Amen. Let's turn to our confessional reading together this evening. Lord's Day 16, page 217. Question answers 40, 41, 42, 43, and turning to page 44 as well. Five shorter question and answers. I'll read the questions and together let's say each of the answers. Beginning with question 40. Why did Christ have to suffer death Because God's justice and truth require it, nothing else could pay for our sins except the death of the Son of God. Why was He buried? His burial testifies that He really died. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die? Our death is not a payment for our sins. but only in dying two sins and in entering into eternal life. What further benefit do we receive from Christ's sacrifice and death on the cross? By His power, our old man is crucified, put to death, and buried with Him, so that the evil desires of the flesh may no longer rule us but that instead we may offer ourselves as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to him. Why does the Creed add, he descended into hell, to assure me during attacks of deepest dread and temptation that Christ my Lord by unspeakable anguish, pain, and terror of soul on the cross, but also earlier, has delivered me from hellish anguish and torment." It's the confession we hold in common, that faithful summary of the Word of God. Let's turn to that Word, John chapter 5. Jesus has just healed on the Sabbath. In the mind of the Jews, this was a breaking of the Sabbath commandment. And then he also makes a claim in verse 17, but Jesus answered them, my father is working until now and I am working. And that is part of what brings us to verse 19. We'll read John chapter five, verses 19 to 29. So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, that the son does likewise. For the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing, and greater works than these he will show him. so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself. And He has given Him authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our Lord endures forever. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, this may be a passage, a text, which the unbeliever could find little difficult to understand in early days of reading the scriptures. This is not Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4. This is Jesus speaking to the Jews of Jerusalem and to them Jesus is speaking in their language. He's speaking in the style of a rabbi. And so in this case, in case anyone would have a hard time understanding all that Jesus is claiming here, John gives us an important verse of explanation in John 5 verse 18. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath in their mind, But he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. Now, this is the understanding that is in their mind and far from correcting as though they got that wrong. Jesus will only expand upon this truth. Yes, I am equal to the father. I am divine and our will is so in unison that I cannot do anything that the father would not do and the father has given me authority over life and death and all judgment. This is the defense of his divinity before the Jews. This is the reason. why they want to kill him and will seek to kill him all the more up until they do in Jerusalem in the week of his death, which is to come. And so we see our theme here this evening, believe in Jesus who has power to deliver from death to life. And we'll first look at how Jesus can give believers spiritual life and then how Jesus himself destroys death and then how Jesus gives believers physical life. Each one of these being seen in our text and even as they are all reflected in our catechism. And so first this giving of spiritual life to believers. While the Father and the Son and the Spirit are all co-eternal, there are distinct roles within the Godhead. And so we see, for example, in verse 22 that the Father gives judgment to the Son. This is a special authority which the Son has. And this is also that the Son may be honored, verse 23. And the honoring of the Son is closely related to believing in the Son, in His word, in verses 24 and 25, in hearing His voice. This is something which is related to eternal life, but for those who believe, there's also a here and now going on. There is, we see the language of verse 25. An hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Now, how can we speak about the here and now and the moving from death into life. Well, we can speak in that way because in verses 24 and 25, the focus is upon spiritual life. The focus is upon the movement out of our deadness of sins and into life in that sense. And so Ephesians 2 verse 1, speaking in the past tense to his fellow believers, the apostle says, we were dead in our trespasses and sins. So there's that movement, we were dead. But we are not any longer. And in Colossians 2, 13, the apostle says it this way to the believers there. And you who were, past tense, dead in your trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses. This is the sense of death and life in verses 24 and 25. This is how that Jesus The God-man on earth can speak about moving people from death to life through the preaching of his word for all who believe in him. There is now here a movement from death to life. We can speak about this movement in the sense of becoming a believer. We can think of it in terms of justification. Question answer 43 tells us we can also think of the language of life and death with relationship to our sanctification. So answer 43 says, by his power, our old man is crucified, put to death, buried with him. And we know that that's something which is even ongoing. There is in the spiritual life, all of this language of death, deadness. We spoke already this morning about heavy subjects. Well, death is a heavy subject. And by relating sin and death so closely that Jesus himself and then the apostles after him can speak of them in the same lines that we are dead but we can now be made alive before we die because we're speaking about spiritual life. It reminds us how heavy sin is. There was once two pastors who were sharing a chapel in a prison on a Sunday night. And the first, it was these local pastors rotated in these chapels on Sunday nights for this prison. And the first pastor was up and he spoke about the love of God, he spoke about life, but he didn't say a single thing about sin in his whole half of the chapel. So the second pastor gets up and he says, well, I'm going to change my focus a little bit. I'm going to make sure we know that there is sin. I'm going to make sure that we don't come away from this chapel tonight thinking that there's not something very serious that needs to be dealt with as we come before the thrice holy God. And so the second preacher gives his message and speaks about the term of death and sin, that they are such that a sin can be called deadness. We are dead. When the second preacher finished, and this was now the end of the chapel time, no one moves. The prison guards don't move. The prisoners don't move. They're all sitting there still for a few moments. Then finally, one of the prisoners says, That is heavy. We've used this language of light and heavy this morning and now tonight. We think of these weighty things. We must think of sin in these weighty terms. We must use the same language for sin as Jesus Christ used, as the apostles used, as certainly the prophets such as the prophet Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones used before that. Sin is death. It's only in coming to Jesus Christ who says, come to me for my burden is easy and my yoke is light that we can find a release of the heavy burden of sin and be brought to life. That is what Jesus is saying here. I have that authority. I am divine. I have power to give spiritual life now out of spiritual deadness. The hour is now. Do not be walking in death. Come to the one who can roll that burden away. Now Jesus himself destroys death. Jesus has not only the power to make others spiritually alive out of death, but Jesus has his own life in his hands. Now when Jesus is speaking here to the Jews, when he's telling them that there's something which is going to be marvelous in verse 20 in the sense that there's going to be something coming which is difficult for them to believe it's not the fact that the father has power over life and death that's not going to be marvelous to any Jew who knows the Old Testament to any believer who knows the Old Testament, we know that God has the power over life and death. God is the one who breathed life into man. Genesis 2, he is the creator who gave life and there are clear statements such as this in Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 29, see now that I, even I am he and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. but they will marvel because Jesus will tell them and we know he will later show them in his very own power and rising from the dead on the third day that he also has the authority and so in verse one. In verse 21, he says, also the son gives life to whom he will. And verse 26, as the father has life in himself, so he has granted the son also to have life in himself. This is part of the divine claim of Jesus. He says, I have authority over my own life, and power within myself to live. Now let's pause right here and ask the question this way. Do we understand, as the Jews understood but did not believe, but do we understand that this is a divine claim? What is Jesus saying? Let's paraphrase it and put it in this language. I am my own man. I have a life. in myself, do we understand that this is a divine claim? When someone says, I am my own, I am my own person, I can make my own rules, do we understand that they are claiming to be God? When someone says, I do not owe my life to any creator, I am here because of chance or whatever it may be. Do we understand that that's a type of claiming to be God? I think when we see this rightly and understand the full idolatry of statements like this, for one thing, it helps us to see how sinful it is. For another thing, it helps us to understand how common it is. I'm my own man. I am God. Why is that a common temptation? Well, it's tempting to call oneself God. I do not owe my life to God. I have simply come here as a product of chance. Why has the idolatry of evolution so enveloped and wrapped up the world? Because it is a way that man can pretend that God has no claim over him. It's a way to say, I am God. And I do not owe my life and my obedience to anyone else. No, Jesus says, I have life in myself. And as he's saying that, the Jews understand, he is saying, I am God. Because only God can say, I am my own man. I have my own life. This is Jesus. Jesus who had power for his own life and yet had to die. because nothing else could pay for our sins, question and answer 40, who had to die with a suffering that can be described as a descent into hell, the only line in the Apostles' Creed, which is not essentially a quote directly from scripture. What is it getting at? It's speaking figuratively of the great suffering of Jesus Christ in his life, but especially upon the cross. Question and answer 41 then comes chronologically after question and answer 44. He was buried to show that he really died, that his suffering, unspeakable anguish, pain and terror of soul was even to the point of death. But Jesus did all that as the only one who had the power to not die if he had so chosen, who had the power to conquer the grave on the third day, never to die again. This is our divine savior who himself destroys a death. And this is our divine savior who gives believers physical life. People of God, this is The assurance that when we are trusting in him, our divine Lord, the moving from death to life is true spiritually. The hour is now here when we can say that I am no longer dead in my sins. and also this promise of the future notice in verse 29 he says an hour is coming but he doesn't add and now here because now in verses 28 and 29 he's speaking about future things if there's any doubt the language of the tomb in verse 28 makes it clear now Jesus is speaking about death. Do not marvel at this, verse 28. Don't be surprised by this. Don't be shocked. Don't pretend that you are not made in the image of God with an eternal soul which will come out of the grave. It will come out one way or another. If you deny Jesus Christ, you will come out of the tomb even if you don't want to, even if you think that you can just disappear into nothingness. The voice of God will take the one who denies him out of the tune and he will come up for what the resurrection of judgment revelation chapter 20 speaks of this as then the second death eternal death. But the voice of Jesus also raises from the grave. all those who have done good. What is doing good? Well, remember in verse 24, he said, believe in me, hear my word and believe. Well, that word is all of Jesus' teaching, which is going to impact how we're doing, what we're living, how we're going to serve Him. Well, the one who has heard, who has believed, will seek to do all of His word. We're not just going to focus on eternal life. It's true. There's eternal life in heaven, and that is wonderful and beautiful, and we must speak of that, but we cannot say only that. We must acknowledge that there's a deadness in sin and that we must obey all of God's word and go forth and do it as his servants. But for those who have done that, for those who have believed his word and then gone to do good, the voice of God will call them out to the resurrection of life. This is the end of the believer, that there is no end, but that there's eternal resurrection life. Our very bodies will be taken by our Savior. It's not surprising that Jesus refers to himself as the son of man here. It's been noted by many and can be confirmed by a simple word count that this is the favorite title of Jesus for himself. And so when Jesus says he's the son of man and he says it again in this passage which speaks about the very resurrection life or the resurrection judgment Well that fits perfectly with the only time we get a clear description of the divine Son of Man in all of the Old Testament and that is in Daniel chapter 7. I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man and he came to the ancient of days and he was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom and all people's nations and languages should serve him. And his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. People of God, let us see the divine claims of our Savior here. Let us flee from every form of calling ourself God or falling into such idolatries, but trust in this, our savior, who has such power over the grave that it is clearly seen in he himself, and that it makes us now already alive out of our spiritual deadness and makes us eternally alive. with the resurrection life to have communion with him. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, help us to stand in awe of your power, your divine power over life and death. and therefore to honor you in every way. To know that we cannot be our own, but that we surely must belong to you. To move from death to life and to move a second time, physically and forever.