Teaching and Turmoil
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
Come to think of it, it is really sad in a country like ours in which we live, where anyone can easily hear about the Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be so many people who don't know Him—don't know who He really is. If a person does not have a basic knowledge of who Jesus is and because we live in this place and this country where, all around us, we are bombarded with a different version of Jesus. So many voices, so much confusion. And if a person does not have a basic knowledge of who Christ is—the Christ of Scripture—then he cannot trust in Christ as his Lord and Savior. He would be believing in a Jesus of someone else's imagination or his own imagination, a counterfeit Jesus.
To use Paul's words to the Corinthians, another Christ, another gospel, ‘heteros’—another of a different kind—not the Christ of the Bible. A correct knowledge of who Jesus is must underlie saving faith in Him. If there is to be hope, that ought to be there. And so, as John the apostle labors to make clear in his gospel, the crucial question for every person to answer correctly is, who is Jesus Christ? You need to get that one right. We need to get that one right.
But this is also an important question even for those of us who have already believed in Jesus as Savior and Lord. Just as in human relationships, such as friendships and marriage, there is always room to grow, to know the other person more deeply, so it is in our relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Almost 30 years at least —at least 25 years— after his conversion, Paul said that his aim was still Philippians 3:10 "That I may know Him.” "That I may know Him." The more deeply we know the Lord Jesus Christ for who He is, the more quickly we will submit to Him as Lord—Lord of our every thought, word, and deed and the more readily we will trust Him in all matters that pertain to our daily lives.
These two chapters, 7 and 8, in this gospel, the Gospel of John, relate some incidents at the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem, and they show us the mounting opposition to Jesus Christ. And it is mounting. Pastor MacArthur sets the context for these two chapters, noting that, and I quote, "The main thrust of this section can be summarized as high-intensity hatred. High-intensity hatred since the smoldering dislike of Jesus in chapters 5 and 6 erupted into a blazing inferno. The culmination of this hatred occurs in John 11:45-57, where the Jewish authorities plot to kill the Son of God, culminating ultimately in His crucifixion."
Well, as we begin to look at this portion of the Word of God, let us set the context. Let us look at the context where this scene takes place, and the context is bound up in verses 1 and 2. "And after these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him" (John 7:1). Now, when you read those words, "And after these things," you have to ask, after what things? and where are we here? What we need to understand is that this is about six months after the events that we studied together in chapter 6. Six months later. So there's this gap here, this big gap—six months. We're talking here, October in year three of our Lord's ministry. And keep in mind, it would be about six months after this feast that Jesus would be arrested and then crucified.
“After these things,” — this gap of six months from the events of chapter 6. Remember, the events of chapter 6 took place near the Passover, verse 4 of chapter 6, of that year. John fills in the gap by adding, "Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him." So keep in mind now, there's just six months left of His time here on earth. And in this time, also, we need to keep in mind that Christ is a marked man. He's a marked man.
Now, let's think for a moment about those months Jesus spent in Galilee. Let's think about what's going on that really sets up chapter 7, verse 1, and following for us. All during that time, according to the other Gospels, if you were to look at the other Gospels and bring them together, Jesus was teaching and He was doing a countless number of miracles. He was teaching, preaching, and performing miracles, and the news of that spread to Judea, Jerusalem, and everyone was waiting for Jesus to take, in their eyes, the roadshow south again back to the city which is the heart and soul of Judaism on earth.
There's another great event that occurred during those six months, and that's the transfiguration, where He revealed His glory. Also, during those months, He told His disciples for the very first time that He was going to die, be rejected, die, and rise from the dead— Matthew 16. This is important because, while the public ministry reduced during those six months, primarily His focus was on the twelve. So this would have been the most intense period of training for the twelve. The false disciples are gone. You remember, they left back in chapter 6, verse 66, and walked with Him no more. The true stayed with Him. Where are we going to go? they said to Him, for “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). You're the source of eternal life, and we're sure that You're the Holy One of God. We're staying with You. We're staying put. We're sticking with You, Jesus.
So there's just six months left of His time on earth, and in this time, Jesus is a marked man. Verse 1 tells you, "The Jews"—you see it says here, "the Jews"—and remember, in the Gospel of John, when you read the term "Jews," it's usually referring to the religious leaders who lived down in Judea. So it's not just the everyday Jewish people. It tells us in verse 1 that those leaders—the Sadducees and Pharisees and the priests and the Sanhedrin—were seeking to kill Him. They were seeking to kill the Lord. They want Him dead. He's a threat to their authority. He's a threat to their control. He's a threat to their power. He's a threat to their positions. And so the real power base of these leaders who want Jesus dead is down in Jerusalem, in Judea, in the south.
And so Jesus, we read here, does not go down to Judea, to Jerusalem, because He would be walking into the lion's den. It's where they are. They are concentrated there. He would be playing into the hands of His enemies, and Jesus is on a specific timetable that His Father has given Him.
And He's not going to be—listen carefully, beloved—He's not going to be a day early or a day late for His own death. He's not going to come before it, and He's not going to come after it. And of course, our Lord is not afraid of the Jews, of these Jewish leaders, but He's operating on a divine time clock. It was a big storm brewing, and it was aimed straight at Him. Eventually, as we know, He would be killed by the Jews, but only on His time schedule, His timetable, not theirs.
He knew exactly when He would die on the cross, and He was in charge of His own death. Earlier, we read in John 10, "I lay down My life” of My own accord. “No one takes it away from Me… I lay it down.” He was in charge, not them. And beloved, let me say by way of application, if you are truly Christlike, there will inevitably be those who will hate you. Christlike people who are devoted to being all the more like Jesus Christ must have the courage to stand for what is godly and stand against what is godless with no fear. And when fear creeps in, keep things in context, look and behold the Savior. Behold Him. Your time is in God's hand.
And remember David, concerning him we read in Acts 13:36, “after he had served the purpose of God in his generation, fell asleep and was laid among his fathers.” “After he had served the purpose of God in his own generation,” not before. Only when he fulfilled the purpose that God had for him, God brought him home. So be strong. Be courageous. You are in God's hand. Your days are numbered. He knows your days, beginning to end. And you will not go to Him one day before, one day after. You will go to Him exactly as He ordained you to come.
And so Jesus remains up in Galilee where His hometown Nazareth is, where His home base Capernaum is, and where the religious opposition is not as concentrated. So Jesus is staying up north. But as we know, I trust you recall, three times a year all Jewish males were required to go up to Jerusalem—say "up" if we're talking altitude, but "down" if you think north-south. Those three times were Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles or Tents.
So we read in verse 2 that “the Feast of Booths, was near.” But what was that? Well, it was a beautiful feast. A seven-day feast celebrating the autumn harvest time of Israel, celebrated the closing of the agricultural year in Judea. Grain was harvested, the various kinds of grain from April to June, and then olives and grapes were harvested and gathered in September. And then you had this feast at the end of the agricultural year. It's sort of like our Thanksgiving. This feast reflected back on God's rescue of the people from Egypt and also reflected more currently on the year, on God's blessing of rain that He provided them in the year that had just passed.
And the Feast of Booths got that name because, in reflecting back on the Exodus time period, they said, God cared for us when we had no home, when we lived in the wilderness in tents. He provided for us, and so it's called the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tents, Tabernacles. And what they did is Israel was required to live in those booths. They would make these tents, these booths, made of palm fronds and palm leaves. And if they were in their houses in Jerusalem, they would put them outside their front porch to celebrate the Feast of Booths, ‘Sukkot.’ The idea is they were supposed to be under those booths longer this week than living in their own homes. And furthermore, this feast pictures Messiah's coming again to joyously gather the harvest of His people and dwell with them permanently.
One commentator tells us, and I quote, "This way the feast had a double purpose, to remember Israel's time in the wilderness when they lived in booths and to rejoice before the Lord after harvest. It also involved looking forward to a new Exodus, the time when the kingdom of God would be brought in with all of its attendant blessings." He adds that it was the most joyful of the three pilgrim feasts. In Jesus' time, it included pouring out water as a remembrance of the water from the rock that sustained Israel in the wilderness, and also it included a candle-lighting ceremony that commemorated God's presence with Israel through the pillar of cloud and fire.
And as we will see in these two chapters, John 7 and 8, our Lord plays off these two ceremonies when He invites those who are thirsty to come to Him and drink in verse 37 of chapter 7, and when He proclaims in chapter 8, verse 12, "I am the light of the world." On one level, John 7:1-13 functions to set the stage for the rest of the chapters, chapters 7 and 8 but it also reveals to us some wrong views about Jesus that the Jewish people, including Jesus' own brothers, had about Him. But a careful look at these verses also reveals that Jesus is both Messiah and Lord, which fits perfectly with John's purpose—the purpose of his gospel—that we would believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and believing in His name, we may have eternal life, John 20:31. So if we were to really sum it all up together, we could say, believing—here's the point—believing in Jesus for salvation depends on having the right view about who He is.
With that in mind, let us look at the confusion now together. So, the Feast of Booths. You have this feast now, and having this feast presents, really, a dilemma. How does Jesus obey the command to go down to Jerusalem without getting killed? Added to this dilemma are the attitudes and opinions of His own brothers. You read about His brothers in verse 3 down to verse 5 (John 7). Look at it with me: For “His brothers said to Him, 'Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself publicly to the world.'" And then John adds, "For not even His brothers were believing in Him."
Let's clear some things up here. This is not referring to His spiritual brothers, okay? When we read this—His own brothers—it's not referring to His spiritual brothers. This is not a term for believers like we see in the context when Jesus says in Luke 8:21, "My mother and My brothers are these who hear the Word of God and do it." That's not what's going on here. These are His actual brothers, more specifically half-brothers, boys who were born after Jesus to Joseph and Mary. Remember, Joseph “did not know her,” Matthew 1:25, until she gave birth to her firstborn son. And even the title "firstborn" indicates that she had other children. The Catholic Church believes that Mary was a perpetual virgin, but the biblical evidence is clearly against that. These brothers were Jesus' half-brothers, born to Joseph and Mary after the birth of Jesus.
At this time, John makes it clear to us that they were not believers. They were not believers. They did not believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. In fact, according to Mark's gospel, chapter 3 and verse 21, at one point, they and other members of the family thought that Jesus was certifiably insane and they tried to intervene to stop His preaching and teaching ministry. We see in our Savior's brethren a glaring declaration of the fact that it is impossible for anyone to believe in the Son of God except by the call, gift, operation, and power of God the Holy Spirit.
So obstinate, so desperately wicked, so great is the hardness and unbelief of human nature that we are plainly told in verse 5, "For not even His brothers were believing in Him." Can you believe that? Now file that. We'll come back to it. Holy and harmless, blameless as He was in life, our Lord's nearest relatives, according to the flesh, did not receive Him as Messiah. They did not trust Him as their Savior, and they did not worship Him as the God-Man, the Mediator. It was bad enough that His own people, the Jews, sought to kill Him, but it was even worse that His own brothers did not believe.
Oh, beloved, don't be shocked. Don't be surprised when you find that sometimes the most difficult people to convince concerning the truth of God are your own family members—your own unbelieving family members. One other poignant lesson is that you can grow up in a Christian home, go to church week in and week out, and even know a lot about Jesus, but not personally believe in Him as your Savior and Lord. Warren Wiersbe, in his commentary, makes this remark: "Here were men going up to a religious feast yet rejecting their own Messiah. How easy it is to follow tradition and miss eternal truth. The publicans and sinners were rejoicing at His message, but His own half-brothers were making fun of Him." How tragic.
Now, blessed be God, His own brothers will come to believe in Him, and how do we know that? Well, because two of the other books in the New Testament were written by two of His half-brothers. The epistle of James and the epistle of Jude were written by Jesus' half-brothers. We read in 1 Corinthians 15:7 that Jesus appeared to James after His resurrection, and James became the pastor of the church at Jerusalem. Jude, who humbly identifies himself as "a slave of Jesus Christ" in Jude 1:1 and as the brother of James, wrote that short epistle. In fact, after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, in Acts chapter 1, we're told the disciples gathered in the upper room, and we read in verse 14 of Acts chapter 1, we read the following: "These all with one accord were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus,” — and I love this—" and His brothers.” Blessed be God, His brothers. In fact, James, the half-brother of Jesus, was so devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ that early church writings describe him as having "camel's knees." He was known to be a man of prayer.
Well, by this point, it's undeniable—Jesus had supernatural power. His own brothers could not deny it. They know He claims to be the Messiah, but in this case, up until this point, familiarity breeds what? Contempt. They don't believe in Him at this point. But they say to Him, Jesus, it's time for You to take Your big act to the big stage again, back to Jerusalem. You know, Jesus, it's fine for You to teach and do Your miracles here. To put it in our own context, you know, it's fine for You to do Your miracles here in Newmarket or Aurora or wherever else—somewhere rural, north, Uxbridge even, if you want to say. But, you know, if You really want to make it big, You've got to go downtown, Toronto. That's where things happen. You must go to the most public place of all—Jerusalem—during the feast. It's been a year. Why are You still hiding here in Galilee? Go up to the feast, show Yourself to the world. I mean, if you're a country singer and you want to make it big, you go to Nashville. So if You're the Messiah, You go to Jerusalem and do Your miracles there and declare Yourself to the world. Let everyone who's following You see who You really are.
Beloved, I believe unwittingly His brothers are repeating the temptation of Satan. Remember it? Throw Yourself off the temple, the angels will catch You. Everyone will see that You're the Messiah. You'll publicly be declared as such—the Messiah. You cannot say for sure what motives lay behind the brothers' comments. Some say, well, they were sarcastically mocking Jesus: You want to be famous? Go to Jerusalem, do some miracles, you'll hit the big time. Or they could have been motivated by family shame—Jesus, at first popular and now losing disciples, and they liked that aspect of it. I don't know how much of that is true.
Or, at best, they were offering Him sincere but worldly advice. If You want Your messianic claims to be made known, You need to prove Yourself to the religious leaders in the capital city of Judaism.
Perhaps His brothers thought of Jesus in line with the multitude, that He should be a political Messiah who could deliver Israel from Rome. If His miracles meant that He was this promised political savior, then He needed to establish His claim where? —In Jerusalem. With the Jewish authorities and with the masses there, not in some obscure village or villages in Galilee. They may have been embarrassed over Jesus' strange claims that people had to eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life.
Well, regardless and I find myself leaning more towards the mockery, the sarcastic element here but regardless, to help Him rebrand Himself, improve His image, repair the damage, they gave Him their opinion of how He could best do that. But their advice was based on a complete misunderstanding of Jesus' divine origin and mission. Jesus had a reputation for not wanting to draw attention to Himself. We saw last time in John 6 that Jesus said difficult things that caused the crowd to get smaller and smaller, not larger. He wanted, really, to separate the true from the false. He doesn't want people to come for the show. After healing people, Jesus often would instruct them not to tell anyone, like the time when He actually raised a little girl from the dead. In Luke 8:56, her parents were astounded, but He directed them to tell no one what had happened. He didn't want people to be drawn to Him for the wrong reasons. This is the mindset of Jesus' brothers, who did not yet believe in Him. They held the world's view that life is all about fame and fireworks and celebrity.
The brothers here are saying, go up to Jerusalem, do a few more spectacular miracles, and everyone will follow You. It was a worldly-wise publicity, marketing strategy but beloved, it was satanic at its core. And there are plenty of people today who try to build, sadly, their ministries, their churches through worldly methods of publicity and marketing, so much so that some churches even created a position with the title "Pastor of Marketing," whatever that may be. While there is nothing wrong with letting the community know that your church exists and what its services are, the whole concept of using worldly marketing methods is utterly unbiblical.
If the Holy Spirit is moving in our midst, oh, you better believe it—the world will hear about it. I wonder if this was not part of the problem with Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron. When the fire came from heaven—you remember that account in Leviticus 9—and consumed the sacrifice on the altar of the tabernacle, all the people's attention was what? Where? On God, on Yahweh. We read in Leviticus 9:24, "And all the people saw it and shouted and fell on their faces."
In the next chapter, Nadab and Abihu responded by picking up their incense tools and offering strange fire, something that God did not ask for. And I wonder if this wasn't just a bit like stepping into the spotlight that had just been shining on God and God alone. The next fire to come from heaven didn't burn up the sacrifice, but it burned up Nadab and Abihu instead. In Leviticus 10:3, "Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what Yahweh spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me, I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be glorified.’”” Not the priests, not you, not your kids—I will be glorified.
I've been thinking about this this week, about what gets glorified in our lives, beloved. What gets glorified in our lives? And I wonder if Nadab and Abihu thought they could get away with just a little bit of being in the spotlight, taking some of the credit. When we try to get the attention put on us, it's more than self-destructive. Nadab and Abihu were burnt to a crisp before a holy God. Oh, dear beloved, the spotlight must always be on God, not on us. On Him and Him alone. Point to Him and get out of the way. Get out of the way.
Look at the response of our Lord. "So Jesus said to them, 'My time is not yet here, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I bear witness about it, that its deeds are evil. Go up to the feast yourselves; I’m not yet going up to this feast because My time has not yet been fulfilled.’ Having said these things to them, He stayed in Galilee. But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as in secret." So Jesus says to His brothers, time is fine for you guys. You can go to the feast any time because you're of the world, and the world doesn't bother you. The people of the world don't bother you. I cannot go and come on My own time. I am not on My own timetable. I am on My Father's timetable. "My time is not yet here."
Christ was operating on God's time clock. He'd already turned down an opportunity to become a king, right? Back in chapter 6 and verse 15. As Warren Wiersbe said, and I quote, "Celebrities might ride to success on the applause of the crowd, but God's servants know better." Our Lord would never, would never abdicate His duty or shrink back from that. He would never back away from His responsibility because it might make things uncomfortable. Jesus Christ was always careful and very conscious of His time. His response here is a really nice way of saying, your time is not God's time, but My time is God's time, and it's not time for Me yet to go to Jerusalem the way you want Me to go, as we will see.
Beloved, lost relatives, lost loved ones have no sense of the timing of God, nor of the will of God. They have no clue of what's going on. They will give advice, and it may appear to be very reasonable on the surface, logical, and even philosophical, but it is not biblical, and it should not be heeded. When Jesus says "the world" here, by the way, He means it differently than His brothers when they say "the world." By "the world," the brothers mean just a big population, the crowds. Jesus, by "the world," means that system of unbelief and rebellion that hates God. He's referring to the satanic system which includes its education and goals and philosophies which are in opposition to God. The world was not a dangerous place for Christ's brothers, who were unbelievers, rebels. They fit right in with the world. They were part of the world. The world is a very nice environment for lost religious people. They fit right in with its goals and its objectives. They feel right at home. These brothers of Christ were worldly. They had no conviction, no discernment, no courage for God.
They never criticized the world. They never denounced evil things in it. They never made enemies. They minded their own business and fit right in. You get along just fine in the world if you've never lived for God. If you never attack or expose evil or never stand for what is right, oh, you'll be embraced by the world. You'll be loved by the world. And the world hates Jesus because He's exposed its idols, its selfishness, its sin, and so they don't like Him. In fact, they hate Him to the extent they want Him dead. And the very presence of Jesus caused people to hate Him. He was righteous, and they were not. The world for Jesus Christ was not a safe environment. It was a dangerous place for Him to reside because the world hated Him and wanted Him dead. And the reason why it hated Christ—because He told them what? The truth. He exposed the darkness. The world was caught up in an evil religious work system, dead Judaism. And if you and I, beloved, don't ever find ourselves at odds with that which is contrary to God, then God have mercy on us. When things are always quiet for us in a world which hates Jesus Christ and the Word of God, then we need to really examine ourselves and examine where we're at in our relationship with Him.
Martin Luther said it well. He said, and I quote, "If you preach the truth of God with fearless fidelity, you will arm the whole world against you.” Luther should know. He preached the same pure grace message Christ preached, and he was hated for it. He was denounced for it. They don't like Him. They hate Him. They want Him dead. Jesus says, I'm not walking into a death trap before My time but after the brothers had gone up, we read here, Jesus goes secretly. "‘Go up to the feast yourselves;’" —verse 8, — "‘I am not yet going up to this feast because My time has not yet been fulfilled.’ Having said these things to them, He stayed in Galilee. But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as in secret” (John 7).
Again, to clear any confusion that might be in your mind, perhaps, the context makes it clear as to what Jesus meant —I am not going with you. When He says, "you go," He means, I'm not going with you yet. I'm not going yet with you. I'm not going with you right now because it's not the Father's time for Me to go. You can go anytime, but I must go at the time and in the manner that My Father directs Me to go. You see, Jesus' definition of "I am not yet going up to this feast"—His definition of going up, is the big, with My disciples, grand scene and entourage of triumphal entry kind of a thing. He was saying, I'm not going to do that. He wasn't saying, I'm not going to go up in some private, secret way. He wasn't saying, I'm not going to go up, period. He avoided, here, a premature triumphal entry. Remember, that's going to happen next Passover.
As soon as they know that Jesus is coming, they start what? To hail Him, "Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest!" And Jesus makes sure that doesn't happen ahead of schedule. And so John is showing our Lord's firm resolve to do the Father's will, not the will of His unbelieving brothers—even if they had meant well, which we doubt that. And Jesus walks into Jerusalem halfway through the feast now. The feast ran from Sabbath to Sabbath, so on about Wednesday, according to verse 14 of that week, Jesus shows up. Now before that, on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday, the crowd had been in turmoil, wondering if Jesus will come. Everybody is asking, where is He? Is He here?"
The Jewish leaders had a hostile view of Jesus: This man is upsetting our traditions. We must get rid of Him. We need to kill Him. Get Him out of the way. "So the Jews were seeking Him at the feast and saying, 'Where is He?'" —verse 11. And keep in mind, by "the Jews," John meant, of course, the Jewish leaders. They're hunting for Him. In fact, in the Greek, the words "Where is He?" are literally, where is ‘ekeinos’—that one. Where is that One? They were seeking Jesus, not so they could learn from Him and believe in Him, but they were seeking Him so they could kill Him, destroy Him.
Jesus threatened their power, which they used to control the people through fear. He didn't fit their idea, their own idea, of a political Messiah who would play their political game and reward them with all the nice positions in the kingdom. When He upset the money changers—you remember the tables in the temple—He threatened their income. He hit them where it hurts. So they didn't carefully listen to His teaching or seriously think about the amazing miracles that He was doing and what these miracles were supposed to be pointing to. They reacted in anger and resentment because Jesus threatened their comfortable way of life.
Even so, there are many today who do not believe in Christ for the same reason, beloved. They sense that to come to Jesus Christ, to give my life to Him, to come and embrace Him would mean the end of their plans, their prestige, their fame, their control over their lives. They like the comfortable lives that they have, and they don't want to face the truth that they are rebels against the holy God, that they are accountable to God. Apart from the religious leaders, there's also a crowd of Jewish people in Jerusalem, and the confusion about Jesus is rife. The multitude had a mixed view of Jesus, as we see here in this text. Some said, "He's a good man." Others were saying, No, no, He's leading the people astray. Look at it, verses 12 and 13: "There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, 'He is a good man.' Others were saying, 'No, (no), on the contrary, He leads the crowd astray.' Yet no one was speaking openly about Him for fear of the Jews." We've come across this word grumbling, ‘gongysmos’ is the Greek word—murmuring, translated grumbling. It's murmuring quietly, debating among themselves here in this context, since, as John notes in verse 13, they were afraid to speak openly. So they're murmuring, they're mumbling. The religious leaders were so against Him that they even tried to suppress all public conversations about Him.
John 9 tells us that they had announced to the people that anyone who believed in Jesus of Nazareth would be excommunicated from the synagogue. They'd be put out of the synagogue. It's the end of your life, really, as you know it, in terms of operating and living and selling and buying. It's kind of like East Germany, the Soviet Union during the Cold War. You don't talk about Comrade Lenin in bad ways, right? There's a cost. And they know that their religious leaders are against Jesus, so you don't talk about Jesus openly. You talk about Him in whispered tones. In context, grumbling here means behind-the-scenes talk.
But in spite of the religious leaders' best efforts, as you can imagine, on every street corner and everywhere, you find the crowds talking about Jesus, whispering, wondering. But when they talk about Him, there's more confusion. Some were saying, well, “He is a good man." Others were saying, "No, (no), on the contrary, He leads the crowd astray." So some say He's a good man, others say He's a deceiver. And by the way, that pretty much sums up what remains to be the Jewish view on Jesus to this day. You talk to Jewish people today, and what they would say is half would say, I think He was a good man. The other half would say, I think He was a deceiver. Same confusion.
The multitudes were divided into two camps, both of which were wrong. So some said, "Well, He's a good man." That was true as far as it went, but it didn't go anywhere near as far as it should. As John's Gospel demonstrates, He is God the Son. One commentator points out that if Jesus was not God in human flesh, His claims would have meant that He was not a good man, but a very self-centered man. Why? Well, think of it. He was always talking about Himself, telling people that they should believe in Him as the only way to have eternal life. He claimed that the Old Testament was written about Him, right? Back in chapter 5, verses 39 and 46. He claimed to be the bread of life who could satisfy the hunger of all those who come to Him by faith, chapter 6, verse 35. He claimed that whoever believes in Him would have rivers of living water flowing from his innermost being, chapter 7, verse 38. He claimed to be the light of the world, chapter 8, verse 12. He claimed that before Abraham was born, He existed, chapter 8, verse 58. No good man who was not God, very God of very God in human flesh, could say such things without being considered a deluded man.
The other camp thought that Jesus was leading people astray. They were the traditionalists who thought that the ways of the fathers were good enough. But if Jesus was a deceiver, He was a very good one. He got many fiercely monotheistic Jews to believe His claims to be God to the extent that many of them eventually suffered persecution and martyrdom because of their belief in Him. But He also would have been a very evil deceiver because if He deliberately led people to believe in Him, knowing all the time that He was not the true way to eternal life, then He condemned them to a godless eternity. Nothing could be worse than knowingly deceiving people with regards to their eternal destiny.
So both camps were in error. Both errors would result in people still being under God's righteous judgment because neither camp believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But why did these Jewish people, who had the Scriptures, who heard the claims of Christ, who saw His miracles, not believe? That leads us to the cause, and I want us to see that in verse 7 and verse 13—the cause for wrong views about Jesus. He confronts our sin, and we fear what others would think if we were to believe in Him. So John gives us two reasons why these Jews at the feast did not believe. First, they hated Jesus because He confronted their sins—that's in verse 7. Second, they were ambivalent about Jesus because they feared the religious leaders, who would put them out of the synagogue if they believed in Jesus.
Jesus tells His brothers in verse 7, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I bear witness about it, that its deeds are evil." And we saw in John 3, verse 20, "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light." –Why? — "lest his deeds be exposed." To come to Jesus Christ, you have to have dealings with Jesus. You have to have dealings with God. He's going to confront your sins. He's going to expose your sin. You have to turn from your sin. You have to turn from your deeds of darkness and learn to walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, as He Himself is the light.
Also implicit in the words of Jesus is the truth that if you follow Him, the world will hate you because of your holy life, because of how you live. You will not be the most popular person at the office or at school if you don't join the world in its sinful way. They will react. James, the half-brother of Jesus, who later believed, draws the line in James 4:4. He says, "You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God." You have to choose sides. Which side are you on?
Coupled with wanting to blend in with the world is the fear of what people will think if you follow Jesus—the fear of men. It was the fear of the Jewish leaders here that kept many in the multitude from openly confessing Christ or believing in Christ. And so, if you want to cover up your sins and blend in with the world, you will remain in your sin. You will not believe. You will not truly believe in Jesus. The only saving view of Jesus is that He is both Messiah and Lord. We see this by the fact that Jesus did not do His own thing but rather lived in obedience to the Father's plan. If Jesus had chosen to do so, He could have been popular. If He had chosen to live by His own plan, He could have been a popular political Messiah that people wanted and they wanted to make Him king. He could have gone up to Jerusalem, much like political candidates today do, worked out a few backroom compromises, given some promises for political favors, and would have been swept into office so quickly. But Jesus was operating on God's timetable, which ultimately led Him to Calvary.
Here, Jesus tells His brothers, "My time is not yet here," referring to His time to go up to the feast as well as the manner in which He would go—not openly, but at first in a quiet, undramatic way. He knew that He had come to die for our sins, but at the appointed time, not in response to His brothers' worldly advice. He came to lay down His life for His sheep in obedience to the Father's will. He is the Messiah, He is the Lord. Jesus testified to the world “that its deeds are evil,” in verse 7. Of course, many of God's prophets down through the centuries had done the same thing, right? As the mouthpieces of God, they did the same thing. But there's a stark difference. These prophets always identified themselves with the sins of the people—the sins that they preached against. Their message was always, "We have sinned against the Lord." But Jesus came as the light shining in the darkness. He alone could say, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" John 8:46.
As Peter testified in John 6:69, Jesus is "the Holy One of God." Jesus rightly could call on all people to follow Him with the promise that He could give them eternal life. Later on, as the officers who were sent to arrest Jesus came back without Him, they testified in verse 46 (John 7), "Never has a man spoken like this!" Jesus is the Lord God in human flesh. To be saved—to be saved from sin, really to be saved from the wrath of God—to be saved, you must turn to Him. You must believe in Him. You must embrace Him as your Lord and your Savior, that He is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God.
In conclusion, to sum up, I want to leave us with several lines of application very briefly. Here they are, first of all, from this text. Listen carefully. If you grew up in a Christian home and have been familiar with Christian teaching all your life, maybe you even went to a Christian school, you're familiar with all the Christian teaching all your life, you hear it from every side. It's all around you. Do not be fooled. Do not be fooled into thinking that you are saved by your familiarity with Jesus. Did you hear that? Do not be fooled that you are saved by your familiarity to Jesus. If Jesus' own brothers were not saved by their connection, it shows that no one is saved by familiarity alone.
You must, you must personally believe in Him as your Savior from sin, the One who bore your penalty on Calvary's cross. You must embrace Him as your Lord and Savior. You must turn your back on your sin and turn to Him by faith, embracing Him as your Lord and Savior. Secondly, proximity—there's an overlap here in the application—proximity to Jesus does not preclude perishing. Proximity to Jesus does not preclude perishing. In verse 7, we read, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me." It's not enough to be a human being in order to be saved. It's not enough to be a human being in order to be saved.
In verse 12, “there was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, "He is a good man;" others were saying, "No, (no), on the contrary, He leads the crowd astray." Beloved, it's not enough to have the proper nationality to have Christ. "He came to His own, His own received Him not" (John 1:11). And finally, in verse 5, "For not even” —His own, — “His brothers, were believing in Him." It is not enough, it is not enough to have membership in the family physically to have Christ. It's not enough to be a human being. It's not enough to be a member of a particular nationality. It's not enough to be a member of a particular church. Proximity to Jesus Christ may be the place from which men proceed to hellfire.
Remember the thief on the cross? Both thieves. One thief on the cross, right by His side, heard the Lord Jesus say to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise." The other thief passed from the side of Christ—the very side, the very side, proximity, the very side physically of the Lord Jesus, into eternal separation from God. To the one thief He said, our Lord said, "Today you shall be with Me in Paradise." And by the way, let me insert this—that's a refutation of sacramentalism, regeneration by baptism, because this man was not baptized. It's a refutation of purgatory because He said, "Today you shall be with Me in Paradise." And it's a refutation of universalism. He did not say, today you, plural, shall be with Me in Paradise, but, today you, singular, the believing thief, you shall be with Me in Paradise.
It's really the best illustration I know of. "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling." That's all the dying thief had—the Lord Jesus Christ in His saving word. And that can be you today. That can be you. Turn to Him and be saved.
Thirdly, religion without personal faith brings ruin. Religion without personal faith brings ruin. Here are individuals—and again, Isaiah went on this—here are individuals, the brothers of Jesus, who believed in His power to perform mighty works, but they were lost, still lost in their sin. Religion without personal faith is useless. And what's obvious in this passage is the fact that the multitudes have a form of godliness but have no knowledge of God. Multitudes are religious but lost. Imagine—religious but lost.
We read in verse 2—look at it with me—and this is not by happenstance: "Now…the Feast of the Booths was near." Right? Oh, we missed one section. Did you see the first words? "Now the Feast of the Jews." What scathing words of condemnation those are. The divinely ordained Feast of Booths is here referred to by the Spirit of God as "the Feast of the Jews." This blessed ordinance of divine worship had so degenerated because of their dead Judaism that it was no longer observed as an ordinance of divine worship but as simply a custom of Jewish religious tradition. Tradition. Go with the flow.
The Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths, was a feast that God commanded the children of Israel to keep on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of every year to celebrate His goodness to His people. After they had gathered in the fruits of the land, they were to dwell in tents for seven days in remembrance of the forty years spent in the wilderness. The feast was the grand harvest, as I mentioned, a festival when the Lord of the harvest was praised for His goodness and His mercies. The Feast of Tabernacles and the Booths was a time when Israel was reminded they dwelt in booths in the wilderness and God dwelt with them in the cloudy and fiery pillar. But it spoke of more than that. It foreshadowed that time when God came and tabernacled in human flesh, that He might at last bring God and man together in eternal glory and perfect fellowship, with sin and every evil consequence of it forever expiated, put away, purged, gone, forgotten forever. Really pointing to John 1:14, "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,” — tabernacled among us, — “and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."
How sad, how horribly sad and tragic it is to see multitudes, even today, doing exactly what the Jews in our Lord's day had done—clinging to a form of godliness while denying the power thereof, clinging to outward ceremonies while despising spiritual worship. I pray to God that it's not you here today.
Fourthly, impact with Deity brings conflict in humanity. Impact with Deity brings conflict in humanity. Remember our Lord's words in Luke 12:49 and following: "I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is finished! Do you think that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on, five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
The words of Jesus Christ and salvation through Him ought to ultimately divide men one from another, and they do. They do. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2:15-16, "For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one, we are an aroma from death to death, to the other, an aroma from life to life.” For those who are on the way to perishing, we are death unto death. For those who are on the way unto salvation, we are life unto life. The ministry of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is a dividing message. May God deliver us from division to death.
The two thieves illustrate it beautifully because even the sun that shines from heaven shines on the plants, also illustrates it. For the branch that is not abiding, that is not connected, that is not in living touch with the trunk, it is destroyed by the rays of the sun, while the branch that is in union, in living vital union, is helped by the sun. The same sun, you've heard it said before, that melts the snow, hardens the clay.
Why is it that Jesus Christ divides men? Oh, because of sin. Because of sin. Beloved, if you believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, you must be at war with the world—the world system, the world, the mindset of the world, its philosophy, the spirit of the age. You are either a friend of the world and an enemy of God, or a friend of God and an enemy of the world. As the Apostle John reminds us in 1 John 2:15, "Do not love the world nor the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
And final line of application, if you have believed in Jesus Christ, you must yield to Him as He confronts your sin so that you forsake it and walk in the light. Through God's Word, Jesus tells us how to think, speak, and act in a godly way, and if you are not letting the Word confront your sins, you are not walking with Jesus. We need constantly to have dealings with God and keep short accounts with God. This is how we enter through the narrow gate. We come mourning over our sin. We come repenting of it. We come acknowledging and confessing it before Him. But guess what? Nothing changes when we are on the narrow path. Every single day, we are confessing people. We need to have, you know, the fact that we're bathed doesn't mean we don't need to get our hands and feet cleansed and washed all the time. Keep short accounts with God. Have dealings with God. Ask Him to give you a heart that is sensitive to His Word and stay in the Word. Worship in the Word. "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth." And David prayed, "I hid Your Word in my heart that I will not sin against You."
Let's pray.
Father, we are so grateful to You for these words that the Apostle John has given us. We thank You for the life-transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because we know that You do rejoice in saving sinners. And that is pleasing to the Triune God and exalts the name of the Triune God.
We pray this morning that if there should be some in this gathering who have not come to faith in Jesus, who, like the world of Jesus' day, have hated Him, O God, we pray and we plead, deliver them from their sin. Deliver them from their guilt. Deliver them from condemnation and hatred of the Lord Jesus Christ and bring them to repentance and faith, to the place where they look for the mercy of God through Him who is the only Mediator between holy God and sinful man. Do what only You could do. Pierce hearts, penetrate deep down, take hearts of stone, replace them with hearts of flesh, and put Your Spirit within those hearts, all to the praise of the glory of Jesus.
And for us, Your children, may we draw comfort from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we look to Him. May we be like Him. May we always live our lives recognizing Your providence, Your sovereignty over our life and death. Our days are in Your hand, and we are called to live trusting in You, not caving to the fear of men, but living for the glory of Your name until You call us home.
And we recognize, O God, especially in the face of pressure that sometimes we face, that nothing will come into our lives without it first having to pass through Your sacred desk and that we will not be harmed or even experience death that is outside of Your set timetable. Our days have been ordained to the last second, to the last moment. Help us to live in the light of that truth and be bold and courageous.
With eyes fixed on Jesus, let us run the race of faith with endurance, looking unto Him, the Author and the Perfecter of our faith. We ask these things in His precious name.
To use Paul's words to the Corinthians, another Christ, another gospel, ‘heteros’—another of a different kind—not the Christ of the Bible. A correct knowledge of who Jesus is must underlie saving faith in Him. If there is to be hope, that ought to be there. And so, as John the apostle labors to make clear in his gospel, the crucial question for every person to answer correctly is, who is Jesus Christ? You need to get that one right. We need to get that one right.
But this is also an important question even for those of us who have already believed in Jesus as Savior and Lord. Just as in human relationships, such as friendships and marriage, there is always room to grow, to know the other person more deeply, so it is in our relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Almost 30 years at least —at least 25 years— after his conversion, Paul said that his aim was still Philippians 3:10 "That I may know Him.” "That I may know Him." The more deeply we know the Lord Jesus Christ for who He is, the more quickly we will submit to Him as Lord—Lord of our every thought, word, and deed and the more readily we will trust Him in all matters that pertain to our daily lives.
These two chapters, 7 and 8, in this gospel, the Gospel of John, relate some incidents at the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem, and they show us the mounting opposition to Jesus Christ. And it is mounting. Pastor MacArthur sets the context for these two chapters, noting that, and I quote, "The main thrust of this section can be summarized as high-intensity hatred. High-intensity hatred since the smoldering dislike of Jesus in chapters 5 and 6 erupted into a blazing inferno. The culmination of this hatred occurs in John 11:45-57, where the Jewish authorities plot to kill the Son of God, culminating ultimately in His crucifixion."
Well, as we begin to look at this portion of the Word of God, let us set the context. Let us look at the context where this scene takes place, and the context is bound up in verses 1 and 2. "And after these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him" (John 7:1). Now, when you read those words, "And after these things," you have to ask, after what things? and where are we here? What we need to understand is that this is about six months after the events that we studied together in chapter 6. Six months later. So there's this gap here, this big gap—six months. We're talking here, October in year three of our Lord's ministry. And keep in mind, it would be about six months after this feast that Jesus would be arrested and then crucified.
“After these things,” — this gap of six months from the events of chapter 6. Remember, the events of chapter 6 took place near the Passover, verse 4 of chapter 6, of that year. John fills in the gap by adding, "Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him." So keep in mind now, there's just six months left of His time here on earth. And in this time, also, we need to keep in mind that Christ is a marked man. He's a marked man.
Now, let's think for a moment about those months Jesus spent in Galilee. Let's think about what's going on that really sets up chapter 7, verse 1, and following for us. All during that time, according to the other Gospels, if you were to look at the other Gospels and bring them together, Jesus was teaching and He was doing a countless number of miracles. He was teaching, preaching, and performing miracles, and the news of that spread to Judea, Jerusalem, and everyone was waiting for Jesus to take, in their eyes, the roadshow south again back to the city which is the heart and soul of Judaism on earth.
There's another great event that occurred during those six months, and that's the transfiguration, where He revealed His glory. Also, during those months, He told His disciples for the very first time that He was going to die, be rejected, die, and rise from the dead— Matthew 16. This is important because, while the public ministry reduced during those six months, primarily His focus was on the twelve. So this would have been the most intense period of training for the twelve. The false disciples are gone. You remember, they left back in chapter 6, verse 66, and walked with Him no more. The true stayed with Him. Where are we going to go? they said to Him, for “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). You're the source of eternal life, and we're sure that You're the Holy One of God. We're staying with You. We're staying put. We're sticking with You, Jesus.
So there's just six months left of His time on earth, and in this time, Jesus is a marked man. Verse 1 tells you, "The Jews"—you see it says here, "the Jews"—and remember, in the Gospel of John, when you read the term "Jews," it's usually referring to the religious leaders who lived down in Judea. So it's not just the everyday Jewish people. It tells us in verse 1 that those leaders—the Sadducees and Pharisees and the priests and the Sanhedrin—were seeking to kill Him. They were seeking to kill the Lord. They want Him dead. He's a threat to their authority. He's a threat to their control. He's a threat to their power. He's a threat to their positions. And so the real power base of these leaders who want Jesus dead is down in Jerusalem, in Judea, in the south.
And so Jesus, we read here, does not go down to Judea, to Jerusalem, because He would be walking into the lion's den. It's where they are. They are concentrated there. He would be playing into the hands of His enemies, and Jesus is on a specific timetable that His Father has given Him.
And He's not going to be—listen carefully, beloved—He's not going to be a day early or a day late for His own death. He's not going to come before it, and He's not going to come after it. And of course, our Lord is not afraid of the Jews, of these Jewish leaders, but He's operating on a divine time clock. It was a big storm brewing, and it was aimed straight at Him. Eventually, as we know, He would be killed by the Jews, but only on His time schedule, His timetable, not theirs.
He knew exactly when He would die on the cross, and He was in charge of His own death. Earlier, we read in John 10, "I lay down My life” of My own accord. “No one takes it away from Me… I lay it down.” He was in charge, not them. And beloved, let me say by way of application, if you are truly Christlike, there will inevitably be those who will hate you. Christlike people who are devoted to being all the more like Jesus Christ must have the courage to stand for what is godly and stand against what is godless with no fear. And when fear creeps in, keep things in context, look and behold the Savior. Behold Him. Your time is in God's hand.
And remember David, concerning him we read in Acts 13:36, “after he had served the purpose of God in his generation, fell asleep and was laid among his fathers.” “After he had served the purpose of God in his own generation,” not before. Only when he fulfilled the purpose that God had for him, God brought him home. So be strong. Be courageous. You are in God's hand. Your days are numbered. He knows your days, beginning to end. And you will not go to Him one day before, one day after. You will go to Him exactly as He ordained you to come.
And so Jesus remains up in Galilee where His hometown Nazareth is, where His home base Capernaum is, and where the religious opposition is not as concentrated. So Jesus is staying up north. But as we know, I trust you recall, three times a year all Jewish males were required to go up to Jerusalem—say "up" if we're talking altitude, but "down" if you think north-south. Those three times were Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles or Tents.
So we read in verse 2 that “the Feast of Booths, was near.” But what was that? Well, it was a beautiful feast. A seven-day feast celebrating the autumn harvest time of Israel, celebrated the closing of the agricultural year in Judea. Grain was harvested, the various kinds of grain from April to June, and then olives and grapes were harvested and gathered in September. And then you had this feast at the end of the agricultural year. It's sort of like our Thanksgiving. This feast reflected back on God's rescue of the people from Egypt and also reflected more currently on the year, on God's blessing of rain that He provided them in the year that had just passed.
And the Feast of Booths got that name because, in reflecting back on the Exodus time period, they said, God cared for us when we had no home, when we lived in the wilderness in tents. He provided for us, and so it's called the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tents, Tabernacles. And what they did is Israel was required to live in those booths. They would make these tents, these booths, made of palm fronds and palm leaves. And if they were in their houses in Jerusalem, they would put them outside their front porch to celebrate the Feast of Booths, ‘Sukkot.’ The idea is they were supposed to be under those booths longer this week than living in their own homes. And furthermore, this feast pictures Messiah's coming again to joyously gather the harvest of His people and dwell with them permanently.
One commentator tells us, and I quote, "This way the feast had a double purpose, to remember Israel's time in the wilderness when they lived in booths and to rejoice before the Lord after harvest. It also involved looking forward to a new Exodus, the time when the kingdom of God would be brought in with all of its attendant blessings." He adds that it was the most joyful of the three pilgrim feasts. In Jesus' time, it included pouring out water as a remembrance of the water from the rock that sustained Israel in the wilderness, and also it included a candle-lighting ceremony that commemorated God's presence with Israel through the pillar of cloud and fire.
And as we will see in these two chapters, John 7 and 8, our Lord plays off these two ceremonies when He invites those who are thirsty to come to Him and drink in verse 37 of chapter 7, and when He proclaims in chapter 8, verse 12, "I am the light of the world." On one level, John 7:1-13 functions to set the stage for the rest of the chapters, chapters 7 and 8 but it also reveals to us some wrong views about Jesus that the Jewish people, including Jesus' own brothers, had about Him. But a careful look at these verses also reveals that Jesus is both Messiah and Lord, which fits perfectly with John's purpose—the purpose of his gospel—that we would believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and believing in His name, we may have eternal life, John 20:31. So if we were to really sum it all up together, we could say, believing—here's the point—believing in Jesus for salvation depends on having the right view about who He is.
With that in mind, let us look at the confusion now together. So, the Feast of Booths. You have this feast now, and having this feast presents, really, a dilemma. How does Jesus obey the command to go down to Jerusalem without getting killed? Added to this dilemma are the attitudes and opinions of His own brothers. You read about His brothers in verse 3 down to verse 5 (John 7). Look at it with me: For “His brothers said to Him, 'Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself publicly to the world.'" And then John adds, "For not even His brothers were believing in Him."
Let's clear some things up here. This is not referring to His spiritual brothers, okay? When we read this—His own brothers—it's not referring to His spiritual brothers. This is not a term for believers like we see in the context when Jesus says in Luke 8:21, "My mother and My brothers are these who hear the Word of God and do it." That's not what's going on here. These are His actual brothers, more specifically half-brothers, boys who were born after Jesus to Joseph and Mary. Remember, Joseph “did not know her,” Matthew 1:25, until she gave birth to her firstborn son. And even the title "firstborn" indicates that she had other children. The Catholic Church believes that Mary was a perpetual virgin, but the biblical evidence is clearly against that. These brothers were Jesus' half-brothers, born to Joseph and Mary after the birth of Jesus.
At this time, John makes it clear to us that they were not believers. They were not believers. They did not believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. In fact, according to Mark's gospel, chapter 3 and verse 21, at one point, they and other members of the family thought that Jesus was certifiably insane and they tried to intervene to stop His preaching and teaching ministry. We see in our Savior's brethren a glaring declaration of the fact that it is impossible for anyone to believe in the Son of God except by the call, gift, operation, and power of God the Holy Spirit.
So obstinate, so desperately wicked, so great is the hardness and unbelief of human nature that we are plainly told in verse 5, "For not even His brothers were believing in Him." Can you believe that? Now file that. We'll come back to it. Holy and harmless, blameless as He was in life, our Lord's nearest relatives, according to the flesh, did not receive Him as Messiah. They did not trust Him as their Savior, and they did not worship Him as the God-Man, the Mediator. It was bad enough that His own people, the Jews, sought to kill Him, but it was even worse that His own brothers did not believe.
Oh, beloved, don't be shocked. Don't be surprised when you find that sometimes the most difficult people to convince concerning the truth of God are your own family members—your own unbelieving family members. One other poignant lesson is that you can grow up in a Christian home, go to church week in and week out, and even know a lot about Jesus, but not personally believe in Him as your Savior and Lord. Warren Wiersbe, in his commentary, makes this remark: "Here were men going up to a religious feast yet rejecting their own Messiah. How easy it is to follow tradition and miss eternal truth. The publicans and sinners were rejoicing at His message, but His own half-brothers were making fun of Him." How tragic.
Now, blessed be God, His own brothers will come to believe in Him, and how do we know that? Well, because two of the other books in the New Testament were written by two of His half-brothers. The epistle of James and the epistle of Jude were written by Jesus' half-brothers. We read in 1 Corinthians 15:7 that Jesus appeared to James after His resurrection, and James became the pastor of the church at Jerusalem. Jude, who humbly identifies himself as "a slave of Jesus Christ" in Jude 1:1 and as the brother of James, wrote that short epistle. In fact, after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, in Acts chapter 1, we're told the disciples gathered in the upper room, and we read in verse 14 of Acts chapter 1, we read the following: "These all with one accord were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus,” — and I love this—" and His brothers.” Blessed be God, His brothers. In fact, James, the half-brother of Jesus, was so devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ that early church writings describe him as having "camel's knees." He was known to be a man of prayer.
Well, by this point, it's undeniable—Jesus had supernatural power. His own brothers could not deny it. They know He claims to be the Messiah, but in this case, up until this point, familiarity breeds what? Contempt. They don't believe in Him at this point. But they say to Him, Jesus, it's time for You to take Your big act to the big stage again, back to Jerusalem. You know, Jesus, it's fine for You to teach and do Your miracles here. To put it in our own context, you know, it's fine for You to do Your miracles here in Newmarket or Aurora or wherever else—somewhere rural, north, Uxbridge even, if you want to say. But, you know, if You really want to make it big, You've got to go downtown, Toronto. That's where things happen. You must go to the most public place of all—Jerusalem—during the feast. It's been a year. Why are You still hiding here in Galilee? Go up to the feast, show Yourself to the world. I mean, if you're a country singer and you want to make it big, you go to Nashville. So if You're the Messiah, You go to Jerusalem and do Your miracles there and declare Yourself to the world. Let everyone who's following You see who You really are.
Beloved, I believe unwittingly His brothers are repeating the temptation of Satan. Remember it? Throw Yourself off the temple, the angels will catch You. Everyone will see that You're the Messiah. You'll publicly be declared as such—the Messiah. You cannot say for sure what motives lay behind the brothers' comments. Some say, well, they were sarcastically mocking Jesus: You want to be famous? Go to Jerusalem, do some miracles, you'll hit the big time. Or they could have been motivated by family shame—Jesus, at first popular and now losing disciples, and they liked that aspect of it. I don't know how much of that is true.
Or, at best, they were offering Him sincere but worldly advice. If You want Your messianic claims to be made known, You need to prove Yourself to the religious leaders in the capital city of Judaism.
Perhaps His brothers thought of Jesus in line with the multitude, that He should be a political Messiah who could deliver Israel from Rome. If His miracles meant that He was this promised political savior, then He needed to establish His claim where? —In Jerusalem. With the Jewish authorities and with the masses there, not in some obscure village or villages in Galilee. They may have been embarrassed over Jesus' strange claims that people had to eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life.
Well, regardless and I find myself leaning more towards the mockery, the sarcastic element here but regardless, to help Him rebrand Himself, improve His image, repair the damage, they gave Him their opinion of how He could best do that. But their advice was based on a complete misunderstanding of Jesus' divine origin and mission. Jesus had a reputation for not wanting to draw attention to Himself. We saw last time in John 6 that Jesus said difficult things that caused the crowd to get smaller and smaller, not larger. He wanted, really, to separate the true from the false. He doesn't want people to come for the show. After healing people, Jesus often would instruct them not to tell anyone, like the time when He actually raised a little girl from the dead. In Luke 8:56, her parents were astounded, but He directed them to tell no one what had happened. He didn't want people to be drawn to Him for the wrong reasons. This is the mindset of Jesus' brothers, who did not yet believe in Him. They held the world's view that life is all about fame and fireworks and celebrity.
The brothers here are saying, go up to Jerusalem, do a few more spectacular miracles, and everyone will follow You. It was a worldly-wise publicity, marketing strategy but beloved, it was satanic at its core. And there are plenty of people today who try to build, sadly, their ministries, their churches through worldly methods of publicity and marketing, so much so that some churches even created a position with the title "Pastor of Marketing," whatever that may be. While there is nothing wrong with letting the community know that your church exists and what its services are, the whole concept of using worldly marketing methods is utterly unbiblical.
If the Holy Spirit is moving in our midst, oh, you better believe it—the world will hear about it. I wonder if this was not part of the problem with Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron. When the fire came from heaven—you remember that account in Leviticus 9—and consumed the sacrifice on the altar of the tabernacle, all the people's attention was what? Where? On God, on Yahweh. We read in Leviticus 9:24, "And all the people saw it and shouted and fell on their faces."
In the next chapter, Nadab and Abihu responded by picking up their incense tools and offering strange fire, something that God did not ask for. And I wonder if this wasn't just a bit like stepping into the spotlight that had just been shining on God and God alone. The next fire to come from heaven didn't burn up the sacrifice, but it burned up Nadab and Abihu instead. In Leviticus 10:3, "Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what Yahweh spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me, I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be glorified.’”” Not the priests, not you, not your kids—I will be glorified.
I've been thinking about this this week, about what gets glorified in our lives, beloved. What gets glorified in our lives? And I wonder if Nadab and Abihu thought they could get away with just a little bit of being in the spotlight, taking some of the credit. When we try to get the attention put on us, it's more than self-destructive. Nadab and Abihu were burnt to a crisp before a holy God. Oh, dear beloved, the spotlight must always be on God, not on us. On Him and Him alone. Point to Him and get out of the way. Get out of the way.
Look at the response of our Lord. "So Jesus said to them, 'My time is not yet here, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I bear witness about it, that its deeds are evil. Go up to the feast yourselves; I’m not yet going up to this feast because My time has not yet been fulfilled.’ Having said these things to them, He stayed in Galilee. But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as in secret." So Jesus says to His brothers, time is fine for you guys. You can go to the feast any time because you're of the world, and the world doesn't bother you. The people of the world don't bother you. I cannot go and come on My own time. I am not on My own timetable. I am on My Father's timetable. "My time is not yet here."
Christ was operating on God's time clock. He'd already turned down an opportunity to become a king, right? Back in chapter 6 and verse 15. As Warren Wiersbe said, and I quote, "Celebrities might ride to success on the applause of the crowd, but God's servants know better." Our Lord would never, would never abdicate His duty or shrink back from that. He would never back away from His responsibility because it might make things uncomfortable. Jesus Christ was always careful and very conscious of His time. His response here is a really nice way of saying, your time is not God's time, but My time is God's time, and it's not time for Me yet to go to Jerusalem the way you want Me to go, as we will see.
Beloved, lost relatives, lost loved ones have no sense of the timing of God, nor of the will of God. They have no clue of what's going on. They will give advice, and it may appear to be very reasonable on the surface, logical, and even philosophical, but it is not biblical, and it should not be heeded. When Jesus says "the world" here, by the way, He means it differently than His brothers when they say "the world." By "the world," the brothers mean just a big population, the crowds. Jesus, by "the world," means that system of unbelief and rebellion that hates God. He's referring to the satanic system which includes its education and goals and philosophies which are in opposition to God. The world was not a dangerous place for Christ's brothers, who were unbelievers, rebels. They fit right in with the world. They were part of the world. The world is a very nice environment for lost religious people. They fit right in with its goals and its objectives. They feel right at home. These brothers of Christ were worldly. They had no conviction, no discernment, no courage for God.
They never criticized the world. They never denounced evil things in it. They never made enemies. They minded their own business and fit right in. You get along just fine in the world if you've never lived for God. If you never attack or expose evil or never stand for what is right, oh, you'll be embraced by the world. You'll be loved by the world. And the world hates Jesus because He's exposed its idols, its selfishness, its sin, and so they don't like Him. In fact, they hate Him to the extent they want Him dead. And the very presence of Jesus caused people to hate Him. He was righteous, and they were not. The world for Jesus Christ was not a safe environment. It was a dangerous place for Him to reside because the world hated Him and wanted Him dead. And the reason why it hated Christ—because He told them what? The truth. He exposed the darkness. The world was caught up in an evil religious work system, dead Judaism. And if you and I, beloved, don't ever find ourselves at odds with that which is contrary to God, then God have mercy on us. When things are always quiet for us in a world which hates Jesus Christ and the Word of God, then we need to really examine ourselves and examine where we're at in our relationship with Him.
Martin Luther said it well. He said, and I quote, "If you preach the truth of God with fearless fidelity, you will arm the whole world against you.” Luther should know. He preached the same pure grace message Christ preached, and he was hated for it. He was denounced for it. They don't like Him. They hate Him. They want Him dead. Jesus says, I'm not walking into a death trap before My time but after the brothers had gone up, we read here, Jesus goes secretly. "‘Go up to the feast yourselves;’" —verse 8, — "‘I am not yet going up to this feast because My time has not yet been fulfilled.’ Having said these things to them, He stayed in Galilee. But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as in secret” (John 7).
Again, to clear any confusion that might be in your mind, perhaps, the context makes it clear as to what Jesus meant —I am not going with you. When He says, "you go," He means, I'm not going with you yet. I'm not going yet with you. I'm not going with you right now because it's not the Father's time for Me to go. You can go anytime, but I must go at the time and in the manner that My Father directs Me to go. You see, Jesus' definition of "I am not yet going up to this feast"—His definition of going up, is the big, with My disciples, grand scene and entourage of triumphal entry kind of a thing. He was saying, I'm not going to do that. He wasn't saying, I'm not going to go up in some private, secret way. He wasn't saying, I'm not going to go up, period. He avoided, here, a premature triumphal entry. Remember, that's going to happen next Passover.
As soon as they know that Jesus is coming, they start what? To hail Him, "Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest!" And Jesus makes sure that doesn't happen ahead of schedule. And so John is showing our Lord's firm resolve to do the Father's will, not the will of His unbelieving brothers—even if they had meant well, which we doubt that. And Jesus walks into Jerusalem halfway through the feast now. The feast ran from Sabbath to Sabbath, so on about Wednesday, according to verse 14 of that week, Jesus shows up. Now before that, on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday, the crowd had been in turmoil, wondering if Jesus will come. Everybody is asking, where is He? Is He here?"
The Jewish leaders had a hostile view of Jesus: This man is upsetting our traditions. We must get rid of Him. We need to kill Him. Get Him out of the way. "So the Jews were seeking Him at the feast and saying, 'Where is He?'" —verse 11. And keep in mind, by "the Jews," John meant, of course, the Jewish leaders. They're hunting for Him. In fact, in the Greek, the words "Where is He?" are literally, where is ‘ekeinos’—that one. Where is that One? They were seeking Jesus, not so they could learn from Him and believe in Him, but they were seeking Him so they could kill Him, destroy Him.
Jesus threatened their power, which they used to control the people through fear. He didn't fit their idea, their own idea, of a political Messiah who would play their political game and reward them with all the nice positions in the kingdom. When He upset the money changers—you remember the tables in the temple—He threatened their income. He hit them where it hurts. So they didn't carefully listen to His teaching or seriously think about the amazing miracles that He was doing and what these miracles were supposed to be pointing to. They reacted in anger and resentment because Jesus threatened their comfortable way of life.
Even so, there are many today who do not believe in Christ for the same reason, beloved. They sense that to come to Jesus Christ, to give my life to Him, to come and embrace Him would mean the end of their plans, their prestige, their fame, their control over their lives. They like the comfortable lives that they have, and they don't want to face the truth that they are rebels against the holy God, that they are accountable to God. Apart from the religious leaders, there's also a crowd of Jewish people in Jerusalem, and the confusion about Jesus is rife. The multitude had a mixed view of Jesus, as we see here in this text. Some said, "He's a good man." Others were saying, No, no, He's leading the people astray. Look at it, verses 12 and 13: "There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, 'He is a good man.' Others were saying, 'No, (no), on the contrary, He leads the crowd astray.' Yet no one was speaking openly about Him for fear of the Jews." We've come across this word grumbling, ‘gongysmos’ is the Greek word—murmuring, translated grumbling. It's murmuring quietly, debating among themselves here in this context, since, as John notes in verse 13, they were afraid to speak openly. So they're murmuring, they're mumbling. The religious leaders were so against Him that they even tried to suppress all public conversations about Him.
John 9 tells us that they had announced to the people that anyone who believed in Jesus of Nazareth would be excommunicated from the synagogue. They'd be put out of the synagogue. It's the end of your life, really, as you know it, in terms of operating and living and selling and buying. It's kind of like East Germany, the Soviet Union during the Cold War. You don't talk about Comrade Lenin in bad ways, right? There's a cost. And they know that their religious leaders are against Jesus, so you don't talk about Jesus openly. You talk about Him in whispered tones. In context, grumbling here means behind-the-scenes talk.
But in spite of the religious leaders' best efforts, as you can imagine, on every street corner and everywhere, you find the crowds talking about Jesus, whispering, wondering. But when they talk about Him, there's more confusion. Some were saying, well, “He is a good man." Others were saying, "No, (no), on the contrary, He leads the crowd astray." So some say He's a good man, others say He's a deceiver. And by the way, that pretty much sums up what remains to be the Jewish view on Jesus to this day. You talk to Jewish people today, and what they would say is half would say, I think He was a good man. The other half would say, I think He was a deceiver. Same confusion.
The multitudes were divided into two camps, both of which were wrong. So some said, "Well, He's a good man." That was true as far as it went, but it didn't go anywhere near as far as it should. As John's Gospel demonstrates, He is God the Son. One commentator points out that if Jesus was not God in human flesh, His claims would have meant that He was not a good man, but a very self-centered man. Why? Well, think of it. He was always talking about Himself, telling people that they should believe in Him as the only way to have eternal life. He claimed that the Old Testament was written about Him, right? Back in chapter 5, verses 39 and 46. He claimed to be the bread of life who could satisfy the hunger of all those who come to Him by faith, chapter 6, verse 35. He claimed that whoever believes in Him would have rivers of living water flowing from his innermost being, chapter 7, verse 38. He claimed to be the light of the world, chapter 8, verse 12. He claimed that before Abraham was born, He existed, chapter 8, verse 58. No good man who was not God, very God of very God in human flesh, could say such things without being considered a deluded man.
The other camp thought that Jesus was leading people astray. They were the traditionalists who thought that the ways of the fathers were good enough. But if Jesus was a deceiver, He was a very good one. He got many fiercely monotheistic Jews to believe His claims to be God to the extent that many of them eventually suffered persecution and martyrdom because of their belief in Him. But He also would have been a very evil deceiver because if He deliberately led people to believe in Him, knowing all the time that He was not the true way to eternal life, then He condemned them to a godless eternity. Nothing could be worse than knowingly deceiving people with regards to their eternal destiny.
So both camps were in error. Both errors would result in people still being under God's righteous judgment because neither camp believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But why did these Jewish people, who had the Scriptures, who heard the claims of Christ, who saw His miracles, not believe? That leads us to the cause, and I want us to see that in verse 7 and verse 13—the cause for wrong views about Jesus. He confronts our sin, and we fear what others would think if we were to believe in Him. So John gives us two reasons why these Jews at the feast did not believe. First, they hated Jesus because He confronted their sins—that's in verse 7. Second, they were ambivalent about Jesus because they feared the religious leaders, who would put them out of the synagogue if they believed in Jesus.
Jesus tells His brothers in verse 7, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I bear witness about it, that its deeds are evil." And we saw in John 3, verse 20, "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light." –Why? — "lest his deeds be exposed." To come to Jesus Christ, you have to have dealings with Jesus. You have to have dealings with God. He's going to confront your sins. He's going to expose your sin. You have to turn from your sin. You have to turn from your deeds of darkness and learn to walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, as He Himself is the light.
Also implicit in the words of Jesus is the truth that if you follow Him, the world will hate you because of your holy life, because of how you live. You will not be the most popular person at the office or at school if you don't join the world in its sinful way. They will react. James, the half-brother of Jesus, who later believed, draws the line in James 4:4. He says, "You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God." You have to choose sides. Which side are you on?
Coupled with wanting to blend in with the world is the fear of what people will think if you follow Jesus—the fear of men. It was the fear of the Jewish leaders here that kept many in the multitude from openly confessing Christ or believing in Christ. And so, if you want to cover up your sins and blend in with the world, you will remain in your sin. You will not believe. You will not truly believe in Jesus. The only saving view of Jesus is that He is both Messiah and Lord. We see this by the fact that Jesus did not do His own thing but rather lived in obedience to the Father's plan. If Jesus had chosen to do so, He could have been popular. If He had chosen to live by His own plan, He could have been a popular political Messiah that people wanted and they wanted to make Him king. He could have gone up to Jerusalem, much like political candidates today do, worked out a few backroom compromises, given some promises for political favors, and would have been swept into office so quickly. But Jesus was operating on God's timetable, which ultimately led Him to Calvary.
Here, Jesus tells His brothers, "My time is not yet here," referring to His time to go up to the feast as well as the manner in which He would go—not openly, but at first in a quiet, undramatic way. He knew that He had come to die for our sins, but at the appointed time, not in response to His brothers' worldly advice. He came to lay down His life for His sheep in obedience to the Father's will. He is the Messiah, He is the Lord. Jesus testified to the world “that its deeds are evil,” in verse 7. Of course, many of God's prophets down through the centuries had done the same thing, right? As the mouthpieces of God, they did the same thing. But there's a stark difference. These prophets always identified themselves with the sins of the people—the sins that they preached against. Their message was always, "We have sinned against the Lord." But Jesus came as the light shining in the darkness. He alone could say, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" John 8:46.
As Peter testified in John 6:69, Jesus is "the Holy One of God." Jesus rightly could call on all people to follow Him with the promise that He could give them eternal life. Later on, as the officers who were sent to arrest Jesus came back without Him, they testified in verse 46 (John 7), "Never has a man spoken like this!" Jesus is the Lord God in human flesh. To be saved—to be saved from sin, really to be saved from the wrath of God—to be saved, you must turn to Him. You must believe in Him. You must embrace Him as your Lord and your Savior, that He is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God.
In conclusion, to sum up, I want to leave us with several lines of application very briefly. Here they are, first of all, from this text. Listen carefully. If you grew up in a Christian home and have been familiar with Christian teaching all your life, maybe you even went to a Christian school, you're familiar with all the Christian teaching all your life, you hear it from every side. It's all around you. Do not be fooled. Do not be fooled into thinking that you are saved by your familiarity with Jesus. Did you hear that? Do not be fooled that you are saved by your familiarity to Jesus. If Jesus' own brothers were not saved by their connection, it shows that no one is saved by familiarity alone.
You must, you must personally believe in Him as your Savior from sin, the One who bore your penalty on Calvary's cross. You must embrace Him as your Lord and Savior. You must turn your back on your sin and turn to Him by faith, embracing Him as your Lord and Savior. Secondly, proximity—there's an overlap here in the application—proximity to Jesus does not preclude perishing. Proximity to Jesus does not preclude perishing. In verse 7, we read, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me." It's not enough to be a human being in order to be saved. It's not enough to be a human being in order to be saved.
In verse 12, “there was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, "He is a good man;" others were saying, "No, (no), on the contrary, He leads the crowd astray." Beloved, it's not enough to have the proper nationality to have Christ. "He came to His own, His own received Him not" (John 1:11). And finally, in verse 5, "For not even” —His own, — “His brothers, were believing in Him." It is not enough, it is not enough to have membership in the family physically to have Christ. It's not enough to be a human being. It's not enough to be a member of a particular nationality. It's not enough to be a member of a particular church. Proximity to Jesus Christ may be the place from which men proceed to hellfire.
Remember the thief on the cross? Both thieves. One thief on the cross, right by His side, heard the Lord Jesus say to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise." The other thief passed from the side of Christ—the very side, the very side, proximity, the very side physically of the Lord Jesus, into eternal separation from God. To the one thief He said, our Lord said, "Today you shall be with Me in Paradise." And by the way, let me insert this—that's a refutation of sacramentalism, regeneration by baptism, because this man was not baptized. It's a refutation of purgatory because He said, "Today you shall be with Me in Paradise." And it's a refutation of universalism. He did not say, today you, plural, shall be with Me in Paradise, but, today you, singular, the believing thief, you shall be with Me in Paradise.
It's really the best illustration I know of. "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling." That's all the dying thief had—the Lord Jesus Christ in His saving word. And that can be you today. That can be you. Turn to Him and be saved.
Thirdly, religion without personal faith brings ruin. Religion without personal faith brings ruin. Here are individuals—and again, Isaiah went on this—here are individuals, the brothers of Jesus, who believed in His power to perform mighty works, but they were lost, still lost in their sin. Religion without personal faith is useless. And what's obvious in this passage is the fact that the multitudes have a form of godliness but have no knowledge of God. Multitudes are religious but lost. Imagine—religious but lost.
We read in verse 2—look at it with me—and this is not by happenstance: "Now…the Feast of the Booths was near." Right? Oh, we missed one section. Did you see the first words? "Now the Feast of the Jews." What scathing words of condemnation those are. The divinely ordained Feast of Booths is here referred to by the Spirit of God as "the Feast of the Jews." This blessed ordinance of divine worship had so degenerated because of their dead Judaism that it was no longer observed as an ordinance of divine worship but as simply a custom of Jewish religious tradition. Tradition. Go with the flow.
The Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths, was a feast that God commanded the children of Israel to keep on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of every year to celebrate His goodness to His people. After they had gathered in the fruits of the land, they were to dwell in tents for seven days in remembrance of the forty years spent in the wilderness. The feast was the grand harvest, as I mentioned, a festival when the Lord of the harvest was praised for His goodness and His mercies. The Feast of Tabernacles and the Booths was a time when Israel was reminded they dwelt in booths in the wilderness and God dwelt with them in the cloudy and fiery pillar. But it spoke of more than that. It foreshadowed that time when God came and tabernacled in human flesh, that He might at last bring God and man together in eternal glory and perfect fellowship, with sin and every evil consequence of it forever expiated, put away, purged, gone, forgotten forever. Really pointing to John 1:14, "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,” — tabernacled among us, — “and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."
How sad, how horribly sad and tragic it is to see multitudes, even today, doing exactly what the Jews in our Lord's day had done—clinging to a form of godliness while denying the power thereof, clinging to outward ceremonies while despising spiritual worship. I pray to God that it's not you here today.
Fourthly, impact with Deity brings conflict in humanity. Impact with Deity brings conflict in humanity. Remember our Lord's words in Luke 12:49 and following: "I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is finished! Do you think that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on, five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
The words of Jesus Christ and salvation through Him ought to ultimately divide men one from another, and they do. They do. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2:15-16, "For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one, we are an aroma from death to death, to the other, an aroma from life to life.” For those who are on the way to perishing, we are death unto death. For those who are on the way unto salvation, we are life unto life. The ministry of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is a dividing message. May God deliver us from division to death.
The two thieves illustrate it beautifully because even the sun that shines from heaven shines on the plants, also illustrates it. For the branch that is not abiding, that is not connected, that is not in living touch with the trunk, it is destroyed by the rays of the sun, while the branch that is in union, in living vital union, is helped by the sun. The same sun, you've heard it said before, that melts the snow, hardens the clay.
Why is it that Jesus Christ divides men? Oh, because of sin. Because of sin. Beloved, if you believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, you must be at war with the world—the world system, the world, the mindset of the world, its philosophy, the spirit of the age. You are either a friend of the world and an enemy of God, or a friend of God and an enemy of the world. As the Apostle John reminds us in 1 John 2:15, "Do not love the world nor the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
And final line of application, if you have believed in Jesus Christ, you must yield to Him as He confronts your sin so that you forsake it and walk in the light. Through God's Word, Jesus tells us how to think, speak, and act in a godly way, and if you are not letting the Word confront your sins, you are not walking with Jesus. We need constantly to have dealings with God and keep short accounts with God. This is how we enter through the narrow gate. We come mourning over our sin. We come repenting of it. We come acknowledging and confessing it before Him. But guess what? Nothing changes when we are on the narrow path. Every single day, we are confessing people. We need to have, you know, the fact that we're bathed doesn't mean we don't need to get our hands and feet cleansed and washed all the time. Keep short accounts with God. Have dealings with God. Ask Him to give you a heart that is sensitive to His Word and stay in the Word. Worship in the Word. "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth." And David prayed, "I hid Your Word in my heart that I will not sin against You."
Let's pray.
Father, we are so grateful to You for these words that the Apostle John has given us. We thank You for the life-transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because we know that You do rejoice in saving sinners. And that is pleasing to the Triune God and exalts the name of the Triune God.
We pray this morning that if there should be some in this gathering who have not come to faith in Jesus, who, like the world of Jesus' day, have hated Him, O God, we pray and we plead, deliver them from their sin. Deliver them from their guilt. Deliver them from condemnation and hatred of the Lord Jesus Christ and bring them to repentance and faith, to the place where they look for the mercy of God through Him who is the only Mediator between holy God and sinful man. Do what only You could do. Pierce hearts, penetrate deep down, take hearts of stone, replace them with hearts of flesh, and put Your Spirit within those hearts, all to the praise of the glory of Jesus.
And for us, Your children, may we draw comfort from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we look to Him. May we be like Him. May we always live our lives recognizing Your providence, Your sovereignty over our life and death. Our days are in Your hand, and we are called to live trusting in You, not caving to the fear of men, but living for the glory of Your name until You call us home.
And we recognize, O God, especially in the face of pressure that sometimes we face, that nothing will come into our lives without it first having to pass through Your sacred desk and that we will not be harmed or even experience death that is outside of Your set timetable. Our days have been ordained to the last second, to the last moment. Help us to live in the light of that truth and be bold and courageous.
With eyes fixed on Jesus, let us run the race of faith with endurance, looking unto Him, the Author and the Perfecter of our faith. We ask these things in His precious name.
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