Jesus Claims Equality with God (John 5:17–23)
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SERMON TRANSCRIPT:
Well, good morning, Christ Church. If you could find your way to your seat, we're going to begin our service this morning. So I invite you to stand and let's pray to our Father who is in heaven. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord God. We thank you for this wonderful morning, Lord, where we can come together and just magnify who you are, Lord. We thank you that you are gracious, you are merciful, you are forgiving, Lord. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, Lord, that you have just sent your son to die on the cross for our sins, Lord, but that he did not stay dead, that he rose from the dead, conquering sin, conquering death, Lord, and that we can just continue to celebrate that in the joy of the salvation that you have given us, Lord. We lift up every aspect of the service, Lord, the giving, the songs, the sermon, Lord, the communion, that it will all be focused on you, Lord, and that we can just magnify you together, Lord. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. Let's sing greatly to be praised.
Lift up His name with joyful praise. Our God is great. Our God is great. Shout to the God of triumph. Let every tongue proclaim His name. Roast in the resurrection. In Jesus Christ who rules and reigns. Our God is waiting to the earth compares to him, the God of glory and of grace. Our God is great, our God is great. The nation joins to praise him. Our God is great, our God is great. The sinner finds salvation. Our God is great, our God is great. The church of Christ our God is great, our God is great, our God is great, need to be praised. Nothing in all the earth compares to Him, the God of glory and of grace. Our God is great, our God is great.
Well, Psalm 48 says that God is great as the Lord and greatly to be praised. And that's why we come together as God's people. Not only do we praise Him during the week in our own life with our families and friends, but together with the church we get to praise Him in a unique way. And so we're glad to have you here this morning.
And today we want to answer another question in our FFS series, our Foundational Faith series, just asking questions about what God teaches us in the Word of God. And this is probably one of the most important questions that we could ask and answer, and that is, how can we be saved? And here's what the Scripture says collectively. Let's say it together. Only by faith in Jesus Christ and in His substitutionary atoning death on the cross can so even though we are guilty of having disobeyed God and are still inclined to all evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of our own, but only by pure grace, imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Christ when we repent and believe in him. Amen, amen. What a great God we have, who's so merciful, amen?
Now listen, you might not have had a chance to say hi to someone when you walked in, so why don't you turn around, greet someone, find out what they did this last week. I know the night won't last. Your word will come to pass. My heart will sing your praise again. Jesus, you're still here.
Let me invite you to find your seat. We are doing this service in a little bit different order than we normally do. So we want to welcome all of you who came on time today. Amen. All right.
Open your Bibles this morning to John chapter 5 as we continue our incredible series of the gospel of John and his record that he provides for us in a unique way, 92, 93% of John is totally unique from Matthew and Mark and Luke. And so we're seeing some different things, some different stories, different discourses, and even some different miracles and a unique thing that we're going to be talking about today. But I want to begin this message with this thought. The inspired, authoritative, infallible, and sufficient Word of God is crystal clear about many truths, but this truth in particular, and here it is.
There is only one true and living God who exists according to God himself. That's what he says. In fact, here's an example of over the hundred different times that we find in scripture that there's only one God. No other exists. But here's what God says himself with his own words in Isaiah 45. And there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a savior. There is none except me. Wow, what a statement.
Now, why is this one and only God, why is that truth a truth? Because God tells us inside the scriptures that we serve a triune God. He exists eternally, co-equally in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It's a unique truth, it's in scripture. This is the true and living God as he presents himself. In other words, God alone is the one true God, listen to this, without equal and without rival and without comparison. Therefore, there is no other true or real gods, only fake and false ones. That can be offensive in our world today. But let me make it clear what God is not.
God is not three separate gods like the Tritheists believe. God is not one person who appears in three different modes or with three different masks like the Modalists believe. God is not a hierarchy of essence where Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are lesser beings or almost God or God-like. That's Arianism.
You see, the Gospel of John answers two ultimate questions that every single one of us must ask and answer. Number one is this, who is Jesus? Who is he? And John goes on record from chapter one all the way to the end of the book in chapter 21 to make it crystal clear who he is. But the second question we must ask and answer is why should we follow him? And these two questions are so very important. And how you answer those questions makes all the difference in the world. If you answer it incorrectly, you will sadly and tragically live out your earthly life as a condemned sinner without any hope of forgiveness of sin or the gift of eternal life. And you will miss in this life what real life is all about, what real success is all about. You see, as we've been hearing over and over again throughout this gospel series, we've been hearing who Jesus really is and why we should follow him. And one of the truths that comes out loud and clear is this, is that he is the son of God, but he is the only God man. He's fully God. And sometimes there are people who don't understand that or maybe don't believe it even though God says what he says and makes it clear.
Here's what John says in John 20, verse 31. We've read this almost every week. He says this, that's the purpose of the gospel. This book is like a gospel tract. Telling people how to be delivered from their sin and how to love Christ and how to follow Christ. This book is also a paternity test verifying that Jesus Christ is the only son of God. This book is like a legal deposition testifying about the identity of the person and the ministry of Jesus Christ. So in John chapter 21 verse 24, John describes himself as a faithful witness in recording this story. He's given truthful testimony about Jesus. So along the way from chapter 1 to chapter 21, it's amazing, he trots out a variety of witnesses that attest to that reality. Let me share with you a few of these. Number one is he gives out three divine witnesses, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And we'll be looking at some of those as we go through.
The second group that he brings out are eight plus human witnesses. John the Baptist, Nathaniel, the woman at the well, Peter, people who were at the Feast of Booze, Martha, the people who saw Lazarus resurrected, and Thomas. And then he gives us eight miraculous signs and miracles that point and attest to the fact that he is the God-man. We see that in the changing of the water into wine and the healing of the nobleman's son and the healing of the lame man that we talked about last week and the feeding of the 5,000, him walking on the Sea of Galilee and healing the man who was born blind, and in one of his post-resurrection fishing miracles. Now listen, these are only eight of many, many, many multitudes of miracles that he did, but John records eight for us. And then there's one final witness that Jesus brings up himself, and that is the witness of the written record of the inspiration and the authority of Scriptures.
All these witnesses say the same thing. And it's clear that Satan in our world today, his number one method, and you can read this in Scripture, is deception. And his number one tool that he's going to use, listen to this, is religion. He's going to deceive the masses about Christ and about other things in life through Satan's tool of religion. And what they're going to see is they're going to see Jesus talking. Everybody talks about Jesus in every religion. The problem is they get the wrong Jesus and they're deceived. Let me just remind you once again about some of these religions and what they believe about Jesus. But remember this, Satan, it says, blinds the minds of the unbelieving so they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.
So Jesus is not a good but martyred Jewish rabbi who was not the Messiah and didn't bodily rise from the dead like Judaism wrongly believes. Jesus is not an undivine and wasn't crucified, nor was he one of the 124,000 prophets of Allah who will return in the future and live and die as Islam wrongly believes. Jesus is not a separate God from the Father, nor a created spirit child by the Father and Mother in heaven, nor the elder brother of all men, including Satan, nor was he married, nor was his body created through the sexual union between Elohim and Mary as the Mormons wrongly believe. Jesus is not a created being, nor Michael the archangel before he lived on earth, nor did he die on a stake and resurrected as a spirit and returned invisibly in 1914 as the Jehovah's Witnesses wrongly believe. Jesus is not just a teacher or a guru or an avatar, the incarnation of Vishnu, whose death did not atone and he did not rise from the dead as Hinduism wrongly believes. And Jesus is not an undivine, enlightened teacher who was not the Savior as Buddhism wrongly believes. And Jesus is not just a holy man, a teacher who was not divine, nor the sole way to God as Sikhism wrongly believes. And Jesus is not one of many manifestations of God who didn't rise from the dead and return to earth in the form of Baha'u'llah as the Baha'i faith wrongly believes. And Jesus is not divine or just a moral teacher as the Unitarian Universalists wrongly believe, and he's not an ascended master, an enlightened being, or a model of the divine consciousness who did not bodily rise from the dead as the New Agers wrongly believed. And he's not an operating thetan who was not the creator, nor did he die for sins as our Savior as the Scientologists wrongly believe. And he is not a man who displayed the Christ idea and was not God and did not become man to suffer and die for our sins and did not rise from the dead and will not return as the Christian scientists wrongly believe. Now that list could go on and on and on. Everybody talks about Jesus in their religions.
And Satan knows that if you can deceive the world over the identity of Jesus Christ, you can deceive them about salvation. So Jesus is divine. He's the unique God-man. This is what John has been recording about the ministry of Jesus Christ and all the witnesses around him. And he claims to be God himself. And listen, you've got to only have really three choices. You can choose to say, well, he was a liar or he was a lunatic or he was Lord. The writer and the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis presented the trilemma. It's a problem with only three possible solutions about Jesus Christ, liar, lunatic, or Lord. Listen, if he knew that he was not God but claimed to be God, then he was a what? A liar. A liar. If he thought he was God, but he really wasn't, then he's just a loon, right? He's a lunatic. If he said that he was God because he was God, then he is the Lord with all the attesting miracles and all the attesting testimonies.
Now listen, C.S. Lewis said this famous quote in mere Christianity, a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says he's a poached egg, or he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon. Or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He didn't leave that open to us. He did not intend to, unquote.
Now, if your Bibles were open to John chapter 5, let's read our text. As John records this, after the lame man was healed by Jesus Christ. Pick up your pallet and walk. The religious leaders didn't like it. You're breaking the Sabbath was more important to them than the fact that a man received his health back. And plus, he didn't even break the Sabbath. He never broke the Sabbath. He just broke the rules they added to the Sabbath.
Now watch what happens here. Verse 17 connects to this story. But he answered them, those religious leaders, my father is working until now and I myself am working. You know what he's really saying? Did you know the father is working on the Sabbath? Notice verse 18, but for this reason, therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because he not only was breaking the Sabbath, but he was also calling God his own father. Watch this, making himself equal with God. Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of himself unless it is something he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, these things the son also does, watch this phrase, in like manner. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all things that he himself is doing, and the Father will show him greater works than these, so that you will marvel. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he wishes. And for not even the Father judges anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. And he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. What a text.
It's amazing what John does here. John trots out six pieces of evidence from Jesus' words and Jesus' actions about the fact that he is the truly God-man. And this is just not the only place. It's all over the Gospel of John, all over the Scripture. So I want to take the opportunity today to present these six evidences to you because, again, one of the foundational truths is that we worship and we serve and we love and we follow the one and true living God because there is no other. The rest of them are fake, phony evidences. I mean, that's what the scripture says. And if Satan's out there deceiving, how do you know you haven't been deceived? How do you know that? Well, here's an opportunity for us to look at our own beliefs and to see what Jesus says. Because each one of us have to decide. Like Jesus was kind of like in this text, it's kind of like he's in the courtroom. He's raising his right hand. He says, I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
And so we see the following, all right? Number one is that Jesus claims to be equal in who he is. And he talks about the nature here in verse 17 and verse 18. Let me read verse 18 again. He says, he was just breaking their rules, their traditions, but also calling God his own father, which meant in the Jewish mindset, he was making himself equal with God, and that's exactly what he was doing, right? And so John wants us, his audience, to say, okay, we see that. That's one piece of evidence, a powerful piece of evidence. He uses the language of the Father, Son in almost every verse that we're going to be looking at today. In fact, between verses 19 to 26, he talks about the Son and the Father nine times. Nine times. And it always referred to a person's nature, the Father and the Son. Nine times.
Jesus is claiming to be of the same essence and the same substance as the Father, but wait, yet distinct as a different person. That's why we worship one God who exists eternally and co-equally as the three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet one God. So Jesus is claiming clearly. Now you go back in the creation story. One of the things that I think really just undermines, one of the many things that undermines macro evolution that we all just evolved from some pond scum somewhere way back when is that when God created the world, he created things after their own order. And so when he created a cow and they reproduced, guess what they had? Another cow. When he created a turkey, what did they have? A turkey. When he created the birds, what did they do? They reproduced birds. When they created like husky dogs, what did they reproduce? Husky dogs. When they created cougars, what did they get? Disappointment, all right? Now follow that logic there, okay? But you get the point, right?
Listen, the phrase, quote, the son of, was more than just genetic. It spoke of a person's nature. So listen, brothers, James and John, who were two of the disciples, God called them, or Jesus called them, the sons of what? Thunder. Which testified about their nature. And then Jesus, or excuse me, idolaters were called sons of Belial. Right? On one occasion, Jesus said this of his critics, they are of the father of the father, the devil. This is why the Jews never referred to God as my father. They would say our father, but Jesus consistently said my father, and that's what got him in trouble, or one of the many things that got him in trouble.
See, Jesus knew that he would enrage them, but he never backed down. He never backed off of his claims of deity. And we could go all over the place, but because of time, we can't. But just let me note a few things we're going to run into. In John 8, verse 58, Jesus said one of the most stunning things he could ever say. He simply said this, I am. Now, if you're a Gentile standing around, you're saying, well, can you finish the sentence, Jesus? But if you're a Jew, you knew exactly what was going on because you recalled the burning bush and you recalled Moses meeting with God. Who should I tell that's sending me? He said, I am who I am. And Jesus is appealing to say, that's me. Wow. He's claiming to be God. So what happens in John chapter 8? The religious leaders, quote, picked up stones to throw at him because of his audacious claim to be God. You go over to John chapter 10, verse 30, and Jesus explicitly says this, I and the Father are one. Oh man, that just stirred him up like a hornet's nest again, because it says they wanted to kill him. And when Jesus asked which of the many good works from the Father, they were stoning him, they replied, for a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God. And that's clearly what he is saying.
In Luke chapter 22, toward the end of his life, in the last week, the passion week, before he went to the cross, the Sanhedrin walked up and said, hey, are you the son of God then? Here's what Jesus said, yes, I am. That's all they needed. And they furiously said, what further proof do we have of his testimony? For we have heard it ourselves from his own mouth. And those words they thought condemned him. I think it's good to remember that while Jesus is equal with God clearly as we look at who he is, in sharing the same nature, he's also distinct from his father as the son. You see, Jesus' existence as the son of God does not imply, and listen to this, very important, that there is a point in time which he didn't exist and then was created as the son of the father. Jesus was not created. He's the eternal son of God.
Just as a human son shares his father's nature, so Jesus shares the same nature as God the Father. But just as a human son is a distinct person from his father, Jesus is distinct from the Father as the second person of the triunity. It's the same with human beings. We're created male and female. We're totally equal as male and females in essence, in significance, and in value. And yet God says we have some distinctiveness because one's male, one's female, but we also have distinctiveness in our functional roles. The connection is incredible. One more note is John chapter 14. One day before he goes to the cross, Philip says, show us the Father. And Jesus said some famous words. If you've seen me, you've what? Seen the Father. You see, it's crystal clear that John, as he shares with us what Jesus is communicating. And the enemies of the cross themselves, the enemies of Jesus, recognized that he was claiming he was equal with God, and that's what he was doing.
Secondly, Jesus claims to be equal in what he does, in his works, in his power, in his creative ability. When Jesus says, my father is working until now, and I myself am working, in verse 17, he's connecting his own activity directly with God's activity in working. And he knew that was just going to get under the skin of the religious leaders who were just upset about the Sabbath. You're messing with the Sabbath. Listen, Jesus is saying to accuse me of Sabbath breaking by healing a lame man and having him carry his pallet is to accuse God of Sabbath breaking because he is my father and I work exactly as he works. And so verse 17 tells us his father has been continuously working. And guess what that means? Even on the Sabbath. And so has Jesus.
Let me remind you that the Bible tells us that this triune God, that each one of them were the source of the creation of the universe, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And since he, the Son, and the Father are one, Jesus has been working with the Father since all the time. The Jews got it, didn't they? The enemies got it in verse 18. Why wouldn't people in the church or why wouldn't people and anybody who looks at the Scripture understand that? It's cruel. And then Jesus says, well, truly, truly, three times in this discourse. Why? Because he wants to make a special note of what he says. And first he says this, the son can do nothing of himself and let it is something he sees the father doing. Now he's not making a statement, hey, listen, Jesus is just sitting there watching the father because he's weak and he's limited and he's just going to see what he says next. No. No. They have absolute unity with the Father in nature and in will. So it's impossible for the Son to act independently of the Father. Why? Because they share the same nature. What the Father does, the Son does. What the Son does, the Father does. And when Jesus worked, guess what? It was God working. Whatever Jesus did was an act of God. Whatever Jesus said was the Word of God. There was no moment or no action of his life which he did not express the life and the action of the Father. And so yet there's three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. So we see there's a distinctiveness, right? Three persons, yet one God.
I'll admit this, I don't think our puny pea-sized brains can really understand that unbelievable glorious truth in Scripture, and yet people have tried to do that all the time, like I shared earlier. There's a lot of different people out there in faith that look at the triune God and completely undermine it by misrepresenting what the Scripture says. But notice these verses reveal these functional roles in carrying out the divine plan. And as the son, Jesus was always subordinate to the father. As the father commanded, the son obeyed and was sent to this earth by his father to fill his redemptive plan. Subordination in the functional hierarchy of the Trinity does not in any way imply inferiority. It does to us, but it doesn't. All three persons of the triune God are equal and eternal. But for the sake of carrying out the divine plan, the Son is subject to the Father, and the Holy Spirit is subject to the Father and the Son. That's hard for us to comprehend, and yet that's what the Bible reveals.
Now notice the last part of verse 19 explains why it's impossible for the Son to do anything of himself. For whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does. Listen to this, in like manner. Why? Because they're one God. It's impossible for the Son to take independent, self-determined action that would set him over against the Father as another God because he wasn't another God. He was the one true God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. There's one God. And John's point is that while Jesus is the Son of God as a subordinate to the Father and carries out his work of obedience by coming to this earth and obeying the Heavenly Father and going to the cross to seek and to save those who are lost, he is nonetheless also equal to the Father as God.
So Jesus claims to be equal with God by who he is and by what he does in his works. Thirdly, he claims to be equal in how he is loved. This is very interesting. In verse 20, look at verse 20 again. He says, amazing. The father loves the son. It just seems like so basic. Well, yeah, of course that would be true. Fathers usually love their sons, so the heavenly father would love his son. But listen, I believe with all my heart, when you read all the scripture, this is not a normal love. This is a special love that is above even the agape love that we receive that's poured out into our hearts, according to Romans 5, 5, when we get saved, so we can love one another with that agape God's love. There's some special love in the Trinitarian godhood that is so unique, so special. And really, this is, notice in verse 20, do you have this there? The first word in your Bible should be the word for. It's a conjunction. It makes you look back to what he just said. And what's motivating the father? The motivating the father is his love. It's his love.
You and I aren't really privy to that kind of love. At the heart of God's redeeming work is, according to Scripture, we are given the great love of our Father, that he would sacrifice his only begotten Son for us, and he was motivated by this incredible love. But listen, the heart of God's redeeming work is not God's love for you and me. It's not the same. It's not God's love for all human beings and not for sinners. No, the heart of redemption is the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the Father. And so in a sense, Jesus died in a secondary sense because of his great love with which he loved us. Now follow this. But he died on the cross in a primary sense because he loved the Father first and foremost. First. Again, showing and revealing him as God. You see, the whole purpose of redemption and creation in human history is so that God the Father can gift and deliver, listen to this, a redeemed bride to his son as an expression of his love who will glorify and serve the son forever. Forever.
But notice that the Father's love for the Son is demonstrated by what? Showing him all things that he himself is doing. Well, what's he doing? When? Where? What? I mean, it seems like John is recording here in Jesus. What Jesus is saying is he's referring to what Jesus came and was sent to do to accomplish on this earth. But he's not saying that Jesus was diminished in information. If he's God, then he has to be omniscient, right? And he is. In fact, we've already been seeing that. We talked about that last week. So what does it mean in Philippians 2 when he said he did not regard equality a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself? That's been a focus of great theologians throughout the ages about what does it mean in the kenosis of empty himself. Did he set aside his divine prerogative as God just to be a man? I don't believe that's true at all. He was the God-man. We already see he was omniscient. I'm not really sure completely what it totally means other than I know that somehow he maybe sometimes didn't use his omniscience all the time as he was the perfect God-man. But he wasn't receiving new information as if he needed new information. No, he's God. But that's different than us, isn't it? You and I need information all the time. That's why we're coming to Scripture. That's why we study our Bibles. That's why we come together in church. We have life groups. We have Bible studies. All the different things because we need information. Or we work and we need information for our work. Or we want to know what's going on in the news. We're in the information age. And we don't know it all.
But one thing I think we learn here is that we don't need to turn to the wisdom of the world for answers to our personal and relational problems when we have Jesus Christ, listen to this, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Colossians 2, 3 says. And we have been given, according to 2 Peter 1, 3, everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.
And then notice this, if you will. Look down at verse 20 again. He says, for the Father loves the Son and shows him all the things that he's doing, and the Father will show him greater works. What are these greater works? Well, we don't have to guess. It's not that he turned the water into wine. Those are good works. But he's not talking about those greater works. He's not talking about the lame man who was healed or maybe walking on the water that he's going to show us or maybe feeding the 5,000, which turned out to be really 20,000 people and families and everything else there. Those aren't the greater works. You know what the greater works are? It's the next two verses. The greater work is that he's going to save whomever he wants. And the greater work is that he's been given, delegated by the Father, judgment of everybody. He's the judge and the jury in the end. Those are the greater works. So Jesus claims to be equal in who he is, in what he does, in how he is loved. And fourthly, he claims to be equal in who he saves. Yes.
Did you see that in verse 21 again? He says, that means he's able to give physical life, and we have record of that. Three different resurrections are mentioned in the gospel accounts. Jesus raised three different people from the dead. But I really believe what this passage is referring to is not just the physical bringing from death to life, it's that spiritual from death to life. What a miracle that is. Not one of us can perform that miracle, ever. You might be able to pray a prayer and say, would you please raise my dead grandmother from the dead and God could do it. He can do it. And maybe he'd answer that prayer. But one day Jesus is going to resurrect all the dead, we're going to find out next week, or the next couple of weeks, from all time, either for judgment or for eternal life. What a stunning statement it is that he could resurrect the spiritually dead that he gives life to, and it's whomever he wishes. Did you notice that God doesn't raise all the dead?
Jesus only raised three of the dead and there were many other people who were dead during those three years. Why did he raise them all? He, in the end, is the sovereign one who chooses. Look at verse 24, which we're going to talk about next week. Truly, truly, I say to you, Jesus says, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but is passed out of what? Death, that spiritual death, into spiritual life. Only God and Christ can do that miracle in our hearts. Leon Morris says, he said in one of his commentaries, he says, you see, God's the only one who can raise the dead spiritually. But you know what he uses? He uses you and he uses me as the seed sowers and the harvest reapers along the way as he performs the miracles, just through our feeble efforts, maybe our courage, maybe our willingness to drop the seeds. And by the way, it's a good reminder that he gets all the credit, right? We're reminded of that in 1 Corinthians 1.30, but by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus. It's his doing, not yours.
For God has not destined us for wrath, he says to the Thessalonians, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us so that whether we awake or asleep, we will live together with him. Wow, what amazing evidence John's given us. He claims to be equal in who he is and what he does and how he's loved and who he saves. And fifthly, Jesus claims to be equal in who he judges.
We live in a culture, don't we? Does anybody in this room like to be judged? Just raise your hand. I just want to see. I didn't think so. Nobody likes to be judged, yet we judge each other all the time. I kind of find it's interesting that how many people in the Major League Baseball love this new ABS system, where either the pitcher or the catcher or the batter can, within two seconds, either tap their hat, and they get a relook to find out, was that a ball, was that a strike, and it's changed some games. It's really an interesting thing, but the fans love it. I'm thinking, why do they love it? You either win or you lose or whatever it is. It's kind of interesting. It adds some flavor to the game. But it's kind of interesting to me that the umpires have a 93.5% accuracy rate, which means one out of every 15 calls they make is wrong. But listen to this, 50% to 56% of the challenges are overturned. Now, if it's your team, you love it. If it's not your team, I don't like ABS. ABS. But umpires and human judges are fallible, and we don't like that when it concerns our life. Maybe they made the wrong decision about me. Well, we're fallible as well as we judge ourselves wrongly, and who knows what our accuracy rate is. It's pretty, pretty low. But listen, when it comes to God, perhaps we have this love-hate relationship with the perfect judge. He never can get it wrong. He's perfectly just. He knows everything about our motives. He knows everything about our heart, our thoughts, our words, our actions. He's got all the evidence right in front of him. And he can judge perfectly. In fact, in verse 27, it says the Father delegates all judgment to his Son alone because he is the Son of Man. He took on human flesh. He died for our sins. So the Father delegated this judgment to him. And Jesus even said back in chapter 3, these words, I didn't come into this world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. But those who reject him are already under condemnation. Because they have not believed in the only provision for their sin. That's Jesus Christ. And what does a perfect, just, and perfectly fair judge need? They need flawless knowledge. And that's exactly what Jesus has, the Father has, and the Holy Spirit has. He's God. So five pieces of evidence. He's equal in who he is, in what he does, in how he's loved, in how he saves, or who he saves and who he judges.
And finally, Jesus claims to be equal in what he deserves. Now watch, this is powerful. So that, here's the purpose, so that all will honor the Son. How? Even as they honor the Father, and he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent me. Now, if Jesus isn't truly God, then he's a liar there. He's a lunatic. He's blasphemous. But he's basically saying, listen, I am God because I deserve the honor the Father gets. And that's to be worshiped as the one and only true God. And by the way, you know who learned this lesson well? It was John himself, the writer. If you remember, he wrote the book of Revelation. 44 visions in the book of Revelation. And at the end of the book, John's having an encounter with one of the angels. And he falls down before him and basically with some kind of a prostrate heart of worship. And here's what the angel said. Do not do that. Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren, the prophets, and those who heed the words of this book. And here he closes it out. Worship God. That's the only one we can worship. That's the only one we can honor. John records the stunning words right here. If you honor the Father, you honor the Son. If you honor the Son, you honor the Father. If you don't honor the Son, you're not honoring the Father. Why? Because they're God. Amazing.
That means that you contest anyone's claim to believe in God by their views of Jesus Christ. Again, that's why you need to answer the question, who is Jesus Christ? And you're going to get the information from the Scripture. If you claim to believe in God but believe in anything less than what God's Word says about Jesus Christ, then you do not believe in the living and true God as presented by the Lord, and you're believing rather in the God of your own making. Listen, if they don't honor Jesus, they don't honor the Father, and that means no one will be okay in judgment if that doesn't happen. By the way, John later also wrote 1, 2, and 3 John in your Bibles. He wrote five books. And here's what he says in 1 John 2, verse 23. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. The one who confesses the Son has the Father also. He's keeping making the point.
Jesus is equal to God in who he is, by his nature, in what he does, by the same works, and how he is loved by that divine love, that unique special love they have, that Trinitarian love, by who he saves, by the choosing that he has to raise the dead hearts to life, and by who he judges all men perfectly, and by what he deserves, and that's to be worshiped. Listen, only God can be and do these things, and Jesus is clearly God. And this is just one little section. So the question for all of us this morning is, do you believe that Jesus is the only true and living God-man? This is what the Scripture says. You don't want to play with fire and try to believe something else. You don't want to nuance it.
I decided this week to look up some statistics from various sources to find out what is it that Americans believe and what does the American church believe? Listen to this. This is stunning. The polls reveal the following beliefs. 65% believe that all religions are acceptable to God. 65%. Yet 60% to 64% still identify themselves as Christians. My question is what Bible are they reading? 80% say that Jesus is the son of God. Hey, that's pretty good. But what kind of a son of God? 55% say that Jesus is the first and the greatest being created by God. He wasn't created. That's a different Jesus. And unbelievably, 73% of evangelicals agree with that belief. Can it really be that high? Only 41% believe that Jesus is eternal. And 49 to 53% say that Jesus was a great teacher but not God. Wow. I'm guessing that there may be people in this church, even though we're a Bible church and we preach through the Bible and we try to present the truth of God, that there may be some who are doubting that. It's impossible with all these statistics. But these stats tell us that too many people believe in the wrong Jesus, and tragically, too many professing believers believe that he's special, he was a great moral teacher, but he's not necessarily God. And then you're just rewriting the Bible and you're calling him a liar or a lunatic. It's really not an option to believe in Jesus Christ as merely a great moral teacher or a great miracle worker and not believe that he's fully God. So here's how I want to end this message. I want to quote what Jesus said in John 8, verse 24. He says this, "...unless that you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins."
Explicitly Mentioned References:
John 5:17-27 - Main text of the sermon
Psalm 48 - God is great and greatly to be praised
Isaiah 45 - No other God besides me
John 20:31 - Purpose of the Gospel of John
John 21:24 - John as faithful witness
2 Corinthians 4:4 - Satan blinds minds of unbelieving
John 8:58 - "I am" statement
John 10:30 - "I and the Father are one"
Luke 22 - Jesus affirming He is the Son of God
John 14 - "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father"
Philippians 2 - Christ emptied himself (kenosis)
Colossians 2:3 - Hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge
2 Peter 1:3 - Everything pertaining to life and godliness
1 Corinthians 1:30 - By His doing you are in Christ
1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 - Not destined for wrath
John 3 - Not come to judge but to save
Revelation 22:9 - Worship God alone
1 John 2:23 - Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father
John 8:24 - "Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins"
1 John 1:9 - If we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive
Romans 5:5 - God's love poured into our hearts
Hebrews 12:1-2 - Turn your eyes upon Jesus (Fusion theme)
Alluded to References:
Exodus 3:14 - "I am who I am" (burning bush)
Genesis 1-2 - Creation account (things created after their own kind)
John 1 - Beginning of John's Gospel
Romans 3:23 - All have sinned and fall short
Romans 6:23 - Wages of sin is death
Ephesians 2:4-5 - God rich in mercy
Colossians 2:14 - Certificate of debt nailed to cross
John 3:16 - God so loved the world
John 19:30 - "It is finished"
Romans 8:1 - No condemnation for those in Christ
Ephesians 1:3 - Every spiritual blessing in heavenly places