Speak Truth

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing alright? Oh, I’m fine, thank you, happy in the Lord. This is your friend, Bob Cook, and glad to be back with you for a few moments from the Word of God. What we do is to go through a book of the Bible, verse by verse, and try to put a handle on it, so that you can get hold of it for yourself.

We’re in John Chapter Five. We went as far as Verse 23 the last time and I’ll back up a little bit, so we get a running start into this passage. It says, “The Father loveth the Son and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth. And He will show Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.” The Lord Jesus voluntarily limited Himself in His incarnation to a position of subjection and obedience to the Father, because of the very nature of taking upon Him a human body, and identifying Himself with poor, lost sinners, and so He, now has, during this Earthly ministry, a position of subjection and obedience to the Father. But the relationship now, that He has with the Father, and also with you and me, is laid out pretty clearly in the following verses. It has to do, for example, with giving life.

Verse 21, “As the Father hath life in Himself, raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.” Quicken means to make alive. So our Lord Jesus has the power of giving life. And the Verse 22 has to do with judgment, “The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.” So next point, honoring the Lord Jesus Christ, “He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father, which sent Him.” Then comes this famous 24th Verse, one of the verses, one of the 50 verses I learned from the Gospel of John when I was a little boy, not yet seven years old, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my Word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation.” That’s our word ‘judgment,’ same word you had previously in Verse 22, “Shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life.” Here, you have the process of salvation. Here, His word ‘believe,’ which means commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, have, hath everlasting life, and the prospect is, you’ll not come into the judgment, because the Lord Jesus has already paid your penalty.

“God commendeth His love toward us,” we read in Romans Chapter Five, “In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The word ‘for’ is ‘up over’ in the Greek verb or a Greek word there, the word ‘huper,’ up over, instead of, in our place. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died in our place.” You could very well read it that way. “God hath made Him to be sin for us, He who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Peter says, “Christ suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” All of these passages, and of course, many more, like Isaiah 53:5-6, and some of the other great passages tell the story so clearly, that when you commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith, you receive that full divine pardon for all of your sins, because the Lord Jesus has already paid the penalty for them all when He died for you on Calvary’s cross.

Jesus goes on to say in Verse 25, “Verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” Two ways to take that. One, dead spiritually, you read Ephesians 2:1, “You hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Before you’re saved, friend, you’re dead to God. And your spirit is dead, in terms of any eternal worthwhile life, and so you can take it that way. You could also take it that the Lord Jesus was about to raise some people from the dead, as for example, Lazarus, who had been in the grave four days, not being embalmed, but simply wrapped up in a linen cloth that was interlarded with spices. His body had had a chance to do a considerable decaying in that time, and the Lord Jesus called him forth, and Lazarus came forth out of the grave, bound head and foot with the grave clothes, and they said, “Loose him and let him go.”

Oh, the glory of the life-giving power of the Lord Jesus. You can take that verse, therefore, I say, two ways. One, spiritually dead, “The one that’s spiritually dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live.” Second, physically dead. You and I have the great prospect of a physical resurrection. “The trump of God shall sound and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain under the coming of the Lord, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” There’d be a blessed resurrection of those who died as believers. We have that wonderful hope, Paul calls it the ‘blessed hope.’ So there you have the layout of the life-giving power of our Lord Jesus, and so the Savior wraps it up by saying in Verse 26, “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son, to have life in Himself.”

The great attempt of scientists through the ages has been to find the secret of life. We can kill life, but we can’t create it, and so they’re still trying, and nor do I think they will ever discover that secret, because it rests with God. “In Him is life,” it says, “And the life is the light of men.” And so God has given to the Son authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. “Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the grave shall hear His voice and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” Now, He’s giving us quite a horizon of truth there, isn’t He? He talks about His ability to quicken, Verse 21. He talks about the fact that God has given judgment to Him, Verse 22. He talks about the fact that honor is to be given to Him, and in so doing, you honor God the Father in the same way. He talks about the fact that when you commit yourself absolutely to the Lord Jesus Christ, you have, at that point, passed from death into life. He talks about the fact that there is coming a resurrection, and at that resurrection, there will be two kinds of people: Those that are saved and those that are lost. That’s the final resurrection.

Interestingly, out of truth there, and all of it centers in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I say, you wanna be spiritually alive? Make the Lord Jesus Christ Lord and Savior of your life by faith. You wanna honor God? You wanna please God? Honor the Lord Jesus and do what He wants you to do. Do you want to have the precious hope of life beyond the grave? Put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, because He’s the Lord of the resurrection, and the hour is coming, when those that are in the grave shall hear His voice and come forth. Everything wrapped up in your relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, He’s talking about His ministry and the way people receive Him. He said, “I can, of mine own self, do nothing.” We get back now to the fact that the Lord Jesus, in coming down the stairways of the stars, and taking on a human body, had voluntarily limited Himself to those parameters, and so He said, “As I hear, I judge and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father, which sent me. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that bears witness of me.” It means that’s the Father, “And I know the witness, He witnesses of me, is true.” Now, there’s a spiritual principle here that I want to touch before we run out of time. He said, “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory.” We read in another portion, “He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory. But he that seeketh his glory, who sent him, the same is true and no unrighteousness is in him,” that’s John 7:18. “He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory.”

Back to Chapter Five, “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” What does that mean to you and to me? It means that everything we say has to be related to and tested by the inerrant, infallible Word of God, and the truth, as it is in the Lord Jesus Christ. The world is not interested in your opinion. They may be for a little while, if you’re famous enough, but they’re not interested in your opinion, generally. And what you and I think can very well be left in the discard in a hurry. But if we specialize in saying what God has to say, if we specialize in relaying His message, then we have a true witness. You want to think about that, in terms of your own life and your relationship with other people? Many of us really have come to grief, in that we’ve tried to argue our way into the lives of other people. We’ve tried to persuade people by our own logic to adopt our religious point of view. It doesn’t work, does it?

No, it’s the Word of God that does the work. Jesus said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life.” The writer to the Hebrews says, “The Word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the joints, and marrow, and soul, and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” “The Word of God’s alive,” said he, “And powerful.” So specialize in God’s message. Now, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be a Bible-quoting robot. There’s no one more distressing than someone who mechanically spouts scripture verses at every opportunity. I don’t mean that. And I think you understand already, that this is not what God has in mind. But you remember, the ancient prophets said when they gave their message, “Thus saith the Lord,” which is equivalent in our way of speaking to say, “God told me this. This is what God told me. This is what God’s Word says.”

Our brother, Billy Graham, from the outset of his ministry, early on in the 1940s, was heard to say again and again, “The Bible says. The Bible says.” Why? Not a form of bibliolatry, not a religious cliche or a formula, but the fact that the ultimate authority is in the inerrant, inspired Word of God, the Bible. You follow that? So when we’re talking about a true witness, we need to relate it to the Word of God and the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A small thought here. Let God validate what you have to say. He said, “There’s another that beareth witness of me and I know that the witness, which He witnesses of me is true.” See, “The Father Himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me,” Jesus said later on in Verse 37. Let God validate what you have to say. Now, you probably won’t hear Him speaking from the heavens in a voice like thunder, but God has a way, doesn’t He, of proving that what He said is true, as it is demonstrated in our lives, and in what we say and do. Don’t expect other people to put the stamp of approval. I’ve often said, “If you need to ask somebody how well you did on your sermon, don’t, because it’s too late.” [chuckle] Let God validate what you have to say, by keeping close to His blessed Word. Oh, we could add some more of this the next time we get together.

Father, today, may our words honor Thee. May we be true to our God. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!