John 7 2

It's. He's our rescuer. He's our rescuer. We are free from sin forever oh, how sweet it sounds oh, how great about we'll raise the Lord I'll rescue her there is good news for the captive good news for the shame there is good news for the word who walked away there is good news for the doubter the one religion fail for the good Lord has come see can say he's our rescue he's our rescue we are free from forever oh, how sweet it sounds oh, how great will praise the world his beauty for the blind man riches for the poor he is friendship for the word the world ignores he is pasture for the weary rest for those who strive all the good Lord is the way, the truth alive yet the good Lord is the way the truth alive he's our rescue he's our rescue we are free from sin forever oh, how sweet it sounds oh, how great I will raise the Lord I rescue come and be chainless come and be fearless come to the foot of Calvary there is redemption for every affliction here at the foot of cal we are forever we are free about we will praise the Lord we will praise the Lord I rescue what gift of grace is Jesus my redeemer? There is no more for heaven now to give he is my joy, my righteousness and freedom, my steadfast love, my deep and boundless peace.

To this I hope. My hope is only Jesus, for my life is holy bound to his oh, how strange and divine I can see all that but through Christ in me.

But I am not forsaken. For by my side the savior he will say I labor on in weakness and rejoice for in my knee his power is the sway to this I hope my shepherd will defend me through the deepest valley with me all the night has been one and I shall yet not I cry in me I dread I know I if you should show the price it has been paid for Jesus, bless for my heart and he was raised to overflow the grave to this I hope my sin has been defeated Jesus, now whenever it's my oldest chain I can see I am free and not I renew me until I stand with your throne to this I hope. My hope is only ever more to me when the race is complete in my shall we be Christ in me when the race is complete till my lips shall receive Christ in me. Yet not I but through Christ in me. Yet not I, but through Christ in me through every battle, through every heartbreak, through every circumstance.

I believe that you are my fortress oh you are my portion you are my hiding place oh I believe you are the way, the truth in the life I believe you are the way, the truth no light I believe whoever we bless every breath I take I believe that you are provider oh you are protector you are the one I love I believe you are the way, the truth the light I believe you are who you are who you are it's a new horizon once set on you and you meet me here today with mercies that are new all my fears and doubts they can all come to because they can't stay long when I'm here with you it's a new horizon and I said on you and you meet me here mercies out of the room my fears and doubts they can all come to because they can't stay long when I believe you are the way, the truth, the light I believe you are the way true the light it's a new horizon and you may begin mercy that yeah my fears and I can all come to because they can't say I know you are the way hold you are away to try I believe Father, I thank you for this day that you have given us. Lord, thank you for. Thank you for the many mercies that you have given us, Lord, and for your blessings and your promises and your outpouring of love. Father, I pray as we go through this service today, Lord, that you will turn our hearts from the things of the world, from the distractions and those things that would grab our attention right now. And, Lord, just let us focus our minds and our hearts on you.

Father, I pray that you'll be glorified as we learn about you, as we learn about who the messiah is, what he did, that you are the way, the truth and the life. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Were you guys able to hear me as we opened up in prayer or did I forget to unmute my mic?

We're good. Okay. I just realized I looked down and saw red. I'm like, that's not good. I apologize if I'm a little distracted.

There's a high pitch, very high pitched noise. I hope it's not going through to the feed, but it is coming out of my speaker and it's kind of pretty high. But we're going to begin today or not begin, but continue in John chapter seven. As we're turning to John chapter seven. Verse 25 is where we left off last week.

I first want to apologize about the opening countdown. Whatnot. Shawnee informed me the music was not hearable and I forgot Zoom is stupid. And I want to remind everyone kind of where we left off last week. So we saw Jesus emphasize timing, that his time has not yet come.

It's not yet his time to be taken, his time to be in the public. And his brothers wanted him to please the people. Right? His brothers said, you need to go, and you need to demonstrate that you are a prophet. You need to get the support of the people.

You need to get them to like you, to love you, to want you. But that is not what God is about. God says, we cannot seek the applause of men. We're not here for men. We're here for God.

And then we also saw that he went, and he eventually did show up to this festival, and he eventually did begin to teach in the temples and the synagogues. And it ended with Jesus calling out their hypocrisy. Remember, the reason they want to kill him right now, that they're seeking them out, is because he healed a man on the Sabbath day, and he caught up the hypocrisy. He said, if you will circumcise a man on the Sabbath, then what is wrong with healing a man on the Sabbath? And he says, do not judge according to outward appearance, but according to righteous judgment.

So that gets us to verse 25 today. That gets us to where we left off. And we're going to begin with 25 to 31. He says that some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem began to say, is this not the one whom they are seeking to kill? And behold, he is speaking openly, and they are saying nothing to him.

How can it be that the rulers truly know that this man is the Christ? Or can it be not? How can it be? Can it be that the rulers truly know this man is the Christ? Yet we know where the man comes from.

But the Christ, wherever he comes, no one knows where he is from. Then Jesus cried out in the temple courts, teaching, and saying, you both know me, and you know where I am from, and I have not come from myself. But the one who sent me is true, whom you do not know. I know him because I am from him, and he sent me. So they were seeking to seize him, and no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come.

But from the crowd, many believed in him, were saying, whenever the Christ comes, he will not perform more signs than this man has done, will he? Okay, so what we're introduced here right away is with confusion. There's confusion going on. If you remember, last week, there was a lot of quiet whispers. Bless you.

A lot of quiet whispers. And discussions about who this guy was. Some people said, he is a really great man. Look at all the things that he's doing. And others said, no, he's a deceiver.

But they wouldn't speak out loud. And then the Jews had been attempting to kill him. And he said. He called them out and he says, you want to kill me? You want to murder me.

And they told him he had a demon. So now we see that there are some others in the crowd. It says in verse 25. Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem began to say. And this is an entirely different group of people than the Pharisees and Sadducees altogether.

These are people who are aware that the Jews are trying to kill him. These are people who know that they said it. This not the one that they seek to kill. But look at their confusion. Verse 26.

They said that he is speaking openly and they are saying nothing. Think about that. They even asked the question. Do they know? Do they actually have some form of knowledge that they know he is the Christ?

This actually baffles me. I had never stopped as I read through John and realized what is going on. Right.

You know, let's put our place in their shoes for a minute. If we were the religious leaders, the Pharisees.

And it was our job to interpret the word, to know what it says, to teach it to others. And their job was even more involved than mine as a pastor, to enforce the laws. That was their job, to enforce the laws. And there was somebody openly speaking and teaching and doing these things. And that we knew they were wrong.

To the point that we want to kill them. Right? Would we not be speaking out against them?

Would we not be trying to cry out over them to the crowd, beware of this man, for he is evil, right? He will mislead you and lead your souls to destruction. Would we not be trying to let the masses know that this guy is bad? We do that today. I openly do that today.

I criticize, today, the courts of the world. Those who would have you believe that they're Christian. That they will lead you to life. But really they will lead you into the pits of hell. I criticize them openly because we are called to do that.

And that's not even our job to enforce the law.

And look what they point out. They said that they do not speak out against him. He goes and he teaches. And they sit in the back and they quietly listen. And then they leave.

And they plot to kill him away from everyone else.

As we've read through John already in chapter five. It says that they began to plot to kill him. But they said nothing out of fear of displeasing the crowd.

So can it actually be that the Pharisees know that Jesus is the Messiah?

I think they know. I think they know who he is. They know that he was the one that they were long awaiting for. So let me ask a question. Why, if I know that he's the Messiah, why would I want him gone?

Put yourself in their shoes again. You've been teaching about this guy for centuries. Been telling people to wait for him. He's going to come. He's your hope.

He's your salvation. And now he's here, and you want to get rid of him. What's going on? In our morning service, we're going through the book of Romans here in Milford in the morning service. And we were in chapter eight today.

And in Romans chapter eight. I'm going to turn there. It just fits perfectly. So I'm going to turn there. It says in verse seven, romans eight seven.

It says that the mindset of the flesh is enmity towards God. So those who are of the mindset of the flesh, those who live according to the flesh, according to our fleshly desires and lust and wants and needs, they are at war with God.

Does that not happen in religion? I think the people most apt to fall toward that are the religious.

What did the Jews have that would. That a full surrender to God would take away from them? The Pharisees. They had power, they had wealth, they had status, they had followers. They had everything that they could want and need and desire.

And a full submission to the Christ threatened in their minds. It threatened that power, that wealth, that authority, that following.

These are people who they have built for themselves a life around religion. And power accumulated from religion. That to allow the Messiah to enter the stage would threaten their very existence.

So this crowd in verse 25, they are beginning to learn that. They're beginning to say, hey, they seek to kill him. And yet they seem to know who he is. They seem to know that he's the Messiah. And what it comes down to is when you live according to the flesh.

Not just 2000 years ago. Let's talk today. Let's talk to the people who are alive now. When you live according to the flesh, you are enemies of God. You will wage war against him.

You do not want to do what he wants to do. You cannot please him. In fact, you don't want to. When you live according to the flesh, you want to please yourself. And that is the danger, by the way, of also being religious.

And when you become religious, there's this tendency to make it all about you. Like the Jews did something that we need to be very careful about.

He then goes on to say, so there's confusion, right? They think that they're confused already. They want to kill him. He speaks openly, yet they don't criticize him. And so now they're wondering, is this man really the Messiah?

Is he the promised person? But look, in verse 27, there's more confusion going on. They said in verse 27, the problem is we know where he comes from. But the Christ, wherever he comes, no one knows where he is from. So they're confused because of a misconception about Jesus.

And this misconception is that they know where he is from.

The thing is, this baffles me. The jewish thought at the time was that nobody would know who the messiah was, including the Messiah himself, until the prophet came and anointed him.

That was the thought. And so they're confused because we know where he's from. He appears to believe that he's the messiah, but no prophet has anointed him. He can't be the Messiah. They said not even the messiah will know who he is.

I find that problematic.

The Messiah should know the Messiah that the promised one of God, the seed of know God incarnate. It would be a problem if God did not know who he was.

But also these are people who supposedly know the scriptures. And this shows how when you leave it up to men to form tradition around theology, that theology becomes corrupted.

Had the jewish leadership searched and studied the scriptures, they would have known quite a bit about who Jesus was. They would have known that he would have been the seat of David. They would have known roughly where he would be born and come from. They would have known that he would make flight to Egypt. They would have known that he would have been raised up in Galilee.

They would have known all of these things about him.

But as men take power in religion, and not just take power, but as they begin to form opinions, there is a danger of man's opinions on what the scriptures say becoming scripture to people becoming a Bible. We'll call it becoming Bible and not the scriptures themselves. There is a danger when people get behind a pulpit or a camera and a congregation and they begin to speak what they believe. It says that people latch on to what the pastor says and they begin to quote the pastor more than they quote the Bible.

And then when you begin to quote the pastor more than they quote the Bible, and they become teachers and teach other people have you ever played the telephone game?

If I whisper in your ear a message and then tell you to whisper the same message to the person to your right, and it goes on through 2025, people back to me, the message has changed. Whatever I originally told to someone else, it's not even the same by the time it gets back to me. And we see this thing happen in Christianity, where people, they view there's a danger, a tendency for people to view the words from a pastor or a priest or a bishop as more valuable than the word itself. And that's what they begin to speak to other people. And over time, it gets changed.

It gets changed to the point that you know where Christ will come from because the scriptures say it. But tradition says we don't know where it comes from. Because you're not reading the scriptures. You are reading from the teachers and the scribes. And that is how Jewish Theology worked.

The rabbis had this idea that nothing new should be taught. So if I were to become a rabbi, I would learn under another rabbi. And what I would learn was that rabbi's teachings and theologies and philosophies, and that's what I would then teach. So I would teach that to my next student, who would become a rabbi and so on and so forth. And they weren't studying the word.

They were studying the rabbis to the point that what was right in front of them went under their noses. Church, I want to stress this today as we talk about that we need to read our bibles.

Every one of us need to read our bibles, not just me or a few of us. Because the words I say, they hold zero importance over the words that were inscribed on those pages. And you need to know what the Bible says. You need to know. This way, when I mess up, you know it.

You know I messed up. And when I mess up, you can correct me. And then there is no danger of what the Bible says becoming second to what I say or what another pastor says, or a bishop or a priest or a rabbi. We need to know the word of God for ourselves.

This way, we know what it says.

Then Jesus cried out in verse 28 from the temple courts. And he said that you both know me, and you know where I am from, and I have not come from myself. But the one who sent me is true. Whom you do not know. And I know him because I am sent from him, and he sent me.

This is interesting, what the people say. They are half right and they're half wrong. Do they know where Jesus came from? Well, yeah, they know that he was born of Mary. They know where he grew up.

They know where he resides. They know where he came from. And he even says that, you know me. You've been around me, you've seen me, you know where I'm from. But at the same time, do they know where Jesus is from?

Where is Jesus from? Is he from Bethlehem? Is he from Galilee?

He's from heaven, right? He's from above.

That's what makes the gospel of John so unique. Like in Matthew, in Luke, the story of Jesus begins in Bethlehem. But in John, the story of Jesus begins in heaven, right? It begins at the beginning. If you look at John one verse one, it says that in the beginning was the word, and the word is with God.

And the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. So John, he says that the origins of Jesus are not from Bethlehem, but from heaven.

The crowd, they believe that he's from Bethlehem or from Galilee, and they do not understand what his nature is. In fact, you see them say, is this not the son of Joseph? Actually, no, he's not the son of Joseph. Joseph is his stepfather.

Joseph raised him, but he is not the son of Joseph. There is no dna that links them. And so their statements here are half right and half wrong. They should know where he would come from physically. But they said, we won't know where he comes from.

And they're right. They don't know where he comes from because he comes from above. Jesus says when he talks about that, he says, I have not come from myself. Jesus did not pick up this mission on his own. Jesus did not, one day when he was about 30, say, hey, you know what?

I want to become a preacher. I want to be a prophet.

But he was sent. And the one who sent him is true. That is God. That's the father. He sent him.

And he says, I know him. But you do not.

No one knew the father. No one knew who it was who sent him. No one knew where he came from but jesus alone.

But the Jews, they knew what he was saying. Look at verse 30. So they sought to seize him. They understood right then and there that Jesus claimed to come directly from God. And the Jews understood that that claim meant he was also God himself, meant that he was deity.

And it stirred them up and they sought to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him yet because his hour had not yet come. So although they had sought to seize him, they were unable. It's like jesus just. He disappears. If he weren't God, you would wonder how he does this all the time.

We read multiple accounts where he's in the crowd and they're trying to grab him. And he vanishes. He's gone. So Jesus, he just. He goes, his hour is not yet here.

But we're going to see here in the very near future.

That the hour of jesus will arrive. In fact, we'll see in this chapter. That he begins to publicly identify himself and who he is. Let's look at verses 32 through 36.

The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about him. And the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers in order to take him into custody. Then jesus said, yet a little time. I am with you, and I am going to the one who sent me. You will seek me and will not find me.

And where I am, you cannot come. So the Jew said, one to another, where is this one going that we will not find him? Is he going to the dispersion among the Greeks. And teach the Greeks? What is this saying that he has said, you will seek me and not find me.

And where I am, you cannot come. This is an interesting teaching and discussion going on here. So Jesus is beginning to warn them. He says there's only a little time left. He's beginning to publicly identify who he is.

I'm only here for a short while. I won't be here much longer.

He's foretelling of his death. Jesus is letting them know I'm going to die.

And then I will return to whence I came. To the one who sent me.

And then he says, you'll seek me, and you won't find me. I think we can see both the physical and spiritual side of this as well. But this is mostly going to be. You'll seek me and will not find me. They will look for him, and he'll be nowhere to be found.

But also there's a danger to these elite religious. They'll seek him after he's gone. They'll seek him, and they won't find him.

They'll seek salvation. They'll seek the kingdom of God. And yet they won't find it. Because they are seeking it in and of themselves.

And thank God that Jesus also has the promise. He says, seek me and you will find me. If you are seeking the kingdom and his salvation through him and not of yourselves, you will find him. But if you are seeking salvation. If you're seeking the kingdom through your own works.

You will not find Jesus. You will look, and you will not find salvation. You will look, and you will not find rest. You will look, and you will not find peace. And Jesus says, where I am, you cannot come.

Where is he going? He's going to heaven, and they cannot come. And this statement is actually a harsh statement. What he is telling the jewish people is, I'm going to the kingdom, and you will not partake of it.

This is Jesus is prophesying right now. He is telling them, the kingdom of God that you have so much sought is where I am going, and you cannot come there.

Jesus isn't even talking about right now. He's not saying you won't be able to come. Right now. He is saying you will not partake.

And he's talking to the Pharisees. He's talking to the officers of the court. You will not partake. Why will they not partake? Because they are seeking righteousness through the works of the law, and they are unwilling.

When you are so hardened in your heart that you know who God is, you know that Christ, that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. And you want to remove him because he threatens your way of life. He threatens your wealth, your power, your status.

You will seek him and not find him because you are at war with him. You don't want him and you will not. When that is when you know who he is and yet you want to get rid of him. You will not partake of the kingdom.

And look what they say here. They say, where is he going? That we won't find him? There's nowhere you could go that you can't be found, right? Wherever you go, we could follow you.

We could chase you down at our pitchforks and our torches. And they begin to question, is he going to the dispersion among the Greeks? To teach the Greeks the dispersion here that they're talking about is going into Palestine proper.

The Jews had, by this point, been dispersed many times. They used to be pure. It used to just be the Jews married within the Jews. But then Babylon came and dispersed them. And then the Persians came and dispersed them.

The Greeks came and dispersed them. The Romans came and kind of left them alone. But there was some dispersion during the Romans. And so they're referring to Palestine proper, where the Jews had been dispersed previously. And they're kind of making fun.

Are you going to go to those people, to the half breeds? Think like the Samaritans. This is how they view the Samaritans. These were half Jews. They were a jew.

But they had become hellenized as they were mixed into other races, to other people groups, and they made fun of them because, well, you're not truly a jew, so they're making fun of him. He's going to go teach the Greeks.

And then they said, what is this saying that you'll seek me and not find me where I am? You cannot come. They do not understand that Jesus is prophesying that he will be with the Father. He will be with God. They don't understand this.

And that they will not partake with him and the Father.

Verse 37 through 39. He says now, on the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and let him drink. The one who believes in me. Just as the scripture said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water. Now, he said this concerning the spirit whom those who believed in him were about to receive.

For the spirit was not yet giving because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

So, the last day of the feast, some cultural understanding here is needed. Several centuries, six, seven centuries before this event took place, during. During the feast of the tabernacles of the booths. This was a thanksgiving feast. Thank you, God, for the harvest.

Thank you for what you have provided to us. Thank you for being a good God, a good father. However, several centuries earlier, the Pharisees began to insist that it became less of a prayer of thanksgiving and more of a prayer for rain. This feast, it took place in the fall. And by the time of the feast, their water was running out.

They collect water in the winter, they collect water in the spring. But then there's no rainfall. Almost all summer long. And all fall, there's no rain. And so all of the water that they have stored up, it's beginning to dry out.

And the Pharisees have insisted that this feast became a way to beg God for water. So we have to understand, why is it that Jesus says what he says right now? If anyone is thirsty, it's because they're actually begging for water right now. On the last day of the feast, they march around the temple to the water gate and they pray to God for water seven times.

But the other six days, they pray for water once. So for six days, they march around the temple and they pray for water. On the 7th day, they march around the temple seven times, praying for water. And so Jesus stands up on this last day and listen to what he says. They're crying out for water.

And he says, if anyone is thirsty, come to me and let him drink.

Now, Jesus is not talking about physical water, but he's talking about spiritual thirst. But there's a connection to what they're doing. They're crying out to God for water because they have none. They're thirsty, and yet they are neglecting their spiritual health. We need to feed our spirits.

And so Jesus, he cries out at this time, and he says, if you are thirsty, come to me and I will give you water to drink. He says the same thing to the woman at the well.

He says, if anyone would come to me, out of them would spring forth wells of living water. He says a similar thing here. Out of your belly will flow rivers of living water. So Jesus says, anyone who is spiritually starved, who is dry, who longs to know God, who longs to have a soul satisfied, come to me, and there will be produced in you living water. And he is referring to the spirit.

And we know that the spirit satisfies all things.

The spirit satisfies that thirst as it nourishes us, as it reconnects us to God. It satisfies our longing for peace, as it brings peace between us and God. It satisfies our need for love as we experience the fullness of the love of God in Christ Jesus, who died upon the cross, as we come to an end tonight, I know there are people out there right now who are thirsty. There are people out there who, just inside of their souls, they feel empty. They feel lost.

You might feel hopeless.

And you want all of that to go away. You want to be satisfied. You want the dryness to go away.

And so I want to cry out to you today, if anyone is thirsty, come to Christ and drink.

Believe in him who has sent the sinless one, and allow him to fully satisfy your every need, your every desire. Allow him to bring to life that deadness in you, and he will. It's a promise. Jesus does not say only to the Jew. He doesn't say only to the Baptist or to the Pentecostal, or only to the Methodist.

But he says, if anyone is thirsty, if you are thirsty, you can come.

And Jesus, when it says he cried out, he's begging you. He's not just saying it. He's not just saying, hey, if you're thirsty, I'm here, I'm available. Let's come hang out. But he's actually begging you when it says he's crying.

He's begging. He's pleading because he knows this will save your life.

And so tonight, if you are ready to save your life, if you are ready to have that dryness disappear, if you're ready to have hope and peace and satisfaction, Jesus says that if you would confess me before your fellow men, I will confess it before the father. He says that if you would only acknowledge your sinful ways and that in you can no good thing be produced absent of me and come to me. He says, I'll give you the living water. I'll give it to you. So if you're ready, we're going to go to our closing prayer here in a moment where we're going to verbalize a few things.

And just know this prayer doesn't save you. It never will. It never can has no effect on your salvation.

But what it will do is allow you to verbalize your admittance of being a sinner. To verbalize to God that God, I am a sinner. It will allow you to verbalize your belief in him who was sent the eternal God who stepped into creation, and verbalize your confession to him that he is your Lord, that you will follow him, that you're given your life over. And then you need to verbalize to men as well. Right?

He says, if you will confess me before your fellow men. So I'm going to give you that opportunity now, I just ask you, verbalize this prayer with me if you are ready to no longer be thirsty. Immediately after our closing prayer, we're going to have our communion. So I ask everyone, please stick around for the Lord's supper. Grab my communion right after, and we'll partake of this beautiful thing that the Lord has given us to do.

Let's pray. Father, I admit that I'm a sinner. I admit, God, that I can't say it myself, and that in me is no good thing. But I believe that Jesus, the messiah, the Christ, that he was sent from you, and that he came here into this world that he created and that he lived perfectly. And that he died.

He traded his perfect and holy and righteous life for mine. I believe that Jesus rose again from the grave, that he was resurrected into a glorified body so that he could secure the gift for me. And Lord Jesus, I confess you as my king, as my God, as my savior, my lord, forever. Lord Jesus, I will remove the crown off of my own head. I'll throw it away and I bow to yours.

I submit to yours. I want to follow you. And Lord, I come and I ask you, give me water to drink, Lord, give me your spirit. Fill me up with the spirit of God that satisfies every need and desire. And I thank you for that, Lord Jesus.

God, I pray as we depart here today, Lord, that we will not be blind to who you are, that we will not walk in the flesh and be an enmity with you, and that our desires will not be opposed to your desires. Lord, give us the desires of your spirit. Give us the desires of your kingdom, of your righteousness. And Lord, I pray that you will help us all to know your word, to know what it says, lord, that the same things that happen to the Jews and that happen to millions around us today will not happen to us, that we won't know what your word says, and that we will base everything upon what others say. Lord, we don't want that to happen.

We want to base everything on what you say and what you say alone. Would you help us do that? Help us to know your word, to understand it, that you will be glorified, Lord Jesus, in your holy name we pray. Amen.