Psalm 81:8-12 Isaiah 65:1-7 Romans 10:1-13 John 8:21-30
Nowhere Roads
Never since the advent of the Enlightenment has there been such a global revival in spiritualism. People from all walks of life are seeking some or other spiritual experience, yearning for an energy or a force beyond themselves that can help them attain inner peace. It is estimated (conservatively, in my humble opinion) that more than half the world’s population dabbles in some form of astrology, magic, or the occult.
You might well ask then, if they are really seeking a spiritual experience, why do they not turn to the one true God? Purely human endeavours inevitably do not deliver the tranquillity hoped for. And yet people persist even though their ideologies exact unreasonable demands, devotion, sacrifice, and unquestioning commitment from their adherents with little to no lasting or meaningful gratification.
As I wrote this, I remembered when, as a young child, I tried to fly on a broom like Miss Eglantine Price – the amateur witch in the movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I took my mother’s grass broom, climbed up on the roof of our house, said the magic words, and jumped. I don’t need to tell you what happened next. But the saddest part about this story is that I did this over and over again, convinced that if I just said the magic words correctly, I would fly. Thankfully, I am still here today to tell you this tale of utter stupidity…then again, I have heard of others trying to be Batman, Superman, and Spiderman…
But why do so many folks follow these roads to nowhere? Many are highly intelligent, influential, and materially prosperous. And yet, when it comes to things spiritual, it seems as if all reason has been discarded as they talk of energies and crystals and interplanetary conjunctions and achieving an exotic state of metaphysical consciousness.
Why not turn to the one who has done everything possible to provide eternal peace? Our Gospel passage for today may supply us with at least three basic reasons.
The first is that different folks have different destinations. Jesus said to the unbelieving leaders, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.” It seems clear that Jesus was referring to his return to the Father in the ascension, to a place where those who did not believe in him simply could not go.
It is a sad reality that while these leaders sincerely yearned for the Messiah, they did not find him even though he stood right in front of them. They had the very oracles of God, they knew the Scriptures well, they had a godly heritage of faith – patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings – they had a godly history and a godly law that taught them who God is and what he expected from his people. And yet they did not know him. How was this possible?
In Mark 7:13 Jesus said that the unbelieving leaders nullified the word of God by the tradition that they had handed down. What tradition was this? Well, shortly before, during, and after the Babylonian Exile, the teachers of the law began to apply the Mosaic code to daily life and practice with different applications arising out of practical necessity, convenience, or experience. In time, these unwritten applications were seen as equal to the written law.
Many of these applications or traditions were promoted by one of the two main sects of Judaism at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees. The Pharisees were a sect of largely lower- and middle-class Jews that stood in opposition to the Sadducees, the aristocratic priestly class who governed the Temple and who rejected the validity of any extra-biblical laws or traditions. The considerable controversy regarding the so-called “oral law”, including an internal dispute within the ranks of the Pharisees between the followers of Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shummai, culminated in the collection and compilation of these oral laws in written form after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This compilation later became known as the Mishnah. And then there is also the Talmud, but that’s a story for another time.
So, when this offer of freedom from bondage to man’s restrictive and unreasonable demands was made, one would have expected the people of Israel to fall over themselves to embrace a truth that would remove their shackles. But they didn’t, did they? In this, they were very much like their ancestors who wanted to return to slavery in Egypt or like our modern-day spiritualist cultists…or like me, jumping off our roof.
The reason for this is simply that if you have different destinations, you have different priorities and different goals and therefore you make different decisions. In our reading from Isaiah God said that he held out his hands all day long to an obstinate people…he revealed himself to them and yet they rejected him because they wanted to pursue their own imaginations. Or in the words of Paul, as they sought to establish their own righteousness, they refused to submit to God’s righteousness. When your whole life has been based upon convictions of your own invention, it is hard to humble yourself and admit you are wrong.
But there is more to this than simply different decisions. People have different destinations because they have different origins…a different starting point, if you will. Jesus said that the reason they could not come to where he would be was because they were from below while he was from above. Their origins were different. “You are of this world,” he said, “I am not of this world.” No matter how ingeniously spiritual the inventions of humans may appear to be, and regardless of how many chills or goosebumps the rituals may deliver, they are always earthly or worldly, and therefore limited, finite, and temporary.
Now, when Jesus used the word “world” here, he did not mean that all matter was intrinsically evil. That would contradict God’s pronouncement in Genesis 1 and 2. The Scriptures affirm both the physical and spiritual aspects of life. Jesus was called a glutton and a drunkard by his opponents indicating that Jesus was no stranger to good food and wine.
In this context, the word “world” is used in a negative sense…as an antonym for “heavenly”…like when Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” (John 3:6) Jesus’ origin is “heavenly” – not of this world – and he shares that origin with those who are born again through the power of the Spirit. Without this spiritual rebirth, the origin of the individual remains “worldly” and therefore bound to the fallen state of the first Adam.
The rebellion of our first ancestors separated them from God. Sin, iniquity, and lawlessness build a barrier between humans and God. It is only when God breathes new life into those who were dead in their trespasses and sins that their origin changes and consequently their destination changes too. They move from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. They are no longer under Adam but under Jesus. They are no longer dead but alive. They have been redeemed and adopted into the family of God. So, while that which is physical may not be evil in and of itself, it remains empty and lifeless if it is not regenerated by the Spirit of God. The terms “below” and “above” used here by Jesus indicate different origins and therefore different destinations.
Now, having said that, it is important to note that different destinations and different origins are, in one sense, linked to what we’ve discussed briefly before…different decisions. These leaders of Israel failed to believe…they failed to exercise faith in Jesus, and they failed to exercise faith in God the Father. Jesus told them: “If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” Now, that little word “if” presupposes a need for a decision. They needed to respond to the revelation they had received and the revelation they were receiving. If not, their origin and destination would remain the same.
There is a very precarious tightrope we must walk here between human responsibility and God’s sovereignty. This is, in my humble opinion, an antinomy and a paradox that has divided believers for centuries. On the one hand, it seems clear that God alone initiates all saving relationships…but this does not rule out the necessity for human beings to respond to his call and to repent and to turn back to him...after all, as Paul said, God desires for all people to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). Those whom God prepared for glory are those who choose to reject their former beliefs and practices to place their faith and trust in him. The two seemingly contradictory propositions work together.
True, we love him because he first loved us…but there is a response here even though he initiated the relationship. God did not create us to be mindless puppets. We must be weary of trying to make the Bible say things it does not. We like our neat little packages, but the Scriptures can mess with our wrappings and our bows. It is better and, I dare say, appropriately unpretentious, to simply accept that something will always remain in the realm of mystery.
God in his sovereignty and his infinite mercy and his amazing grace offers salvation through the substitutionary death of Jesus…a reversal of the curse brought upon humanity through the sin of our collective forebears. But if we reject Jesus, we reject the one and only true offer of salvation and we will subsequently die in our sins.
And what Jesus made perfectly clear in this passage is that if we reject him, we also reject the one who sent him as an offering for sin. “He who sent me is true,” Jesus said, “and what I have heard from him I tell the world.” In other words, the teaching and the claims of Jesus were the words of God...the same God who spoke in the Old Testament was now once more speaking to them again, but they failed to make the connection. Why? Because they had substituted God’s Word with their interpretive traditions…their own imaginations…their own righteousness.
Now, a word of caution here for those who like to dismiss things that are in the Old Testament”. Jesus (as well as Paul, for that matter) repeatedly affirmed and confirmed the Old Testament Scriptures…he often quoted from them and called them as a witness to testify to the truth of his own assertions. Besides, the New Testament tells us that Jesus is the Word…if there is a difference between the Testaments, well then, the Lord himself is a contradiction. No, God has one Word which is in total agreement on all points. The fact that some “teaching tools”, if you will, such as the Festivals, the sacrificial system, and the purity laws, to name a few, have been fulfilled in Jesus does not negate the basic unity of the Scriptures.
In fact, this is precisely what Jesus was saying here. If the leaders had truly understood the Old Testament Scriptures, they would have recognized Jesus as the same one who spoke to their forefathers in times past through the prophets at many times and in various ways. (Hebrews 1:1) The fact that they did not, reveals their lack of faith in God…period.
In verse 28, Jesus declared that a time would come when they would realize their mistake…when they would see him for who he is…but by then it would be too late. The judgement would be final and irreversible. In their case, it was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and ultimately their own demise. In the case of other unbelievers down through the ages, it is the day of their death. Hebrews 9:27 tells us that it is appointed for humans to die once, but after that comes judgment. The time for decision-making is over…their destination has been sealed for all eternity.
At the end of time, the cross will serve as the ultimate example of a rejection of debt redeemed. The cross that represents deliverance provided for all who would call on the name of the Lord also represents destruction for those who refuse him. Just like the fiery cloud pillar was darkness to the Egyptians but light to the Israelites, so the cross was at once darkness to the one thief and light to the other. You see, it is the “lifting up of the Son of Man” that ultimately reveals him as the one and only legitimate Judge.
It is a strange thing that humanity is all too quick to accuse God of injustice when it comes to the final destination of those who refuse to accept his free offer of salvation in Jesus. Strange, but not surprising. “The natural man,” Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, because they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Those who are wise in their own eyes will always judge the graciousness of God in Jesus as folly. Because they are from below, they cannot discern the one who is from above. So, they will continue to search down dead-end alleyways and avenues and no matter how many things they do or don’t do or how many rules they obey or rituals they practice, they will blindly plunge into an eternal separation from God. Jesus is the only way, the only truth, and the only source of life…without him, there is no atonement for sin.
In stark contrast to these teachers of the law, John stated that even as Jesus spoke, many put their faith in him…but they too would be challenged as to the object of that faith as even believers can misplace their faith…but that is the sermon for next time.
Our faith is shaped in many different ways today. In the first century, the people of God were confused by the oral law or the traditions of the elders, even though they had the Scriptures by which they could have determined what was true or not, by simple comparison. Every Jewish boy knew the Torah and the Psalms by heart by the age of ten.
We also have the Scriptures today, but all too often, many in the modern church take their cues from popular preachers, devotional booklets, self-help tracts, charts, prophetic visions, and messages…without ever measuring them against the teaching of God’s Word. Mahatma Gandhi, an educated and qualified lawyer turned Hindu guru and passive social activist, once said: “You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisations to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as if it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”
Dearest beloved brethren, it ought not to be so. We have his Word…other than Jesus himself, this is the greatest gift God has ever given humanity. So, let us decide today to read it, study it, hide it in our hearts, and, once we know what the Scriptures teach, then let us live by what we learn.
Shall we pray?
© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2023
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