Hearing Jesus
John 5:24,
“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.”
Anytime we see Jesus start a sentence with the words, “Truly, truly” it means that what he’s about to say is really important and it’d be good for us to just hear this again. So, John 5:24,
“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.”
Now it was Jesus saying things like this that (in one sense) got him killed on Friday. But because what Jesus says here is true is why he was raised on Sunday.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This is the core creed of Christianity.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried.
[But on the] the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end. …
These are facts about Jesus and the Gospel of John makes them clear to us, and I wanna repeat to you what Pastor David Mathis said last week — we see it here in verse 27 — it’s that the Father has so exalted Jesus that he has made him the final judge of all humanity.
The Nicene Creed just affirms what Jesus says. One day every single human being will stand before Jesus and answer to him. This is not theoretical! This is not symbolic! This is heart-pounding literal.
One day, a day like today, a moment in time, each of us will look at Jesus, right in his face. We’re going to look at his human face … which he has right now — and we’re going to see his eyes. We’re going to see his nose. We’re going to read his lips as he speaks. And we will absolutely know that the Divine Judge is a man like us, who became like us to save us.
Everybody will know that on the Last Day — even those who reject Jesus will know then that they have rejected their only hope of salvation.
We’re all gonna see him one day. You are going to see Jesus, and for what it’s worth, I believe that my job mainly is to help prepare you for that moment. There’s a trillion things going on in our lives, and they all matter, but the thing that matters the most is that you are ready to meet Jesus.
And so to that end, for this Easter sermon, looking at John 5:24, I wanna repeat to you three truths about reality I hope you always remember.
1. You can hear Jesus today.
Look at that word “hear” in verse 24: Jesus says, “whoever hears my word.”
And the nice thing about the word “hear” is that it can have a couple of meanings. At the most basic level, it means to literally, audibly hear something.
To hear involves sound waves entering the ear canal and causing the eardrum to vibrate, and then these vibrations are transferred through tiny bones in the middle ear to the inner ear where they’re turned into electrical signals that then travel to the brain which then interprets the meaning. That’s what it means to hear. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about in verse 24.
That’s also not what my mom ever meant when she used the word. I don’t know if this is a Southern Mom thing or if all moms do this, but often growing up when my mom would give me instructions, she would end her instructions with “Do you hear me?”
I can promise you that when she said that she was not thinking about my ear canal.
What was she saying then? She was talking about obedience. She wanted to make sure I was gonna do the thing she said. She wanted me to heed the words, to take action on the words — and that’s what Jesus means in verse 24. To hear the words of Jesus is to believe. Jesus is saying the same thing two different ways in verse 24: to hear his word is to believe God the Father who sent him.
Jesus is talking about faith, and we’ve already seen that our faith is the purpose of this Gospel. John wrote this Gospel so that people would read it and believe in Jesus (John 20:31). And that was not just the purpose in the year 80 when John first published this Gospel, but that’s the purpose today, every time we open this book. Because all these years later, we can still not just ‘hear’ the words of Jesus, but really hear him.
You can hear Jesus today.
That goes for all of us, and look: we should hear him. We should do what he says. And Christians, isn’t that what we want?! We have his word, and everyday we wanna say: Jesus, we hear you!
But for those who don’t yet believe, if you don’t yet hear Jesus, I hope you can hear him tomorrow. And if you don’t hear him tomorrow, I hope you get a chance to hear him the next day, but there’s no guarantee. This is what’s called the urgency of the gospel.
It means that there will come a time, at some point, when you won’t be able to hear Jesus anymore. But you can hear him today. And so today (as the Bible says, Hebrews 3) — today, while it is called “today,” don’t harden your heart toward Jesus, but really hear him. Believe him. On his behalf, I’m calling you to believe him right now.
You can hear Jesus today.
2. If you hear Jesus you have eternal life.
Now there are some grammatical details in verse 24 that I’m gonna make a big deal about.
For the first one, I want you to notice the first time the word “has” is used, right before the words “eternal life.” This is in verse 24, and it’s one of those things that I wanna make sure you really see it, so help me out. Verse 24, everybody find the word “has” right before “eternal life.”
“…whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life…”
That’s a present active verb. It means not that you have had it, or that you will have it, but you actively have it now. You possess it now. It is yours in this moment.
John repeats this for us: John 3:36, “whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” John 6:47, Jesus says, “Whoever believes has eternal life.” And John 11:25, Jesus with the same point says, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he die…” — which means this physical body here over, there’s a flatline — Jesus says “yet shall he live.”
Believer in Jesus, listen — you have, right now, the resurrection life of Jesus in you and it is inextinguishable, it’s indestructible, it’s irrepressible, it’s unfading, unfailing, unyielding — even though, look, tribulation will come for you, and distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword — they’re coming for you, but the resurrection life of Jesus in you is ever-bright, ever-true, ever-new. It does not drift, it does not dim, it will never die. Happy Easter! This is what it means to be a Christian!
Because of what Jesus has done, we will live forever. You have that life now and the best is yet to come.
If you hear Jesus you have eternal life.
3. If you have eternal life you have been changed.
Again, let me show you another word in verse 24: The one who believes in Jesus has eternal life, which means, the end of verse 24:
“He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
I want you to focus on that second time the word “has” is used at the end. The end of verse 24: the believer in Jesus “has passed” from death to life. “Has passed” is in the perfect tense, which means this is an action that has been completed in the past. It still has an ongoing effect, but we look back on the perfect tense. At some point in the past, this action has happened. What action?
Passing from death to life. That word “passing” means literally to change, or to transfer. It means to move from one place to another.
And when Jesus says death and life here, he’s referring to spiritual death and spiritual life, and he’s saying that for those who believe in Jesus — who have eternal life and don’t come into judgment — they have in the past been changed. The theological word for this is the word “conversion” (which means to change or transfer). And conversion happens at a moment in time, it’s the moment of saving faith.
When someone puts their faith in Jesus, when they really hear him, when they believe him, the Holy Spirit is at work in that moment to make that person spiritually alive — or to use the phrase from John Chapter 3, this is to be born again. It means we are converted/transferred/changed from spiritual death to eternal life.
Last month when I was at my grandmother’s funeral, her pastor (who used to be my pastor) said something I thought was amazing. My grandmother was a godly woman. I never knew her when she was not a Christian, and most people would say the same thing. She grew up in the same church her entire life — she’s buried right by the only church she’s ever been part of.
But there was a time in her life when she was spiritually dead. And her pastor, Preacher Billy, said “When people tell me they’ve been a Christian their whole life, I tell ‘em that’s too long.” He’s right. Nobody is born a Christian. You have to be changed to be a Christian!
Now this doesn’t mean that every detail in your life is completely different just like that — that’s what discipleship is about; for the rest of our lives we learn together to obey all that Jesus has commanded us — But there is a change.
There is a decisive move from facing condemnation to no condemnation, from hopeless to hope, from without God to having God. There’s a change from spiritual death to eternal life. And it all starts with hearing Jesus.
You can hear Jesus today.
If you hear Jesus you have eternal life.
If you have eternal life you have been changed.
And I want you to know this church believes in conversion. We believe that it’s a necessity and we believe that God the Father is working until now, and Jesus is working, and he’s still saving people. Which is why this morning there are ten individuals who are coming to be baptized, as a symbol of their conversion.
By our faith in Jesus we become united to him in his death and resurrection, which means that when Jesus was crucified, our old selves that were destined for death, were crucified with him. The cross of Christ was the death of our death. Baptism shows that as the person is buried under the water. But just as Jesus was raised from the dead, we are now raised with him as new creatures, on a new path, toward a new destiny. We have come out of the grave of spiritual death and we have new life. Baptism shows that too.
And in just a few minutes, I’m eager for you to witness the baptisms of ten people who each have different stories and the same story — they heard Jesus, they have eternal life, they have been changed.
Father in heaven, thank you for Jesus and his word. Thank you that you are working right now, in this room, in these cities, in our world — you are at work for your glory and our good, and we praise you. With everything we’ve got, we praise you. Magnify your glory this morning, we ask, in Jesus’s name, amen.
