Your Spiritual DNA - John - July 21st, 2024 (Sermon Transcript)

Well, I'm excited to get back in the Gospel of John with you this morning.

I was a number of years ago at our church, we had a members meeting, and as part of our members meeting, we did some time in corporate prayer, and I was asked to lead a prayer.

I forget exactly what it was for, but I think I was praying for missionaries and missions around the world, and it just really, really struck me at that time, the vital role that missionaries play, obviously in spreading the Gospel, but also in spreading the Word of God throughout the world.

Because there, throughout history and even now, have been millions and millions and millions of Christians who do not have the scriptures in their own language.

They might hear about Jesus and be convicted of their sin and convicted of the glorious Savior that we have in Jesus, and they might turn to him in faith and be saved, and never, ever, ever in their whole lives learn about Psalm 23, or about the Gospel of John, or about Romans chapter eight, or any of those other scriptures that so many of us have learned to treasure.

I treasure Psalm 23 and Psalm 34 and Psalm 27 and Psalm 103 and John chapter one and Romans chapter eight and Philippians, all of Philippians, all of these things that we as Christians treasure, there are Christians around the world who do not have the privilege of hearing from God through his word like we do.

What a privilege it is to have such an abundance of revelation from God, and not to mention an abundance of commentators and preachers and infinite resources at our fingertips to go deeper and deeper and deeper into God's word.

And I remember that just because I'm really thankful for John chapter eight.

I'm really thankful for this passage, really thankful that we get to talk about it and learn about it and learn more about Jesus and who he is.

So as we continue this morning, we're going to be coming towards the end of chapter eight.

But I want to take us all the way back to chapter one for a moment.

Chapter one begins with this epic prologue.

It's so familiar to many of us.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

And then John goes on to say that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

That is the word is Jesus.

Jesus is the eternal word of God.

Come down from heaven to rescue sinners like you and me.

And that's an exciting thing, a wonderful thing, and it was an especially wonderful thing for the Jewish people at that time.

It's exactly what they had been longing for and hoping for century after century.

Finally, the promised Messiah had come.

Their national hope, the hope of their very souls, this promised Messiah of God had finally come.

How happy they must have been to meet Jesus, except they weren't.

That's not how it played out.

Some of them were happy, but it seems like most of them actually hated Jesus.

Isn't that strange?

How could that happen?

That's kind of the big question that I want us to consider this morning.

How could that happen?

For these people to, as a nation, to walk with God and to receive prophecies from God and to be expecting God's promised Messiah, and the Messiah finally shows up, and they say, we don't like him, we don't want him, he's not our Messiah, let's kill him.

But John talks about this in the prologue.

At one point in the prologue, John says this, verses 11 through 13 of John chapter one.

He says, he, as in Jesus, came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

His own people did not receive him.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Now, our passage this morning is the perfect demonstration of these words.

It's like these words right here, coming to life and having a dialogue.

And I'll warn you now, it's a very intense dialogue.

A lot of harsh things or seemingly harsh things are said because things have become at this point in the Gospel of John very hostile between Jesus and the Jewish crowds.

So, wanted to give you that warning up front.

But with that said, let's read this dialogue now.

Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us, John chapter eight, verses 39 through 47.

They answered him, Abraham is our father.

Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you'd be doing the works Abraham did.

But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did.

You were doing the works your father did.

They said to him, we were not born of sexual immorality, we have one father, even God.

Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here.

I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.

Why do you not understand what I say?

It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

You were of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.

Which one of you convicts me of sin?

If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me?

Whoever is of God hears the words of God.

The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father in heaven, as we approach your word this morning, I pray that we would approach it with humble hearts.

Hearts that are willing to receive whatever it might say, whatever it might mean about us or for us.

I pray, God, that as we approach your word, we would be able to hear it, be able to understand it.

These people could not understand your son and your word, but by your grace, may we be able to.

By your grace, by your spirit, God, help us to understand and believe and obey.

I pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

Now as you read these words, it becomes clear that there's something very dark and very dangerous going on.

There's a blindness, a prejudice.

I've seen this kind of thing a hundred times, and I'm sure you have too, with unsaved friends and family.

When somebody is not a Christian, when they don't belong to God, it's like they just can't comprehend the things of God.

You can explain the Gospel 20 different ways, but it's like there's a blockage in their brain where the message just never makes sense to them.

And if there is any part that does make sense, they respond to it with hostility.

And that's what's going on here.

Again, this is Jesus speaking with a group of Jewish people, a lot of the Jewish leadership, the most prominent, powerful religious people in their culture, in their day.

And these are the people who read the Old Testament the most and expected the Messiah the most, and now the Messiah is here, but they're not receiving him.

They're arguing with him.

They're shortly, right after this passage is over, they're gonna say that he's possessed with a demon.

They're gonna call him a Samaritan, which was basically a racial slur.

So something is terribly wrong.

It's not just a blindness.

It's not just an inability to understand.

It's much deeper than that.

There's something behind their prejudice, behind their hostility, and Jesus tells us what it is.

Verse 43, he describes it like this.

He says that they cannot bear to hear his word.

They cannot bear to hear it.

Maybe it's hurtful.

Maybe it hurts their pride.

Maybe it's so offensive to them that they just can't hear it.

Their brains won't let them understand it because it would be too hurtful to their hearts.

And Jesus gets to the real root of the prejudice in verse 44.

He tells them that their father is the devil.

To say that another way, they are children of Satan, children of Satan.

He says, you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

In verse 45, he says that they don't believe him because he tells them the truth.

Think about that for a moment.

Think about how backwards that is.

And normally, you would say, I didn't believe that person because they told me lies.

But Jesus is telling them the truth, and it's because it's the truth.

They don't believe it.

They had no reason to distrust Jesus.

And I think it's verse 45 where he says, who among you can convict me of sin?

Who convicts me of sin?

They couldn't convict him of sin, and he knew that because he knew that he'd been walking his whole life in perfect obedience to God.

There was nothing in Jesus where they could point to it and say, well, that's why we don't believe you, because you said that and that wasn't true.

That's why we don't believe you, because you did that, and you're a man of questionable character.

Nothing like that.

It was 100% on them.

And it was 100% weird, just strange that it was because he told the truth that they didn't believe him.

Because as human beings, we're sort of wired to believe things that are true and not believe things that are false.

And we try as much as we can to believe things that are true and not believe things that are false.

But for them, it was like the wires had become crossed.

Their sin, their spiritual lineage being children of the devil, the wires had become crossed such that they didn't believe things because they were true.

They were so lost in darkness and lies.

They were so like their father, the devil, that they embraced lies instead of the truth.

That's pretty scary.

That's a dark place to be.

And I wanna make something very, very clear.

The people that Jesus is speaking to are Jewish, but every race on the planet does the exact same thing that they did.

This is all of us apart from the grace of God.

They were not especially bad or especially wicked or especially dumb or especially blind or especially children of the devil.

This is every single person on planet Earth, no matter their race, no matter their gender, no matter their upbringing, this is all of us apart from the grace of God.

And I think that's an important message for people to hear these days.

Because I've noticed an increase in disdain for the Jewish people in our world today.

And obviously this is very political, and there's left and there's right, and there's the Palestinians, and there's the war, and there's all of that stuff.

But the point that I want to make, aside from all of that, the point that I want to make is that this passage here does not prove that the Jewish people are especially bad, or especially blameworthy, or anything like that.

There's nothing in the scriptures that proves that they are especially bad, or especially blameworthy, apart from the grace of God in Jesus Christ, we are all this bad.

The Apostle Paul says as much at the beginning of Ephesians chapter two.

In these words from the Apostle Paul, these divinely inspired words are written to both Jews and non-Jews.

He says, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, that is Satan, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.

Notice that?

Were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Like the rest of mankind, Africans, Asians, Romans, Greeks, Jews, it doesn't matter.

Everybody is born with the same spiritual father and the same sin nature.

Apart from the grace of God and Jesus Christ, all of us are lost in darkness and deception.

All of us believe lies instead of the truth.

All of us would do what these people did.

And I want us to think for a moment longer about what exactly it is that they did, being hopeful for the Messiah, hopeful for God to send a rescuer, and then the rescuer comes and they kill him.

They're like a group of people stranded on a desert island, dying of thirst, and somebody risks their life to rescue them.

Somebody has come finally, after centuries being stranded on this island, somebody has finally come and he's brought water and he's gonna nurse them back to health and get them off the island, and they're angry about it.

They're offended and mad at the person come to rescue them.

They're so mad that they're ready to kill him.

Why?

It seems like a big part of it is just pride.

They're mad because this guy has come and told them that they need rescuing, and they're bristling at that.

Like, how dare you presume to rescue us?

We should be rescuing you.

How dare you presume to say that we're lost or that we're stranded?

We're doing perfectly fine.

And all of us experience this to varying degrees at different times.

When somebody speaks the truth that you don't want to hear and you get offended, that's what's going on here at a very deep and very, very cosmic and consequential level.

This is just the natural end of that thing that is in all of us where somebody says, hey, you were being really mean to that person, and then you get mad at them for pointing out the truth to you.

You get mad at them for trying to help you.

When somebody says, you're sick, you really should see a counselor.

Or somebody says, you're sick, you really should do this, and you get angry at the truth.

You can think of it like a doctor who has found the cure for a terrible disease.

Jesus is the doctor who has the cure for a terrible disease.

And so he travels a long way.

He makes great sacrifices, and now he's here with the cure, ready to save these people from misery and death.

And they say, who are you calling sick?

What's wrong with you?

You're the one who's sick.

They're outraged because he told them the truth that they're sick.

How do you get to a place like that?

How do we human beings do things like this?

What were they doing that got them so twisted and so lost?

How do we avoid becoming like them or being like them?

Do you want to be the kind of person who rejects something because it's true?

Or do you want to be the kind of person who embraces the truth?

Do you want to be able to hear and understand the words of God?

When God sends his most magnificent blessings into your life, do you want to be ready to receive them?

Well, if you look closely at this passage, there are three things we need in order to be that kind of person.

Three things that we can have by the grace of God, by the Holy Spirit in us, through faith, humility, obedience and faith.

There's another theme running through this passage that leads to these same three things.

There's this prominent theme of spiritual DNA.

Jesus makes it clear that their father is the devil, and his father is God.

And we learn elsewhere that anybody who puts their faith in Jesus is adopted into God's family so that God is their father too.

So really, the testimony of the scriptures, the teaching of the Bible, the message of Jesus, is that there are two kinds of people in this world, children of the devil and children of God.

And you can see it in all of us.

We all resemble our parents in some ways, right?

Apparently, this becomes more true as you get older.

You start to see it more and more.

You start to act like them more and more.

And Jesus is saying that it works the same way in the spiritual world.

These people resembled their father, their father being the devil.

So they resembled him in that they hated the truth and they loved lies.

They were filled with violence and anger and murder because they were trying to murder Jesus.

That's what children of Satan are like.

Now, what are children of God like?

What are the marks of being a child of God?

Humility, obedience, and faith.

And faith.

Let's go through these.

Let's start with humility.

We can find these characteristics in our passage by identifying the opposite of what Jesus' opponents are doing and saying.

Let me show you what I mean.

Verse 39, they begin by answering Jesus.

This is, of course, continuing from our passage last week.

They answered him, Abraham is our father.

Abraham is our father.

And they're trying to say that they come from a privileged spiritual lineage, that because of the blood in their veins, being Jewish blood, they are therefore good with God.

So they're trusting their ancestry.

They're trusting their own culture and customs.

They're trusting in all of that to ensure that they are morally good, morally okay, morally in good standing with God.

And do you see the arrogance of that?

They're confident in themselves.

They're confident in their ancestry.

They're confident in their religious performance.

And Jesus doesn't say this explicitly, but he does imply it in other parts of the scriptures, say this explicitly.

There's a big difference between being a physical descendant of Abraham and a spiritual descendant of Abraham.

And this is something, this is sort of the deep doctrine here, the deep theology.

You can read about it at the beginning of Romans nine.

You can read about it at other places in the scriptures.

There's a difference between spiritual descendants from Abraham and physical descendants.

And Jesus admits, you guys are physical descendants of Abraham, but you're not spiritual descendants of Abraham.

God does not care about your physical DNA, but he does care about your heart.

That's what matters in the end.

And these people had the right DNA, but the wrong hearts.

They're lacking in humility.

They're lacking in humility.

They're self-confident.

They're self-righteous.

They're not humble and contrite.

They're not acknowledging their sins and failures.

They're full of arrogance and pride.

We see it again in verse 41.

Jesus is not impressed with their claim to be children of Abraham.

So they say, well, actually, you know what?

We're even children of God.

But Jesus knows that's false.

That arrogance, that self-reliance, that smugness, it just leads to darkness and deception.

And I think one truth we can pull from this is that if you want to be ready, the kind of person who is able to receive the truth and to receive blessing from God, you must be humble.

You must be the opposite of this.

You must let go of all your self-assurance and self-reliance, all of your self-confidence, because God doesn't help those who help themselves.

God helps those who realize they're helpless.

Our God is a father to the desperate, to the hopeless, to the helpless, to the one who realizes that he brings absolutely nothing to the table.

He brings absolutely nothing to the table.

It's when you get to that point that you are closest to the kingdom of God.

When you get to the point of total desperation, total to the end of yourself, and when you cry out to God, God, I have nothing to bring to the table.

I am nothing.

Save me.

Help me.

That's where we meet God.

Isaiah 57, 15 says, for thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternally, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Such an easy mistake to make, to think that God is so morally pure and morally good and God dwells in the high and holy place, so I better get myself high and holy before I go to God.

I better purify myself.

I better do a lot of good stuff before I go to God.

But no, he says, I dwell with the contrite and the lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

That's humility.

That's who God dwells with.

Children of God are marked by humility.

We also learn in this passage that children of God are marked by obedience.

Verse 39, Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.

Now, what works did Abraham do?

What is Jesus talking about here?

Well, Abraham was renowned, especially in first century Judaism, Abraham was renowned for his obedience to God.

Genesis 12, one, the beginning of the story of Abraham.

This is before God changed his name from Abram to Abraham.

Genesis 12, one, the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

God just appeared and told him to leave his home, his family, his job, his financial security, his comfort.

God told him to leave everything he'd ever known and loved, and he didn't even tell him where to go.

He just said, I'll show you later.

And Abraham obeyed.

Abraham obeyed.

That's legendary obedience.

He was a man that was marked by obedience.

And we ought to be as well.

We ought to obey like that.

And one comforting thing about Abraham, one comforting thing about all the heroes of the Bible is that they're all failures, too.

As you read throughout the story of the book of Genesis, the life of Abraham, you see, yes, he was amazing in his obedience, and then at times he was also amazing in his disobedience.

But because of his faith, God considered him righteous.

If you want to know God and receive the truth and blessing of God, if you want to show your love for God, you must, like Abraham, obey God.

Jesus said repeatedly, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.

Not perfectly, not 100% of the time, but if you love Jesus, there will be a consistent effort in your life, a consistent pattern of increasing obedience to God.

Sometimes we forget that.

Sometimes I forget that.

The message of the Gospel is a message of grace through faith.

It's not a message of earning our salvation by our obedience.

It's not a message of read the Bible so you can find the list of rules, and you follow the rules, and you go to heaven when you die.

That's not the message.

That's the anti-Gospel.

The message of the Gospel is a message of grace, unmerited favor from God.

Unmerited favor apart from our obedience in spite of our disobedience.

It's all based on the obedience of Christ.

And that is the central message of Christianity.

But one of the dangers with us human beings is we take a message like that, and we say, oh, well, I'm saved by grace in spite of my disobedience, so I guess obedience isn't that important.

No, it is that important.

It doesn't save you, but that doesn't make it any less important.

As a Christian, you must walk in obedience to God, not to earn your salvation, not to prove your worth to God, but to, as a demonstration of your gratitude towards God, as a demonstration of love towards God, because you want to have a decent life.

If you want to wreck your life, if you want to ruin your relationships, if you want to sink into a deep dark pit of deception and sadness and anxiety and fear and heartbreak, then by all means disobey God.

That's the fastest way to get to that place.

But if you want to be blessed, as the Bible says, then follow God.

If you want to be close with God, then follow God, then do what he says.

Christians should be marked by their obedience to God.

Christians should be immersed in the word of God, studying the word of God, savoring the word of God, and carefully doing everything that the word of God commands us to do.

We should know the word of God in part because we need to know what God wants us to do and what he doesn't want us to do.

And when we go to God's word and we find out we should be doing this and we shouldn't be doing that, we need to then commit ourselves to doing those things and avoiding those things he commands us to avoid.

We need to be committed, passionate, focused, obeying God.

That is a defining characteristic of children of God.

Children of God obey God.

The other defining characteristic I want to highlight for us this morning is faith.

Genesis 15 six says that Abraham believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness, as righteousness.

That's what children of God are like.

They believe God.

That's the kind of person who is ready to receive blessings from God.

They believe God, they put their faith in God.

In contrast that with the people in our passage, they don't believe God.

They don't believe the one that God has sent.

They don't believe the one who is speaking the words of God to them.

They don't even hear the words of God because they are not of God.

They're lacking faith.

Are you lacking faith?

Do you pray, for example?

There are a lot of ways for us to get a measure of our own faith, to see where we're at, to see if we're really trusting God or not.

And I think one really good one is prayer.

How often do you go to God and ask for his help?

Everybody asks for God's help sometimes, atheists included, right?

There are no atheists in the foxhole.

Everybody prays when they're really, really, really desperate.

But what about when you're not desperate?

What about when you're happy?

When life feels like it's going pretty well, do you pray then?

I wanna suggest that if you struggle with prayer, it's because you struggle with faith.

The more faith we have, the more time we'll spend in prayer.

Because if you really believe what God says about prayer, then you'll go to him in prayer.

One, he says, pray without ceasing.

Do you believe that?

Do you believe we're commanded to pray without ceasing?

If you have that faith in that call, then you'll pray more.

He says that he is happy to hear our prayers, that he loves to give good things to his children that ask him.

If you really believe that, you'll go to him all the time and ask him for all kinds of things.

He says that despite our sin, because of the blood of Jesus that covers our sin, we can go boldly before his throne of grace.

No hesitation at all.

The more you believe that, the more you'll go before his throne of grace.

And when you pray, do you pray with faith that God will do what he promised?

Do you pray with faith that his word is true, that his promises are real, that he is who he says he is?

I've noticed this in myself recently, how often I pray without faith.

I love to pray through the Psalms.

So I'll pray through something like Psalm 34, verses six through seven goes like this.

It says, the poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.

And there's a really subtle difference between praying that with faith and praying that without faith.

For me, I noticed myself praying it without faith because I'll read it, and it sort of stirs in me a longing for God to save me out of my troubles.

It stirs in me this like desperate longing for God to deliver me, and then I beg and I'll pray, God, please deliver me, please save me from my troubles.

But this doesn't say that God might do that.

It says that God does that.

It says the Lord delivered him, the Lord saved him.

So I often find myself when I should be praying with confidence in God, instead I'm praying with this desperate hope that God will do what he says he will do, or this desperate hope that God actually is who he says he is.

No, I should be praying in faith that he in fact is who he says he is, that he always keeps his promises.

What about your prayer life?

Are you praying in faith or in doubt?

Let me remind you of Hebrews 11, six.

Without faith, it is impossible to please him.

For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

And let me remind you of what Jesus said a few verses before our passage, John 8, 24.

He said, I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.

Unless you have faith that Jesus is who he says he is, you will die in your sins.

Are you actively trusting in Jesus today?

Are you living in faith, trusting him as your one and only hope for salvation, obeying him?

That's the kind of faith that I'm talking about.

That's the kind of faith that makes a person a child of God.

So if you don't have that kind of faith, you'll never get it on your own.

You have to ask God for it.

It's a gift from God.

Let's pray.

God, I pray that you would give us all the gift of faith, the faith to trust in Jesus for salvation, the faith to obey Jesus, the faith to believe your word, the faith to confidently pray, trusting in your promises, the faith that leads to obedience, the faith that is pleasing to you, the faith that humbles our hearts, the faith that allows us to believe the truth and reject the lies.

God, we need your grace to give us that faith, otherwise we are lost in darkness and deception.

Lord, I pray that you would deliver all of us from darkness and deception by the blood of Jesus.

The blood of Jesus, we pray in His name, Amen.