You May Be Wrong
John 5:39-40
Steve Miller
www.centergrovebc.org
Have you ever been wrong? I won’t tell.
People are often wrong. Most of the time, it is a result of misunderstandings and hasty decisions. Sometimes people are simply mistaken.
It can be funny to read some “bulletin bloopers” where people make mistakes in print:
--The outreach committee has enlisted 25 visitors to make calls on people who are not afflicted with any church.
--Evening massage - 6 PM
--Thursday night - Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow.
--The third verse of Blessed Assurance will be sung without musical accomplishment.
--The choir will meet at the Larsen house for fun and sinning.
--Ushers will eat latecomers.
Today’s Scripture shows Jesus being confronted by a very antagonistic group. They are sincere in their beliefs, but Jesus tells them that they sincerely wrong in their beliefs. In the Scripture we find people strongly holding onto beliefs that Jesus says are not right. But Jesus doesn’t want them to stay that way.
All of us remember when Jim Bakker was at the top of the “prosperity gospel” game in the 80’s. He sincerely believed in what he was selling but after his great fall, he admitted in his autobiography, as his title exclaims, “I was wrong,” that he was wrong about "The idea that God wants Christians to be rich and wealthy.” Bakker wrote, "For years I had embraced and espoused a gospel that was branded ’prosperity gospel.’ I didn’t mind the label, on the contrary I was proud of it. ’You’re absolutely right!’ I’d say to critics... Look at all the rich saints in the Old Testament... I even got to the point where I was teaching..."Don’t pray, ’God, your will be done.’ You already know it is God’s will for you to have those things... when you want a new car, claim it." (page 532)
Christ didn’t want Bakker to continue in his sincere mistakenness and Christ would not have you to miss out either on His truth.
1. You may be wrong, but Jesus wants you to find the truth.
Jesus doesn’t want anyone to be wrong. This morning, our text clearly shows that Jesus wants us to search the Scripture for His truth. Read v. 39-40
The scene in our text is emotionally charged. It is the Sabbath, in Jerusalem, and Jesus has just healed a man, not by taking him into the healing waters of Bethesda, but simply by his own power. The religious scholars of the day did not like it and were confronting Jesus. Jesus attempted to give them every reason to believe in Him. He explained how John the Baptist witnessed of him, how the works he performed witnessed of him, and how the Father witnessed of him.
And then, he began to really touch their hearts when he began speaking of how the Holy Scripture witnessed of Jesus. You see, these religious scholars were devout men of the Word of God. They were highly intelligent men who counted every letter, weighed every word, and scrutinized every sentence of the Scriptures. But they were still strangers to the truth.
And how sad it must have made Jesus to find that these godly men of Jerusalem had spent their lives searching the Scriptures, but they had failed to find the Savior. What a tragedy it is for men and women to waste their lives in pursuit of truth, but find themselves only in bondage to their own thoughts and their own theories. (prev. two paragraphs from sermon by Morris H. Chapman, entitled “Search the Scriptures,” found in Draper’s Preaching with Passion)
John Wesley once said, “When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me.”
READ v. 39 again. Jesus is saying, “you may be wrong. Search again!”
One of our greatest examples of a search gone wrong is in Saul of Tarsus. He was a top student of the Law, a Jew of highest prestige and privilege, an activist for Judaism unlike many others. But he was wrong. And Jesus visited him on the Damascus road and set him straight. Saul changes his name to Paul when Jesus changes his perspective on the truth.
Have you had Jesus change you perspective lately? Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People had his perspective changed once on a subway in New York. He writes (pages 30-31 of Habits...:
People were sitting quietly—some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. it was a calm, peaceful scene. Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway care. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.
The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people‘s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.
It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?”
The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mothers died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.”
Jesus knows that when we are left to our own thoughts, we will come up short every time. That is why He tells us to head back to the Scriptures. The Scripture is designed for us to objectively measure God’s truth against man’s truth.
--Ps. 119.89 says “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.” Christ says, “let it be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
--1 Pet. 1.25 says, “the word of the Lord endureth for ever.”
--And as my grandfather quoted to me as his favorite verse: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. (Isaiah 40:8, KJV)
You may be wrong but Jesus says search the Scriptures.
2. You may have missed the point, if Jesus is not THE point.
Now, interestingly enough, Jesus knows that these men have searched, but their search has led them to miss the whole point. What’s happening here?
The Pharisees think that their knowledge of the Scripture gives them salvation. But this is untrue and it misses the point. The point is knowing Jesus and receiving a relationship with Him. Read V. 39.
Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Read 45-47.”
We know Jesus loved for the Old Testament Scripture. He obeyed it, and The Lord knows the way through the wilderness only by the Word of God. But He also knows that if we don’t find Jesus in the Word, than we are missing the whole point.
How is it possible for Scripture readers to miss Jesus in the Scripture?
Let me give you a few names: Judaism, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka Mormonism), Religion of Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses. All of these religion read the Old Testament, but they do not reach the same conclusion about Jesus Christ.
Our nation’s founding fathers used the Old Testament, in part, to construct the world’s greatest republic, but not all of them found a real relationship with Jesus Christ.
Your friends may not agree with you on all points concerning what the Scriptures declare about Christ. I may not agree with you at all points.
I believe that Jesus identifies the major problem in reaching wrong conclusions regarding Scripture. Look again at verse 40. The NLT puts it this way, “you refuse to come to me so that I can give you this eternal life." (John 5:40) The NASB says that “you are unwilling.” Unwilling, hard-headed, inflexible…these are words that describe why folks can look into the Holy Word and raise their heads with their hearts unmoved. Jesus plainly states that we refuse Him. That is why we can go from worship time to worship time unchanged.
I believe the answer then is to humble ourselves to Christ and allow Him to bring life to us. Too often we are refusing Christ. We won’t come as a child to the Scriptures to hear what it has to say. Instead, we come already full of our own ideas, and we rationalize the Word to fit the situation.
And if the truth be known, many here today may quote Scripture, but be as devoid of the life of Christ as can be. In Matthew 7 Jesus said, “"“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you…" (Matthew 7:21-23, NKJV)
If we miss the life that Jesus is offering, then our searching has been in vain. You may have missed the point, Jesus is the point.
3. You may not have real life, but Jesus offers it to you now.
If it is possible that you are wrong, and it is possible that you have missed the point, then the result is certain: you may not have the life Jesus wants you to have.
Life is more than moving and breathing and the beating of a heart. Real life is about being right with God. And Jesus came to do that very thing. He said, “I come to give you life and life more abundantly.”
Remember Nicodemis? He was one of the foremost searchers of his day, and yet, he did not have real life, though he was confident that he did. It wasn’t until he went to Jesus and was open to hearing Him that he found out that he did not have salvation. Jesus told him that he must be born again in order to have the abundant new life.
Did you know that some people in church, who appear like Christians aren’t born again? It is true. I’ve recently heard testimony of a long-term Sunday School teacher who didn’t receive Christ until later in life. I remember a pastor telling me about the revival in his church where deacons came to know Christ. It is really possible that you may be wrong about having the life of Christ born in you.
If you, like Nicodemis, feel that there may be more than what you have right now, I want you to know that Jesus doesn’t want you to be wrong forever. He wants you to find way. He wants you to find the truth, He wants to give you life. He wants to give you Himself.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Him.
If you feel like you need to find Jesus, He tells you this morning:, "“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." (Luke 11:9-10, NKJV)
Earlier in Jesus’ day, he approached man sitting at the pool of Bethesda. John 5:6 says, “When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” (NASB) Even at that moment, the man thought that all that could help him was to get to the pool. But he was wrong! Jesus opened him up to so much more.
Are you ready for Jesus to do his life-changing work in your life today? You may think that you’ve tried it all before, but you may be wrong! You may think that you’ve sinned too much, but you may be wrong! You may think that you are right where you need to be, but you may be wrong!
You may be wrong, but praise God, Jesus doesn’t want you to stay that way forever.
