Distinguishing Belief in God from Abiding in God's Word

May 25, 2021              John 5: 37-39

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. ³⁷And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

39 ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ⁴¹I do not accept glory from human beings. ⁴²But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

            So there is a circular logic going on here.  The Father has testified to Jesus, the Father sent Jesus.  However, the Leadership that Jesus is talking to, they are denied this testimony.  They have never heard his voice nor seen his form nor have His word abiding in them, because they do not believe in Jesus, whom the Father sent.  How then do you achieve these things?  You believe in Jesus, to whom the Father has testified and whom the Father has sent.  To believe in Jesus is to experience who sent Jesus.  To experience who sent Jesus is to know the truth of Jesus and his testimony.  Without belief, they cannot experience who sent Jesus.  So they do not receive His Testimony. 

            A couple of interesting bits here in what Jesus is saying.  The first thing he tells them is that they, the Leadership, have never heard the voice of the Father.  This is true in the background of this age.  There has not been an ‘official’ prophet since Malachi, a couple hundred years before.  The second bit that Jesus says, “You have never…seen his form.”  That goes much further back.  When Moses was on the Mountain of God, he only saw God from the back, God’s glory being too powerful.  When Elijah went up on the Mountain of God, there was wind and fire and then God showed up in the still small voice.  The point seems to be that divine intervention is not coming directly from ‘the Big Guy’, but through Jesus.

            And then Jesus says they, the Leadership, do not have ‘his’ word abiding in themselves because they do not believe in Jesus, sent by ‘him’ (the Father).  It is something of a fine line that Jesus is drawing here.  The Leadership believe in God, that is Judaism, that is their religion.  Jesus is not comparing them to ‘Gentiles and unbelievers’, but he still needs a way to poke at their lack of faith in what has come among them. 

            He wants them to understand the transition, the fulfillment of the faith that is represented by the coming of Jesus.  It is the Messianic expectation that has been fulfilled.  It is God’s Plan that is being carried out.  It did not fall upon them cold, but came in the testimony of John the baptizer, who, by Jesus’ explanation, appears to have been accepted by the Leadership as someone of God. 

            The Leadership of the Jewish people, the educated ones, those ‘in the know’, those who are filled up with the knowledge and study of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, they are the ones who have not been drawn across the gap of faith that would have the word of the Father abiding in their hearts, if they believed in the one that the Father sent. 

            He says this straight up in the next verse.  They search through the pages of the Old Testament because they believe eternal life is to be found in the pages themselves, instead of in Jesus, the Messiah, the one to whom the pages refer.

            So Jesus is not simply arguing them in a circle.  They are believers, but they have not made the leap of faith to Jesus.  Jesus will continue his persuasion in the verses to come.  More later.

            Peace, Pastor Peter.