529: The Witnesses | Tim Henderson

Introduction

You guys, this morning we're going to be looking at John chapter 5. We're going to actually start in verse 30, which is a little bit earlier than I asked Barbara to start reading. You may recall that John—this thing is weird somehow, something is broken now. You may recall that John is writing his gospel with an agenda. It doesn't mean that he's being false. It just means that he is seeking to make a persuasive case. As such, he is including and organizing his material consistent with his stated goal, which is to convince you that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, so that by believing in him you could have life in his name.

And as he pursues that single goal, he is going to complete and compliment the existing record that's already out there. He knows what Matthew says, what Luke says, and he's generally going to try to avoid the things that they have talked about, or at least the specific events that they talk about, even as he pursues a similar ultimate purpose.

The Witnesses to Jesus' Identity

And in Matthew and Mark and Luke, all three of them record this conversation that Jesus had with his disciples, in which he asked, who do people say that I am? And then the follow-up question, which is, who do you say that I am? John is not going to record that particular conversation. Instead, his whole gospel is going to be just absolutely permeated with this wrestling question. It is over and over and over again. Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Who is this guy?

John is deeply interested in showing you just the pervasive curiosity about the true identity of Jesus, and Jesus' deep commitment to satisfy that curiosity, to reveal his true nature to the world. So as he does that, you could think about him like a skillful attorney making his case. It's a persuasive case.

This passage here that Barbara read and a little bit more that I will read to you is basically that attorney, John, giving us his list of witnesses. There are six in this passage. I'll go through them and give you a chance to discover who are the six witnesses that John is going to call to the stand answering the question, who is this guy?

Let's start in verse 30 where Jesus says:

I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me. If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.

Okay, we're up to two. Who are the two? Jesus himself and John the Baptist, okay? So we got those two. Keep going there.

In verse 34, Jesus continues:

Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light, but the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that John has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing bear witness about me, that the Father has sent me.

What's number three? The works that he is doing. So we have Jesus, John, and the works that he does. Keep going.

In verse 37, Jesus states:

And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you've never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.

So, who are the next two witnesses? The Father and the Scriptures. Okay. Final one.

Verse 41, Jesus says:

I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you'll receive him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes only from God?

Then in verse 45, Jesus says:

Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how you believe my words?

Who’s the sixth witness? Moses.

The Central Witness: The Scriptures

So, it's Jesus. It's John. It's the works that he does. It's the Father. It's the Scriptures. And it's Moses. These are the six witnesses that John is marshaling based on this conversation with Jesus to testify to who he is.

Of that whole list, I just want to focus on one this morning: the one that contains all the others. Take a look again at verse 39. I'm going to read it to you in the NIV instead. It says:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me.

Because I've been walking with Jesus from probably, I don't know, a decade or more before I really began to grapple with the intensity with which Jesus means this. He means this at a radical, fundamental level that it's possible.

A year like me, it hadn't really grappled with it. Jesus believed that the Old Testament was fundamentally and crucially about himself. And there are hints of this all over the place, even in John's gospel.

And if we were back in chapter 1 and verse 45, it says:

Philip found Nathaniel and told him, 'We have found the one that Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.'

Prior to that, before John even started writing this book, Luke had made the same case. At the very end of Luke 24, it's called the road to Emmaus. Jesus is raised from the dead and he's walking down the road with some followers. They weren't part of the twelve, but they were broader, part of the broader disciple community. And they were all discouraged because Jesus was dead and I thought he was still dead. And as he reveals himself to them, he says to them:

"How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory." And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

And then back here in our passage in John 5, Jesus again emphasizes it with his specific mention of Moses as a particular witness. He says:

"If you believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote of me."

The Old Testament Points to Christ

What is the weight of this? What is he saying here? What is the consistent record of the New Testament concerning the Old Testament and concerning Jesus? What Jesus is telling us is that every part of the Old Testament has as its highest and ultimate purpose the revelation of Christ.

I mean that genre by genre. This is the protagonist to which every narrative in the Old Testament points. Jesus is the giver of the law. He is the keeper of the law. He is the one who suffers the consequence of failing to keep the law. And he is the reward for those who obey the law.

He is the fulfillment of the prophets' visions. He is the singer of the songs, both the Psalms of praise and the Psalms of lament. As Sally Lloyd-Jones says in her fantastic Jesus storybook Bible that would give to all the kids in this church, every story whispers his name. The whole book, the whole thing, is about him.

And it's not just that each portion, each genre, or each story, or each law, each little chunk is about him—that is certainly true. But it is also the case that there are multiple, there's just tons of these longitudinal themes that run throughout the Scriptures. There will be a motif. And it starts generally pretty early in the Scriptures. And once this motif is surfaced, then it gets repeated and layered over and over again throughout the Scriptures.

And every one of these motifs, these themes, finds their climax in Christ. There’s a ton of these. I’ll just give you a couple examples.

There is a centuries-long search for a king throughout the Old Testament. There’s a promise that a king will come of Judah, the passage that we read this morning, that Joe read to us, that there will be a king coming from the line of Judah. And you guys, king after king after king, they think, maybe this is him. This day, you know, first I thought it was Saul, and that turned out badly. And then I thought it was David, and that went beautifully until it didn't. So it's okay, it's the son of David, it's Solomon. And that goes great until it doesn't. And king after king after king, there's this search—where's the right king, where's the king? And the answer is they're all a disappointment. The whole thing is incredibly frustrated until finally he comes to whom it belongs. And the obedience of the nations is his.

There is a tension that exists throughout the Old Testament between the justice of God and the mercy of God. A just God would punish sin, but a merciful God would desire to forgive. And it is unclear for centuries which is going to win. How do you hammer this out? Like, what is this going to be? And it is not until finally Jesus shows up and he lives a righteous life. He is perfect in all of his ways. And then he drinks the wrath of God, fully taking into himself our punishment so that God can be both just and the one who justifies those who have faith in him.

There’s a theme of temple. We talked about this a couple months ago in John 2—that early on, we have this idea of a temple. It actually begins in the garden earlier than you might know it. And then there is the tabernacle, and then there’s the first temple that gets destroyed, and there’s the second temple that is a disappointment until finally Jesus comes. He is the temple to which all the temple is pointed, right? Because he is the place where the sacrifices are offered. He is the place, for God dwells with man. He is the place where heaven meets earth, for he is the temple and then invites us to join him that we might be temple.

You guys, it's not just the portions of Scripture, it is not just the themes of Scripture, but I would contend that every major character in the Old Testament is a type of Christ. Jesus is the true and better Able whose blood speaks a better word. Temple is murdered and his blood cries out for justice—Jesus is murdered and his blood cries out for mercy.

He is the true and better Noah. He is the bringer of rest who builds, who creates a place of safety so that when the judgment falls, all who have fled to him could be safe. He is the true and better Isaac, the beloved son who climbs a mountain with a wooden instrument of death on his back, and whose father not only raised the knife but also brought it down and then raised him from the dead.

Jesus is the true and better Joseph, who is the beloved of the father but hated by his brothers, slain despite his innocence, falsely accused in his righteousness, he mysteriously is alive again. He does all things well and he comes to be seated at the right hand of the king where he spends his reign for the preservation and the rescue of the very ones who had betrayed him.

He is the true and better Moses, who can not only give us the law but fulfill the law, who can not only bring us to the edge of the promised land but actually bring us in. Jesus is the true and better Joshua. He is the one who can cross the waters of judgment and bring the people with him into the promised land.

He is the true and better David, who saw the plight of a frightened and weak people before a giant they could not defeat, and so out of obscurity and weakness, he not only risked his life but gave his life that he might purchase for them the safety they could not find on their own. He defeated their enemy and became their king.

He is the true and better Esther, who goes before the king to intercede on behalf of the people. He does not merely say, "If I perish, I perish." He says, "When I perish, I perish," and by his death he brings salvation.

Jesus is the true and better Job, who suffers though innocent and during the scorn of the ones that he loves, but who is vindicated, restored, and enriched. Then he intercedes with the Father for the very ones who condemned him.

Guys, the entire thing is about him—the stories, the law, the prophecies, the poetry. All of it is meant to train God's people to recognize the Messiah when he comes, the conspicuous stories of life out of death, victory out of defeat, of God rescuing the weak and the needy. What they are supposed to do is they are supposed to train us to see the pattern, to look for a redeemer. They are not there to stroke our vanity that we might presume we ourselves are redeemers.

The Bible and Its Purpose

I know that this understanding of the Bible may be at odds with what you were taught or may be at odds with what you assume, as I think far more common to believe, that there are occasional little islands about Jesus in an ocean about you. I fear most people read the Bible moralistically, as if the whole thing is this giant finger wagging at you, right, chiding you, that you're not imitating Moses very well. Now, why can't you be more like Ruth in her faithfulness? And why do you lack the courage of David? Tighten up, be good, do good.

But friends, that is mistaken because the ocean itself is about him. This book is not chiefly telling you to be like Joseph. It is telling you that Joseph is like Jesus, so that you will marvel and wonder and worship him in his loyalty and humility, that you will be captivated by his long-suffering patience under such unjust treatment, and that you will be cheered by his victory despite such a pervasive and ongoing miserable rejection and suffering.

You guys, the law, it is not a ladder for you to climb. It is there to break your heart. It is there to prove to you that you are completely unable to keep it, that you are disabled. So that you will look about you for a solution to a problem you cannot solve and discover that the solution is a person—he has kept the law.

The law shows us how much we are bound to Christ for his fulfilling it and enduring its curse in our stead and for our good, so that we might be provoked to worshiping gratitude, which we would express in our greater care to conform our lives to it.

You guys, the psalms of praise should confound you. It has been said that Christians never lie more than when they are singing the psalms. Listen to this. This is Psalm 119. Just listen to this:

Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
I am a sojourner on the earth, hide not your commandments from me.
My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times.

Really. Your soul is consumed with longing for his rules at all times? Could anybody? Is that true of anyone in this room right now?

You guys, that song is not about you. Jesus is the singer of the songs. He is the one. He is the only one who loves God with all of his heart and with all of his soul and with all of his strength, with all of his mind. He is the singer of the psalms of praise and he is the singer of the songs of lament.

Despite his holiness, his perfection, his worthiness to receive good, he was a man acquainted with sorrows, familiar with grief. He was like one from whom men hide their faces, and we esteemed him not. The songs of lament find their apex in his great suffering.

The whole thing is about him, all of it. This sermon could go on for a very long time. It's not. I'm actually going to end a little bit early, but I want to mention two more things.

The entire sacrificial system that just permeates the life of the Israelites finds its ultimate fulfillment in him. If you were a kid growing up in Israel, what would have been beaten into your head is that sin equals death, sin equals death, sin equals death—a bloodbath. They're constantly slitting the throat of sheep and goats and bulls. But notice they’re slitting the throats of sheep and bulls and goats, not you. Sin equals death, but it doesn't have to be your death.

There was a particular annual ceremony known as Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It shows up in Leviticus 16, and it's really the epicenter of this. In this ceremony, there were two goats. These two goats would be taken from the people, and then they would transfer from the people to the goats all sin, all transgressions, all culpability for wrong-doing.

Listen, this is how this is read. Let me just read this to you. So I’ll pick it up in Leviticus 16:20:

When Aaron has finished making atonement for the most holy place, the tent of meeting of the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all of the wickedness, the rebellion of the Israelites, all their sin, and put them on the goat’s head. And he shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place, and the man shall release it in the desert.

So, one goat receives the culpability of sin, and then he's banished, he's estranged. The other goat—this actually came earlier but I flipped the order because I wanted you to hear about this little hands laying ceremony—verse 15:

Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring his blood inside the veil and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. Thus he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins.

You guys, Jesus is the scapegoat sent into the wilderness. He is the one who’s banished when he’s on the cross. He's going to say to the Father: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he has been ostracized. He was crucified outside the city, bearing the shame. And he is the goat that is killed as a substitute for the people of Israel.

That entire ceremony finds its fulfillment in him. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament speaks a great deal about this sacrifice. It notes that Jesus offered a better sacrifice than a better temple, with blood that was his own.

In particular, it says that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin. Imagine you have an enormous debt, maybe five million dollars, and you can't pay it off. But the best you can do is pay the interest on the loan. If you keep making interest payments, then the bank stays off your back. But the debt is not being reduced; the debt remains.

That's a little like what the Israelites were doing. They were paying only the interest on the loan day after day, year after year, just killing bulls and goats and sheep to make the interest payments. What needed to happen, and what did happen, is that Jesus came and retired the debt. He cleared the principal, so there is no interest payment left to make because his sacrifice fully paid for our sin.

I think maybe this is why Jesus was incredulous in Luke 24 when the disciples couldn’t understand that he had to die. Those guys Jesus was talking to—Luke 24—when he says, "How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken”—they thought he was the Messiah. They thought he was the one, then he dies, and they were like, "Well, I guess we got it wrong."

But you guys, his death did not contradict his claim to be Messiah. It confirmed it. Which I think Jesus was kind of like, "What did you think was going to happen? Did you read any of the things that we've said?" Right? "How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe." What did you think this whole thing has been about all this time? Did you not know that, of course, I had to die? Maybe ten million bloody bulls should have clued you in. But the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.

Conclusion

Now, in just a minute, I'll give you the final picture of the morning of the week. It’s not the final picture of the book, just the one we’re going to look at. In a minute, we’re going to come to this table. You’re going to come up and kneel, and we’re going to offer you bread and wine.

When we do it, Sloop's going to say these words that you’ve probably heard a thousand times—that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed once for us upon the cross. Jesus is not just the fulfillment of Yom Kippur, but he’s also the fulfillment of Passover.

I know we're late in a sermon, so this might hurt your brain a little, but did you know that those are completely different things? Yom Kippur and Passover—they're not only different ceremonies, but they mean different things. They point to different realities.

Yom Kippur is about the fact that Jesus drinks the wrath of God. He is a substitute in our place—rather than punishing us for sin, he punishes Jesus. Jesus takes our blame, our culpability, so we won’t have to. That’s lovely. It’s true, it’s necessary, you’ve got to have it. But it’s not the whole picture. It’s not what Passover is about.

Passover is not about a means for sin, not about propitiating God’s wrath; it is about rescuing us from our enemies. Jesus’ Passover depicts the fact that Jesus has the ability to defeat our enemies and make us free. Passover was not about propitiation; it was about being freed from slavery in Egypt, and it anticipates Jesus freeing us from Satan’s bondage.

Jesus did drink the wrath of the Father—Yom Kippur—but he also defeated Satan and freed us from his clutches. Penal, substitutionary atonement is true. So is Christ’s victory, because Christ is victorious over all things.

In short, the whole thing is about him. In ten million ways, God, through the Hebrew Scriptures, was revealing different facets of the singular jewel that is Christ. It is one giant story, and the whole thing is about him.

And we should diligently study the Scriptures—not because we think we’re saved by our Bible trivia knowledge, but because as we study it and learn to read it the way the Spirit of God wrote it, we discover more of him. And he, and he alone, can give us eternal life.

It is worth understanding this magnificent, complex book and all the ways it points to him so that we might find him. Amen, Lord Jesus, you're the king of all things. You are the fulfillment of all things. You are the singer of the songs. I pray that we might be a people here in this community that learn how to read this book without the arrogance and presumption that it’s about us, without the burden and crushing weight that I better tighten up, or rather that it depicts you and your beauty in the perfections of your love and the right ordering of how you value things, so that as we see you, as we worship you, as we wonder at your beauty, we might, bit by bit, over time, actually become more like you. We love you. We bless your name. Amen.