Redemption Church - Augusta, GA

As we end John’s Gospel, we ask on question: What now? What do we do with it? What we need most is to see that discipleship, this following Jesus, this being sent in the Holy Spirit… It is not something that we can use our cultural measures of success and failure to understand. It is not like choosing a career path. This life found in Christ alone is not all about focusing on your work, or about figuring out your calling… It is about seeing who Jesus really is, recognizing Him as Lord, and listening to Him and obeying Him because He has proven faithful and just and good and full of love.. It is about finding, continually, that He brings peace, He brings forgiveness, He brings mercy… It is about attuning our attention to Him always and following Him…learning to be faithful when you can’t see the end… Because He says this is life for us. Doing what He did - Glorifying God by showing others what He is like. Humbly serving the interest of others before our own…Even laying ourselves down for others… Whether that means simply helping someone at work, Tenderly caring for your spouse and children, Sending flowers when someone is grieving, Buying groceries for one in need, Serving in church to teach kids, lead a Bible study, preach a sermon, play music, make coffee, run sound, Or if it means stepping in the way death for another, The call is to follow not the measures of the world for a life well lived, but to be faithful where Jesus has you, and to continue to find life in Him day by day, forever, because in Him is life everlasting.

Sermon notes 👇 Barabbas is seen in all four Gospels. It’s interesting to me that Barabbas’s name literally means “son of the father.” So, when Pilate gave the crowd a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, they choice a violent man - a murderer - whose name meant son of the father. Meanwhile, they were clamoring for the death of the true Son of God - the true Son of the Father. It’s evil that Jesus was betrayed by a close friend. It’s evil that the religious leaders sought to kill Jesus, and even more so in the name of righteousness. It’s evil that Pilate overlooked justice for the sake of his own power. It’s evil that an innocent man was murdered…while a guilty man was set free. But there it is… A guilty man was set free. The guilty man was pardoned, and the innocent man was condemned to death. And we are all that guilty man set free by the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospel of Barabbas is this: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)

Sermon notes 👇 What part of Jesus as Lord and Savior are you willing to believe? What parts do you struggle with? John 18:1-27 has to do with Jesus’s arrest, but there is another story intertwined with it, and it is that of Peter denying Jesus 3 times…just as Jesus foretold. As these two scenarios are contrasted, we are guided to recognize and confront some of our own areas of disbelief. In the Gospel of John, we’ve seen 7 times where Jesus has claimed particular things about who He is, using “I AM” language… I Am the Bread of Life (6:35) I Am the Light of the World (8:12) I Am the Gate for the Sheep (10:7) I Am the Good Shepherd (10:11) I Am the Resurrection (11:25) I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life (14:6) I Am the True Vine (15:1) And there are 6 other times where Jesus simply uses this language of “I Am” to identify Himself…. And this passage we see the 7th time, and it is sort of this culmination… In John 17, Jesus just prayed this prayer that we now know as the High Priestly Prayer…where He clearly identified Himself as God Himself… Then He responds to those who have come to arrest Him saying…”I Am He”...essentially uttering this name of God to identify Himself as the Jesus whom they seek. Jesus identifies Himself as “I Am.” Peter rejects being identified with Jesus, denying Him, using the language of “I am not.” Ironically, Peter’s denial of Jesus also held the confession he needed to believe - a confession John the Baptist made in the first chapter of the Gospel of John - “I am not the Christ.” Jesus is strong and able and holds all power, He cannot lose it. We are completely weak and unable without Him. When are you going to put your trust in Him entirely? When will we find our confidence in Him, even when it seems dangerous to us? That’s our prayer and our confession this morning, turning Peter’s denial into John the Baptist’s confession… I am not the Christ. Jesus is.

Sermon notes 👇 Jesus loves His disciples to the uttermost and to the end. Here, Jesus demonstrated His love by washing the disciples feet, so that His disciples could love like He does. He even lavished this love on Judas, who He knew would betray Him. And this is what glorifies God, this is what makes Him known, this is what His Kingdom come looks like…. Loving your friends. Loving your enemies. To the end. To the utmost with His love, because He has lavished it on you and shown you the way, and has shown us that in this very way is true life. Before there is any call to go do what Jesus does there is the call for us to see this - He loves us to the end, to the uttermost, with the most deep and abiding and generous love. We can receive it like John, who calls himself “beloved.” Or we can receive it like Judas.

Sermon notes 👇 Believing in Jesus means you look to Him as your ultimate Source of life. John 12:42-43 says this - “Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.” Certain pharisees thought that there was more to gain in the praise of others than the life that comes from Jesus. They were more enthralled by the idols of their heart than anything else. For us, it might be possible as well to believe in Jesus, but then look to the idols of our heart to provide life. And when I say idols of your heart , I mean anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God - anything you seek to give you the life that only God can give. It’s anything that you can look at and say: “If I have that, then I’ll have meaning and value and significance” But the truth is - idols will never give you that meaning and significance. They will rob you of joy - they will steal your assurance - they will not forgive you when you fail them. They will trap you in an unending loop of trying to get that thing you crave only to leave you unsatisfied and wanting more. Such that you’ll try again - over and over and over - and never be satisfied. So the way we should live is to remember that every single day there will be a battle fought in our hearts and minds. Will we look to Jesus for life? Or will we depend on our idols? Will we keep trying to drink sand… When we can instead go to the source of life and find living water?

Sermon notes 👇 What is life? It’s a hard thing for me to define at times because when talking about life we could be talking about a number of things… One way we can talk about life is from a pure biological perspective, but we can also talk about life as it pertains to our individual existence. The New Testament generally seems to refer to this type of life by using the greek word “bios”… But the Greek word John uses in 20:31 - the word for the life that we find when believing in Jesus as the Christ, our Savior - is not “bios,” it is “zoe”… “Zoe” is the word used to talk about Life Eternal in the New Testament. And it points to the truth that we exist at a deeper level than just our flesh and blood… For those who believe in Jesus…there is life in us that comes from the Eternal God and is Eternal…and it is meant to lead our bodies with purpose… Jesus says in John 12:25 that “whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” & “If anyone serves me, he must follow me.” And here, in Jesus’s words, a 3rd Greek word for life is found…and the word is “psuche” - of course this is where we get psyche. This is the soul-life. This is the mind, heart, and will. I kind of think of it as the YOU of your life. Jesus basically says that your soul-life can either be driven by the “bios” life or the “zoe” life… That which is of this world, or that which is eternal… That which is temporal, or that which is everlasting…. But not by both. Only one or the other can possess you, and it may seem obvious which is the better choice… But the truth is that, because of the Fall, because of our sin, our heart and soul is bound to - and I mean held captive to - desiring temporal things over eternal things. But it isn’t how we were created to be, we’re broken and we need saving. We desperately need Jesus to give us eternal life.

Sermon notes 👇 If you hang around Redemption Church long at all, you’ll hear us say this quite a bit - We are striving together to make the real Jesus known, by being honest about our failures, loving the way He loves, serving the city for the good of all, and inviting everybody into the family of God. If you visit our website, the first thing you’ll see is that statement, it is in big letters in our lobby, and it is on a bunch of our handouts. That’s the vision for us. The Bible is just full of the message that Jesus loves each and every one of us more than we can imagine… That He came and lived, and died, and rose again to demonstrate His love, to rescue us from ourselves, to redeem and restore all of creation, and to be with us now and forever. We know that the church has often misrepresented Jesus. We know that this church has misrepresented Jesus. I have often misrepresented Jesus. You have misrepresented Jesus. But our aim here is to be found striving together to know the REAL Jesus and make Him known. That is what we want to be true of us at Redemption Church through and through. Because we believe that the more that it is true of us, the more we will rightly represent and reflect Jesus, making Him known to others.

Sermon notes 👇 …all the noise in our lives...our busyness, our hurry, our filling up the calendar and the day with tasks and meetings, and constantly checking our bank accounts, or calculating for future jobs or relationships or whatever else we find ourselves obsessing over constantly… all that noise is generated from all our doing… And all our doing, all our activity, at its root, usually has something to do with us trying to tell the world who we are. But, who we really are isn’t answered by our doing, it is answered in our being, But we often can’t even see our true reflection for all the commotion in our lives. So, we can’t tell the world who we really are because we can barely remember who we really are. This New Year’s Eve, before we jump into 2024, take a moment to be still. I want to remind you of who you are… At the very root of your existence you are an image bearer of God. You were given life - God formed you and breathed life into you - so that you can make Him known in this world together with others. That is your purpose. And not only are you an image bearer of God, but you are deeply loved by Him. So much so that Jesus, who is God, came and hung on a cross to rescue you from sin and death. And He rose again to restore you to life in Him and with Him. See, you have this intrinsic value, you are a deeply loved image bearer of God, but you probably don’t really know it, you probably forget it, your true reflection fades in the commotion of your life. We must get quiet, and still, and be with God and find again who we are in Him. I can’t think of a better way to end this year or to start a new one. This is the invitation of Jesus back in John 15:3-5 “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Sermon notes 👇 There is a kind of doubt that grows out of disbelief. It is proud and defiant. It looks inward at itself, in bitterness, and says to God “this can’t be true.” Maybe that was Zechariah. But also, there is a doubt that grows out of a humble wonder. It stares upward with awe and says “ I don’t understand God, help me see how this is true.” That was Mary. Tim Keller calls this the difference between dishonest doubt and honest doubt. Dishonest doubt is proud and lazy. It responds to God’s revelation by saying “that’s impossible” - or ‘that’s just silly’ - and then walks away. Those statements are not arguments, they are just assertions where we refuse to consider anything beyond our limited understanding. By contrast, honest doubts are humble because they lead you to ask genuine questions - not just put up a defiant wall. When you ask a real question it puts you in a position of humility and vulnerability. What if you ask a real question and God gives you an answer? And what if that answer contradicts you - and shatters your categories - or demands things from you that you feel like you are not ready to give yet? Honest doubts are open to belief. Honest doubts are doubts where we are open to doubting our doubts - as much as we are open to doubting what is unbelievable. You see, if you are really asking God from humble doubt for insight into who He is and what He does, He just might give it to you. Look at what the angel says in verse 37 in response to Mary’s doubt: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” How much hope is there to be found in that statement? That is a boundless and unending promise from God. And the reason Mary gets this extra revelation is because Mary asked the doubting question.