Choose Christ! Series

Choose Christ!

The Gospel of John

John 7:40-53

Sermon by Rick Crandall

Grayson Baptist Church - December 14, 2016

(Revised September 1, 2019)

BACKGROUND:

*Here in John 7, a great multitude of Jews were gathered together in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles. It was one of the three major Feasts God commanded them to observe each year, and Jesus was there. By now, the Lord was in the third year of His ministry, and the religious rulers had been wanting to kill Him for months.

*Jesus was only 6 months away from the cross and was still calling people to receive Him as the promised Messiah. Here in vs. 37-39, Jesus offered to quench our spiritual thirst forever. God's Word says:

37. On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.

38. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.''

39. But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

*Let's read vs. 40-53 tonight to see how those people responded to Jesus, and how we must respond to the Lord Jesus Christ.

MESSAGE:

*All of us make choices in life, and when you think about it, it's amazing how many choices we make every day. From the moment we wake up, to the moment we fall asleep, we are almost constantly making choices. And we have more possibilities every day.

*In 1975 the typical American supermarket had about 9,000 products, but by January 2014 that number had gone up to 47,000! "Consumer Reports" studied this drastic increase. In one supermarket, they found 27 different varieties of Crest products. Then at a local "Stop and Shop" they found 9 varieties of Pringles, 11 flavors of Cheerios, and 53 types Campbell’s soup! According to the company, they missed 21 others." (1)

*We will make countless choices big and small as we move through life, but the most important choice is how we will respond to Jesus Christ. Tonight's Scripture shows us three possibilities.

1. FIRST: SOME PEOPLE WILL GET SAVED.

*Thank God that people get saved! We can see some of these people in tonight's Scripture. In vs. 37-38, they heard Jesus cry out:

37. . . "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.

38. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.''

*Verses 40-43 tell us how the people responded:

40. Therefore many from the crowd, when they heard this saying, said, "Truly this is the Prophet.''

41. Others said, "This is the Christ,'' but some said, "Will the Christ come out of Galilee?

42. Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?''

43. So there was a division among the people because of Him.

*Yes, there were still many people questioning the truth about Jesus, but every one of the people who truly believed in Jesus was saved! And every one of us who has truly trusted in the Lord has also been saved. We heard the truth about Jesus in God's Word. Then by God's grace, we believed in Christ, and we started to follow Him.

*Everybody should believe in Jesus Christ, because He IS the Prophet that Moses spoke of 1,400 hundred years before the Lord was born. In Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses said: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear." Jesus is that Prophet.

*And Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. That word "Messiah" comes from a Hebrew word that simply means "anointed" or "anointed one." It's actually found 39 times in the Old Testament, but most of those times it's translated as "anointed," because it's talking about one of the anointed Old Testament priests or kings.

*Only two times in the Old Testament is this word translated directly as "Messiah." Both of those times are in Daniel 9. And it happened during a desperate time in Jewish history: The Babylonian captivity of the Jews.

*The Kingdom of Judah had gone through a terrible loss to the Babylonian Empire, and it was their own fault. Most of the people had turned their backs on God. They rejected every attempt God made to call them back. And God began to withdraw His protection from His people.

*Their exile to slavery came in 3 stages, each worse than the one before. The "Got Questions" website explained that "God used Babylon as His agent of judgment against Judah because of their stubborn sins of idolatry and rebellion against the Lord. There were several different times between 607-586 B.C. when the Jews were taken captive by Babylon.