The Words of Jesus #6

SPEAKER 02 : 0:03

The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:17

How was it possible that otherwise sane men would want to kill Jesus? Think about it. He was a quiet man. He was plainly a kind man, a man of few words. He was an engaging teacher and faithful to the Scriptures. And by and large, from anything I can read in the Scriptures, people liked him. And more important, he was healing people right and left. He was doing miracles the likes of which no one had ever seen. A man born blind could now see. A man who had never walked in his life could walk and leap and run. And yet, immediately after Jesus healed some of these people, the religious establishment wanted him dead. Now, I submit to you that this is strange behavior. We know a lot of it had to do with jealousy. The establishment felt threatened by Jesus. And, in fact, the establishment always feels threatened by success by someone outside the establishment. I guess it just works that way. Even Jesus’ own disciples felt threatened by a man who was successfully casting out demons in Jesus’ name. They came to Jesus one day and said, Lord, we found this fellow over here who is casting out demons in your name. Let’s go forbid him to do it because he’s not following us. Jesus looked at them like they were crazy and says, leave that man alone. There’s no one that can do a good work in my name that is against us. But it’s odd that Jesus’ disciples were starting to fall into a mindset as though they were now a new religious establishment. Well, the Jewish establishment of that day would never have admitted that they were jealous of Jesus. So what was their reason? What reason did they have down inside themselves as to why they wanted to persecute Jesus? Well, the account says, therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these good works on the Sabbath day. That was their reason. But Jesus answered them and said, well, my father works hitherto and I work. And therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, not only because he had broken their Sabbath, their way, according to their rules, but had said that God was his Father, and in their eyes that made him equal with God. So the establishment had two reasons for getting rid of Jesus, breaking the Sabbath, their rules, and blasphemy, making himself equal with God. Now the question of healing on the Sabbath is a strange one. Let me read Exodus 20, verse 8. This is the fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work. But the Sabbath day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you nor your son nor your daughter, your manservant nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. Now did you hear anything in there about healing? And by custom, the minimal work of taking care of the sick on the Sabbath day would have been permitted. Sure, somebody’s lying in bed with a fever. And they need someone to bring food to them. They need a little broth brought and someone to hold their head up and spoon the broth into their mouth. What fool would prohibit that on the Sabbath day? The Jews didn’t do that. But for Jesus to walk into a synagogue or to be standing nearby and to say on the Sabbath day to a man, rise, take up your bed and walk. Well, that was breaking the Sabbath day. The rules and the regulation of the establishment had turned the Sabbath into a burden. Now, this is odd. You don’t really understand the Sabbath day properly unless you go back to Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, where the Ten Commandments are laid out in two different ways. And you consider where these people were. These are people newly delivered from slavery. They were slaves in Egypt. They worked building. They made bricks. They built with these bricks. And they had to work seven days a week. They had no choice. So when they came out of Egypt, God says, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, folks. We’re going to take one day a week off. I’m going to give you a day off. You don’t have to work on this day. And not only do you not have to work, I don’t want you to require anybody else to work. Not your wife, not your son, not your daughter, not even your animals. I want everybody that you have any responsibility to be given the day off for rest. No work. Well, you can easily see that the original idea of the Sabbath was to be a release from burdens. It was not to be a restriction, a restrictive thing, or to keep people from, you know, any type of relaxation. It was to tell you, stop work. Now, to keep something holy is that keeping of the Sabbath day holy is an interesting term all by itself. The word holy in both Hebrew and Greek in its originals simply means to set something apart from others. How was the Sabbath set apart? Well, God worked six days, and those days were all the same. They were just work days. And the seventh day was set apart from the others by not working. And so he tells you to keep the Sabbath day holy by working six days and then not working on the seventh. Well, now, the Jews of Jesus’ day, the Pharisees in particular, had set up for themselves a whole panoply of rules whereby they observed the Sabbath day. They had built a fence around the law to keep them from even getting close to breaking the law. And it was in this area of their rules that Jesus continually came into conflict with them. Jesus observed the Sabbath. He was in the synagogue every Sabbath. He had no problem with the Sabbath. The problem he had was with all the restrictions, burdens, and rules that these men had added to the Sabbath day that the Scriptures never commanded and never intended. Jesus ignored their rules. He considered himself Lord of the Sabbath day. It was his day. And if it’s his day, well, he gets to make the rules. Now, in response to their objections, Jesus gave a relatively long response. I say relatively. It’s only 108 words. But if you’ve been following us in this series of programs on the words of Jesus, you realize that Jesus is a man of few words, and we don’t hear a great deal from him. We hear a lot about him from the apostles, but they don’t tell us all that much. about what Jesus had to say. This response of 108 words is a very important statement because it addresses the relationship between Jesus and the Father. It is Jesus’ first major doctrinal statement as well. It touches on the nature of God, the resurrection and the fact that there are at least two resurrections, the judgment and the connection between Jesus and Moses, all this in 108 words. When I come back, we’ll read those 108 words, and we’ll consider some of Jesus’ doctrine.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:01

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SPEAKER 03 : 8:29

So these people were ready to kill Jesus, first because he had broken their Sabbath rules, and secondly because he made himself out to be the Son of God, which to them meant he was claiming equality with God. So Jesus answered this way. He said, The son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the father do. For whatever things he does, these also does the son likewise. I have no trouble in visualizing this at all because little boys have a tendency to imitate their fathers. I was babysitting a friend’s son once, and it was funny. I was sitting in church with him one day, and as I sat there, I became a little uncomfortable in the position I was in, so I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees with my Bible in my hands to read. And out of the corner of my eye, I noticed little Jimmy bend forward and put his elbows on his knees. And after a moment, I sat back up. And he sat back up. I crossed my legs and he crossed his legs. I don’t know how long that would have gone on. But it’s really interesting to watch the little fellows imitate their dads. And I remember another boy whose father, because of injuries he had had, had a very peculiar walk. And I saw dad walking across college campus one day and his little boy alongside of him walking with his undamaged limbs exactly like his father walked. So when Jesus says the son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the father do. For whatever thing he does, these also does the son likewise. That makes a lot of sense to me. For the father loves the son and shows him all things that he himself does. And again, I can see a dad taking his son out to the workshop and saying, now, see, son, this is a saw. And we use the saw to cut the wood, and here’s how we do it. And we don’t do it this way because if we do, we’ll hurt ourselves, right? The Son, the Father loves the Son and shows him all the things that he does. And he’ll show him greater works than these that you all may marvel. Now Jesus presents here the imagery of two persons interacting. One can see the other. One shows things to the other. One loves the other. And the relationship between these two persons is a family relationship. Father and Son interacting. So Jesus’ doctrine, if you will, of the nature of God presents us with a family relationship. And in this family relationship, I mean, everyone who thinks of this will realize that the Father is greater than the Son. That is not necessarily in the—when the Son has grown up, He’ll be the same kind of being as His Father. But the point is that as long as the Father is alive in a family, He is the man. He’s in charge. He’s the one who leads, and the others follow. And so we have this relationship or this image of the Father in heaven, the Son upon earth, who is imitating his Father and doing the things his Father told him to do. Then in verse 21 he says this, For as the Father raises up the dead and quickens them, now what that means basically is gives life to them. As the Father raises up the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whomsoever he will. For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son. Now, here comes a portion of a doctrine of judgment. The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think of the judgment day, I think of the Father sitting on the judgment bench and looking down at me and evaluating my life for what it’s been. But apparently not. Apparently the one that’s going to be sitting at the judgment bar is not the Father, it’s the Son. And once again, the distinction between two persons is drawn. One judges, the other does not, having committed all judgment to the other. Jesus acknowledges that he and the Father are one, but not that they are the same person. Jesus is on earth, the Father is in heaven. When Jesus prays, they communicate. He says, The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son, honors not the Father which has sent him. Verily I say unto you, He that hears my word and believes on him that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life. Verily I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. Now, I have no idea what the men listening to Jesus, those men of the religious establishment again, I have no idea what they thought about what he was saying. It must have continued to sound blasphemous to them because he is talking about, when he says the Son, there could be no doubt in their mind that he’s talking about himself. And he is saying, whoever believes my word and believes on him that sent me has everlasting life. and shall not come into judgment. He’s passed already from death to life. In other words, if we are believing Christ and believing the Father through Him, if we are in Him and trusting Him, we don’t have to worry about that judgment bar off in the future. We’re being judged right now. We have already passed from death to life. Jesus would raise Lazarus from the dead, and he would show the power of what he has just said. And he would prefigure his own resurrection. He would show the whole world, yes, the dead are going to hear the voice of the Son of God, as Lazarus did. And I think the whole thing about Lazarus—we’ll come to that later—had to do with demonstrating this very point, that the dead would hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard would live. For as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself. Now when you think about it, this thing of having life in himself is pretty special. And I would conclude from that that I don’t. You and I don’t have life in ourselves. That’s what God has. And we’re actually dependent upon them, those who have that life within themselves, to give that life to us in order that we might live on. Now, you have to think about that a minute before you realize that that does a certain amount of damage to some of the old ideas we have about man being immortal, that we have an immortal soul somehow, that we ourselves are going to live forever. The implication of this is that we don’t have anything immortal in us. We’ve got to, in the words of the Apostle Paul, put on immortality. It’s got to be given to us. Well, he has life in himself, and God has given him the authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man. Now, that’s interesting. Not only is he the Son of God, he’s also the Son of Man. And the reason why God has given him the authority to judge is because he is the Son of Man. That is, he has lived in the flesh, he has experienced flesh, he knows what it’s like to be human. Now don’t marvel at this. For the hour is coming in which everyone that is in the grave will hear his voice and shall come forth. They that have done good to the resurrection of life and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation. Now, you could slide by this real easy, but what he has just told you in the words of Jesus is that there are two resurrections, one to life and one to damnation or judgment. And it is Jesus who decides who is in which resurrection. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what his criteria for that judgment, for that decision might be. I can, he continues, of my own self do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father which has sent me. Notice, my judgment is just because I am judging by a standard outside of myself. I am judging by the will, the standards, the way of the Father. If I bear witness of myself… My witness is not true. Now, I don’t think he means by that that he would be lying. What he means is that, judicially speaking, his witness of himself could not be considered as true. Someone else has got to bear witness of him. He said that in verse 32. There is another that bears witness of me, and I know that the witness which he witnesses of me is true. You sent to John, and he bear witness of the truth. So he had John’s testimony. More important, he had the Father’s testimony. But you know, in this little statement, if I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true, you have in one simple statement here the reason why Jesus did not write his own gospel. You have the reason why we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John instead of Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God. Because what was needed was two or three, or in this case, four witnesses of the things that Jesus did and said. John and Matthew and these others are witnesses who give us their testimony for us to believe or, as the case may be, not believe. But he said, I don’t receive testimony from man. I say these things that you could be rescued. He, John, was a burning and a shining light. And you were willing for a little while to rejoice in his light. But I have a greater witness than that of John. For the works which the Father has given me to finish, that’s what I’m doing, and they bear witness of me. What does? The works. And here we come all the way back to the first question I asked. I said, how can it be? Why in the world would men want to kill a man like Jesus? Look at the works that he has done. Look at the kind of man that he is. Those works bear witness of him. And yet in the face of that, there were people who wanted him dead. Now, I don’t think he means just the men who are standing there looking at him. I think he means man has never heard God’s voice, the Father’s voice, at any time, nor seen his shape. Now, that has implications, serious implications about the Old Testament. For if men in Old Testament times did not hear the voice of the Father, who did speak to them from Mount Sinai? Whose voice was it that came rolling down the mountain? Who was it that spoke to the prophets? Who was it that revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush? Interesting questions, aren’t they? He says, you have not his word abiding in you. For whom he has sent, you don’t believe. In other words, if you had God’s word abiding in you, and here comes one that God has sent, you will know him and you’ll believe him. Search the scriptures, Jesus said, for in them you think you have eternal life. And it’s the scriptures that testify of me. But you won’t come to me that you might have life. No, I receive not honor from men, said Jesus. But I know you. You don’t have the love of God in me. I am come in my Father’s name, and you will not receive me. If another came in his own name, oh yeah, you’d listen to him. But how can you believe who receive honor one of another and don’t seek the honor that comes from God only? You’re looking for titles. You’re looking for office. You’re looking for chief seats. And you praise one another and pat one another on the back, and you don’t look to God. Don’t think that I’m going to accuse you to the Father. There’s one that accuses you. It’s Moses, in whom you trust. Because if you believed Moses, you would believe me. You see, there really is no conflict between Moses and Jesus. You would believe me because he wrote of me. But if you don’t believe Moses, well, there’s no way you’re going to believe my words. This is a strange thing for him to say to a group of people who would have sworn up and down that they were keeping the Mosaic Law faithfully. And remember, all this was spoken… in response to people who were trying to kill him because he had broken the Sabbath and said that God was his father, making himself equal with God.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:48

More words of Jesus after this break. Or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.

SPEAKER 03 : 22:19

About the same time, Jesus was walking through a grain field on the Sabbath day, and his disciples were with him, and they were hungry. So they began to pluck the ears of corn or grain as they went through there and ate them. Well, when the Pharisees saw that, they said, well, why are your disciples doing what’s not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day? Well, look, I read you the fourth commandment earlier in this program about what’s involved with keeping the Sabbath day. Let me ask you. You and I are walking through an orchard on the Sabbath day, and we pick a peach each off of the tree as we walk through. Tree-ripened peach, juicy, beautiful peach. And begin to eat the thing with juice running down our chins as we wander on out through the orchard. Are we breaking the Sabbath day? Now, the Pharisees said nothing to them about stealing, walking through somebody else’s orchard and picking these things, because the law actually permitted that. The law of Moses said, if you’re passing through your neighbor’s orchard and you’re hungry, you can pluck off something and eat it as you go your way. You just can’t harvest his crop. You can’t take a basket and you can’t take it home. Okay? Well, it seems to me clear enough. But you see, when you harvest this grain, you go out there and you cut it down and you pluck all these ears of grain and you go through the whole rigmarole of harvest. And when you pluck a handful of it, you are, in a very small way, harvesting grain. It’s silly, but that’s what they believed. Now, I don’t judge it that way. You probably don’t judge it that way. But that’s the way the Pharisees interpreted the law. Jesus didn’t. He said to them, Haven’t you read what David did when he was hungry and the men that were with him? How he entered into the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for the priests? But I imagine the men standing there looked at him and sort of blinked. What are you talking about? Well, you know, they’re arguing that what these men who were hungry were doing on the Sabbath day was wrong. So Jesus said, well, haven’t you heard how that David went into the house? You know, he’d been three days on the road. He and his men were starving. They came to the tabernacle where there was hopefully food. But the only food was there was the showbread, which it was not lawful. for David and his men to eat. Jesus didn’t say it was okay. He said it was not. And yet he gives you an example of something which God seems to have accepted. In other words, he justifies David for what he did. He didn’t change the law. He didn’t do away with the law. He didn’t say the law didn’t matter. He just said, sometimes hunger is more important than some technicality of the law. And indeed, what they were talking about was a technicality. their technicality, their interpretation. He goes on to say, Have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple. Now the law says you’re not to do any work on the Sabbath day. But in the temple, every Sabbath day, Priests continued to kill animals, cut them up, burn parts of them on the altar, and sprinkle the blood before God’s altar. Well, isn’t that breaking the Sabbath? Well, yeah. Jesus said they profane the Sabbath, but they are blameless. And what he’s saying is that God in his grace will sometimes allow you to have a conflict between one law and another and hold you blameless. But I say unto you, he said, in this place is one greater than the temple. And he was talking about himself. But if you had known what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the guiltless. In other words, he held his disciples absolutely guiltless for what they did. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but if that’s the case… then isn’t the Sabbath the Lord’s Day? The idea that the Lord’s Day is the first day of the week is very old, but it’s really without any biblical foundation. The only time the expression is found in Scripture is Revelation 1, verse 10. It says this, I, John, who am your brother and companion in tribulation, in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. But that doesn’t tell you one word about what day of the week it was. It may not have been a day of the week at all, but if it was, the Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week, is the Lord’s day.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:28

Until next time, this is Ronald Dart. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to You may call us at 888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:00

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