John 5:37-40; 17:6-19
January 29, 2023
preached by Pastor Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“Americans have…a new rule written into their mental operating systems: Do your own thing, find your own reality, it’s all relative… Today, each of us is freer than ever to custom-make reality, to believe whatever and pretend to be whoever we wish. Which makes all the lines between actual and fictional blur and disappear more easily. Truth in general becomes flexible, personal, subjective.”

~ Kurt Andersen (1954-present), American writer

“Epistemology [i.e. the theory of how we know what we know] is still a central issue in philosophy, and we moderns are particularly vexed with the question of how we can come to know anything outside of what we already know, that is, how we can climb out of our own culture’s basic assumptions, and how we can hope to see beyond our brains’ basic formation.”

~ Jennifer Hecht (1965-present), American philosopher and professor of History

“Is authority to be placed in human wisdom or cultural experience…or does it break into our world as a new reality that overturns human imagination and conception? Is it a truth waiting to be uncovered through diligent searching, or is it a word personally addressed to us, calling us to repentance and obedience?”

~ Donald Bloesch (1928–2010), American theologian and professor

“God does not reveal information by communication: He reveals Himself by communion. Revelation is a personal meeting of God with man. It is a meeting of mind with mind or person with person.”

~ Sam Storms (1951-present), American pastor and author

“The Bible is alive; it speaks to me. It has feet; it runs after me. It has hands; it lays hold of me!”

~ Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Sermon Passage

John 5:37-40 (NIV); 17:6-19 (ESV)

John 5

³⁷ “And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, ³⁸ nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. ³⁹ You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

John 17

⁶ “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. ⁸ For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. ¹¹ And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. ¹² While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. ¹³ But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. ¹⁴ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁵ I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁷ Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”