John 5:39-47
"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.
BUT YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO COME TO ME THAT YOU MAY HAVE LIFE.
I do not receive honor from men.
But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.
I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me; If another comes in his own name, him you will receive.
How can you believe, who receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?
Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father: there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust.
For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.
But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?"

Message:
Christ has taken His defense! The religious leaders had charged Him with two counts: breaking the Sabbath and blasphemy--making Himself equal with God. Their sentence...death!
In this important passage in John, from verses 31 to the end of the chapter, Christ has presented various witnesses that verify His claims. In our study, we have imagined the scene as that of a court room. His accusers are the religious leaders—the Pharisees.
During the past number of weeks, we have considered the various witnesses...the Holy Spirit, John the Baptist, His works, the testimony of His Father supported by the Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming Messiah.
Today, Jesus is bringing his court case to a summation. The indictment...but you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.
His accusers have closed their ears to the truth!
Psalm 50:17
"You hate My instructions and cast My words behind you."

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Two)

Jeremiah 6:10
"To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it."
Zechariah 7:12
"They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by His Spirit through earlier prophets."
Isaiah 28:12
"This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it."
Jeremiah 32:33
"They turned their backs to me and not their faces, though I taught them again and again, they would not listen or respond to discipline."
Christ had presented unquestionable witnesses to His claims as the Messiah, the Sent One from God, God Incarnate in human flesh...AND THEY WOULD NOT LISTEN!
The Apostle Paul had the same response!
Acts 28:23-28
"So when they had appointed him a day, many came to him at his lodging, to whom he explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets, from morning till evening.
And some were persuaded by the things which were spoken, and some disbelieved.
So when they did not agree among themselves, they departed after Paul had said one word: "The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers, saying,
"Go to this people and say: "Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand: And seeing you will see, and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.
Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Three)

John had opened his Gospel with these sad words:
"He came to His own, and His own received Him not."
(John 1:11)
In the closing days of Christ's public ministry, He weeps over the unbelief and rejection of His people:
"0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!
How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord."
(Matt. 23:37-39)
In the passage before us in the Gospel of John, Jesus deals with this same rejection: BUT YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO COME TO ME THAT YOU MAY HAVE LIFE.
No man ever spake with such power, so clearly and convincingly, every word supported by a flawless character, yearning only that men should come out of darkness into the light and out of bondage into liberty, as the Lord Jesus Christ during His three years on earth.
Strange that He who was the Truth was rejected, that against the light which shone through Him, men turned their backs, that the gift of eternal life which He gave, some spurned, and that the truths which He set forth many refused to believe.
On another occasion during the earthly ministry of Christ, He asked His listeners: "If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? Which of you convicteth Me of sin?"
THE ABSENCE OF SIN INCLUDES NECESSARILY THE ABSENCE OF FALSEHOOD!
I have often wrestled with this question: "Why do people choose to disbelieve in Christ?" Why have the truths of our Christian faith suffered so much opposition?
The New Testament, itself, from the records of the birth of our Lord down to the end of St. John's vision of the era of anarchy and persecution to come, testifies in the most startling way to the fact that Christ Himself was most viciously and constantly attacked, that His apostles suffered the same opposition, and that it was predicted by these very apostles that Christianity

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Four)

would continue so to suffer, down to the end of this age.
When Mary took her blessed babe to the temple at Jerusalem, the aged Simeon, taking the child into his arms, predicted, "Behold this child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel; and for a sign which is spoken against." (Luke 2:34,35) It was the Divine purpose that the manifestation of the Messiah should cause the crisis just described; men must decide either to join or to oppose Him.
When one closely reads the Gospels to discover what men did to Christ Himself, the holy, righteous, loving Son of God, one begins to get some conception of the awful depravity and perversion of human nature. Thus, for example, in the record of the briefest and earliest of all Gospels, that of St. Mark, we read that His disciples were offended at Him. The Greek word here is SKANDALIZO, from which comes our word SCANDAL. When our Lord was under arrest Peter denied Him, Judas betrayed Him, and then "ALL FORSOOK HIM AND FLED."
When we turn from His own disciples who really loved Him, except Judas, we find that Jewish authorities SPAT ON HIM, covering His face, BUFFETED HIM (the word means to strike with the fist), they struck Him with the palms of their hands in the palace of Pontius Pilate; HE WAS SCOURGED; the soldiers clothed Him with purple in mockery, they put a CROWN OF THORNS UPON HIS HEAD, and then saluted Him. This not being enough, THEY STRUCK HIM ON THE HEAD WITH A REED, then again in mockery they worshiped Him, and then mocked Him (the word here means to play with, to trifle with). Those who passed by while He hung upon the cross reviled Him, the word here being BLASPHEMEO, from which comes our word BLASPHEMY. Finally, the two thieves on either side reviled Him!
The Apostle Peter plainly told the Jews that their treatment of Christ was one in which they had set Him AT NAUGHT, the word meaning, to make of no account, to despise utterly, to treat with contempt.
Man fallen away from God has a bias against God. That bias is hatred, enmity.
In the very first chapter of Romans, Paul speaks of man as "haters of God."
Writing to the Colossians he concisely declares that

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Five)

"men by their wicked works have become the enemies of God."
This animosity is expressed most graphically in the opening of the second Psalm:
"Why do the nations rage, and the peoples mediate on vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against Jehovah, and against His Anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us."
The famous German theologian Julius Muller wrote:
"There is no contradiction in maintaining that an awe of God may linger in the soul, in connection with aversion against God and everything Godlike. It is founded in the very exalted nature of man created as in the likeness of God, that when he has once estranged himself from God, especially if at some earlier period he has expressed something of living fellowship with God, that he more easily lapses into a concealed hatred against God, then into dead indifference. He cannot easily wholly withdraw himself from the silent, knowing consciousness of his essential obligation to God although he incessantly strives to do so, and feels himself driven to react against the same."
JUST SO MEN HATED CHRIST BECAUSE OF THEIR OWN EVIL HEARTS, AND THEIR REFUSAL TO GIVE UP SIN AND EMBRACE THE HOLY SON OF GOD. There is that in human nature which makes it possible for men to hate religion because of, and in the measure of its purity and excellence. SINFUL MAN IS BIASED AGAINST GOD!
The New Testament epistles emphasize continually, in striking sentences, with profound insight; the constitutional darkness of the mind of fallen man. In Paul's remarkable survey of the historic deterioration of mankind from a spiritual and material standpoint, tells us that men "because that, knowing God, they glorified Him not as God; neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasoning and their senseless heart was darkened."
THE CORRUPTION OF THE HEART WENT SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE ERRORS OF REASON, OF WHICH IT IS AT ONCE THE CAUSE AND THE EFFECT.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
"But even if our gospel is veiled; it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Six)

age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them...verse 6...'For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
Satan is here said to assert such an influence over those who believe not as to pervert their apprehending the glory of the Gospel. This control of Satan over the human mind, although so effectual, is analogous to the influence of one created intellect over another in other cases, and therefore is perfectly consistent with free agency and responsibility. The blindness abides in all humanity apart from those who believe and are regenerated, whose minds have been renewed by the Spirit of God.
Ephesians 4:17-19
"This I say, therefore and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."
The word BLINDNESS used in this Ephesians passage more accurately could be translated HARDNESS. The Greek word is POROSIS, from which comes our word POROUS, originally meaning HARDENING OF THE SKIN, and at times used by medical writers, in referring to CALLUS formed at the end of fractured bones.
It is the condition of the blindness, the darkness of the sinner's mind that Christ speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount: "If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness, how great is that darkness."
Fallen man has a bias against God, and suffers from spiritual blindness and hardness. But there is another reason why men reject Christ and that is PRIDE.
In our text in John 5:44, we find these words:
"How can you believe, who receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?
In this statement of the Christ, He gave one of the

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Seven)

major reasons why men have been unwilling to recognize a holy, sovereign God. When man says he believes in a Supreme Being, and especially in Jesus Christ His Son, he at the same time if he is honest; confesses that God is holy and he himself, unholy, that God is independent and can do according to His own will, while man is dependent. All this is humiliating; it takes away any cause for pride, for if there is one thing that man has always liked to feel, it is that he is sufficient for all things. The world through its own wisdom has rejected God. "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." Literally this should read:
THE FOOL HATH SAID IN HIS HEART...NO GOD! That is he is determined not to have God. It is the verdict of his heart that for him there will be no God!
One of the great Puritan theologians, John Owen, wrote:
The innate pride and vanity of the minds of men is another means whereby they are disposed and inclined unto an apostasy from the profession of evangelical truth. With respect hereunto the design and work of the gospel is, to 'cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,' taught therein, 'bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.' The mind of man is naturally lifted up with high thoughts in itself. In all things the mind of man would be its own measure, guide, and rule, continually teeming with these two evils: (1) It exalts imaginations of its own. Seeking out and exalting inventions of our own, in things spiritual and religious, is the principal and most pernicious consequent of our fall from that state of uprightness wherein of God we were created. (2) It makes itself the sole and absolute judge of what is divinely proposed unto it, whether it be true or false, good or evil, to be received or rejected, without desire or expectation of any supernatural guidance or assistance; and whatever is unsuited unto its own prejudicate imagination, it is ready to scorn and despise." So wrote the old preacher in the days of the Puritans!
1 John 2:16
"For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world."

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Eight)

I started my message with the question...Why do men not believe in the Christ so that they might have life? We have stated that there is a bias against God in the mind and heart of fallen man. The god of this world has blinded man to the truth of the Gospel and the person of Jesus Christ. In his blindness, man is filled with pride and seeks to live his life under his control without any outside interference from God. His pride has made himself his own god.
In the text that we have been studying in John 5, it was not lack of evidence as to "the claims of Christ and His witnesses, but perversity, blindness and human pride kept them from accepting Christ as the Sent One from God.
The reason why men despise the claims of Christ is not because of any want of evidence on the side of those claims, but because of a sinful indisposition on their part to attend to those claims. They have not the love of God in them; for if they had, they would receive and worship His Son!
Jesus said: "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." (5;43) Unspeakably solemn is this. Israel's rejection of Christ has only prepared the way for them to accept the Antichrist, for it is to him our Lord referred in the second part of this verse. Just as Eve's rejection of the truth of God laid her open to accept the Devil's lie, so Israel's rejection of the true Messiah has thoroughly prepared them, morally, to receive the false Messiah; who will come in his own name, doing his own pleasure, and seeking glory from men.
WHEN WE REJECT TRUTH, WE LEAVE OURSELVES OPEN TO FALSEHOOD!
Jesus concludes: "How can ye believe which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?" Sinful man, rejecter of truth, seems to be more concerned of what his fellowman will think of him than the God who he will face in eternity and to Whom he will give an account as to what he did with Christ.
when we put our trust and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are given the gift of eternal life, which begins immediately upon our reception of Christ as our Savior! When we pass from this present life, we pass immediately into the presence of Jesus Christ who will receive us unto Himself for all eternity! Ah! What a hope and what a faith!