Untitled project from SquadCast
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jeremy_1_06-06-2025_135619: [00:00:00] Today I am gonna share a passage with you that has forever changed the way I read the Bible, in particular, the Old Testament, and I suspect it may be a game changer for you as well. This is something that Jesus said in John chapter five. We're gonna begin reading in verse 31. Jesus says this, if I were to testify on my own behalf, my testimony would not be valid, but someone else is also testifying about me, and I assure you that everything he says about me is true.
In fact, you sent investigators to listen to John the Baptist, and his testimony about me was true. Of course, I have no need of human witnesses, but I say these things so that you might be saved. John was like a burning and shining lamp, and you were excited for a while about his message. But I have a greater witness than John.
My teachings and my miracles. The [00:01:00] father gave me these works to accomplish and they prove that he has sent me, and the father who sent me has testified about me. Himself, you have never heard his voice or seen him face to face, and you do not have his message in your hearts because you do not believe me, the one he sent to you.
So here Jesus is giving a list of accolades, why he is who he is, how he's worth, uh, believing in, and all these things that he's been doing, you can have confidence in. But then we get to one of the most profound things. Seriously Jesus ever said, and these two verses I'm gonna read next are verses I think about all the time.
I quote these all the time and these come up in conversations. When someone is wrestling with a particular thorny passage in the Old Testament. They're like, what do I do with that? I often take them to the next two verses that we're going to read. If you understand Jesus' argument here. It will forever change [00:02:00] the way that you read the Bible, John 5 39 through 40, Jesus says this, you search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the scriptures point to me, yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.
Now he's talking to religious leaders who were going through what we would now know as the Old Testament. To them, it would be the Hebrew Bible. And Jesus refers to this as the scriptures. He's saying, you go to those to find eternal life, but you won't find it. You'll find it in me. But then he says, you refuse to come to me, even though according to Jesus, all the scriptures point to him.
Now, this is a game changing revelation when it comes to how we interpret the Old Testament. Greg Boyd has written like this. [00:03:00] We cannot read the Bible as we would a cookbook giving equal weight to everything it teaches. We should rather read it like a novel in which the final chapter forces us to rethink everything that preceded it.
More specifically, we should read the Old Testament through the lens of the revelation of God in Christ and especially through the lens of the cross, which sums up everything Jesus was about. This is how we read the Bible. I compare it to watching the sixth Sense.
I see dead people.
jeremy_1_06-06-2025_135619: When you get to the end of that movie, I'm not gonna spoil it for you if you have been living under a rock for the last few decades, but if you get to the end of that movie and you find out a key detail, if you're anything like me, you immediately want to go back and rewatch the movie [00:04:00] knowing what you know.
That is how we should read the Bible. Once we realize what Jesus is saying here, that all of it points to Jesus, we should want to go back and reread anything that we thought might be in, in contrast to Jesus or look different than Jesus because Jesus says that all the scriptures point us to him and then he's going to add on a few more accolades in case they were having a hard time processing.
These claims. John five, verse 41. Jesus says, your approval means nothing to me because I know you don't have God's love within you. For I have come to you in my father's name and you have rejected me. Yet, if others come in their own name, you gladly welcome them. No wonder you can't believe for you gladly honor each other, but you don't care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God.
Yet it isn't I who will [00:05:00] accuse you before the Father Moses will accuse you. Yes, Moses in whom you put your hopes. If you really believed Moses, you would believe me because he wrote about me. But since you don't believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say? This is Jesus putting together one heck of a resume as to why he is worth trusting and notice in the verses we just read all of the different examples we find.
John the Baptist pointed to him, Jesus' teaching and his miracles testify to him. God the Father testifies to him. The scriptures testify to him. And then even Moses wrote about Jesus. Jesus putting all of these together, saying, these are all signs pointing you directly at me. And what it shows us today is that we don't need Jesus.
To give us more signs, [00:06:00] what we need is to stop searching elsewhere. We do exactly what these early religious leaders do. We look to find our life in all sorts of other things around Jesus rather than actually looking to Jesus. Now, I can easily illustrate this for us. There has been an ongoing debate.
Over getting the 10 Commandments posted in schools. And this has been for, for years and years and years. And it strikes me as the perfect illustration of missing the point that we're referencing here. Now, Texas, if you've been following the news, has become the latest state passing a law that requires a 10 Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms.
Now, I want to invite you to listen in on part of the debate that was just had over this. Because it illustrates what is actually going on here. Check this out.
Representative Noble, uh, what is the fourth commandment, [00:07:00] Keith? The Sabbath. Uh, us being here on Saturday, it's about us being here on Saturday. Is that ironic or what? And so part of keeping the Sabbath holy is not working on the Sabbath. That is, that is. Um, yeah. And what is the and day of rest? The 10 Commandments come from Judaism.
What day is the Jewish Sabbath? It is on Saturday. And what day is it today? It is Saturday. Here we are. The Christian Sabbath is what day Sunday in honor of the day that Jesus rose from the dead and we're scheduled to give this bill a final vote on what day of the week. It's ironic, isn't it?
Representative Noble, you're saying that you'd rather tell people to follow the 10 Commandments than follow it yourself.
jeremy_1_06-06-2025_135619: Did you notice the phrase she kept using? It's ironic, isn't it? Yeah. It's ironic and it's sad that legalism takes us to that place. Where we are doing things that make no sense, that are so silly [00:08:00] that to someone look spiritual, and yet it completely misses the point and it misses what Jesus is offering us here.
See, our culture has created all sorts of ways to talk about Jesus without actually following him. But according to Jesus, life is not found in the 10 Commandments according to Jesus. Life is not found anywhere in the Bible. Life is not even found in religion. Even one like Christianity according to Jesus, life is found in him, in the person of Jesus, and anywhere else we look will be a distraction.
So if you read the Bible. It doesn't look like Jesus. You've missed the point. And if you follow Christianity and it doesn't look like Jesus, you've missed the point. A close of something [00:09:00] that CS Lewis said. He said, I need Christ, not something that resembles him. You will never find eternal life in anything else other than the person of Jesus.
That is the invitation for United A to stop looking elsewhere, to stop all the distractions, and to see that eternal life is only found in Jesus alone. I'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith.
