The sermon titled 'The Scriptures Bear Witness Of Christ' addresses John 5:37-47, where Jesus confronts Jewish leaders about their failure to recognize Him as God. The speaker emphasizes that believing Jesus is God is essential for true faith and distinguishes it from false religion. The sermon critiques the notion that one can know God without accepting Jesus, particularly highlighting this misconception in various religions. It underscores the importance of the Scriptures, which testify about Jesus, and the necessity of receiving Him for salvation. The sermon also warns against relying on personal works for salvation and stresses that judgment falls on those unwilling to believe in Jesus. It concludes that Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and that recognizing Him is crucial for eternal life.

Music Morning family. Morning. So we are in the book of John today. Book of John chapter 5 will be moving ahead and finish off chapter 5 today. We'll be in verses 37 through 47.

And I'll read that now. John 5, verses 37-47. And the Father Himself who sent Me has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form, But you do not have His Word abiding in you because whom He sent, Him, you do not believe. You search the Scriptures for in them you think that you have eternal life.

And these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me, that you may have life. I do not receive honor from men, but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, him you will receive.

How can you believe who receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God? Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writing, How Will You Believe My Words?

Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for our guests, Lord God. We thank you for your Holy Word. Father, I just pray this morning that it would do work in our hearts, Lord God, and in our lives. Thank you for the power that it carries.

I pray for its movement unto boldness in our walks every day, Lord. In Jesus' precious name, Amen. The text that we'll be going through this morning is one that convicted me heavily. And so I'm preaching to myself this morning. If it applies to you, go ahead and apply it.

But it was convicting as I worked my way through it. And so as I recap where we're at, the setting is in Jerusalem. It's got to be close to the Temple. Jesus has just healed a paralytic man who was paralyzed for 38 years. And he's left.

And the Jewish leaders have found him, the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees. They found him and they are giving him a hard time about it. They want to run him through the wringer because he did something on Sunday. He commanded a man to carry his bed on Sunday. And so they're running him through the wringer.

They're giving him a hard time. And so he's responding to them in our text today. He's giving them leaders, the fundamentals of sound doctrine. And he's letting them know that he is the Christ and that they're not seeing it. They've missed it.

And in doing so, he reveals the most important foundational fundamental truth that any human being will ever come to understand and that is that Jesus is God. And I know we're all believing Christians. If I ask every hand to go up and everybody say, yeah me. Okay, this is deeper than that. You need to not just take it on the surface level that yes, I believe in Jesus and Jesus saved me and I remember I said a prayer and I'm living for Jesus.

That's great. The basic fundamental doctrine of Jesus being God is what separates true faith from false religion. You must believe Jesus is God. You can't add to that finished work that he's got. And too often, even not even thinking about it, it's in our blood, it's in our life.

We think we can add our good works to what is the finished work of Christ on the cross. The gospel of Jesus Christ that tells of God, John 3, 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish. That God sent his Son who was crushed because we sin. And that atonement for our sin is only found in His Son Jesus Christ. Only.

And that we have to receive that gift. We have to repent of our sins and fall on our faces before Christ before we have salvation. That is the point. This restores a person to a right relationship with God. If you don't do that, you'll spend eternity in a literal hell.

And in my notes, I wrote, don't do that. Don't do that, Bad choice. So you have an option laying in front of you and He's telling them this, that He is the prophesied Messiah from centuries come to earth and that you need to give your life to Him, or you'll spend eternity in a literal hell. And so this morning we need to remember what Jesus said. He said it, I believe seven times directly and another eight times indirectly.

He said if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. I was watching when everybody was coming in this morning, for the most part, everybody has ears. I did a survey. I didn't see anybody without ears walk in the building. There is no one that is deaf.

I'm close. But everybody can hear. Everybody has ears. So what does this mean? If you have ears that can hear, ears to hear, are you hearing what Christ is saying?

Because he didn't tell it to them, he told it to us too. Why? Why would he have to tell us to? Thick skulls. We're stuck in our own ways.

You can go to church every day your whole life and end up in the pit of hell. He's telling us because we need to know this too. So we need to remember what Jesus said. If you have ears to hear, hear. What you hear and what you choose to do with what you hear, it's going to determine your destiny.

So if you don't believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, If you don't receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior alone, you will go to hell. And so the message of the church, which I don't want to confuse What is a biblical church with what is an American church or worldly church? The message of the Christian is this, that salvation of your soul from hell by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, alone. There is not another way. And it starts with who He is.

You can't believe in another Jesus and be okay with it. You can't believe that you can live in sin and that God is just going to have to overlook it. That Jesus is going to forgive sin that you don't repent for. That's not the God. You're living in imagination.

Okay, this is not the real God. And it starts with who He is. No one can be saved who doesn't believe that Jesus is God. It is impossible. And the responsibility to believe falls on the sinner.

It always falls on the sinner. If a person fails to believe the Gospel, it's never the cause of the sinner's environment. You can never say, I grew up in a bad home. Nobody told me this and nobody told me that. It's not bad circumstances.

It's not my addiction. It's not my problem. No, the problem is it always comes down to the sinner. It's due to a personal choice. It's not due to somebody else's fault.

Salvation happens because God wills for people to be saved. That's why salvation happens. Condemnation happens because the sinner is unwilling. So John MacArthur wrote, judgment is never attributed to a decision made by God. It's always an unwillingness in the sinner.

And I can vouch for that myself. It was an unwillingness in my life to receive Jesus Christ for many years. This is why the Bible tells us in John 3, 18a, it tells us, He who believes in Him is not condemned. John 6.37, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. Matthew 11.28, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

There's this perpetual call that Christ is giving for people just to come, all of you who labor, not some of you, not whoever I want, it's all you. He is not willing that any should perish. You see, there is no limit to the atoning work of God. And it's not due to the lack of invitation, it's not due to the lack of information, it's always because of the sinner's unwillingness to believe. That's what it comes down to.

And the fact is that 2, 000 years ago something astounding happened. The only true God came to earth in human flesh in his son, Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ came to make God known in the clearest possible way. In the clearest possible way for the benefit of fallen lost sinners, for the benefit of every one of us. He sent His Son clearest message you can imagine and gave us his son sacrificed on the cross and to rescue the perishing, to save those who are in darkness, that a light would come, and to rescue them from the grip of Satan.

That was the purpose. And that's the power of His presence today. That wasn't just then. The glory of this is that it's today too. It came forward.

And this is here today for us. This One Who Came 2, 000 years ago is the focus of all the Old Testament. Moses' prophets. And he's the fulfillment of the promise of God from the beginning. And the subject of the prophets.

He is the point. But as it was, they, in our text, the Jewish leadership did not recognize him or see him as the light that God sent to them. John 3.19 reads this, and this is the verdict, the light has come into the world. But men loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. Then and now, same thing.

Same thing. How many people have you given the Gospel message to that sit like a lump on a log and want nothing to do with it because it comes with a cost. And it's a miserable cost. And it's the easiest trade and the greatest thing in the world. Here's the trade.

I'm going to trade my wretchedness, my life of filthy darkness and sin. I'm gonna trade that for Christ's righteousness. And then I can live as an adopted son in Christ. I've been grafted in. That is a slam dunk.

And then we talk about it like we have to do this and we have to do that. We can't pry our carcasses out of the bed in time to get to church. Oh man, we're missing it. The price or the cost of this was the Son of God died on a cross to pay the punishment of every sin, of every sinner who ever sinned. That's me.

Now Jesus continues to speak to us in and through His Word, through His people. The Holy Spirit working in our hearts and lives, convicting us and working us over. He commissions saved people, saved men and women, and He commissions them to go out in the world to be this light, to save people that are lost in darkness. This is God's glorious plan of salvation. And they have an opportunity to be set free from being held captive to being set free.

So if you're living in a world of deception or imagination that is leading you to hell, The most loving thing anyone can do is give you the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is salvation. To not tell them is to hate them. St. Corinthians 10, 4-5.

The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the flesh. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. How about it?

What are we taking prisoner? The vain thoughts. Lying imaginations. These deceptions that come in our head that feed our flesh. Higher knowledge in human reasoning.

This is what we fight. The wisdom of God is foolishness to man. These are fleshly. And in today's text, John 5, Jesus is confronting lying, deceived religion, these lying imaginations. And I'm using the word imagination because to me It's another word that will pick it up in our mind to a level that we can understand instead of deception and such.

But lying imaginations that he destroys, and we need to be equipped and prepared, Ephesians 6, right? Putting on the armor, going to the world, destroy these lofty opinions that rise up against the truth. And we're going to war. We're going to war. And we do that with the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

And the first one that we go against, these lying imaginations that God will destroy, is that you can claim you know God if you reject Jesus. That's the fundamental, basic one. The Jews were very religious in verse 39, but they rejected God. And today we live in a world where it's believed that you can know God, no matter what you do with Jesus, that you can know God. And that is this Islam.

They believe that God is Allah. See, Allah in Islam is an imagination of Muhammad's mind. And so, they see that Jesus is a prophet, that he's not from God, and they imagine that he still have a relationship with God. It's not possible. The Mormons, they reject Jesus of the Scriptures.

They say he's a brother of Lucifer. There are many gods, many planets, that this isn't the only planet. And as God is, man can become. I can't. They imagine a God they don't know.

This is your imagination. They imagine a God they don't know. This is your imagination. They imagine a God they don't know while they reject the true Jesus of the New Testament. And People talk of God generically with no mention of Jesus Christ.

People, it does matter what you believe and do with Jesus. It matters. And so they don't trust in Jesus in verse 37 and verse 38, Jesus tells they don't have the love of God in verse 40, that they refuse to come to me, to Him. And verse 37, Jesus says they should believe due to the Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus' works, an internal witness, and an audible witness. That audible witness is in Luke 3.22.

It says, "...and the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, You are my beloved Son in you, I am well pleased. And we today, we stand without an excuse. Because we have also been... I didn't ever hear an audible voice come from heaven. I haven't.

I've heard thunder. I've heard birds singing. I've heard a lot of things come from heaven. I've never heard that. We stand without an excuse because I see God working today.

I don't need a voice from heaven. His word speaks to me. People that love Him speak to me. I see God in their life. I've seen His transforming power in my heart, in my life, in answered prayer, in unanswered prayer.

I've seen Him work. We stand without an excuse. 1 John 5 12, whoever has the Son has life, whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. You absolutely can't have a right relationship with God apart from Jesus. You cannot.

John 1, 9-14. It's long, but it's good, and I'll be referring to it some, but the true light who gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to his own and his own did not receive him, but to all who did receive him. To those who believed in his name, He gave the right to become children of God.

Children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and full of truth." This is where we need to see and stand. We need to hide these in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him. We're not born of blood.

We're not born of the desire or will of man. We're born of God. The second imagination that Christ destroys in this dialogue He's having with them is this vain religion. This is verses 39 and 40 that you read Scripture and you can reject Jesus. When it's all about Him, the Scripture is all about Him.

And if you don't see this clear plan of redemption in God's Word, you're lost in your sin. I remember brother Jerry Benjamin coming and his whole ministry was the preeminence of Christ throughout the Word of God. He's from the beginning to the end. Verse 39, it reads, You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of Me. They read the Scriptures, and in the Scriptures they thought they had life, but Jesus is telling them, the Scriptures testify about Me, and you're missing it.

And so Jesus says, all of Moses and the prophets, the whole thing, it points to me. And we can't read the Bible today without looking for Jesus. The Bible is all about Jesus. So we need to read the Old Testament with Christian eyes too. Or we miss it.

We're no different than them. And also in true, in the realm of commitment. You can't just read it. If your life is not committed to Him, not just a confession of Jesus, or we'd have an altar call, and I would say some sobbing words and everybody would come forward and I would I would have you say a prayer repeat after me or raise your hand and then everybody would be good right no it's not just a confession of Jesus is being a sold out for Jesus that we might know him as Lord and be committed to him by living according to the word of God. So not a vain religion with rigid rules and you gotta do this and you can't do that, but a joyous life that you get to live.

You don't have to live. You get to live. It's a direct result from trusting Christ. God's Word and having Christ in you. John 20, 31.

I'm going to go back to that one. We've been using it almost every week. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. You don't have life in His name if you don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus is the Christ. It's the point of the book of John to tell us to understand that Jesus is the Christ.

That there is no way to God other than through Jesus Christ. Many have the confession of Jesus, but no commitment to Jesus. Their lives just don't reflect a life of one that belongs to Jesus. So revealing the reality that they don't know Him at all. So you can raise your hand and you can say, I have Jesus in me.

If you go the other way and you walk in a way that doesn't show it, you're telling us that you don't have Jesus in you. So we need to obey if we really know Him at all. James 1.22 tells us, be doers of the Word and not hearers only. Otherwise, what? You're probably saved, but not sure?

No, it says, but otherwise you are deceiving yourselves, meaning you're, you're not saving. If you're not a doer of the word, you're not a believer of the word. Talk is cheap. Talk is cheap. You will be known by your fruit, your love, your humility, the person you are, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, understanding, self-control.

See we're spiritual trees and we're growing fruit and your tree should be ripe with big fruit. Stuff dropping on the ground. People coming around wanting some of it. That's what spiritual fruit looks like. If we have more than just vain religion, we would be happily, eagerly keeping God's commandments out of a loving relationship with Christ.

John 14, 15 says, "'If you love me, you will keep my commandments. John 15, 10, if you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in His love. You get to. You don't have to. You get to.

It's a glorious blessing. A child of God. That you get to live for Him. You don't have to. You don't have to do this.

You don't have to do that. You get to. It's not that you have to. These leaders didn't want to believe Christ was God, so they wouldn't submit to Him. They wouldn't leave behind their vain religion.

But we come to Jesus on His terms. And that's what it says in 2031. We come to Jesus on His terms. And that's what it says in 20-31. We come to Jesus on His terms, or we have no real life.

He has to be Lord of your life. A Lord is somebody that has ownership of everything you are and everything that you do. That is the Lord of someone. He needs to be Lord of our life. Is Jesus part of your life this morning?

I'm going to ask you. Is Jesus a part of your life? It's a trick question, by the way. Because if He's part of your life, you missed it. Is He the point of your life?

Is He the spearhead? Is He everything in your life? He didn't come to be part of your life. God didn't send His Son from heaven to earth, take on a wretched bodily form in the poorest part of the world, and have him crushed on the cross, killed in a most humiliating naked way a man can be killed. So that we can live our best life now.

It doesn't work. We come to Him on His terms. And His terms are unconditional. Unconditional surrender. And that's what He requires.

No more lifeless religiosity, but abundant life. And in that total surrender comes abundant life. Abundant life. You think you've got abundant life, coming to church once a week, and then going off during the week and doing what you want to do, kind of fulfilling the flesh, doing your fun things, and then come back. You are missing it.

If you don't want to be here this morning, if this morning is only about talking to people and eating as much fish as you could possibly fit in your face, then you are missing the whole thing. This is about Jesus. So if this defines Christianity, How many people really are Christians? How many people can boldly poke their hand fast up in the air and say, that's me. That's what I am.

Do not imagine that you know God if you reject His Son Jesus Christ. We need to see that Jesus is the point of everything that the Bible reveals to us. The third imagination that He destroys is inferior glory. And that's in verse 41. It says, I do not receive honor from men.

Well, that you really believe that you're satisfied with something less than glories that come from Christ. From Christ Himself. These inferior glories can be various honors from other people, but ultimately they're all worldly. Jesus recognized that the glory that He shared with His Heavenly Father was not recognized by these people, by these leaders, because they sought earthly honors based on popular opinion. They liked their authority.

They liked the way they dressed. They liked to wear their loud bells and they're clanking money into the offering box. Romans 11, 36, it reads, For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever, amen. See, we need to come to a place in our minds, in our lives, where everything is for His glory.

Glory from one another, you can't believe on Christ until the only glory you care about is what comes from Him, not from people, from God. The acceptance, the praise from other people, it influences our beliefs. And I'm not saying I don't want anybody ever to tell me again, I liked how you did that, or I liked what you did there. Encouragement is one thing. But it's in our heart that we live for praise from other people or not.

We think if I follow Christ, someone will not like me. My lifestyles change, the world will not love me, or otherwise, you think some people, If I follow Christ, others will praise me. Others will praise me for what I do. And it's not about that. So there's a choice that we have before us to seek the approval and the glory of man, or to seek the approval and the glory and the honor of God.

Because what is the end of man? What is the purpose of man? The end of man is the glory of God. The end of man is the glory of God. That's why we were created.

And so there's a choice that we have before us, knowing fully that if I follow Christ, someone is not gonna like my lifestyle. They're not gonna like what I do or what I say. The world will not love me. I will have new affections. I will look different.

I will walk different. I will grow to hate the things that God hates and I will grow to love the things that God loves. The question is this, Are you willing to lose the world to have Jesus? That is the question today. Please though, don't imagine that you're a true believer when you're satisfied with the glory that comes from men.

The honor, the recognition, the accolades that this world has to offer, temporary satisfaction, endless distractions. Whose acceptance do you want? And the fourth imagination that he destroys is a false assumption regarding the judgment. In verses 45 through 47, he says, Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust.

For if you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" And so these leaders were believing that judgment doesn't already rest on those who reject Christ. They thought they kept Moses' Law. That was their life to keep it. And it cleared them.

It made them, you know what? I'm good. How many times did I give a person a gospel track? Yep, I'm good. I'm good.

No, I'm good. They don't want it. How many times? The only time is in Mexico when I was with Brother Jim and a group down there. You hand out a gospel track and they will come back for more.

They will be sending people to get gospel tracts. But so many people, they are good. On the judgment day after rejecting him, Don't think that Christ will have to give testimony about you, because it's already done. That testimony is done. As Jesus told the Jews, Moses already judged.

It's actually the purpose of the law God gave Moses for people, that they might see their sins through their shortcoming and know that they're under judgment. At funerals, I like to give the literal account of the rich man and Lazarus and go tell my brothers so that they won't end up here. Remember that story? So there's hell and there's heaven, and Lazarus, the poor man and the rich man, Lazarus was in heaven and the rich man was in hell. And a great chasm between them.

And he said, can you come over and put a drop of water on my tongue? It's burning. He said, nope, the chasm is too great. And He said, then can you send Lazarus to go and tell my brothers that they don't end up in hell? Can you please go do that?

And he said, no, I can't. He said, if they don't hear Moses and the prophets, they will not hear, though a man rise from the dead and come and talk to them. It will matter not. Today, a man has risen from the dead and is talking to you today about having life in His name. That is Jesus.

Luke 16, 31. Then Abraham said to him, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead. You see, there's a sufficient testimony in the Scriptures to lead someone to life. Their condemnation is just. Although Christ does not wish that any should perish.

It seems to be that people imagine they stand before God on that day. And there's this scale. There's this scale of my good works are here, my bad works are here, and ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo. Oh, there we are. That's pretty close.

Well, I think I got more good works and that doesn't work. And the bad and the good and the good just needs to weigh just an ounce more and you're gonna be good to go. No, Jesus came to destroy this myth. John 3, 16 through 19, It reads, for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Whoever believes in Him is not condemned. But whoever does not believe has already been condemned because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. And this is the verdict. Here's the verdict. We read it earlier on.

The light has come into the world, but men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. Just as a true believer fights his fight from a platform of victory in Jesus, He runs the race from that position. He's already won, but he's running the race. He who has rejected Christ stands in the defeat of condemnation already. So please understand, This whole discourse is not about belittling you or trying to disgrace where a person is.

It's to tell the truth about Jesus and who Jesus is and what He offers. Christ didn't have to tell these people at all. He could have walked away. There's plenty that he didn't have discourse with. But it was for the purpose to rescue them because he loves them if they would only believe on him.

And that's what He's begging you today. Do you have any false religiosity? Do you have any self-pride that keeps you from living and submitting wholeheartedly to the Lord Jesus Christ? Luke 19, 10, For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. 1 Timothy 1, 15-17 this is the trustworthy saying, worthy of all acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of who I am the worst. But for this very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His perfect patience as an example to those who would believe in Him for eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal and invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Friend, this morning, I'm closing now, and I'm begging you to know the Jesus of the Bible.

Do not, Do not let this opportunity slip past. We can't get this wrong. Know Jesus. If you want to talk, I'll be available. But you need to know Jesus today.

Without knowing Jesus, you will spend eternity in a very bad place. You need to decide though. Father, this morning we thank you for your love and your care and your grace that you've shown on us, Lord. We thank you for your Son Jesus and who He is and what He has accomplished, Lord God, for our sins, Lord, for our eternity. I pray, Father God, that all hearts here today would be sold out for you, that those who don't know you would make that right this day, Lord God.

I thank you for your care and your love for us and I pray for boldness to walk in you as we go forward today in Jesus name, Amen.