Sunday Gathering - John 2 : 23-25 - Chris Simpson - Sermon Only

Good morning, everyone. Nice to be back. Let's have the first slide up, if we can.

Good. You'll notice that that's only three verses.

And actually, I think in all the time I've preached in this church, this is probably the shortest passage I've ever been asked to speak on.

So, I thought we would do the reading slightly differently and involve all of you.

but I'm not going to put the words

on the screen

so I'm going to read you a verse

and then I want you to repeat it to me

so that means you'll need to

listen

and hopefully this will work

we might even do it twice

because it's quite short

because of the miraculous signs

Jesus did in Jerusalem

at the Passover celebration

many began to trust in him

okay

let's have another go

let's have another go. Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover

celebration, many began to trust in him. Ian, you confused the audience there, but we got it,

we're getting it. Fortunately, that was the longest sentence, so it should get a little

easier now. But Jesus didn't trust them because he knew all about people. Right, okay, then this,

the last one is a little bit longer, we'll do it in two parts then. No one needed to tell him about

human nature, for he knew what was in each person's heart. Okay, good, we've got that.

So let's have the next slide. So that's the first sentence that we looked at,

and I guess it kind of sets the scene.

We can piece together a bit of a timeline of Jesus' ministry,

starting with his baptism by John the Baptist

and ending with the resurrection and the ascension.

And that's a period of about three to three and a half years.

And during the majority of that time,

Jesus' base is well to the north of Jerusalem,

in an area called Galilee, around a kind of body of water that we know as the Sea of Galilee.

And Galilee would have been about a five to seven day walk to Jerusalem,

and actually an extremely hilly walk. So if you imagine kind of walking from here to Manchester

and back, that's a sort of idea about the distance, only it would have been much hillier.

So Jesus is mainly based around Galilee,

and he makes occasional visits to Jerusalem,

and that's obviously quite a trek to get there.

And he often comes for the big festivals,

and Passover is an annual festival,

and it's a very big deal in the Jewish religion.

So Jesus has come.

This is his first visit to Jerusalem

after he was baptized in the Jordan River.

And we see that because of the miraculous signs Jesus is doing, people are starting to put their faith in Jesus.

Actually, there is an interesting point in this, that if you read John's gospel up till now, you won't have heard of a miracle in Jerusalem.

So we've had one significant miracle, which is turning the water into wine.

That's in a place called Cana, and Cana is in Galilee.

So John's not referring to that here.

And the reason is that we can find towards the end of John's gospel.

John says Jesus did many more miracles in the sight of the disciples than are written here.

And so the miraculous signs that Jesus is doing is leading people to put their trust in him.

Let's have the next slide.

And I took this picture in Eccles Hall Woods,

and it's just a picture of a signpost.

And I guess what a sign does, I guess it does two things.

It points to something, and it contains information.

So, you know, typically a sign is kind of showing the way to go,

and it's also giving you some information.

And that's kind of what the miracles are doing.

You know, they're giving us information.

Often they're giving us information about God's character.

You know, the majority of the miracles were, in fact, healings.

And healings tell us something about God's compassion for people who are in difficulty.

And we might add to that things like the feeding of the 5,000.

We see something of God's character.

They're not kind of random supernatural things.

As far as we know, Jesus never was transported from Galilee to Jerusalem in half a day.

He had to walk it over five to seven days through the hills.

So they're not kind of random supernatural things.

It's not like watching one of these things on TV about some being with special powers that can just do stuff.

They are telling us about God's character.

And in particular, they're pointing kind of at Jesus.

And they're asking us to consider the question, who is Jesus?

So they're pointing at Jesus and asking to see that.

And we can see that when it said in the previous slide, you know, they began to trust in him,

is that that process of coming to faith wasn't simply believing stuff or even believing what we would ordinarily think of as beliefs.

There's actually a personal dimension to it.

It's putting your trust in Jesus.

So it's got that personal dimension.

In fact, many of the translations would say they trusted in Jesus' name.

You know, put their trust in the name of Jesus.

And name meant who Jesus really was.

So there's that personal dimension.

But let's go on to the next slide.

And this will be one that will certainly have hit you as we were reading the passage.

Because we start with that bit about the signs.

And many people are trusting in you.

Isn't that fantastic?

You know, it's like the Alpha Corps, people are putting their trust in God.

This is fantastic.

And then we read, but Jesus didn't trust them.

And that comes as a bit of a shock.

In fact, I was sharing last weekend with a good friend, a real kind of man of God,

and I said, well, this is what I've got to preach on.

And I showed him the passage, and he said, oh, he said, that sounds a bit negative.

And it does, really.

And, you know, if we were to have a conversation after the service and you were to say to me,

Chris, I'd really like to be your friend, and I said, well, yeah, that's fine,

but you've got to know I don't trust you, then we wouldn't have got off to a good start

because trust feels kind of basic to relationship.

So let's spend some time thinking about this thing

that kind of jars a bit when we first read it.

We think, well, what on earth does that mean?

How do I make sense of that?

Let's have the next slide.

One answer that's traditionally been given over many centuries

has been these people who were putting their trust in Jesus

weren't the real deal.

They weren't genuine disciples.

They're not the real thing, and that's often been suggested as being the reason.

Jesus doesn't trust them because they're not the real deal.

And we can't discount that explanation because, after all, Jesus says,

this is another difficult saying, but Jesus says,

not everyone who calls out to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.

On Judgment Day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, but I will reply, I never knew you.

So at any time, there will be people who are mouthing Christian things, who are saying, Lord, Lord.

And even actually in context, people who are in significant positions of ministry who are saying, Lord, Lord, but do not really know Jesus and have not been transformed by him.

So we can't, you know, that is a possible explanation.

But as we spend a bit more time on this, I think more truths come to light and we see more than this alone.

Let's go with it.

Let's have the next slide.

And in a way, our wrestling with this verse brings into question,

well, how do I in general deal with difficult things in the Bible?

And when I say difficult things in the Bible,

I'm not really things of things that we just read and we think,

I just don't understand that, what that means.

I mean, the things that, in a sense, we do sort of understand what they mean,

but actually they do kind of jar, we think, how does that fit?

I just don't, I'm struggling with this bit.

So how do I handle difficult bits in the Bible?

Well, let me start with something from some things I think we shouldn't do.

Some people, I think, read the Bible and they're reading the Bible and asking themselves,

what do I agree with and what do I not agree with?

So, you know, I agree with this, but I like this bit and this other bit I don't like.

So what's wrong with that?

Well, if I put it this way, I think it displays a deep confusion

about our role in relation to God's Word.

See, God's Word is there to search and interrogate us.

It's there to ask questions of you and I.

We do not sit in judgment on God's Word.

Rather, God's Word judges us.

And when we kind of say, oh, I like this bit and I don't like that bit,

We're like some, you know, demented man in the dock shouting abuse at the judge and the barristers.

He's not understood who's on trial here.

So I think that kind of rejecting the bits that we don't like is plainly wrong.

Something else we can sometimes do, which I think is less than ideal, is we simply close our eyes and we hurry on.

And why is that wrong?

I guess because it doesn't feel entirely honest.

and also God might have been wanting to say something

through this thing that I am struggling to understand

and I'm not going to get that if I'm blanking it.

A third thing I still think is less than ideal

is we grab the first explanation going

and you can always find an explanation

because if that's a great explanation then that's fine

but in the case of grabbing the first thing going

actually that's a bit like the previous one isn't it?

Does it feel entirely honest?

Is there an insecurity there?

are we missing an opportunity that God might be trying to challenge my thinking through something

that I am currently struggling with? So what can we do? I probably could add to this list,

but I'm going to mention a couple of things. I think one thing, be prepared to sit in the

discomfort. You know, if that thing is an irritant at the moment, it may be because God is trying to

say something to me. So I might need to sit with that and not rush and say, God, show me things

through this. But I think next what we can do is we can say, well, how do I make sense of this verse

in the context of the rest of the Bible? And the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible.

So as we know the Bible in its entirety, or we know that the other teachings in the Bible, that

helps us to understand this thing that we are currently struggling with. I think some of you

were at the Alpha course. It talked about, maybe it's a slightly mechanistic example, but it's a

bit like a crossword. You know, sometimes you're struggling to find the clue, and you get a couple

of the other ones right, and then because you got the others right, that helps you get this one

right. So as we read the Bible generally, that helps us deal with some of the difficult stuff.

But let's go on to the next slide.

I don't know how many of you have watched The Traitors.

I have. I say I find it quite gripping.

I will confess that.

But it's currently a BBC reality game show,

and it's one of the biggest hits on the BBC currently.

And in that game show, there are about 20 contestants,

and they're taken to a castle somewhere in Scotland.

and of the 20, about three or four are picked to be what are called traitors

and the other are the faithful.

And the game is that every night or nearly every night,

the traitors get to murder one of the faithful,

get them off the game.

And again, similarly nearly every day,

they have what's called the round table

and the whole group tries to vote for somebody

who they think will be a traitor and get rid of that person.

And this goes on over a number of rounds.

And the thing about that game show is it only works

because human beings turn out to be very poor

at judging what is in somebody else's heart.

So, you know, one of the amusing things about the story

is you get people on a bin and somebody's been a, you know,

a very experienced barrister who's cross-examined people in court

and you've got a senior police officer and a psychologist

and people have done this and people have done that

and they're consistently failing to identify the traitors.

and misidentifying faithful as if traitors and getting rid of it.

And in the last series, at the end of it, there's only two people left standing,

Rachel and Stephen, it turns out they were the traitors, you know.

So that's how, so human beings generally don't know what's in somebody's heart.

So when John tells us that Jesus knew what was in each person's heart,

that is a pointer to who Jesus really is.

Because that is not a power that human beings have.

So God knows what's in our heart, and we don't.

And we can see that in a number of other places in Scripture.

Let's have the next slide.

So the backstory to this one, this is Samuel,

who was a very significant prophet in Israel at the time.

And the Lord has told Samuel to anoint a new king to replace Saul.

and Samuel is sent to Bethlehem

and he's sent to a man called Jesse

who has a number of sons

and as he's introduced to the sons

Samuel spots one who looks pretty impressive

and he thinks this must be the one

and then we get to this verse

but the Lord said to Samuel

don't judge by his appearance or height

for I have rejected him

the Lord doesn't see things the way you see them

people judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. So that ability to see into

hearts is reserved for God himself. So when we learn in John's gospel that Jesus has this ability,

it is a pointer to who Jesus really is. And we can see that in other parts of the Bible as well.

Let's have the next slide.

The human heart, this is the prophet Jeremiah,

the human heart is the most deceitful of all things

and desperately wicked.

Who really knows how bad it is?

But I, the Lord, search all hearts

and examine secret motives.

So again, Jeremiah,

that God has that ability to see hearts.

I sometimes think

when we read the previous example

you know the one about Samuel and David

isn't that lovely that God

can see hearts and he's interested

in what's in somebody's heart and not in their

appearance, isn't that lovely

that kind of rather depends on

my heart being

lovelier than my appearance

and my

appearance has never amounted to much but

it looks better than my heart

so God

sees and searches

and knows all things, and so does Jesus.

Next slide.

But I did say my friend's first reaction was,

isn't that negative?

That sounds negative.

I think there's another way of looking at it,

which I can take us to, when I think, actually,

we start to see this not as a negative thing,

but as an incredibly positive and important thing.

So this is the story of Hagar.

and Hagar is a young single parent on the run from abuse, on her own with her child, and she

has a powerful encounter with God. And after that encounter with God, this is what Hagar says.

She refers to God as, you are the God who sees me. And I think that's incredibly important to

understand and find comfort in the fact that God sees you. The truth is that God knows me

better than anybody else. God knows me completely. I have no secrets from God. And surely there's a

huge comfort in that. I can be, in a sense, naked before God. He knows me completely. The details of

my life are known to him. The psalmist at one point says that all our tears are kept in a bottle

by God. And that's that thought that nothing in our life passes him by, that he knows me

completely. I can be myself with God. In truth, I can be myself with God in a way that's deeper

and richer than I can be with any other person, because God alone knows me completely. So Hagar,

far from being kind of repelled by this idea, is actually seeing the positive. You are the God

who sees me. I am there before you. All the hurts and pains in my life, all my shortcomings and

failings are known to God. Next slide. This is a very familiar story, but I'm going to read part

bit, but I'll also tell you the introduction. So this comes at the end of Jesus' life and

they're actually on the way from the Last Supper to the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus

will very shortly be arrested. And Jesus has just said, I'm going to be arrested and

you will all desert me. So Jesus has just given them that piece of information. And

And, of course, Peter's reaction is no, no, no.

Peter said to him, even if everyone else deserts you, I never will.

Jesus replied, I tell you the truth, Peter.

This very night, before the cock crows twice,

you will deny three times that you even know me.

No, Peter declared emphatically.

Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you.

And all the others vowed the same.

I'm thinking about, you know, Jesus' response to Peter's first line,

even if everyone else deserts you, I never will.

I guess Jesus could have just put his arms around Peter at that point and said,

listen, Peter, I really appreciate what you just said.

I trust you, and that's fantastic.

So why does Jesus not do that?

well first of all because he knows Peter he knows Peter better than Peter knows Peter

he knows the truth and he will not sacrifice the truth to make Peter feel better in that instance

I'm sure if Jesus had done that if he had put his arm around and said Peter I trust you this is

fantastic what you've just said it's lovely then then Peter would have been cheered up by that

until the betrayal. You see, you know, if you want a God who will only say nice things to you,

who will flatter you and tell you the things you want to hear and not worry too much about whether

they're true, then you're not ready for Jesus, because Jesus will only deal with the truth.

But what we can also see is that after the betrayal, after Peter does indeed reject Jesus

and denies that he's ever known him.

But Jesus' words actually become a huge comfort.

So actually, in telling the truth,

he is also speaking words that will build up

and strengthen Peter in the days to come.

Let's kind of draw some conclusions.

I'm not quite finished, but we'll draw some conclusions.

Next slide.

When Peter denied ever knowing Jesus,

Peter was surprised and devastated.

Yes or no?

Yes.

In fact, actually we read at the end of Mark 14, I think it's the final verse,

it says, and Peter wept, broke down and wept bitterly when he heard the cock crow.

So Peter finds he's not the big disciple he thought he was.

He's not the person he wanted to be.

He let himself down.

So Peter was surprised and devastated.

But Jesus, was Jesus surprised and devastated?

Well, the answer is no, because Jesus had predicted it.

Jesus knew what was coming.

He understood it.

But Jesus still loved him.

Jesus still loved him.

Next slide.

So let's draw some conclusions.

First of all, that God sees the real you.

It can be a place of huge comfort, but he sees the real you as you really are, warts and all.

Two, you won't properly understand God's love for you until you face up to your own untrustworthiness.

You know, I'm sure Peter knew that Jesus loved him before all that happened.

But I suspect afterwards, after he'd come face to face with his own broken nature,

Peter had a richer sense of Jesus' love and compassion.

You know, if I think I'm basically a decent sort, not perfect, but you know, not a bad person really,

I'll never fully grasp God's love.

It's only as I see myself as I really am

and understand my sinfulness,

I understand the immensity of God's love and care for me.

Three, God's love for you and his plans for you

cannot be derailed by the discovery of some hidden sin

or the breaking of trust.

Over the past year, I've walked with two couples

where the marriage has been put in jeopardy

because there was a major breach of trust.

So there was hidden sin, and in both cases,

the wife was being lied to, and the thing came out,

and the marriage is in great difficulty.

And that's a thing that definitely can happen.

It cannot happen in your relationship with God

because there is no such thing as hidden sin from God.

It's not a category that exists.

and no dirt in me, past, present or future,

will derail God's love and purpose for me

because he knows it all.

He knows it as it really is.

There are no shock surprises in heaven.

But I do want to just add something here.

You know, the truth that God knows me as I am,

warts and all,

and that he can wash the slate clean is central to Christianity.

It's a vital truth.

But that's not all Jesus does.

That's not all.

There is more.

Let's have the next slide.

For we are God's masterpiece.

He has created us anew in Christ Jesus

so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

You see, Jesus isn't simply in the business of forgiveness.

Yes, he's in the business of forgiveness,

but he's also, we could say, he's in the construction business.

He is building a new you.

Actually, some of the other translations were,

this is from the New Living Translation,

I think some of them refer to, for you are God's workmanship.

I think that was used in English Standard Version,

in King James Version.

Handy work, I think, if you've got the NIV.

And you think, well, does masterpiece overstate it?

I'm thinking, no.

How could God's handiwork be anything else other than a masterpiece?

You're a masterpiece because of who's working on you.

It's God himself.

He has created us anew.

So, yes, that having the slate white thing is vital to our understanding of Christianity.

But there's more here.

There's more.

I've just got time for a bit of C.S. Lewis before we stop.

So let's have the next slide.

This is a famous sermon that C.S. Lewis preached in Oxford in the middle of the war.

I read the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God.

By God himself it is not.

How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important.

It is written that we shall stand before him, shall appear, and shall be inspected.

That thought of God seeing us as we really are.

The promise of glory is the promise almost incredible

and only possible by the work of Christ

that some of us, that any of us who really chooses,

shall actually survive that examination,

shall find approval, shall please God.

And just do remember that it references

that any of us who really chooses,

you know, we're not talking about a category of super-Christian,

that any of us who really chooses

Because of the work of Christ, his death and resurrection

shall survive that examination, shall find approval,

shall please God.

And the next one, to be loved by God, not merely pitied,

but delighted in as an artist delights in his work,

for we are God's masterpiece,

but delighted in as an artist delights in his work,

or a father in a son.

It seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory, which our thoughts can hardly sustain.

But so it is.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, you are bigger than our hearts and minds can contain.

You are the God who loved us.

And you love us, Lord, knowing all about our hearts, knowing all about our weaknesses, our sins, past, present, and future, Lord.

and still you love us, and still you said Jesus to the cross to die,

not to die for lovely people, but to die for broken, sinful people

who run away from God.

Lord Jesus, we stretch out our hands to you.

We are thirsty, Lord, for the living water.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Fill us in the power of your Spirit.

In Jesus' name, amen.