Ever heard of clue words.? The ones you use to give warning of something important to follow. “This is a customer announcement”; “This train terminates at..” “Right children, what I want you to do is.”; “Please take your seats”; “Darling..! Today we have one of Jesus clue words three times. Translated here as “I tell you the truth”, Jesus actually said: “Amen! Amen! I say to you!” And I thought Amen was a religious word we tacked on to the end of prayers, a clue word to tell everyone else we’ve finished praying! So what does it mean? Its true! When you say ‘Amen’ you are saying what the person leading the prayer has said it a true statement of my convictions on this matter. In a sense you are affirming before God your agreement.

 

“ I tell you the truth” appears today in verse 19; verse 24 and verse 25. Jesus is choosing his words carefully. What follows is a significant revelation of truth. And it is those statements that we are drawn to this morning.

 

What are they? Verse 19-23: “The Son can do nothing by himself, he can do only what he sees his Father is doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does….”

 

Verse 24 “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life…”

 

Verse 25 “a time is coming… when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and…. live”

 

The first tells us about the relationship between the Father and the Son.

 

 The second tells about how we receive eternal life

The third tells us this eternal life is the new creation. God speaks and the dead become alive!

That follows is an interpretation of verses 24 – 25.

 

Theology is meant to be the study of God but on the whole is has become perverted to an extension of philosophy. God can only be known by revelation, so all true theology comes from God. In other words Jesus is the true theology. The key text on theology is the Bible. The rest is just speculation. So today we are studying theology!

 

We are going to dive into the end of this passage and begin with verse 26.

 

God is eternal.

This resonates with the revelation of God in Genesis 1, page 3 “In the beginning God....” Here Jesus tells us “the Father has life in himself” He has no beginning or end, He is not the product of a creation, he is alive outside of time and inside time. It is necessarily mind boggling because theses things are beyond our comprehension. We have live breathed into us. Our conception triggers life for us, brought to full life at birth as we began to breath and will end when we stop breathing.  God is not like that. He is eternal In Exodus 3 page 61. God tells Moses “I am who I am”  or maybe “I will be what I will be” He is the one who determines himself. Nothing can change that.

God is unchallenged.

 

But Jesus takes a leap forward. God has granted the Son to have life in himself. He, Jesus, the carpenter’s Son, is God. Which takes us back to the beginning of this section. What is the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Is it two superpowers in the universe. No! They act in perfect harmony. These verses remind me of any pairs dance routine. The whole point is that the pair work together in perfect harmony. Together and sometimes exact mimicking of the other. At other times doing different things to make a single action timed to perfection. SO it is with God the Father and God the Son.

This is what was meant when we read last week “My Father is working and I am working.”

They work together. Hand in glove.

 

 

 Is one subservient to the other? Well this is a big issue. And I have to say that the revelation of Jesus Christ is perfectly clear. The Son obeys the Father. But the Father has entrusted all authority to the Son. So yes the Son is following the thoughts and action of the Father but he is not any less God for doing so.

 

Now this is a key concept that has been perverted by sin. We see obedience as demeaning, derogatory. We resent being told what to do, it challenges our freedom , our rights and our pride. The Boss has power and influence. Ambition is to lead, to control to be God! But that is a result of sin. In God there is no sin, so the Son obeying the Father is perfect freedom because freedom is doing what you want and Jesus wants what the Father wants and the Father wants what the Son desires. So they make a perfect team and the obedience bit creates no challenge to Jesus, he accepts, joyfully the will of God. We see that at the point of highest tension is their relationship. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus as a human being struggles with the fear and pain of torture and death and cries out. “If it is possible remove this cup from me, nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” Jesus endured the cross because he loved you. He obeyed the Father because he loved him. The Father sent him because he was willing to serve.

 

But we have a twisted view of service. And it is seen best in the challenges of the marriage relationship. The very concept of the wife obeying and the husband loving is considered out-of-date, archaic and redundant. But the first point to note is that you cannot isolate the love of the husband from the obeying bit. If you do you depart from the model of the Father and the Son and end up with a shadow of what God intended. The wife debating with her husband is not challenging his authority. The husband listening to his wife is not weak. The wife prepared to obey when she does not think the husband is right is trying to maintain godliness even when it appears that the husband is wrong. The husband insists on his way is godliness only if he is convinced that his way is the best expression of love for his wife.

 

In the church the leadership is calling for you to follow Jesus, which it should, and you want above everything to Follow Him then to obey the Leadership is not a challenge to your status or identity or anything. In fact the model of leadership is Jesus and he taught a servant leadership style.  

 

The problem is when we don’t agree with the leadership or leader. Then it is a matter of energetic debate but in the end, unless you believe there is a deadly sin being planned, you obey. And leaders have to lead where they believe God is directing even if others disagree. The challenge is to listen and an act faithfully to the promptings of the spirit.

 

In the business world this idea only has its vestige in that it understands that effective leadership has to communicate its vision to its workforce so that they want to produce what the managers want. A driven workforce is a poor workforce. The old adage is “one volunteer is worth 10 pressed men” We all work better if our wills are in line with the bosses.

 

To summarise:

There is no sin in God so the Father and the Son are equal even thought the Son always is seen obeying the Father. That is there relationship. And the submission relationship is complimented by love and revelation. Jesus obeys, God loves and shows him everything. That is the model of relationship we should imitate.

 

The second point is what do Father and Son agree on?  The life they have they give to whom Jesus pleases! The eternal life you entered when you put your faith and trust in Jesus was not some improved, supped up life it is the life of God himself, given to you by Jesus! When we get to Lazarus being raised from the death, it will hardly be significant because we already have a better resurrection here. Raised not to life and die again but raised from dying altogether. Back in the Old Testament this was foretold in a graphic account of a valley full of dry bones, bleached in the sun. In the vision God commanded and breathed life into the bones and Israel was reborn. You can read about it in Ezekiel 37. Here it is happening for real. This is no vision. The Kingdom is about life giving.

You nay wonder about the judgement bit but the judgement is about life-giving not condemning but life giving. God is not in the business of sending people to Hell but giving eternal life to those who are already hell-bound. The passing of the giving of life to the Son is so that the Son is honoured. Even here the intimate relationship between Father and Son comes out. You cannot honour the Son without honouring the Father and vice versa.

So the next question is who does it please Jesus to give this God-live to?

 

The answer is whoever hears the word and believes God. This takes us straight back to John 3 where the same theme has been developed. Both the essential nature of believing and the judgement for live or death appear there. There is no question. Jesus’ is pleased to give life to those who hear and believe. Not those who argue and bluster; not those who work hard or are extremely good but those who hear and believe. Simple as that. So why are so few hearing and believing. Because what they hear they don’t like. Self will be dethroned; desire has to be directed in godliness and we would rather go to hell than give up our small freedoms and power.

But those who hear and believe, Jesus says HAVE past from death to life. You who believe are eternally alive, god-like alive! This is amazing, heaven is to look forward to but even here and now I can know the love, the peace and the joy of the presence of the eternal God.

 

To summarise this passage we begin with Jesus and the Father in perfect harmony of thought, action and purpose.

Secondly if we hear and believe God we can have eternal life starting now.

Finally the new creation has begun, we are entering live as God lives, better than being healed after 38 years as the man at Bathzada was, better than a resurrection like Lazarus, we are given this eternal life.

 

How do we know this is true. Jesus says so. Is he right? Yes. And that is the subject for next week.