John 7:38-44 • The Gift of a Prophet

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  (This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

  I'll ask that you look in your Bibles at John chapter 7, John chapter 7, as we look at verses 38 through 34, and Jesus is dealing with some people who are troubled a bit with His evidence of being a prophet, and we'll see how they and He respond. John 7 and verse 38, Jesus said, "Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."

  Now this He said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

  When they heard these words, some of the people said, "This really is the prophet."

  Others said, "This is the Christ."

  But some said, "Is the Christ to come from Galilee, where Jesus lived in His adult life? Has not the Scripture said that Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?" So there was a division among the people over Him. Some of them wanted to arrest Him, but no one laid hands on Him.

  We actually have a place in our attic for gifts that we are preparing for some of you, because we have received these gifts from some of you.

  We have a Styrofoam lifesaver that has sensenoid on it the word "Titanic."

  And we have a wooden trout with a barometer in its belly that does not work.

  And we have a collection of European cheeses with an expiration date of 2002.

  We received these at last year's White Elephant Party, and we plan to give them away at this year's White Elephant Party, because these are plainly the gifts that nobody wants.

  When we talk about Jesus being a great prophet, we admire that, but the reality is He also

  may be a gift that nobody wants.

  Now we do admire the prophecies. Everyone loves a prophecy.

  No one loves a prophet. The love of the prophecies is evident right here in this passage, even in Jesus' time. The people of Israel knew the prophecies about the coming Christ, verse 42. They knew that Christ would come. That had been prophesied, that He would breath the offspring of David, that He would come from Bethlehem.

  And we recognize when we see prophecies, there's something special about something in the past,

  in a divine way, being given to God's people so they know what to expect in the future. The theologian George Sweeting says there's actually about 2,000 prophecies in the Bible, which means roughly every 30 verses you're getting a prophecy of some sort. And they can be miniscule, like Jesus being betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, or people gambling for His clothes at the foot of the cross, prophesied centuries before. But there are also magnificent prophecies of what is to come, that Christ would be preached to all nations, that He would come again on the clouds in power and glory to claim His people. And we relish the notion that God could tell us ahead of time what will happen. And we don't just need the biblical record. We recognize that there are skeptics who say, "Oh, that's just the Bible confirming the Bible."

  There are actually other ways we can do that just in November of this year.

  Yale academics looking at archaeological evidence in a cave in northeastern Iraq identified a great drought that took place in northeastern Iraq that ended up in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire, what they called the mother of all droughts. Why should you care?

  Because what Yale academics have discovered is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Nahum and Zephaniah, who actually prophesied centuries and centuries ago that a great drought would destroy the Assyrian Empire. Now we have secular academics affirming the same thing.

  So we relish prophecies.

  "O little town of Bethlehem, come thou long-expected Jesus." So many great prophecies that confirm the way that God has prepared His people to say, "I've loved you for so long. You are so special to me." And it can just do something important to every human heart to recognize that God has said, "Those who have gone before you, I was using to affirm how great is my love for you." We see that even outside the biblical record. Think about all the attention that Mr. Rogers is getting right now. What's getting all the attention? Just a man in a culture that was going so fast that when he would just take time to say to a child, "You are special to me.

  I love you just the way you are."

  You know when he received his third Daytime Emmy Award and his Lifetime Television Achievement Award, Mr. Rogers did just that, but not for little kids, for adults who had gathered to be recognized with all of the glitter and the fashion of the era for their contributions to television. But when he received his award, he said this, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being.

  Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think about those people who have gone before you and helped you become who you are, those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you? Would you take just ten seconds to think about those who have gone before you to help you?" And then he said, "Don't worry. I'll keep the time."

  And the commentators of the time said that the tears fell like rain among the beglittered celebrities who had gathered for their own recognition when they were simply asked to remember who had contributed to caring for them by going before them and arranging for what was needed for their lives.

  Maybe something we should remember too.

  In sentiment, we cloud the prophecies of the Bible and sometimes forget that what God is doing for every single one of us is saying, "Let me tell you of those who have gone before you at my instruction to tell you how special you are to me. I'm giving you all this evidence. I'm giving you all these words just so that you will know that I've gone before you to prepare for you." In the prophets, in your parents, in a neighbor, in a Sunday school teacher, there are those who have gone before you to show God's care for you. Maybe you should follow the example. Let's just take 10 seconds and think of those who have gone before you to care for your life and what God has made you. Don't worry. I'll keep the time.

  And when he finished the 10 seconds, Mr. Rogers simply said to all, "God, be with you."

  It's a wonderful, Immanuel statement that what God did through the prophecies and the fulfillment of them was to say to His people, "Call Jesus' name Immanuel," which being interpreted is God with us. And that great statement is what God is doing through the prophecies, through the ages, to tell us by what we can expect, what God has done ahead of us and beyond us to say how special we are to Him. We love the prophecies because they tell us what to expect.

  But at the same time, we struggle with the prophets because they tell us what God expects of us. Verse 42, of course, they commented, "Christ comes, the offspring of David. He comes from Bethlehem."

  But then verse 43, "There was a division among the people over him. Some wanted to arrest him." Why? How does that make sense? That we love a prophecy and everyone hates a prophet because the prophecies in telling us what will come come from a person who says, "Here's what God expects of you." And we don't like to hear that. But what if the two things came together? What if what was happening? What if a prophet is God was not just saying, "What should you expect?"

  But even in saying, "What does God expect of you?" He was saying, "Here's what God will provide for those who don't meet expectations."

  That's Jesus. He is that gift of a prophet who's saying what will come and at the same time saying what God expects of us. We understand why we don't like a prophet. When we understand what Jesus says, God expects of us. Just a few weeks ago as we have marched through the Bible in a year, we were at the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus as Jesus spoke on that lovely, flowered mountain and scarred the scene by actually telling us what God expects like a prophet would. He said things about anger and insults.

  You've heard it said, "You shall not murder, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother and says, "You fool," will go to hell."

  Well Mr. Rogers may have taught us to sing. What do you do with the mad that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite, what do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay?

  No, just think of this song. I can stop when I want to.

  But what if you can't stop when you want to?

  When the anger and the bitterness still come, then we may like Mr. Rogers, but Jesus is a little less attractive for having said it.

  And he doesn't just talk to us about anger, he talks about purity. You've heard it said, "You shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery in his heart." He gave us expectations about marriage.

  Everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

  Expectations about generosity, you really don't want to hear this at Christmastime, give to the one who asks you and do not refuse to the one who would borrow from you.

  Expectations about forgiveness, you've heard it said, "You should love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you and pray in this way to your Father in heaven. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive

  you." And we start looking for the escape clauses. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He can't really mean that, except Jesus concludes the sermon by saying, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand." And the little children sing the song, you have to hear what he's actually saying. "For everyone who does not hear these words of mine will be like the man who built his house upon the sand, and the rains came, and the floods rose, and the winds came, and beat against the house, and the house on the sand fell flat, and great was the fall of it." And that's the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

  Well, no longer we don't like, no wonder that we don't like prophets.

  If that's the message, we may admire prophets, we may love their prophecies, but a prophet,

  who wants that?

  We feel like when the prophets actually speak to us, they're always putting us in shackles of some sort that are limiting our freedom to be who we really want to be.

  I think of my experience from early in ministry when I was helping an older couple arrange for the funeral of the man's father.

  At some point, because the pastor was present in the living room with them, the wife dared to ask a question that she was pretty sure was going to anger her husband.

  She said, "Are you going to invite your sister-in-law, Jane, to your father's funeral?"

  He looked at her, he looked at me, and he stormed from the room.

  Some minutes later, he came back, and he said, "Brian, that woman, my sister-in-law, wanted a little more money, so she convinced her husband, my brother, in the military to go on a dangerous mission for just a little more hazard pay. And he was killed, and because he died, my mother died of grief. That woman killed my brother, and she killed my mother, and she is not coming to my father's funeral."

  I understand.

  You understand. Which of us has not been hurt and felt the fire of bitterness and the difficulty of forgiveness? Who has not felt that? But then I look at the man whose wife so often echoed his anger in the way that she dealt with her daughter-in-law and her son and grandchildren till the day came that they said they would no longer have anything to do with those grandparents.

  And a younger daughter, to escape the anger of her father, got involved with a man, got pregnant early, married unwisely, and the pain just continued and continued and continued as a man to be free of the law of God, imprisoned himself and his family in the destruction of his own bitterness.

  We don't want to hear what a prophet says, because we fear we'll be shackled in the commands that we want to avoid.

  But we also don't like prophets because we don't just want to avoid the shackles, we want to keep our shackles.

  There are things that they require of us, compassion for other people, the same prophets in the Old Testament who would tell us about wonderful counselor, mighty God, Prince of Peace would also pronounce woe to people who neglect the needs of the poor, who turn deaf ears to the cries of the widow and the orphan, who ignore the plight of refugees, who take advantage of human trafficking, who overlook injustice for personal comfort.

  We do not like the prophets who require of us compassion for others that may cost something of us.

  Oh yeah, Isaiah, who talked about wonderful counselor, mighty God, Prince of Peace, also said, "What does God expect of you?" Same prophet.

  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house when you see the naked to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? I'm not even sure what that means, to hide from our own flesh if someone might want money or just want a relationship, and we're so tired of them that we hide from our own flesh.

  Or Amos, the one who revels us with the descriptions of the great day of the Lord, and then says, "I foresee the international manufacturing and human trafficking abuses of this age."

  This is what the Lord says, says Amos, "For these sins I will not turn back my wrath,

  those who sell the needy for a pair of sandals, those who trample on the heads of the poor and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son, use the same girl and deny my holy name. And hear this word, you cows of Bashan, you women of Israel who oppress the poor and crush the needy, and say to your husbands, bring us something more to drink.

  Prepare to meet your God." That's where that phrase comes from in the Bible.

  As God is talking to his people and saying, "I am requiring of you compassion for others. It may cost you, but I am the God who gave myself for others." When he says, "Prepare to meet your God," now that's why we don't like the prophets.

  After all, Jesus was just echoing them when he said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the prisoner and to relieve those who are oppressed. When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne and He will say to those who denied food to the hungry, clothes to the needy, care to the sick, or justice to the oppressed, "Truly I say to you, as you did not do it unto the least of these, you did not do it unto me.

  Start from me, you workers of iniquity."

  Now that's why we don't like the prophets.

  Jesus the greatest prophet is not just Mr. Rogers with a beard.

  He is saying things that he knows are not just kind but necessary. And the reason he is doing so is because he's actually carrying out the goal that Mr. Rogers had when he invited us to his neighborhood.

  After all, what is biblical neighboring?

  What was the greatest commandment according to Jesus?

  You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second, he said, was like unto it that you should love your neighbor as yourself. As though these two things are of the same cloth, of the same peace, that this is the same thing. Really loving God with all your heart, you will love His people, His priorities, His people become your priorities as well. And as a consequence, you begin to recognize that this neighboring is a reflection of the holiness and the heart of God.

  And the reason for it is when the holiness and the heart of God come together in that way, that it's the witness of the people of God, it is a powerful witness to who God is and what He actually plans. I recognize that what happens for each of us in our lives is when the holiness and heart of God are coming from us, when it costs us to put ourselves in obedience to Him and costs us to give for the sake of others. That it's almost like you're going down our street at Christmastime and you're seeing the neighbors who put the Christmas lights on their houses. I am telling you, there is one house we love. It's not ours.

  I mean, somebody has spent so much time and effort to tell the Christmas story. And we slow down and people going down the street slow down and they just have to look. And what we begin to understand is if our light is shining in such a way that the holiness of God and the heart of God are coming together, it's like our light shining is a powerful witness.

  When Mr. Rogers talked to others about neighboring, one reviewer said of the movie that's currently out and portrays him as that kindly television characters, these words, "Rogers remains the great enigma of modern American media, an unassailable object of good intentions whose influence spanned generations. In a culture as broken as ours, his singular focus was on helping children understand their intrinsic sacred value.

  And as a consequence, no one could speak against him." Now listen, we've got good theologians in the room.

  They're not asking us to emulate the theology or the mousiness of Mr. Rogers.

  But what happened when a man would speak with kindness and compassion into a culture that would cause them to stop and listen so that we whose theology is so precise and are sometimes so strong that we cannot afford some gentleness wonder why he's heard and we're not.

  When Paul the Apostle wrote, he said, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law."

  We commend ourselves in every way to these standards so that we will not be a stumbling block to anyone hearing the message of Christ. Then when there are a people who will put on the Christmas lights of their lives by saying I'm going to live a transformed holiness, an obedience to Christ, believing that he actually intends good for me through it, but I'm going to live compassionately for the sake of others, we begin to recognize there is power in that witness.

  Our children this past week came with their children en masse to our house, and it really felt like they were en masse in our house. You know, the tornado going through all the time. But when there was a little quiet in the tornado at some point, my second son came and said, "Dad, I just want to tell you about somebody in our church." He's kind of finding his way back to faith. Based in a Christian home, but a scientific engineer, and the way that he was taught science against the way that he was taught the Scriptures in his church, he could not reconcile the two.

  And ultimately he began to believe the Bible was irrational and God Himself could not be trusted.

  But he says he's coming back to the church, he still asks hard questions, but he's listening to us.

  And the reason he is doing so is this. What brought him back to consideration of his need for a Savior, and the world's need for a Savior, is that he could not deny the reality of Jesus in the home in which he was raised.

  He said, "My parents were Jesus to me, and I cannot deny the reality of that." He's still figuring it out. He's still working his way back. But when there were people who would live, the holiness and the compassion, the holiness and the heart of God, it became this light in their own home so that the witness became powerful for their own son.

  It's what God is requiring of us. The goal is not to be better than other people. The goal is that your light would shine. The holiness and the heart of God in such a way that people would say, "There's something real in you."

  And that reality would be Jesus Himself.

  God not only requires our obedience and our compassion, ultimately He requires our repentance for our failures in holiness and compassion.

  After all, recognize Jesus almost from the very moment that he declared that he was a prophet in Matthew chapter 4, said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Now anytime you use, even in the church, the word repent, certain stereotypes come to our mind. We immediately begin to think of the long-haired, long-bearded hobo with the sign saying, "Repent! Repent!" And it seems totally unrealistic and without anything to do with our world.

  It actually has very little to do with Jesus.

  What did the great prophet who called us repentance believe that repentance would bring?

  John chapter 7, verse 38, where we are, Jesus said, "Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." Now this was, He said, about the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were yet to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified. Did you catch it? There's a little prophecy right in there. I'm going away, but the Holy Spirit is coming. But when He comes, what will He do with hearts that are open to Me? He will become as this river of living water.

  If we hear the holiness and the heart of God requiring our obedience and our compassion, just inevitably we feel this emptiness, this dryness in us of what God is requiring.

  And Jesus says, "But no, if you'll trust in Me, then I will make provision for you. Then the Holy Spirit's not only going to come in and He's only going to say, He's going to help you understand. Listen, you might not have all this figured out.

  You may need some help in the way you're trying to make it through the world." And that's the witness of the Holy Spirit in there saying, "You really haven't got this all fixed."

  But then when you turn to Jesus, He becomes like this stream of living water, this sustaining, this refreshing that says, "Even though I'd have it all figured out, even though it's not all straight yet, there is a God who cares for Me, and He sent His Spirit for Me, and He's making things right." No better example than the Apostle Paul, who thought he was doing the right thing, pursuing Christians, persecuting even to the point of death those who were following Christ.

  And yet Jesus saved him, knocked him down on that road to Emmaus. And when Paul was wondering, "What is all of this about?"

  Jesus spoke to him, "I'm sending you so that others may receive forgiveness of sins in a place among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.

  By faith in Me, you who recognize the holiness and the heart of God are not all they should be in your life. Nonetheless, by faith in Him that He's made things right, that He died on the cross for your sin, that He sent the Spirit to witness in your heart, that you need Him, are going to recognize He's made provision, and I want to walk with Him, I want to serve Him, I want His influence in my life." And it becomes like this stream of living water as God's holiness and heart begin to echo from us because we are so satisfied with the life and the love that God is now giving us.

  What Jesus, as the prophet said, was that He expected of us, for God's sake, to be obedient to God's Word, to show compassion to others, and to repent of our sin.

  But if we do that, what are we to expect?

  First thing, rescue from our sin, from the failure to live the holiness and the heart of God, as we are getting closer and closer to the cross in this walk through the Bible in a year. Recognize Jesus gets more and more specific of what is about to happen to Him as He gives His own prophecies.

  He says to His own disciples days before this crucifixion, "We are going up to Jerusalem,

  and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him over to the Gentiles, and they will mock Him and spit on Him and flog Him and kill Him.

  And three days later He will rise."

  And it is that prophecy that is filling our hearts with understanding of what God is providing forgiveness from our shame, faith in what Christ has provided, that not only take the penalty, He rose the victor over it so that ultimately what we see happening with Jesus suffering on the cross is precisely what the Old Testament prophets said would happen. You know the words, "All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one of us to His own way, but the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." All our sin put upon Him, He was wounded for our transgression, crushed for our sin.

  To what end?

  Even King David said, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered."

  The rescue comes and the stream of living water flows.

  When we recognize a new covering, not our pride, not the way we look to others.

  Do you know in the great to-do over Mr. Rogers right now, one of the gifts being offered on public television is a coffee cup that has on the outside a picture of Mr. Rogers in his sport coat, the way he always entered the living room before going to the land of make-believe.

  But if you pour in your hot coffee, he puts on a sweater.

  The way his mother put a sweater on him, the sweaters he himself wore, she made for him on TV.

  You recognize what's happening is as we put aside our pride, what we stand for, what we feel distinguishes us, that we are being told our sin is covered.

  Working with the embrace of a mother, making a sweater for a son or a Savior making an embrace for eternity. God says to you and me, "Listen, what life did you build?

  What robe did you put on?

  Is there something you need to cover you?"

  Then Christ says He will. He will rescue you from all that has passed, the sin, the shame, the wrong. He will. He will cover you with something more dear, entirely new.

  And that's not the end of the promise. That prophet did not just tell us he would rescue us. He promised resurrection.

  Did you hear it? They will spit on him. They will flog him. They will put him to death. And three days later he will rise.

  But it was not he alone who would experience that. He said in his earthly ministry, "I am the resurrection and the life.

  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die." It was the promise of resurrection that means we fear and face so many things in the hurts of this life. But God is saying, "I will make you new. I will resurrect you even from death. And those who love me will be with you." That becomes important.

  You know, I watched an interview with the director of the new Mr. Rogers movie.

  She was doing lots of research to get ready for the movie. And so one of the things that she did was she began to play a lot of those old black and white programs of Mr. Rogers. And one is where he was helping children understand death.

  And he did it by taking a dead goldfish out of a fishbowl and just telling children, you know, "This is just part of life. Fish die." Well, the movie director did not recognize her three-year-old son was watching the show with her. And when Mr. Rogers showed the dead goldfish, the three-year-old said to his mother, "Oh, but, Mom, cats don't die."

  And the mom looked across the room at the family pet and dared to say it, "Oh, yes.

  Cats die."

  "Oh, Mom, no, not boots."

  And the wailing went on for hours.

  But that wasn't the worst of it. She finally got her child settled down. And it was nighttime and she put him to bed. And then the child said, "And, Mom, people don't die."

  "Oh, yes."

  And then the crying would not stop.

  The interviewer was sharp enough to wonder where the story should go next.

  And so she asked the movie director on the basis of something the interviewer knew had happened. Do you know this? That in the making of the latest Mr. Rogers movie, there was actually a technician who was killed on the set.

  And so the interviewer, knowing something at occasion, said, "What happened? Oh, we were filming in this building and this good man went out and got a smoke on the balcony and the railing failed in some way and he died."

  Said the interviewer, "How did you handle that?"

  The director responded, "Well, there was no protocol for handling that tragedy.

  We held each other and we cried and we wailed and we tried to take lessons of Mr. Rogers to use in this moment of tragedy."

  Well, what were the lessons of Mr. Rogers?

  Well there were three lessons.

  Be kind, be kind, and be kind.

  But somehow that wasn't enough.

  It's not all that Jesus said who is more than Mr. Rogers with a beard.

  He promised something even beyond resurrection.

  Do you remember the great prophet said, "When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne and He will say, "Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

  There will come a moment at which Jesus will welcome to the heavenly kingdom not only those who have gone to be with Him, but all who claim that Jesus is Lord and long for His appearing and when we are made right with Him, we will be made right, body and spirit, mind and relationship. May you take glory in His name. He is the greatest gift and He tells us what is to come. Rejoice in it in Jesus' name. Amen." Father, so bless Your people, I pray, that they, knowing the goodness that You have provided,

  would recognize that Your very intent was that those who would hear the hard words of a prophet would hear how great is the compassion of the God who sent the prophets to tell us not only what You expect, but what we can expect provision beyond our own, blessing beyond our understanding, restoration of body, spouse, family, of relationship with You.

  Thank You, Lord Jesus, for telling us what is to come.

  We praise You. In Jesus' name, amen.