Those Who Hear Will Live
January 15, 2023
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
John 5:16-29
16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. 21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
Quick thing before I pray and preach. If you have not signed up for the women’s retreat, let me encourage you to not only sign up but also bring a friend. The speaker for the retreat is Glenna Marshall. If I said we were good friends, that would be too much. We’re good acquaintances, really, who have occasionally interacted. We’re both in a writing group together with a number of other writers. And when I wrote a book and was looking for authors to endorse the book who are big time, I totally asked her to write an endorsement because she’s big time. And she did. I won’t be at the women’s retreat, but if I could, I would. Glenna will do a fantastic job teaching and encouraging. So, again, consider not only going but inviting a friend to join you.
Let’s pray again as we begin.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
So, let’s say you have a certain neighbor. This neighbor tends to walk his dog in front of your house and lets the dog poop on the edge of your yard—never in front of other houses, just yours. This neighbor picks it up with a bag and all that, but still. Then you notice one day he doesn’t pick it up. You think it was, perhaps, an accident and let it go. I mean, you’re a good religious person. Then it happens again. You gotta say something. The situation keeps escalating.
But before you get a chance, the neighbor walks his dog up your sidewalk to your porch, and his dog poops square in the middle of your doormat. Then he rings the doorbell and walks away. You’re not home, but you see it all because you have this fancy Wi-Fi doorbell that sends the video to your phone. To say that you’re fuming is an understatement. You show the video to your coworkers. You post the video Facebook. You call the police because if they don’t lock this guy up, you might kill him.
Now, this isn’t a sermon about loving your neighbors, although that might have made a decent introduction if it were. This book we call the gospel of John tells stories about the life and ministry and words of Jesus. If you’re here for the first time, we are about a quarter of the way into the book, and, now, this morning I’m picking up a story midstream. I’m just preaching 5:19–29, but I had us start reading in v. 16 because something escalates between those verses that is crucial for us to see. I’ll read again.
And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (5:16–18)
Do you see the escalation? Jesus does things on the Sabbath, which is why they persecute him. I’ll spend some time in a moment telling you more of what he did on the Sabbath. But for now see that it moves them from persecution to now “seeking all the more to kill him” (v. 18).
Perhaps my sermon opening about the neighbor and the dog poop doesn’t work so well. Let’s not press that too far because in the illustration, then, Jesus is a neighbor whose dog poops on your porch. Probably not the best of connections to make. Yet, as irreverent as that might seem, it pushes you and I to consider who we think Jesus is. The title that so often goes with Jesus Christ in the Bible is “Lord.” Lords don’t ask permission. Lords do what they want, when they want. In the world of the New Testament times, the saying went, “Caesar was lord.” And thus, when Christians would say into that context that Jesus is Lord, it was a charged statement. And it’s fair to say the good, Jewish religious leaders of the day, did not want Jesus as their Lord. If Jesus is Lord, they we’re Lord of their lives, which is perennially problem for all of us. As irreverent as it may seem to put it the way I put it, the religious leaders took Jesus to be one pooping on their doorsteps and making their life a mess. They heard Jesus’s claims to be Lord as him taking away their life, rather than Jesus life giving them life. And it had to stop. He had to be stopped, they thought.
How do you receive the lordship of Jesus? How do you understand the absolute authority of King Jesus over every aspect of your life? Is the advent of Jesus into your life a blessing to you, is it life to you? Or is his arrival more of an intrusion?
Well, I’m speaking to people who, for most of us, love God and love his word and thus love the one God sent. We love Jesus and want to follow him as Lord. That, however, wasn’t the case with Jesus’s audience who first received this monologue of his. I don’t want to give away too much from Ben’s sermon next week, but consider these lines that Jesus says to his audience: “You do not have [God’s] word abiding in you” (v. 38). And this one, too, “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you” (v. 42). No Word of God and no love of God. Ouch. Tough crowd Jesus had.
There is something the religious leaders see rightly, though. They see that Jesus doesn’t intend to just slide into your life and have nothing change. The religious leaders see rightly that, to have Jesus move into our life means a home renovation project will be undertaken. Or we might say, to have Jesus in your life is to hang up the banner that says, “under new management.” And Christians, those who hear the voice of God, love to be under the new management. This is getting ahead. I need to back up.
The Story
Before this monologue from Jesus, there is a story. Michael Aiken preached the story last week, but I need to retell some of that story so we know what’s happening here.
Jesus had been in Jerusalem, then he’d left, and now he’s back. And we read of a man who’s sick, and he’s been sick, evidently, for nearly four decades. He can’t walk. There was a popular belief at the time that there was this special pool of water near the temple and that an angel would stir the pool and the first person in the pool would get well. I believe supernatural healings can happen, but none of that about the pool and angels is in the Bible in any Old Testament story. So, to whatever extent there was truth about the special pool and the angel and the healing or to whatever extent it’s a bunch of superstitious baloney, we can’t know. But evidently some people believed it, maybe even this man, which is why he hangs out there all day. He’s desperate for healing. Yet he’s too slow to even get in the pool since he’s got to, we presume, crawl on his elbows. I’ll read vv. 5–9.
One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. (5:5–9)
Good news, right? Well, the next part of v. 9 says, “Now that day was the Sabbath.” Oh no. There Jesus goes again. Aren’t there like six other days? Doesn’t he know that taking up a mat on the Sabbath is a violation of all these extra, super important Jewish laws? Oh, he knows. He knows what he’s doing.
I won’t read the rest of the story, but here’s what happens. Jesus slips away to avoid the pandemonium that would have followed the healing. The religious leaders see the guy with the mat and want to know who’s carrying his mat on the Sabbath. You notice they say nothing of healing. “Why are you carrying your mat?” they ask. “Some guy told me to carry the mat,” he says. “What guy told you to carry your mat?” they ask. They ask no questions about healing. They keep focusing on the mat, which indicates something of their deadness to marveling at the work of God’s sovereign grace.
It would be like Jesus going into a hospital where people are in beds and in comas, and he goes to one of them and says, “Get up, take out off your IV and go home.” And then the guy, as he leaves the hospital, takes his paper mask and swings it around his head as runs and dances out the front of the hospital—healed and happy! And then the security guards are totally dead to the marvel that for like years that guy had been in a coma and that with one word everything changed. All the guards can do is demand to know why he wasn’t wearing his mask and who told him not to wear his mask.
If you were watching—the healing and the guards—you’d want to say the guards something like, “Did you notice the whole about-to-die-and-now-alive thing? I’m sure this guy would be more than happy to wear the mask if you ask him to do so next time he comes to the hospital, but right now he seems really healthy.”
In their defense, being the Sabbath Police that they were—as Michael so helpfully called them last week—was part of their job. The people of God had made a mess of so many parts of God’s law. So the religious leaders made a bunch of extra laws to ensure that if people kept the extra laws, well, then no one would ever mess up God’s laws. It’s like owning a gun. No one will ever do anything bad if we just keep the gun in a gun safe and put that gun safe in the basement and then take cement and bricks and build a wall around the gun in the safe in the basement. And then don’t put a door on the wall. That way no one will get hurt. The Sabbath was like that. What started as a good concern, over time, turned ridiculous. Their rules became ridiculous. They became ridiculous. And Jesus knew. So he pokes them. And now we’re back at vv. 16 and 18.
And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (5:16–18)
Now, here comes the monologue from Jesus, at least the first part. Pastor Ben will cover part two of the monologue next week.
The Monologue
If you were a good Jewish person, and someone had taken your words to mean you were equating yourself with God, what would you do? You’d be terrified. You walk that misunderstanding back as fast as your little words can carry you. Consider how the ten commandments begin: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2–3). If you’re a good Jewish person, and you suspect that someone even remotely thought you were claiming to be more than a mere man, let alone claiming to be equal to God, what would your monologue sound like? I’ll tell you it doesn’t sound like what Jesus said. Hear the words of Jesus again.
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” (John 5:19–29).
Christians can often talk of wanting more from the Bible about the depth of God’s God-ness, that is, we often want more on the inner workings of the Trinity. But when we have depth and exploration of the Trinity from Jesus himself, we don’t know exactly what to do with it because it’s at once so wild and wonderful (cf. comments from J.C. Ryle in his commentary). Each sentence deserves a sermon.
But what you need to see most clearly is this: When Jesus is accused of claiming to be God, he doesn’t walk it back. Oh oh, that’s not what I meant at all. I never meant to imply that. No, he doubles down. First, he claims to do exactly what the Father does. Then he claims he gives life to whom he wills, he has sovereign choice. He claims that all authority to judge has been given into his hands. He claims that if you don’t honor him, you don’t honor God. I’ll read that part again. It’s the second half of v. 23. “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” Marvel at what he’s saying. It doesn’t matter how nice and winsome you are about your Christian faith, the day is coming and is now here where to believe v. 23 is explosively controversial in our secular society. To say that if you don’t honor Jesus, you don’t honor God, means all Jewish people and Muslims don’t honor God. That’s explosively controversial. And they are not my words. They are Jesus’s words.
And marvel at his claim about the resurrection. “An hour is coming,” Jesus says, “when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” What? Everyone who has ever lived and has now died will one day obey his voice and will get up out of the grave and be faced with either heaven or hell? Yes. Caesar will obey the Lord Jesus and come out of his grave. President Lincoln and Washington will obey him. Your great-great-great grandma will obey and come up out of the grave. And if you, one day, go into the grave before he returns, you’ll also come out when he calls your name. What power, what authority, what Lordship.
Now, I’m going to wrap this up soon. But not yet. Two issues first. If there seems to be two resurrections in the passage, it’s because there are. In vv. 24–25 Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” That’s the first resurrection, which Jesus says is now here. Then, later, he speaks of all who are in their grave coming forth, which I just read. That’s the second resurrection.
There are different ways to understand the first resurrection. Some might see the handful of physical resurrections that Jesus did in his earthly ministry as such. For example, there’s a whole chapter in John’s gospel about Lazarus, who Jesus raises (John 11). But I don’t think that’s what he means. I think vv. 24–25 speak to our spiritual resurrections that take place anytime someone hears the words of Jesus from the heart, that is, they hear Jesus with spiritual ears. And those who hear come to life spiritually.
To read again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” There’s a good parallel with chapter 4 and the dialogue with the woman at well. The woman asks about where people will worship, and Jesus says, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. . . . But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (4:21, 23). You get the sense that a present-tense experience of Jesus seeking worshipers and a present-tense speaking of words that get heard with spiritual ears.
What does it matter that Jesus is speaking first of spiritual resurrection? Oh, marvel at the hope. It means that in any situation, no matter how bad or how spiritually dark or spiritually dead, it means that Jesus can speak a word—like, take up your mat and walk—and in that moment, Jesus can cause life to grow out of death. What a hope. You don’t know anyone so far from God that God can’t call his or her name.
That was the first issue, spiritual resurrections in this life, followed by physical resurrections someday for everyone. Here’s the second issue. In the final, physical resurrection, it could seem as though Jesus sends you to heaven or hell based on whether you are a good person or not. Look at the wording.
Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (John 5:28–29).
If you have done good, you get life. If you’ve done evil, you get judgement. Wait, what? How does this relate to the rest of the Bible, which says the opposite? Doesn’t Jesus give life to the undeserving? Yet Jesus seems to say you get heaven if you’ve done good.
You need to know something else that the Bible teaches to understand this, and that is the power of spiritual conversion, your spiritual resurrection is powerful. The connection, according to the Bible, between Jesus converting someone and saving them from judgment is so strong that it’s impossible for a person not to begin to change.
And here in this passage, Jesus can describe the final judgment as depending on how one lives, not because living good earns heaven, but because a spiritual resurrection produces good living. And that connection is so strong between spiritual resurrection and what spiritual resurrection produces, namely, good living, that here Jesus can describe final judgment as depending on that. In other words, when Jesus moves into your life, he’s so kind and strong and loving that he undertakes a renovation project that he will see to completion. It’s true: Lords do what they want, but what Jesus wants is for your good, now and forever. He hangs his banner outside your life that says, “under new management.” And maybe not everything changes as fast as we like, but one decade goes by and then another, and God’s people become holy and happy in Jesus. I, one of your pastors, testify to seeing over and over again Jesus changing people, changing you.
And that’s the challenge of this passage, isn’t? Are you hearing his voice? Have you found life in him? Is the Lordship of Jesus a wonderful, marvelous thing to you? If so, what he begins in you, know that he will see it to completion when he calls your name.
I’ll invite the music team forward so we can have a time of response through communion and singing. Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father. . .”
Communion
In Jesus’s monologue, he says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (5:24). He can say that because he, on the cross, took all the judgment that belongs to us. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who have been raised by Jesus. We have, in the words of Jesus, been given eternal life because he swallowed our eternal death.
And so, there are times when our communion celebrations at church are more of a Good Friday celebration: the body of Christ broken, the blood of Christ shed. It’s messy and somber and costly. And there are times when our communion celebration should be a celebration, that is, more of Easter morning, more of resurrection, more a time when communion is for us joyful and hopeful, a time when we know that whatever good God has begun will go on forever. This morning our communion is more Easter morning. The apostle Paul, when writing about communion, says that when a church gathers together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they proclaim to one another the Lord’s death until he returns (1 Cor. 11:26). And when he returns, it’s going to be good.
Different churches have different understandings of who should participate in communion. We believe communion is open it anyone who wants the Lordship of Jesus, anyone who has had their sins forgiven by Jesus, and anyone who hears his voice and loves what they hear. This morning if, for whatever reason, you don’t feel comfortable taking communion, that’s okay. You’re more than welcome to stay in your seats and just think and pray. No one will think anything of that.
The ushers will drop a piece of bread in your hand. It’s gluten-free, and the juice is just juice. If you’re not able to come forward and want me to bring communion to you, just flag me down. The worship team is going to play a song, and the rest of us, when you’re ready, may come forward. Hang onto the elements until we have all been served so we can participate together.
Sermon Discussion Questions
Why did the religious leaders have a legitimate concern for the Sabbath? What, however, went wrong in their concern?
What is most challenging or even confusing to you about the words Jesus spoke in John 5:19–29? What is most encouraging?
In what ways have you seen Jesus change others? How has he changed you over the last decade?
Who do you know who is far from God? How might the truths of this passage encourage you to pray for him or her?
Benjamin talked about communion as sometimes (perhaps often) as feeling more like Good Friday than Easter. What did he mean by this? Why did he try to stress that this morning should feel more like Easter?
