Jesus didn't come because we were already right and he just needed to add a little bit more information. Jesus came because we were completely and dead wrong. He had to come and speak truth in the midst of the darkness. He had to come and speak life in the midst of our dead hearts that were resisting God. No one here is complete yet. So every time we go to God's word, we should be expecting God to correct us. We should be longing to be corrected because we're sinners. This is who we are. This is why Christ came. We should expect Christ's word to correct us. And this is the key component. Deny yourself. Resist the temptation to alter and modify what God's word says. The second thing we see in our passage in verse 32 through 34. Believe in Jesus because he speaks with final authority. Believe in Jesus because he speaks with final authority. His testimony is different. When he gives testimony, it's not hearsay. It's not, this is what I heard God say. When Jesus speaks, it's what God's saying. When he speaks, it's because he is speaking with absolute authority as the son of God. It's amazing that the crowds, they were always amazed by what Jesus said. They could hear and experience, understand there's something different. There's a different authority. Hebrews one says it very well. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son. whom he appointed the heir of all things, for whom also he created the world. The sun has come. His word is the final and ultimate word. He utters the words of God because he is the word of God. Now, notice here. First, 32, yet no one receives his testimony. Almighty God came down and spoke. That's what John's saying. And then he declares no one receives his testimony. The light is coming to the darkness and the darkness knew it not. He came to his own and they rejected him. He came to his own to save them and they sought to nail him and did nail him to a cross. If you look at Stephen's speech in Acts 7, it's really amazing what he's arguing there. He keeps going after prophet after prophet. He says this prophet came and the people of God persecuted him and rejected him. This prophet came, the people of God persecuted and rejected him over and over again. God sent his man to his people and he was rejected. And here's a final and perfect prophet. He comes and he's rejected. Notice verse 33, whoever receives his testimony sets it still to this, that God is true. Now, this isn't just simply saying God exists. This is saying God is truthful, God is reliable, what God says is true, what he says is the truth that I can build my life upon. The application is that we need to be listening. We need to stop altering God's word with our earthly and worldly wisdom, and we must follow exactly what Christ says. And here's the most important thing Christ says. If you're not a Christian, I especially want you to hear this. It's the most important thing Christ says. Since I came because you are rebellious, God, Jesus Christ came down to save sinners, he came down to be the Lamb of God. To take away sin. You see, our sin was an offense to God. Our sin was against God and God's judgment. His condemnation was against us because we were sinning against him. But Jesus Christ, the perfect God, the one God, he became like us in every way so that he lived the perfect, righteous life so that when he died on the cross as the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, when we believe in him, our sin is counted towards him. God's judgment is counted towards him. His righteousness is counted towards us. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. He came to save sinners and he came to save sinners by becoming as sin for us so that we're forgiven. We're free. We're declared to be sons and daughters with a new identity while he's declared a sinner and he dies in our place. But he rose again and he gives us hope of new life. Now, today we are still still to follow Jesus's voice as the disciples were to be taught by Jesus, as Jesus declared, teach disciples everything that I tell you. Jesus is no longer walking and talking with us. So how are we supposed to follow Jesus's voice? Well, he sent the spirit as we sang in in that fantastic Keith Green song. There is a redeemer. He has sent the spirit until he comes again. And the spirit led certain men to record what we call the word of God. We have John, we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, we have Paul, we have Peter, we have Jew. This is the word of Christ. Well, we can name the individual authors who are human authors of the book. Every word in this book is Christ's word. When we listen to this, when we obey this, we're listening to Christ and obeying his word. Now, this we are by definite a book religion. Some folks don't like that. It seems impersonal, but we are a book religion. Everything we know about God is because God has spoken. We're a book religion. Everything that we know of God is must be founded and based upon what he has said in this book. Now, if we are supposed to students or professors here, when we study certain subjects, what we're doing is trying to just gather data. We're trying to believe and understand the intellectual aspect of certain topics. We have biology, chemistry, math, history. We're trying to wrap our head around the certain data. This is not that kind of book. Because God has spoken so that we know about him. But most of all, so we know him. We were created to be loved by him. We were created to know him. And what he has said is said so that we know him personally. We were designed To worship him and to know him personally. So this is the wisdom that Christ speaks. He speaks wisdom, and there's two parts to wisdom, to know God and to know yourself. There's two parts to true wisdom, to know God and to know yourself. We must know who God is so we know how to worship him and how to live for him. We must know who we are as we were originally designed. But here's a very important thing about us now as sinners. We're idol factories. We must recognize that about ourselves. We had the tendency to always change what God says. We also have a tendency to worship things that are God. We are prone to worship the things of this creation. And God is calling us in Christ to worship him. We must listen to his word and how it corrects us and leads us to true worship. The third thing we see in our passage, believe in Jesus, because he has all authority. Believe in Jesus because he has all authority. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives a spirit without measure. The father loves the son and has given all things into his hands. John declares everything in his hands. My daughter was singing this morning as I was thinking of this passage. He's got the whole world in his hands. The itty bitty babies and the mommies and the daughters and the fathers and the sons. He's got everything in his hands. It reveals that he has absolute authority. Whatever's in his hands, he has absolute authority of. And here we see the bigger picture. He's the king of all creation. The father has sent the son to exercise his righteous rule in his reign over this creation that's raging against him. He has sent the son to put us back in proper order. This is why we're Christ-centered. The one we sing of most and foremost is Jesus Christ, because he is the one who has ultimate authority. something else I want to point out in this passage. We have a full-fledged Trinitarian doctrine here. Look at this. He gives the spirit without measure. The father loves the son. You have all three persons of the Trinity here in this one passage. It's important. I want us to think about this because this is what John is introducing very radically to God's people that there is one God and it's three persons. Do we see the father? He loves the son. It's a forever kind of love. It's the eternal love. And the beauty of that for us is that when we believe in Jesus, we get to share in that love. The love we get to receive is a love that we share because Jesus has shared that inheritance with us. The other passage here, he gives the spirit without measure, this is a there's some confusion or there's some debate over who's really in reference here. Is Jesus the one who gives the spirit without measure, or is it the father who gives the son the spirit without measure? There are two possibilities. Actually, I think both those statements are true. Jesus does. He does give us the spirit without measure. But I think here the passage is saying the father gives the spirit to Jesus without measure. And that's significant. Every Old Testament prophet, or every Old Testament king, everyone who was ever anointed with the Spirit, it was measured. It was for a specific time, a specific purpose. Jesus received the Spirit without measure, the fullness of the Spirit, for the entirety of his lifetime, for the ultimate end. As we look at this passage, I want to give some application on the doctrine of the Trinity, because I was recently studying another passage of John with a a friend, and I came across, wow, I've never seen the doctrine of the Trinity in this passage, and this friend said, why do you get so enthusiastic about the doctrine of the Trinity? Well, I kind of had to ask, am I getting too enthusiastic about the doctrine of the Trinity? Well, no, it's God, so I'm going to stay enthusiastic. He said, what's so exciting about it? It's a good question, and so I want to propose to you two questions that I asked him. that I think should make us all enthusiastic about knowing more about the God who we say is the Trinity. First question, what is the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God. In order to love someone, you need to know who they are. And the fullest revelation of who God is, is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If we want to grow in our love for God, we must grow in knowing who God is. And the fullest revelation of who God is, is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Second, how do we know God loves us? How do we know God loves us? It's because the Father sent the Son to die for us. That is the clearest demonstration of God's love, and by nature, it is in Trinitarian language. It is based upon and founded upon a doctrine of the Trinity. This is why that Council of Nicaea, they fought for the deity of the sun. They were going to be killed for the deity of the sun, because if the sun is not divine, we're not redeemed. So the gospel is what we're all about at Jefferson Park. We're here to be people of the gospel. We're here to exalt Christ. We're here to love God more. And I think one of the ways we can grow in our love and understand the gospel is to grow in our love and understanding of the Trinity. The gospel is the entire Godhead given over to us without measure. It is the entirety of God, all three persons committing to us, to love us, to care for us, With all they have. Think about it. The father sent his most beloved son. In order to truly grasp the gospel, we have to wrestle with this. Why did the father send his most beloved son? Why did the father choose us to be his son's bride? Why is he now declared us to be sons because of Jesus Christ? Secondly, the son laid down his life for us. There is no greater love. He came to purify us as his bride. so that we can come up with him and worship the father. The spirit leaves that led the son to die for us. He now is well that so that we can worship God, the father purely. This is the beauty of it. All of God is for us. The father and the son and the spirit is all working for us for the one purpose of redeeming us. It gives it that bigger and greater foundation as we think about the entirety of God. loving and caring for us. Our fifth reason, our final reason for believing in Jesus Christ, we believe in Jesus because he gives life. Verse 36, very simply, whoever believes in the son has eternal life. What do we have before life? If you don't believe in Jesus, what do you have? You have death. Yes, we're all going to die. But we're talking about a different kind of death than just the physical death. We're talking about spiritual death. We're talking about the fact that anyone apart from Christ, anyone who's not been redeemed and renewed and spirit indwelled and empowered by God, anyone who does not know Christ, we're not able to do anything that is good in relation to God. We're dead towards God. A dead person doesn't respond to the things of God. A dead person doesn't do anything that glorifies God. We're spiritual zombies. Yes, we're walking around. We realize there's a world around us, but we're completely blind to the other truths that are there that are more important that we need to be asking what is pleasing to God. We are dead. We're under judgment, but if we believe in Jesus Christ, His death is for us and he gives us his life. I do have one bonus point because the outline was five reasons to believe in Jesus Christ. The six is a point of application. Obey Jesus because you believe in him. Obey Jesus because you believe in him. We read the entirety of verse 36. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." Notice their belief and obey are used as synonyms. If you believe in the Son, you obey him. If you obey the Son, you're believing in him. Notice he transitions those words without any explanation, because it's understood. If you believe in Jesus, you're not just saying, I want a ticket to heaven. I want a ticket out of hell. What you're saying is what you've said is true in its entirety. I am really messed up. I'm more of a sinner than I could possibly even imagine. And you're telling me you're still going to love me. You're going to lay down your life for me. And you've risen again after dying for me so that I may have hope. We believe the truth of the gospel that saves us. And then we believe everything he says. See, when Jesus comes, he comes because we've got it all wrong. He comes to tell us how to be reconciled to God. He comes to tell us what life is really meant to be about. He tells us how life was meant to be lived. And now we submit to him. To believe him is to obey him. He is our king. It changes how we live. It changes what we live for. It changes for whom we live. Because all of us, by our sinful nature, we live for ourselves. But we listen to Christ, we begin to live for God as we were intended. The last thing I want to make a comment on in here, in terms of the passage, it says the wrath of God remains on him. If you do not believe in Christ, if you don't obey Christ, the wrath of God remains on you. We're already condemned. We're born as sinners and we've only lived as sinners. The wrath of God is upon you if you have not believed in Christ, you're already condemned. Christ has come to save us out of condemnation. And I want to say the wrath of God isn't some impersonal retribution, the wrath of God isn't just the business of God because he likes to be mean to people. No, the wrath of God, it's personal. The wrath of God is personal for God, because he created you to be his. And sinners, we've only spat in his face. We've only rejected his righteous rule. We've denied him. It's personal. That's what the love of Christ is so personal. He has come to claim us back. The wrath of God is personal in the same way his love for us in Jesus Christ is personal. Friends, if you have not believed in Jesus Christ, the wrath of God is already upon you. We have rejected him, but Christ has come so that we may know him again and be loved by him. We pray with me. We thank you, Lord, that you are the God who speaks. That we can know who you are by your word, we can know you and all your glory. In Jesus Christ, we can know you and your love and that you have sent your son. We thank you, Lord, that we can understand your word because you have given us your spirit who authored these words. I pray, Lord, as we are a church seeking to glorify you, that we be built upon your word, we be submissive to your rule and authority. I pray most of all for anyone who does not know you. Anyone who is not sure of their position in standing with you, I pray that you would convict them, cut them to the heart, just like you did in Acts 2, Lord, to those who heard the first gospel proclamation. Cut us to the heart so that we see our sin and we see that your death was sufficient to forgive us and give us new life. We praise you. The God who is just in judgment, the God who is merciful in seeking us out while we're still raging against you. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.