Grace Community Church - Nashville

Long before Jesus told his church to be his witnesses, God the Father witnessed to the authority of God the Son to judge the world and to give life to all who believe. The Father testified to the authority of the Son through the witnesses of the Old Testament Scripture, the prophets and John the Baptist, and the works he gave the Son to do. In this passage we hear Jesus say, “These bear witness of me.” The voice of the Father through these witnesses is calling us to believe in Jesus the Son and in every word he spoke, every work he did, and every promise he made. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.

In this passage, the Jewish leaders rightly understood that Jesus was claiming equality with God. Jesus took the opportunity to explain that his equality with God means the Father has given him the authority to judge and to give life. With this authority, Jesus came to bear our judgement for sin in his death on the cross, and to be raised from the dead to grant us life. For this purpose the Father sent him. Here, in this historic declaration on earth of the eternal reality of the nature and work of the Son of God, we are being called to hear his voice and believe. If we do, we will pass from death to life; we will live.

This week, Josh Hussung and Justin Tucker discuss the sermon from John 5, and how distractions affect us in different ways.

Justin Tucker speaks on John 5:1-18.

In this episode of Jesus' ministry in Galilee, where he did signs to reveal himself to people, we see another person believe in him. This man is moved along in his faith from believing that Jesus can heal his son to believing in Jesus himself. The difference may seem subtle, but the point of John’s Gospel is to lead us to faith in Jesus as the Son of God, that by believing we may have life in his name.

Scott and Justing return for another week of looking at Jesus' time in Samaria, and how this helps shape us into a healthy congregation.

The world is a field from which people are being harvested by Jesus and gathered into the kingdom of God. The church is the harvested people of God who are sent back into the field to gather others. We have been given new eyes to see the world as a field ripe for harvest.  Let us enter this field and join Jesus in the joy of gathering.

This week, Justin and Scott sit down to discuss how Jesus’ discussion about worship in John 4 shapes us as a congregation.