A
Study of the Book of John
“That You May Believe”
Sermon
# 17
“The Credentials of Jesus”
John 5:31-47
One of my favorite old movies is a western in
which a cowboy is set upon by some Mexican banditos trying to pass themselves off as
officers of the law. When the banditos stated that they were law officers the cowboy asked
them to prove it by presenting their badges. To which they replied, “Badges, Badges, We don’t need no stinkin’
badges.”
Yet the truth is that even today we expect
people to be able to prove who they are. In today’s text the identity of Jesus
becomes the issue after He heals on the Sabbath. You might recall that Jesus healed a man
that had been an invalid for 38 years and he did it on the Sabbath (5:1-13). But instead
of rejoicing in this miracle the religious leadership concluded that Jesus was a
lawbreaker. Jesus defended his actions by making three amazing claims about who He
is; He claimed equality with the father, He
claimed the power to give life, and He claimed the authority to judge. “Then Jesus you are saying that you are God.
Well, then, upon what evidence do you make such a claim?” In the light of those
claims it is only natural that substantiation be given for those claims. In fact his
critics had every right to expect that evidence be presented to confirm his claims.
Jesus begins in verse thirty-one by
stating that he realizes and accepts that without proof his claims are unworthy of belief.
“If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true.”
Jesus does not mean that His claims are
false, only that His testimony alone would not be valid in a court of law. If Jesus was who He said He was then His claim had
to be supported by other testimony.
The Old Testament in Deuteronomy 19:15
states, “One witness shall not rise against a man concerning
any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter
shall be established.” According to the Law of Moses a single witness was not sufficient to deter-mine
the truth of a matter. So beginning in verse thirty-two Jesus begins to present his
witnesses. In fact in this section of Scripture alone, the word “witness”
appears nine times.
First, There is the Witness of the Father (v. 32)
Jesus says that there is testimony that will
verify who He is (v. 32), “There is another who bears witness
of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true.” Who
is the “other witness” that Jesus first asserts
that supports his claim? It seems wise to understand
that the “other witness” that Jesus refers to
here is God the Father.
Although Jesus does not identify the “other” witness he refers to he uses the Greek word for
“other” or “another” (allos)
is a word that means “another of the same kind.” God the Father is the only one
of the same kind as Jesus. Jesus is saying that God the Father not only sent God the Son,
through whom He is to be known, but he has in addition provided other supplemental
witnesses. Jesus now presents four additional witnesses as to His identity.
Not
Only Do We Have The Witness Of God The Father But ….
Secondly,
There is the Witness of John the Baptist (vv. 33-35)
“You have sent to John, and he
has borne witness to the truth. (34) Yet I do not receive
· John
will be recognized as a credible
witness because He was so widely known and
accepted by the people. When John began to preach people came from all over Palestine to
hear him (Mark 1:5). It was apparent to all that he was candid, sincere and without
self-promotion.
· John
is also a credible witness because
of his recognition as a prophet! John is not
brought forth here simply as a witness, in much the same way that a Christian today would
be considered a witness for Christ, but rather he is a particular type of witness, a
prophet. Just because John refuses to be identified as “the” prophet in John
1:20 does not indicate that John was rejecting that he was a prophet. John is in fact a
priest by birth (his father was a priest) and he was a prophet by appointment by God.
· John
is also seen as a credible witness
because the religious leaders themselves
acknowledged the importance of John’s witness when they sent a delegation to visit
John and question him (John 1:19-24).
John had fulfilled his purpose which was to
announce the arrival of Christ. John had identified Christ as the long awaited Messiah.
John had announced the Jesus was “the Lamb of God that takes
away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). John had even declared Jesus to be
the very “Son of God” (John 1:34).
The truth was that people were attracted to
John for a while but they grew tired of John. They listened for a while, but then they
didn’t like some of the things he said so they stopped listening. They listened for a
while and then they went on to other pursuits – other things that occupied their
interests. That is also true about the place of Christ in some people’s lives today
– they remain only until something new comes along and catches their interest.
Not Only Do We have
the witness of John the Baptist but ….
Third,
There Is The Witness of the Miracles (v. 36)
“But I have a greater witness
than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very
works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.”
The “works”
that Jesus refers to are the miracles that he performed. These are not simply powerful
miracles, but signs – designed to point to Christ as the authorized spokesman for God
the Father. Of all the many miracles Jesus performed John selected seven of these miracles
or signs to include in his account of the gospel to prove that Jesus was the Son of God.
In John 10:37-38, Jesus states, “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; (38) but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that
you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”
Yet even the witness of one of religious
leaders own, Nicodemus, had failed to move them, for he testified in John 3:2, that the
works that Jesus was doing could only come from God.
Not Only Do We Have
The Witness Of The Miracles but….
Fourth,
There Is The Witness of the Scriptures (OT)
(vv. 39-40)
“You search the Scriptures,
for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.”
These religious
scholars were devout men of the Word of God. They were highly intelligent men who knew the
Old Testament Scripture so intimately that they knew how many letters were in the Old
Testament. They scrutinized every sentence of Scripture yet they were still strangers to
the truth it contained. It is one thing to have the Word in our heads it is another thing
to have it in our hearts.
Jesus
identifies the major problem in reaching wrong conclusions regarding His identity in verse
forty. “But you are not willing to come to Me that you
may have life.”
The NLT
puts it this way, “you refuse to come to me so that I can
give you eternal life.” The NASB
says that, “you are unwilling.” Unwillingness can
be defined as “hard-headed, obstinate, and inflexible.” Even today if someone
does not believe something we sometimes think that what they need is more information. But
Jesus says the problem is not a lack of information but an unwillingness to face the
truth.
What an awesome tragedy that these very ones
who searched the Scriptures, who prided themselves on being experts of God’s word,
and thinking that in doing so had eternal life, were not willing to come to the one of
whom the Scriptures spoke. They rejected Him! He was standing right in front of them,
challenging them and inviting them, yet they ultimately turned on Him in anger – all
the while believing that in doing so they were being faithful to the Word of God.
Not Only Do We Have
The Witness Of The Scriptures But….
Fifth, There Is The Witness of the Moses
(vv.
45-47) “Do not think that I shall
accuse you to the Father; there is one who
accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. (46) For if you believed Moses, you would
believe Me; for he wrote about Me. (47) But if you do not believe
his writings, how will you believe My words?”
For the Jews, there was perhaps no higher
earthly authority than Moses. After all Moses was the great law-giver, and because they so
highly valued the law, they were sure that at least Moses would be on their side when it
came Judgment Day. No matter who else might be against them before God, they could relay
on Moses.
What Jesus told them
was nothing short of astounding. He said that on that Day, the Day of Judgment, that He
would not be their accuser, Moses would. And did not just say that Moses “would be” their accuser, he said he already “is” (v. 45)! To read the law in the way that these
religious leaders did was to miss what Moses was really saying. The great irony is that
the very one that these religious leaders felt they knew and trusted, Moses, ended up
being their accuser.
Conclusion
The whole point of the
presentation of all of these witnesses comes down to this; there is adequate testimony to
who Jesus is. If anyone does not believe, it is not for lack of evidence. It is because of
a lack of will. As R. Kent Hughes points out the inability to believe in Jesus is not from
a lack of evidence but usually because of a moral deficiency. He says, “Finding the truth is as much a matter of the heart as it is of
the mind. A man may say, ‘I’ve read the Bible and I want to believe it, but I
just can’t.’ But further conversation reveals he is having an affair or is
short-changing his boss or is fudging on his income tax return. He cannot believe when he is in that state.
Nor can the woman who comes and says, ‘I’ve been reading the Bible for years and
I cannot believe it,’ but she has an unforgiving spirit. The Lord’s Prayer says
we are to forgive as we have been forgiven and that an unforgiving person is an unforgiven
person. So when we come to the Scriptures, there must be a yielding of our lives, a focus
not on self but on God. Then we will be able to hear what the Scriptures have to say to
us.” [R. Kent
Hughes. John: That You May Believe. (Wheaton,
From these Religious Leaders
The
Apostle Paul warns in 2 Tim. 3:7 that such people are “ever
learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
You may be wrong about Jesus but you don’t have to Stay That Way.