Did Jesus Really Demand Anything From Us?

Nathan Adams · Tidal Church Moncton · April 14, 2024 · Did Jesus Really? series

Nathan Adams explores John 15, where Jesus calls us to remain in Him like branches on a vine. He shows that Jesus really does ask for obedience, and that obedience is harmony with God that brings freedom, joy, lasting fruit and the Spirit's power.

More from Nathan Adams · The Did Jesus Really? series

Topics: Joy, Holy Spirit, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] Definitely don't believe in Jesus. It's obviously an ancient myth and, you know, even the Jesus story, His biography is completely unoriginal. He makes outrageous claims. He claims He has the authority to forgive sins and the power to raise the dead. You can debate about whether or not He actually lived and whether there's credible objective evidence for that. Do you? So you do think He was a real person. Most of the scholars I've talked to say He probably was. The evidence is not great, of course, but there's lots of rules about slavery in the Bible. None of them are, "Don't do it." They never even thought to say that. Read about Jesus, seem to be a really good guy that killed Him as just the nature of people. So what you have in the figure of Christ is an actual person who actually lived plus a myth.

[0:48] And in some sense, Christ is the union of those two things. The problem is, I probably believe that. Do I believe it? Of course not. It was written by people in the Bronze Age who didn't know what a germ or an atom was, and Jesus healed everyone that He, and he couldn't walk and now He touched when he can walk. I don't know what to do with that. The Jesus of the Gospels is either God in the flesh or a terrible imposter. There is no middle ground. Who do you think He was? Well, God is real. Jesus existed. He was of outlaw and has changed my outlook on life. And so in some sense, I believe it's undeniable from start to finish.

[1:33] The Bible is a book of miracles. At the start of the New Testament, an angel appears to Joseph and says, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins." We are in the series Did Jesus Really? And last week we heard incredible stories of healing being done in the present time in Jesus' name. I don't know about you, but I was particularly moved by the testimony from that man named Tom.

[2:19] He had the black ball cap on and he shared about how he had cancer throughout his body in multiple places, prayed to Christ, and it was all gone. And not only was there a physical transformation, but he got wonderfully, gloriously saved and then his kids did, and his family did, and his friends. And he talked about 30 people now that go to church that are around his circle praising God. The problem is not everyone knows Tom or someone like Tom, and until you've come face to face with the transforming power of Jesus, it can frankly sound ridiculous.

[3:04] If you open this Bible and you read about Jesus walking on water, raising the dead, exorcising demons, not exercising them like, "Goodbye," you'll be struck that this must, couldn't have happened. People think that He's just a famous rabbi that later generations of believers began to elaborate on, and they began to add mythological, miraculous elements in until suddenly this Jewish rabbi becomes the divine Son of God over the course of one or two generations. This was the common opinion in a class that I assisted at McGill called Jesus of Nazareth. The class was filled largely with skeptics, looking to debunk this Jesus of faith and dig down to find the real Jesus of history.

[3:56] But can I share two pieces of history that helped debunk these debunkers? First, the scriptures. The Gospels tell us that Jesus' enemies made an accusation against Him. It's recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. So in Mark chapter 3:22, it says, "Jesus is possessed by Beelzebul." That's a name for Satan. Do not name your dog or your kid that, by accident. "He is possessed by Beelzebul and by the prince of demons. He cast out the demons." His enemies, according to the Gospels, were not denying that Jesus had miraculous power.

[4:42] They were accusing Him of having it from a demonic source. Interestingly, you can read in a book called the Talmud, which records the official Jewish positions on Jesus from the group of the Jews that chose not to believe Him versus the group that chose to follow Him. So in the Talmud, this is the debunking of Jesus that we have in recorded history. It has been taught: on the eve of the Passover, Yeshu, that's another word for Jesus or Joshua. It's Jesus. On the eve of the Passover, Yeshu was hanged. That's interesting. They're saying that, hmm, this guy named Jesus was killed around the Passover and He was hung in some way.

[5:29] We read in the scriptures that He was hung on a cross by nails. But it's interesting. Then there's this other piece. For 40 days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He's going forth to be stoned." Well, the scriptures doesn't say that happened, but that was the Jewish law if you were gonna kill someone. So in their official rendition, that's what they did. They say, "He's going forth to be stoned because He has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy." There you have it. The official historical debunking of Jesus confirms He did the miraculous. They just say it was from an evil source. History can create a real problem for anyone that wants to look into it. The second bit of undisputed history that debunks the debunkers is that Christians living in the first 220 years after Christ often wrote down about the presence of the miraculous in their midst.

[6:26] You can read in 1 Corinthians where Paul gives a list of all these spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues, of prophecies, of healings, of miraculous knowledge given to people. And these same lists are repeated throughout early church history. And the way they're repeated is amazing. It's matter of fact. It's not like, "Oh my goodness, it something happened that never happens." No. It's like, "Well, yeah, this happens." And in fact, early Christians would use it as evidence to those that were trying to persecute them or that they were, or to those they were trying to share the faith with and saying, "Look at the miraculous in our midst. It's proof that Jesus is real and alive."

[7:13] Let me bore you for a second. In AD 100, just 70 years after Christ, in the Didache, it speaks of prophets and prophecies, as does the Shepherd of Hermas. In 120, in AD 150, Justin Martyr offers the same list of spiritual gifts that Paul did, saying they're in action at this time. In AD 180, Irenaeus lists healings, exorcisms, tongues, and even resurrections as proof that Jesus is real. In AD 220, Hippolytus repeats these lists of spiritual gifts, and Origen does the same, and it keeps ongoing right until AD 250, when the early church stops mentioning these miracles as everyday occurrences in their midst.

[8:06] So these guys aren't living a legend, they're living the power of God. The fact that they just put it down so nonchalantly is amazing, and the fact they admit that it disappeared from their everyday experience in AD 250 is a phenomenal historical fact that anyone who wants to debunk the historical Jesus will choke on as they're trying to swallow it. We are well on our way to dispelling one caricature of Jesus. This is Jesus the myth. And today we want to take on another caricature. Jesus the bobblehead. It is the Jesus with a big goofy smile. He looks like a hippie surfer in a toga. This Jesus is all free love and no demands. He gives love and grace.

[8:51] And today we ask, "Did Jesus really demand anything from us?" Well, follow me. He commanded to men and women who stopped their careers on the spot and followed Him with authority. He called out to a nation, repent. And even in His most grace-filled encounters, such as with the woman caught in adultery, who He's saving from the hypocritical accusations of the men, He says to her, in that moment of grace, go and sin no more. This Jesus demands obedience. How do you feel about obedience as a culture?

[9:36] We're not much for it. Sports arenas continued to blare the tired anthems like Twisted Sister, we're not gonna take it. No, we're not, and we ain't gonna take it. We're not gonna take it. Come on, anymore. Hmm. We know the song, and that's in our, it's right in our blood. It's like a rebellion that's been put right in there. And as the preacher talks much or too much about a Jesus who commands, people start very quickly to get a David Koresh kind of vibe and they head for the exits of the compound, don't they? There has never been a society so averse to obedience, to authority as our society, never one so suspicious of the motives of anyone who exercises authority.

[10:24] And sadly, there is good reason for much of this suspicion, but I wanna let you know that that whole attitude is adversely affecting your relationship with God. What if we framed obedience? What if we just thought about it in a different way? What if we thought about obedience as harmony? On Tuesday, a swath of people across North America stopped everything they were doing to witness one of nature's greatest harmonies. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event, a total eclipse, and a strange hush and darkness fell around here at about 4:36 PM.

[11:11] People had no words to express that stillness. It was simply beautiful. We were ready with our special glasses to see it because the sun and the moon and the earth move together in a beautiful harmony that we track time itself by because it's so precise. The laws of physics describe it and predict it, but science alone cannot provide a reason why these laws exist and why all nature moves together. As I read a scripture that explains it, would you just visualize that eclipse with me for a moment. The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak, night after night.

[12:03] They make Him known. Since the first moment of creation, when God said, "Let there be light," nature has obeyed His voice and the creation has been in harmony with its Creator. When human beings disobeyed God, He allowed their disharmony to be displayed even in the world around them. And so we have things like random disasters, death, and imperfections, but underneath it all we still sense a fundamental harmony in the universe, don't we? The planets orbit, the sun shines, the seasons come and go. Things grow and life goes on in a most amazing way.

[12:50] And obedience is harmony with the God of the universe. And it is not the God of the universe who is out there. It is the God of the universe who has come here to us in Jesus Christ. And it is He who says, "Follow me," and to whom you owe your utmost obedience. In John 15 there is a description of this harmony that is put in very organic terms. It's like the relationship between branches and the vine that the branches are drawing their life from. Today we're not gonna look so much at the first few verses, which are usually preached upon, but rather at the whole section, which begins in chapter 15 and spills over into chapter 16.

[13:46] You might wanna open your Bible or an app if you have it. It'll also be on the screen, but let me pick it up in verse 5. Jesus says, "I'm the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." Now, can you see it? Jesus is giving us an image. It is a grape vine providing sap to each branch so that the branches can live and produce beautiful clusters of grapes. Jesus continues, "If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up, they're thrown into the fire and burned.

[14:34] If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples," or, in the Greek, "proving yourselves to be my disciples." So the key thing is to remain living in Jesus and Him living in you, like sap from a vine to its branches. The Holy Spirit must flow from Jesus into us, giving us spiritual life moment by moment. And this spiritual life is God's presence with us. It's His power working through us and in us, and in this connection our prayers become very powerful.

[15:19] "Ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you," says Christ. And as we do that, as we live in Christ, God, in His mysterious ways and times, and they are mysterious, does miracles, the picture that Jesus is painting now becomes even more beautiful. In verse 9 He says, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love," and these words just bring back a resonance for me from the gospel accounts of Jesus' baptism. Whereas He's baptized, a voice from heaven speaks, it's the Father, and He says, "You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy," or, in the more traditional translations, put it, "You are my beloved Son.

[16:14] With you I am well pleased." We saw baptisms today. Can you envision the Father's heart? Because Jesus is saying, in the same way that the Father is so pleased with me and lavish is His love on me, I'm lavishing that love on you. And this is the beautiful gift of salvation. But He says, "Remain in my love," and we ask how. In verse 10, He says, "If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in His love." When we have obedience with Christ, we are open to the flow of His life into us.

[17:04] And when we have disobedience, we cut that flow and we wither and die. Let me pause here for a second. Because Jesus is saying, "I want you to obey just as I have obeyed." The worst boss in the world, of course, is the one that says, "Do it," and has never done it themself. "Do it," and they wouldn't do it themself. But this Jesus says, "Do what I've done. Obey." And as I have spent an awful lot of time studying and pondering about what Jesus was doing on the cross and why His death and resurrection exactly saves us, I've come to the conclusion that He was creating human obedience for the very first time.

[18:00] The thing that we have never been able to do, which is offer perfect harmony and response to the Father. He does it. "Not my will be done, but Yours." He says, Paul says in Romans 5:19, "For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous." And Hebrews 5:8-9 says something similar. It says, "Son though Jesus was, He learned obedience from what He suffered, and once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him."

[18:45] You see, if our whole salvation is accomplished by the obedience of Christ, why do we think that our obedience and response is optional? When we live lives where we say, "Yes, we want Your salvation, but we don't want Your salvation," because salvation is harmony with God, and you can't say, "I want that salvation," and then not live in harmony with God. Will you do it perfectly? No, Jesus is the one that's done it perfectly for us, but that's what salvation is. So we are not saved by our obedience.

[19:32] We are saved by Christ's obedience, but we are saved for obedience. The angel said He will save His people from their sins, but so many of us wanna be just saved in them. What happens when we're connected and harmonized with God in this obedience? In verse 11, Jesus says, "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." Obedience to God does not make your life small and sad. It makes it big and joyful. An obedience to God is not a constriction of our freedom, but an invitation to participate in God's own unlimited freedom.

[20:22] Jesus said, "If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." That is obedience. Woo! In verse 12, Jesus says, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." Jesus commands nothing for us that He has not already done for us. He says, "Lay down your life for others like I laid down my life for you." And in verse 14, He continues, "You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business.

[21:14] Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." In obedience to God, we have this amazing friendship with Christ, who is with us as a presence who guides us, and friends, He will guide us in every decision of our lives. But can I tell you, He will never guide you in a decision, by the Holy Spirit, that is against the holy Scriptures. Some of you are doing that right now. But our Friend tells us this. He says in verse 16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, and so that whatever you ask in the name of my Father, He will give you. And this is my command: Love each other."

[22:09] Jesus is saying, "Would you like to bear fruit that will last with your life?" He came to the first disciples and He said, "Follow me, and I'll turn you into fishers of people." And all Christians are addressed in that call "Follow me," called to invest their lives in ministry and in love to others, to bear fruit that will last for eternity. And some people are called to lead in this ministry as pastors or missionaries. I wonder if God is calling you to full-time ministry. If He is, you'll know it deep in your soul. It will haunt you, and others will have noticed it as well.

[23:00] Will you obey this call from Jesus? Let me tell you that if He has called you, nothing else that you can do with your life will satisfy you. Nothing lasts like a soul saved for eternity. Nothing else matters like a person coming to Christ and then watching salvation and healing spread to their family and friends, and to watch them become world changers. Nothing. I wonder if He's calling you. This harmony with God and the harmony of love with His family is so great that it is greater than any disharmony from our world that is often hostile to the message. Jesus says in verse 18, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.

[23:49] If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world. But I have chosen you out of the world. This is why the world hates you." True obedience to Jesus always has to be willing to pay a price. Some people will listen to the message and the way you live, and others will turn on you for it, increasingly so in our culture today. But Jesus looks at His friends, and in verse 20 He says, "Would you remember what I told you? A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours." Also, as Jesus walked His path of obedience, He walked it to the ultimate point of death on a cross for our sins.

[24:42] His obedience was to a point beyond which no greater obedience could have been offered. And His love was to a point that no greater love could have been offered. And He offered it to the people that were spitting at Him, hurling insults at Him and torturing Him and ridiculing Him, hung by a cross, by nails. He still loved and He still obeyed. And it challenges us. What is the limit of our obedience? The section of Scripture we're looking at together comes to a conclusion a few verses later, as Jesus speaks openly now about the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is that sap from the vine that flows into the branches, making them live and bear fruit. And so in verse 26, He says, "When the Advocate comes, whom I'll send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me.

[25:39] And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning." One of the ways that the Holy Spirit testifies about Christ is by the miraculous. We see this pattern in Acts, whereas the apostles preached the word, it is confirmed by signs and wonders. All these things that we talked about: prophecies, people knowing things they shouldn't know 'cause God told them, healings. You know, in Acts, the prison doors sometimes are just miraculously blown open, and the Christians walk out. And a few other times, mysteriously, the only thing that happens is what happened to Stephen.

[26:24] The Christian is allowed to lay down their life for Christ. Both are miracles and both change the world. But this is the pattern that we saw that has continued in the early church through the 100s, the 200s, and up to 250, until the regular presence of the miraculous in the Christian Church stopped. And it became an odd occurrence instead. And it has not been renewed in our midst until perhaps in the early 1900s when the Pentecostal revival started and the charismatic movement started, and we have again begun to see much more frequent manifestations of the power of God. What happened in AD 250 was the question on my mind.

[27:12] And if you look up the history of the church, the early church was often persecuted for its faith. Sometimes there'd be persecution that would arise in the area of Palestine. Sometimes it would be in Rome, sometimes it'd be in North Africa. But in AD 250, a Roman emperor came and he declared an empire-wide persecution. Christians, when I say empire, this is the known and civilized world for most of these people, there's no place else to go. So Christians could no longer flee this persecution. You couldn't just run from Judea and go to somewhere else. But the persecution was everywhere. It began to purge the Senate, going through, "Are you a Christian? We heard you're a Christian. If you're, if you're a Christian, the only way we're gonna let you live is sacrifice for the Roman gods and say, 'Caesar is Lord.'" And the bishop of Rome gave his life.

[28:08] Christians of high profile gave their lives. But as this persecution went on for a year and a half, for the first time, Christians began to crack under the strain. And a large amount of Christians denied Christ to keep their lives and the lives of their families. And we can understand what they were facing. And then when the persecution stopped, these people said, "We are sorry. We want to come back into the church." They were called the lapsed, the fallen. And the church let them back in. They had to do penance, they had to do long periods of restoration. But the church let them back in. And I don't wanna say exactly how it all worked historically.

[28:54] I don't want to say that no one should be readmitted after that. But I will say this: when the church decided it was optional to testify about Jesus, the Holy Spirit said, "Then you don't need My testimony anymore." If it came to that for us, what would we do? Let me summarize what the scriptures have taught us today. The first is that obedience is harmony with the center of everything, and it frees our souls. Second, obedience is connection to the power of God, and it produces eternal results. Third, when we disobey, that harmony is destroyed and that power is cut off. And fourth, the Holy Spirit regularly testifies with the miraculous only when we are willing to testify with our very lives.

[29:53] Obedience: its surrender, its power, its harmony. It is the miraculous. Disobedience cuts that off. The Spirit has not led me today to preach to us about certain sins by name. I think the problem is that if I tried, I'd miss the individually tailored lies that Satan has used to strangle you, cutting off the flow of His presence and power. So, Holy Spirit, would You please go ahead and would You preach to us? Jesus said, "When the Holy Spirit comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment." John 16:13. Convict us, Holy Spirit, now of our sins, of Christ's righteousness, and the judgment we will all face before Him at that final judgment.

[30:52] We will only be saved by grace. But real grace always wells up into obedience. For it is the presence of the obedient one in our hearts. Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven." And at that judgment, when Jesus' nail-pierced hands take ours, all our excuses for disobedience will fall away. They will turn to dust in our mouths before we can utter them. And by our fruit we will have known on that day. For if the gift of Jesus was truly in us, then the gift would've been changing us to be like Jesus and impacting the lives of people around us.

[31:39] Paul, who himself would pay the ultimate price in his martyrdom, expressed his heart of obedience in this way. He said, "Not that I have already obtained this or that I'm already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Jesus Christ has made me His own. Brothers, I don't consider that I've made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Friends, we're not gonna be perfect this side of obedience and our, this side of eternity, and our obedience will always be incomplete. But did you know that your heart can become full of obedience?

[32:28] That your one desire, the true desire when all things else are ripped away, can become Jesus? And that's the heart of obedience that He wants you to have. That's what the prophets prophesied. "I'll give them a new heart that wants to follow Me and wants to know Me." And for some of you today, obedience means answering God's insistent call upon your life to become a full-time pastor, missionary. If you have it, you'll know it and others will know it too. And for some it means being willing to suffer for being a Christian, whether in your workplace or in your families. There are things in our culture now that will exclude you.

[33:13] If you are faithful to Jesus, will you be faithful if it costs you a job, if it potentially jeopardizes a relationship? You see, for all of us, it means leaving aside our sin to become obedient. Have you seen the great eternal goal of knowing Jesus and making Him known? Have you sensed the harmony of being in tune with the God of the universe and having Him move through your life in power and giving you peace? You see, through that kind of obedience, people like Tom come to Jesus, and people like Tom's kids come to Jesus, and people like Tom's family and friends come to Jesus, and our world is impacted. And the only thing that Jesus is asking you today is, "Will you follow Me?"