Sermon Tone Analysis

His Sheep Have Eternal Life

November 23, 2008

*John 10:22-30*

Two weeks ago my message was on spiritual blindness It was based on John, the story of the man born blind.

We, too, are born blind, spiritually blind.

The after God saves us and heals us of our spiritual blindness, we can still be blind-sided.

Many today have been “Blinded by the God of This Age” says Henry Blackaby in the July 22 reading from Experiencing God Day-by-Day.

He adds, “

/Regarding them: the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.—/2 Corinthians 4:4

When you are blinded, you cannot see things as they really are, even though others around you see them clearly.

You cannot experience the full reality of all that is around you.

You may feel you are experiencing all that there is to life, yet you may be unaware that you are missing what God desires for you.

You may even be in danger because of your blindness and not know it.

Paul warned that the “god of this age” can blind you to the reality of Jesus Christ.

Christ's presence can make a significant difference in your life.

However, if Satan convinces you to doubt that Christ can do what He promised, he will have blinded you to the reality of what your life is really like and to what it could become.

Others may see what your unbelief causes you to miss, but you will be unaware of it.

Your life may be steadily moving toward disaster, but you will be oblivious to it.

Christ comes to you as light (John 1:4, 5, 9).

He illuminates your sin so that you see its ugliness and destructiveness.

He reveals Himself so that you can appreciate the glory of His person and the marvelous riches He brings.

His presence lights your path so that you can see impending danger.

Don't let the god of this age distort your spiritual vision.

Don't be fooled into thinking that everything is as it should be when, in fact, you are missing out on so much that God wants to do in your life.

Ask Christ to illuminate your life and let you clearly see your spiritual condition because you need to make serious spiritual decisions while you are still in this life, otherwise it is too late and your decision is made by default.

I’d like to quote John Piper.

He says: “Since coming to Bethlehem Baptist Church in July, 1980, I have averaged about one funeral per month.

One of the things I regret about this experience is that all of you can't share it with me.

I know that some of you would not live the way you do if once a month you had to spend three or four hours writing a funeral meditation about the meaning of death, and if you had to think and pray about what you would say to the family, and if you had to stand beside the open hole and the mound of dirt and try to make the decisive farewell significant for the bereaved.

I regret that I am the one who does all this once a month, not because it is a hard job and I want someone else to do it, but because it is a gift to me and I would that all of you could share it.”

There are two reasons why the ministry of funerals is a gift.

One reason is that it keeps our minds and hearts awake to the reality and certainty of our own death and our spouse’s death and our children's deaths and the death of everyone we know.

It is easy to forget about our dying.

Except for those in terrible suffering, death is not usually what we want to happen.

It terminates some things we enjoy very much; it severs us from people we love.

And for many it is an awful door leading they know not where.

Perhaps to judgment and eternal hell, perhaps to utter nothingness.

For many it is a great and terrifying unknown.

And since our minds cannot endure such constant threat, we very naturally forget.

Or, more accurately, we very naturally avoid the thought of death by filling our minds with other things.

When the Bible says in Hebrews 2:15 that /"through fear of death men are subject to slavery all their life," /it doesn't mean, of course, that human experience is one of constant fear.

It means, rather, that, since death /is/ fearful, and since we impulsively flee fear, man is enslaved to perpetual flight from thoughts of death.

We may know periods of peace and happiness when for a season we has put the haunting thought of death off our trail.

But we will awake and remember that we are fugitives and must keep running from death.

Does that sound like fun to you? No! Fleeing thoughts of death is not true freedom from death, is it?.

There is no true freedom where happiness depends on denying the inevitable; there is only slavery.

And therefore I count the ministry of funerals a gift because it keeps my heart and mind awake to the inevitability of death and protects me from the enslavements of being a fugitive, running from death.

The other reason why the ministry of funerals is a gift is that it keeps our minds and hearts awake to the promises of God beyond death.

If we were to never think of our death, then we would not think of the promise of resurrection and eternal life and our heavenly reward.

You can't think of the word "forever" without thinking of your death and destination; and yet the benefits that God promises are terribly deflated if they don't carry us to eternity.

/"If we have hoped in Christ only for this life, we are of all men most to be pitied"/ (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Funerals are a gift because they cause us again and again to set our gaze "/not on things that are seen, but on things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal"/ (2 Corinthians 4:18).

And the more we set the eyes of our heart on the invisible gift of eternal life the more precious Jesus becomes, who alone can give eternal life to us.

Since it’s not possible for every one of you to share in this ministry of funerals, I have tried to pass along some of the benefits of this ministry.

These services are the bridge between us and eternity.

Let me direct your attention to the conversation between Peter and Jesus in which Peter recognized the link between Jesus and eternity.

/And once, after many of his disciples had turned away from following him, "Jesus asked the twelve apostles, 'Will you too go away?'

And Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life"'/ (John 6:67, 68).

My desire is that everybody in this room will inherit eternal life and not enter into condemnation (John 5:29).

Therefore, let's listen together to Jesus.

Turn with me to John 10:22.

It was winter in Jerusalem; to be specific, it was the last week of December during the Feast of Dedication.

This feast was a celebration of the rededication of the temple about 164 BC after it had been desecrated for several years by Antiochus Epiphanes.

The feast was a joyous event.

Jesus was walking through one of the covered court areas called Solomon's porch when the Jews surrounded him, no doubt in the excited spirit of the festival, and said, /"How long are you going to hold us in suspense?

If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly"/ (verse 24).

Of course, you don't just walk up to everybody and ask them if they are the Messiah.

Evidently this crowd knows something unusual about this man.

The Messiah was the long-awaited king who would come and reign over Israel, smash their enemies with a rod of iron, and establish an eternal kingdom of peace and righteousness.

He would finish the work begun by Judas Maccabeus at the original Feast of Dedication: rout the Romans and free the land of foreign domination.

Jesus answers the crowd in verse 25: /"I did tell you, and you don't believe.

The works which I do in my Father's name, these bear witness concerning me, but you don't believe."/

They had said, /"Tell us plainly."/

This word "plainly" is the same one we saw two weeks ago in John 7:4 when Jesus' brothers urged him to show himself to the world.

"/No one does anything in secret when he seeks to be known plainly,"/ they said.

They wanted a more open and forthright and public statement of Jesus' Messiahship.

But Jesus complies in 10:26 only partly, just as he complied only partly in chapter 7.

He says, /"I did tell you."/

He does not say, "I did tell you plainly or openly."

For, in fact, up to this point in the gospel of John, Jesus had only made one explicit claim to be the Messiah, and that was all alone with the Samaritan woman at the well (4:26).

Therefore, what Jesus means when he says to the crowd, /"I did tell you,"/ is explained in the next sentence: /"The works I do in my Father's name, these bear witness to my Messiahship."

/By and large Jesus did not make outright, explicit, public claims to be the Messiah.

But everything he said and did witnessed to that fact for those who were willing to accept it.

But these crowds were not willing.

Two times Jesus says it.

Verse 25, /"You do not believe."/

Verse 26: /"You do not believe."/

Jesus met with widespread unbelief in his own day just like he does today.

And the reason was the same then as it is today: not primarily a lack of clear and worthy testimony ("I have told you . . . the works bear witness . . . of me"), but rather a deeply rooted spiritual unwillingness to love what Jesus loves.

Do you remember John 5:44 where Jesus says, /"How can you believe when you seek glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" /The chief hindrance to faith is not that Jesus' claims are obscure or insufficient, but that people /"love the glory of men rather than the glory of God"/ (John 12:43).

It is not primarily a problem of knowledge but a problem of pride.

Like Jesus, Paul too traces unbelief back through ignorance to the heart which is hardened against the glory of God in Christ.

He says in Ephesians 4:18, /"They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart."

/There is a kind of deadness to spiritual things which grips the heart of unbelievers.

The affections of some are so completely enslaved to the things of this world that Jesus says they will not repent, even if one should rise from the dead (Luke 16:31), for it is not a problem of knowledge, but of what they love.

This means that in order to believe on Christ, something very deep and life-shaking must happen in your heart.

Something like a resurrection or re-creation has to take place.

Something has to emerge which wasn't there before.

Otherwise you will never feel the least inclination to believe on Jesus, no matter how high the pile of evidence of his truth mounts.