John 7-8:11 - Making The Right Call
Main Idea: Make your decisions based off of God’s truth, not your truth.
You make the right call when you trust God.
Trust in the Son of God and His salvation for your whole life.
Trust the Word of God to give you the steps to do life right.
Trust the Spirit of God to guide you in each moment of your life.
You make the wrong call when you trust yourself.
You don’t know everything, so you’re missing crucial details.
You don’t know others’ minds, so you’ll misinterpret them.
You don’t know others’ hardships, so you’ll malign them.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
So, we are going to be in John chapter 7 today. We're picking back up in our study in John 5 through 10 called Pick A Side. And today's message is entitled, Making the Right Call.
Making the Right Call. Jim Wilson tells the story of a woman in the last decade. And one of the terms of this woman's probation for her 2012 DUI conviction was that she was not supposed to drink at all.
And she needed to take random breathalyzer tests. In March of 2014, she boasted on her Facebook page that she passed a test even though she'd consumed alcohol the day before.
Buzz killer for me, I had to breathalyze this morning and I drank yesterday, but passed. Think, and then I covered over some words because there was some colorful language within her post.
What she didn't think about before posting that on her social media was that Facebook is a public forum. A local police officer saw the post and she was arrested for violating the terms of her probation. She did not make the right call.
More chemically, every spring, 35 million Americans get hay fever. How many of you kind of struggle with some allergies, especially in the springtime? I am solidly there during spring especially.
Zyrtec is one of my good friends and if you know what that is, then you might struggle with some allergies the same way I do.
Springtime allergies occur when the body's immune system incorrectly identifies pollen as bacteria or viruses, and it releases antibodies to fight against it.
This releases chemicals called histamines, which trigger allergy symptoms like runny noses and itchy eyes. It isn't enough to combat irritants. We must have discernment to recognize what is dangerous and what is harmless.
The body makes the wrong call, and it thinks that, you know, the trees or the flowers, it's a deadly disease that's really going to bring you down. And so it's got to fight it with a runny nose. And I wish it did not do that at all.
Similarly, in today's passage, Jesus heads back to Jerusalem for the first time since he had proclaimed himself to be the son of God, and he had healed a man on the Sabbath day.
The religious leaders of the time were very upset that he had done this action on the Sabbath. They said that it was work. And so as a result, they were trying to plot to find out how they could put him to death.
And in today's passage, in John 7, it is now the time of the year for the Festival of Shelters.
This is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths, where Israel remembered everything that God did in providing for them in the Exodus when they traveled in the wilderness between Egypt and Israel.
So Israel had three really big holidays that were set up for them within the Old Testament law and scriptures that God said, I want you guys to remember that I saved you out of Egypt. I saved you through Egypt.
And then every harvest season, the Feast of First Fruits, God said, I want you to remember that I am providing for you because I love you.
And all of the Old Testament feasts and all of the Old Testament sacrifices and holy days, these were all pointing towards Jesus. So Passover would be the one that we are most familiar with.
Every time we observe the Lord's table together as a church family, we remember Passover, the unleavened bread and the fruit of the vine that we partake in together. As we did, I think it was last week if I remember correctly.
And so we remember Passover and we think about Jesus and how he gave his life for us just as the Passover lamb's life was given to cover over the children of Israel as they were leaving Egypt.
So here with the Festival of Shelters or the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths, I know I've mentioned this before, a tabernacle, so we're Tabernacle Baptist Church. We're like Tent Baptist Church or Booth Baptist Church.
It's a place where we remember God's provision for us. And Jesus, he's going back into Jerusalem. This would be one of the times of year that everyone that could from Israel and Judea, they would all go to Jerusalem to celebrate this feast.
And you would set up your own little tents. And I'm not going to spend any more time talking about this. If you guys ever have any questions, especially as we're going through John, go to Pastor Ron's Facebook page.
And he has been walking through the Gospel of John every Sunday morning for, I assume, a long time. And you guys are in Chapter 10 right now. If I saw today's, I'll call it an episode, today's video.
And so if you're like, man, I would love to know a little bit more, go check out, like, ask Pastor Ron, shoot him a call, shoot him an email, go to his Facebook page and watch it, and you will be blessed through that.
So I'm not going to spend too much more time on that. So Jesus, he comes to the temple. Now, if you remember, the temple was set up to worship God.
And now God himself has entered the temple.
And we saw that in John chapter 2, when Jesus comes through, he overturns the money changers' tables that they were trying to use the house of God as a place to really get in edgewise for their business and charge extortionate fees.
And so Jesus wanted nothing to do with that. And then Jesus was in the temple in John 5 and proclaimed himself to be God the Son, and that he had authority even over the 10 commandments and the Sabbath day.
So as a result, there was a lot of animosity towards him. But Jesus was supposed to be the point of all of it, that the temple was there to worship God, and now God himself had come.
Or as we would read in John 1, 14, where John told us at the beginning of his gospel, the word was made flesh and he dwelt among us. The word John uses is Jesus tabernacled among us. He set up a temporary home here on this earth in his physical body.
And because Jesus now, the word made flesh, he's coming to the feast of Tabernacles. So this should be a great time. Guys, we're here today in a church.
If Jesus walked into our church today, our thoughts should not be, I can't believe he interrupted our service. The point should be, yes, he is the point of all of it. However, that is not what Israel had in mind during this point.
The people that day in Jerusalem at the feast of shelters, the feast of Tabernacles, they were faced with a judgment call, with a choice to determine whether Jesus should be believed or should be dismissed entirely.
And today we are going to be called on to make a similar decision, to make our decisions based off of God's truth not our truth. Make your decisions based off of God's truth not your truth. We can see this highlighted for us in verse number 24.
Stop judging according to outward appearances, rather judge according to righteous judgment. Let's pray together. We'll look at our passage and the challenge to make the right call in our lives.
Dear Lord, thank you for today. God, thank you for the opportunity to be here. Lord, the health, the clothing, the transportation.
Lord, even the cool air that we're able to feel right now. Thank you for all of it. Lord, we ask today that you would help us to make the right call in our lives, that it would be based on who you are and what you've said.
Lord, not just how we feel or what we want to do. May our lives be directed by you. We love you, Lord, and we pray all of this in your name.
Amen. So I'm going to summarize a little bit of the passage. I would encourage you, read through John 7.
So this is one continual story that's happening. It's one account of Jesus interacting with these individuals. But it's a lot of the same themes repeated over and over again throughout the course of Chapter 7.
And then there's an illustration given at the end of Chapter 7, the beginning of Chapter 8, of what it looks like when someone makes the wrong judgment call. So we're going to summarize a little bit of this.
In verses 1 through 9 of John 7, Jesus' brothers, they taunt him. And they're like, Oh, listen, Feast of Tabernacles is coming up.
If you're, you know, the Messiah, the wonder worker, you should go on up to Jerusalem and you should proclaim yourself to everyone. And everyone will be so amazed by you. John tells us that they told him this because they didn't believe in him yet.
They were taunting him. And though they had grown up with Jesus, they did not believe in Jesus. Maybe some of you have encountered this even in your life growing up.
Maybe your parents brought you up in church. Maybe your grandma took you to church sometimes. But you have known about Jesus, but you have not experienced him as your Lord and Savior.
This was true even for Jesus' half siblings, the kids of Joseph and Mary. Jesus responds to their taunting and he tells them, it's not time yet for me to go up to this festival. He says, but your time is always here.
And I'm a little unclear even in reading through the passage, if he means directly, this is your time to go up to the festival, so get on out of here. Or if he's saying like, it's your time to recognize me as Messiah.
I think there might be a little bit of double play, even as Jesus is talking there. So then verses 10 through 24, Jesus' half brothers, they go up to the festival of Tabernacles first.
Jesus secretly goes up, he doesn't make a big to do about it, particularly because right now, the religious leaders are trying to kill him and they're trying to find out how they can do it.
So he goes up secretly after the festival is already half over.
So it's like a six or seven day event and about, you know, day three or four, Jesus secretly goes up and the people, they're talking and they're like, man, do you think this Jesus figure, do you think he's going to come?
And some people are like, man, do you think he's the Messiah? But because of the Pharisees, they had said no one proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah. That's blasphemy.
We will not have any of that. If you say that he's the Messiah, you're going to be kicked out of the synagogue. You can no longer worship in the temple.
And so everyone who's being kind of hush hush about it and they're not saying anything openly. Then Jesus begins teaching in the temple.
If I know, okay, there's a little Wendy's that Pastor Ron and I have been to a couple of times just down eastern over by shoppers or savers or whatever that grocery store is.
And if I knew those in charge of that Wendy's wanted to kill me, you know where I'm not going to go? I'm not going to that Wendy's. However, Jesus, God incarnate, he goes into the house of God, the temple, and he begins teaching.
And he tells them, he's pointing to the father, and he is preaching exactly what God has told him to. He says, I speak as I have heard.
He then responds to the religious leaders desire to kill him, and he maintains his sinless status versus the inability of every person to maintain the law of Moses, questioning why they would kill him for sinfulness.
He says this, Moses gave you guys the law, and that's what you guys are really about. He says, but none of you keep the law perfectly. So why are you trying to kill me for not keeping the law?
Because I healed someone on a Sabbath day. Some of the people don't know that the Pharisees are trying to kill Jesus. And so they're like, dude, you are demon possessed.
Like what in the world are you talking about? Who's trying to kill you? Jesus begins responding to them and to their claims.
He says, I am sent from God and you don't know him and you're not listening to him. Because if you were listening to God, you would know that I have come from God. They actually try to grab him.
They try to seize him at that point and are unsuccessful. And Jesus says, I'm only going to be here for a short time and then I'm going to go and where I'm going to go, you guys can't come.
And they totally misunderstand and they're like, is he going to go to like Asia Minor or Europe where the Greek speaking, Greek culture Hebrews are? Is he going to preach to the Greeks?
It's wild to me that that was the place that they could not go was to Europe. Neither here nor there. So they think that he's saying, I'm going to go to some location.
Obviously, we would know he's saying, I'm going to heaven and you guys can't get there without listening to the father and without listening to me.
Then verse 37, on the most important day of the festival, Jesus says, I'm actually going to read this verse. Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.
The one who believes in me, as the scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him. He said this about the spirit.
Jesus here is claiming from the Old Testament scriptures that said when the Messiah comes, when God comes, he's going to have life that you don't just experience a nice location like Canaan, like Israel.
He says, you're going to have God's life flowing out of you through God's own indwelling presence, his Holy Spirit living within you. And so Jesus says, that's me. I am the one that is bringing that about in your life.
They don't totally believe this. Some people do. They say, this is the prophet that Moses told us about.
You know, believe him and whoever doesn't believe him is cut off from the people. So some people says he's the prophet. Some people said, this is the Messiah.
Other people said, well, the Messiah doesn't come from Galilee, does he? Like we know where he's from, but when the Messiah comes, we'll have no idea. And they didn't get that from the Word of God.
Micah 5.2 said that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem in the land of Judah, and he would come from the line of David. And that's mentioned in 2 Samuel 7 and all throughout the Psalms and several other places.
But they thought, okay, we know where he's from. And so, this can't really be the Messiah, can it? So, the crowds divided because of him, and some of them wanted to grab him, and no one laid hands on him.
The Pharisees had noticed and had heard that Jesus was preaching in the temple. And so, they had sent some servants to go capture Jesus and to bring him into their custody.
The servants are listening to Jesus, and they're like, dude, this guy speaks like no one we've ever heard before. And so, they come back. The Pharisees are like, where's Jesus?
Like, we sent you to grab Jesus. You came back and there is no Jesus. And they're like, listen, no one ever talked like this guy talks.
You know, do you see any of us rulers or Pharisees or scribes following him?
No, the crowd, they believe in him because they don't know the scriptures like we know the scriptures, to which Nicodemus, who we met in John 3, then responds like, hey, in our law, in the Mosaic law, we don't judge people before we investigate and
hear them out. He says, does our law judge a man before it has hurt him? And the response of the Pharisees was, listen, look and you'll find no prophet comes from Galilee.
They basically say because of the location that Jesus is from, they don't know about the whole Matthew 1, Luke 2, Christmas story. So listen, because of where he's from, he's nobody special.
They do not judge according to righteous judgment, they judge according to appearance.
Understanding this passage in the back and forth between Jesus and the people, Jesus is calling them, make the right call about Jesus and the Pharisees responded with, no one speaking for God is ever born in this area of the world.
We see there's a right call, a right decision that can be made, and there are wrong calls and wrong decisions that can be made. I don't know about you, I want to make the right call in my life.
We are faced with dozens of decisions every single day, and we are called on to make choices that affect our lives, our co-workers' lives, our families' lives, and lives within our church and our local area.
How do we not blow it like the people in John 7 did? Well, today we've got just two points. First, you make the right call when you trust God.
You make the right call when you trust God. Want to make a right decision? Don't rely on you.
Rely on God and His Son, His Word, and His Holy Spirit. First, trust in the Son of God and His salvation for your whole life.
Verse 37 and 38 of the passage, on the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.
The one who believes in me, as the scripture said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him. If you hear nothing else from this message, you need to hear this. God loves you.
You are alienated from him due to your sin. There is a cost that must be paid as a result of your sin.
Jesus paid that price in full and is offering you rescue from the path of death and destruction that you're on back into the path of the light and life and love of God.
Turn from your sin, from being the master in charge of your own life, and call on Jesus alone to forgive your sin and to be your Lord.
When you ask him to forgive you and you turn to him in faith as the one who is in charge of your life, you will be absolutely forgiven forever.
You will have an eternal relationship with God as your father, and you will have God's Holy Spirit, his presence, living in your life from that moment onward.
If you have any questions about that, or if you'd like to make that decision today, please talk to me at literally any time. My phone number is in your bulletin today, as well as the phone numbers of our other elders.
And any of us will be thrilled to show you what someone showed us about trusting in Jesus for salvation. You can make every right decision in your life, but if you get this decision wrong, it'll all be pointless for your eternal state.
Make the right choice first and foremost by trusting Jesus for salvation. Now, it goes past just trusting Jesus for salvation. There is more to your life and to mine.
Secondly, trust the Word of God to give you the steps to do life right. Trust the Word of God. We can see this in verses 14 and 19 and 22 and 51, that Jesus consistently calls us back to the Word of God.
And he says, Moses gave some of these commandments. And so why aren't you listening to him? Moses was talking about me.
He mentioned scriptures even from the Scroll of Isaiah. And he says, Isaiah said this, and I am fulfilling it.
Jesus did not come to be dismissive of the Word of God, but to point to its true real purpose, that people would know and love God and would love others as God loves them. Here's the truth.
You are not smart enough to handle your life, your finances, your relationships, or your spirituality on your own. How can I say that? Because that's true in my life.
And because the Word of God says so. God tells us that we all went astray like sheep. We all have turned to our own way.
And Scripture commands us, don't lean on your own understanding, but instead trust in the Lord with all your heart. And what does that look like practically? Two actions this week that could help us for our finances and for our friendships.
For some of you this week, you've got to make some financial decisions with your budget or with a purchase. You need to know two truths from the Word of God. Number one, everything that you have belongs to God.
And you are a manager, not an owner of what God has given you. So intentionally spend your money on the things God wants you to take care of. Like your family, his church, your taxes and your bills.
And secondly, today, scripture tells us that the borrower is a servant, a slave to the lender. And so you should attempt to avoid the slavery of debt in your life as much as you can. That wisdom comes from the Word of God.
And as we pursue God's Word to affect our decisions, that's how some of that can look for us. Some of you have some crazy family or friendship relationships. I happen to know there's quite a few of you that have family in this room.
And as soon as I said crazy family, you guys looked askew at one another. This week, for your family relationships or for your friendships, you need to trust God's Word when it tells you, let your speech always be gracious.
You might want to yell at someone. You might want to insult someone, but that's not God's way.
And you need to listen to God's Word when it tells you, if any among you strays from the truth and someone turns him back, let that person know that whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and cover a multitude
of sins. For some of you this week, God's telling you be gentle. For others of you this week, God might be telling you, you need to dissuade someone from this bad path that they are going down. Now, that's not exhaustive.
That's not every command from the Word of God. If you look at the Old Testament law, you'll see 613 commands.
God has wisdom for every area of your life, but those might be 2 areas of your life where you can trust in the Word of God to give you the steps to do life right. Thirdly, trust the Spirit of God to guide you in each moment of your life.
This is what Jesus was declaring, that as a result of what Jesus would accomplish for us on the cross, He would give us that living water, the Holy Spirit that would guide us into every area of our life.
If you want to make the right decisions in your life, especially in areas where maybe there's not a Bible verse saying like, thou shalt choose this job over that job, we know what we need to do because of the Holy Spirit of God living inside of us.
Now, how does the Holy Spirit guide us in our choices? I'm gonna give just very briefly 4 ways, though there are certainly more. First, he uses his word that he breathed out to talk to your spirit, your inner dialogue.
So listen to, read, memorize and meditate on the Word of God so that you know the kind of things that he says and you recognize it as being the voice of the Spirit. Secondly, the Holy Spirit uses his people.
Scripture says that God has given you gifts of pastors and teachers so you can be equipped in your life for what God wants you to do.
Listen to God's Spirit speaking through actual people in your life and listen to their warnings, their encouragements, their affirmations, and their rebukes. God didn't save you as a lone wolf. He saved you to be a part of a church family.
And can I encourage you? Don't just always go to the people that agree with you. I know in my life I've got some people that I'm like, listen, if I want them to say yes about this, those of you that have kids, they know this.
They know which parent is more likely to say yes and which parent is more likely to say no. That if they ask mom about ice cream, they're gonna get some ice cream.
Or if they ask dad about playing some games or watching TV, dad's gonna say yes to this. In the same way, don't do that with your choices in your life. You're gonna make the wrong call if you just look for the echo chamber.
Instead, look to some people that are maybe wiser than you, maybe that have a little bit more experience than you, and maybe go to some people that you think, they'll probably disagree with me, but they'll at least give me some more counsel or
guidance that I wouldn't have thought about other ways. And as we do that, we can listen to God's people that His Spirit lives within, and we can be guided in that way.
Verse number, or not verse three, but third way here, the Holy Spirit uses your conscience that He gave you. If the inner voice in your heart is going, mm, don't think that's right, that is a pretty good clue that you should not go in that action.
And then lastly, the Holy Spirit uses His peace. It's one of the fruit of the Spirit. Colossians three says, let the peace of Christ officiate in your heart.
When you're faced with the decision, you have read the word, you've listened to the spiritual council of others, you've prayed, your conscience isn't saying the decision is wrong. Go with the decision that God gives you peace for.
I'm thankful for the Holy Spirit's guidance. And again, that's not every way that the Holy Spirit guides us, but those are some great ways. So if that's how we make the right decision and the right call, how or why do we make the wrong decision?
Well, we make the wrong call when we trust ourselves. First, we don't know everything, so we are missing crucial details. We see this in Jesus' half-brothers, that they doubted Jesus.
We see this in the people, that they doubted Jesus constantly. They make fun of him for saying, like, you're demon possessed. Who's trying to kill you?
And they don't know another group of people that also doesn't believe Jesus, because they don't think that he's from Bethlehem, and they don't think he's the Messiah, that they are actually trying to kill him.
So all these people have incomplete details, and so they made the wrong judgment call about Jesus. Proverbs says, the one who gives an answer before he listens, this is foolishness and disgrace for him.
This is why it's so important, especially in relationships with others, to ask when you have questions or problems. This can be true of your kids, your grandkids, your boss, or countless other scenarios in your life.
Don't seek to initially judge or criticize others. Don't trust your estimation of them or their actions because you don't know all the details. Be curious, not judgy.
And yes, that is a Ted Lasso quote in church. Seek to understand where others are coming from. Don't just seek to win over others.
And I've been thankful for people in my life, even over the past couple of months, that have helped kind of walk me through that and to be able to listen and to understand where others are coming from.
Secondly, today, you don't know others' minds, so you will misinterpret them.
The people here, they thought Jesus was crazy, that he was lying, that he was going to go to Europe, and a thousand other things, but they did not know his mind or his thoughts. And so they didn't interpret him correctly.
Anytime in my life or yours where we're like, I just know so-and-so is thinking this about me, or they're plotting this, we are claiming to be a mind reader, and we're most likely wrong. Paul told the Corinthians, Love thinks no evil about another.
When you trust your reading of someone else's mind or motive, you're not operating in truth or facts, and any decision that you make based on someone else's assumed mind or motive is going to be a wrong decision.
When you trust yourself rather than in God, you're going to make a wrong decision not knowing other's minds and misinterpreting them. And then lastly, you don't know other's hardships, so you'll malign them.
Jesus' half brothers, they taunted him not believing he was the Messiah. The people taunted Jesus not knowing he was speaking the truth and was actually being plotted against to be assassinated.
The Pharisees taunted the people who heard Jesus because they didn't realize he was the Messiah, and they dismissed those that didn't have their pedigree or come from their approved locations.
The people at your workplace that you hate the most, the people in your neighborhood that you wish would move, the person a couple rows in front of you that you wish would take a long vacation, they are image bearers of God.
People that Jesus desperately loves and they have lived lives with difficulties that you have never personally lived. They are fighting battles you may never have to face.
And God is calling on you not to judge and hate them or to be perpetually annoyed by them, but to love them and share Jesus with them. You make the right call when you trust God. You make the wrong call when you trust yourself.
In closing today, in chapter 8 verses 1 through 11, there's a story, and don't have time to go into every aspect of this. In the portions of the gospels that we have, sometimes this story shows up here.
At other times, this particular story of chapter 8 verse 1 through chapter 8 and verse 11, sometimes we find it at the end of John. Sometimes we find it at the end of the gospel of Luke.
So some people, they're not exactly sure where this needs to go, but they know that it is how Jesus operates. Story goes like this. The Pharisees find a couple that is engaged in adultery.
They take the woman, not the man, and they bring the woman to Jesus. They throw her down in front of him, and they say, Listen, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act.
Now, Moses said that we should stone adulterers, but what do you say? They're trying to trap him. They, as far as we understand from our knowledge of the past, they did not often follow God's law in how they dealt with adultery.
But here, they wanted to trap Jesus. They wanted to say, Okay, if he says, yes, she should be stoned, then they would tell the people, Jesus is so harsh.
But if he said, Oh no, let her go, they would say, He doesn't follow the law of Moses and he's against God's law. Jesus, he's just riding in the sand with his finger. Scripture doesn't tell us what he's riding.
And they're like, what are we supposed to do? And he goes, the person that does not have any sin, let him be the first person to throw the stone at her to kill her.
It says, from the oldest all the way to the youngest, each of them went away one by one, being convicted of knowing, oh yeah, I'm not perfect. And so at the end, this woman is left, sentenced to die, and Jesus is the only one there.
Jesus lifts up his eyes and he says, woman, where are your accusers? Who's accused you? Who's condemned you?
Who has judged you? She goes, no man, Lord. Neither do I condemn you.
Go and sin no more. The Pharisees here, they make the wrong judgment call because they trusted themselves instead of trusting God. They weren't seeking true justice.
They didn't bring the man and the woman. They just bring the woman. So they're not interested in justice.
They're not interested in following God's law. They're just interested in entrapments and lies. And Jesus cuts to the thick of it, if you will.
Jesus is the judge. The Word of God commands how things should be done. And the Spirit of God brings life.
I think of the verse, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. There's liberty. So in your life, in my life, we're faced with a choice.
Now, most of you will not be called on to be like a jury to determine someone's death this week.
But within your life, within your family, in your workplace, in your neighborhood, in your church, you're going to be called on to make some judgment calls. Make the right call by trusting in God, not yourself. Listen to the Son of God for salvation.
Let him be your Lord and your master. Listen to the Word of God and listen to the Spirit of God. As we do that, we're going to make the right call.
