Too Little Too Late
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
Why do people flee from truth? Why do they knowingly turn from reality, away from reality? Living in this day and age, even in 2025, that phenomenon of fleeing from the truth, I submit, has intensified massively. People flee from truth—economic truth, political truth, moral truth, religious truth. It's truly shocking that people would flee from what they know to be true.
And we might be still shocked by the brazenness of some of the lies around us—bombarded, we're bombarded by them every single day, from every direction. But you know, the Bible actually describes the flight from truth very, very early in Scripture. The Bible also explains to us why this happens. In fact, you find it in the first few pages of your Bible, in the book of Genesis. Once Adam and Eve sinned, you remember what they did? What did they do? Well, within moments, they were fleeing from truth, trying to cover up the nakedness that they now knew they had.
And not only that, the second thing they do is they hid from God when they heard Him in the garden—fleeing from truth. And so we see the pattern beginning with them and continuing with Cain, and we remember what happened then, continuing with Israel—fleeing from God, fleeing from truth, fleeing from reality. And so we see it throughout the Bible: people either literally, physically fleeing from God and truth, or at least mentally fleeing from God and truth with excuses and denials and blame-shifting and rationalizing and justifying and so forth.
And here's the question: why? Why do people flee from the truth? Why don't they want the truth? Wouldn't you want it? Wouldn't you? Wouldn't we want to know reality? Jesus told us exactly why people flee from truth, and earlier in the Gospel of John, already studied that. You can look at it again with me. Go back to chapter 3, verses 19 and 20. He tells us why people flee from truth. Look at what He says in verse 19 and 20: "And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil." Now watch this: "For everyone who does evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds be exposed."
There's the answer in black and white. The Light of truth exposes you, and if you don't want that exposure because of what you're doing, then you don't want the truth. Then you will flee from it. You will try to escape it. You will go the opposite direction of the truth. If you prefer your evil deeds, you'll want to do them in the dark, so to speak, under the cover of lies and deception.
And we see this flight throughout the Gospel of John. In many ways, as you've already seen, the Gospel of John really reads like a court case. You have the prosecution that comes to Jesus, and they throw charges at Him. They say things like He's a blasphemer, He's a lawbreaker, He's a deceiver, He's even wicked, and they had the audacity to say He's demon-possessed.
And then you have the defense. Jesus defends Himself. He explains where He's from, who sent Him, who authorized Him. And you remember, usually He brings witnesses. He calls to the stand John the Baptist. He calls to the stand His Father, the Holy Spirit, and the writings of Moses. He calls to the stand the Old Testament Scriptures and His own works, and He brings these witnesses, these evidences, these testifiers to say, that's who I am.
And then you have the jury and the judge. And who are they? They're the crowd in John. They decide on Jesus—the people He was speaking to at that time—and secondarily, you and I, the readers of the Gospel of John. We now sit, as it were, like judges and jury—not that we can rule over God—but what we're doing is we're deciding on the facts of the case. And what we find again in John 7 is another flight from truth. We saw already in John 7 how Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths, began to present Himself and the opposition, the confusion that ensued concerning Him.
And we've come today to verse 25 and following, and what we're going to see from verse 25, just to give us the aerial view, from verse 25 to the end of the chapter, what we will see unfold is four unmistakable truths concerning Jesus. And they function like four lights that light our way, and here they are—just keep them in mind as we look at the remaining portion in this chapter, and we'll do this in increments—but keep those overarching four lights to guide our paths, and they are the following: His origin, His destination, His works, and His words. Four truths about Jesus that are plain as day, open and easy to see, and really they're the things that you and I even use to know people. Where's He from? Where's He going? What does He do? What does He say? Right? That's what we do. We kind of ask each other those things about people when we are trying to get to know them, right? Where's He from? Where does He live? Where's He going? What does He typically say? What does He do for a living?
And so in the same way, we're going to see Jesus—His origin, His destination, His works, and His words—clear light for those who want to see. And as you read this, we're going to see people again fleeing from the truth. And then as you do this, you should ask yourself, why are they doing that? Why are they fleeing from what's in front of them? Look at it as a noonday sun. Why? And as you do that, don't just point a finger, but ask—I plead with you—am I fleeing from this truth? Am I coming towards this truth, drawing near this truth, or am I going in the opposite direction? Am I retreating from the truth?
So with that in mind, let us now consider our text, bounded in verses 25 to 36, and let us begin to do that under the following headings. And the first one is, I want us to see the confused crowd, verses 25 to 27: "So some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, 'Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill? And look, He’s speaking openly, and they are saying nothing to Him. Do the rulers truly know that this is The Christ? However, we know where this man is from, but whenever the Christ comes, no one knows where He is from.'"
Origin. Origin. That's the first one, right? The first light. But to make sense of these dialogues, by the way, you also have to realize what John is doing here is he's recording different voices in the crowd. It's not just one person speaking, and some of these voices, as we've seen already—and you could see it in front of you—that they're in conflict with each other. So you have this division, this conflict, this confusion, and it's really intensifying because not only is everyone confused, but you have different groups confused about different things.
Now, just a few verses earlier, back in verse 19, Jesus asked the crowd, "Why do you seek to kill Me?" Remember that, right? And in verse 20, the crowd answered, "You have a demon. Who seeks to kill You?" Now in verse 25, some of the people in Jerusalem were saying, "Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill?" So that's another group. This is a group particularly of people who lived in Jerusalem—the Judeans who lived in Jerusalem, close proximity to the religious rulers, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests. They're well aware of the religious leaders' intention to seize Christ and to execute Christ. And they are confused. You find them here confused.
But why are they confused? Well, because Jesus is in the temple. He's in the temple, and they know the rulers want Him dead. Verse 1, right? Chapter 7, "The Jews were seeking to kill Him." But He is in the temple, and they're letting Him teach, and nobody's doing anything about it. Nobody's stopping Him. And they're confused as to why they don't seize Him and execute Him. If that's what they want, it's their turf, it's their temple, right? It's their territory. They're in charge there. Now the rulers don't say anything, but they know this is the man that they're seeking to kill.
Look at verse 26: "And look, He’s speaking openly, and they are saying nothing to Him." They're just letting Him speak and teach and influence others, and they're not stopping Him. They're just letting Him go on and on, and He's making these strong claims, and in their mind, blasphemous claims, right? We don't get it. Why don't they stop Him? If they want Him dead, why aren't they doing something about it? Then in verse 26, they begin to mull over the thought, "Do the rulers truly know that this is The Christ?" This is a thought that comes into their mind. "The rulers do not really know that this is the Messiah, do they? Do they? Could it be? No, it can't be." The construction, by the way, of the Greek in this thought, "Do the rulers truly know that this is the Christ?"—it requires the construction in the Greek, it requires a negative answer. But the question has been raised nevertheless. It's a kind of question that carries with it its own denial. If they want Him dead, why aren't they stopping Him? Has the faint, remote thought entered their minds? Have they decided He's actually the Messiah? Because they're not doing anything.
However, verse 27—they say, "However"—the thought goes away really fast. Can you see it? "However, we know where this man is from. We know this can't be the Messiah. There's no way. We know His history, we know where He's from." I mean, this is the son of a carpenter, a man named Joseph, a woman named Mary, and of all places, they're from a little town called Nazareth. I mean, if you know anything about the testimony of Scripture, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" That insignificant place in Galilee, out of the main pattern of life and religious life for sure—nothing good can come out of there. No, no, this can't be the Messiah. We know Him, we know where He came from, we know His family, we know His town.
And by the way, they always, always fell back to the fact that He can't be the Messiah because we know where He came from. We know about Him. Remember back in chapter 6 and verse 42, the Jews are grumbling, mumbling about Him and saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I’ve come down from heaven'?" Same thing. We know Him. We know about Him.
Back to our text, and then they add in verse 27, "But whenever The Christ comes, no one knows where He is from." No, no, He's not really the Messiah because we know where He comes from. He's Jesus of Nazareth. When the Messiah really comes, it's going to be mysterious. It's going to be mysterious. We won't know where He comes from. His origin will be mysterious. And this, by the way, was actually a kind of confusion and mythology about the Messiah. Some people at that time believed in that or believed that because of a gross misinterpretation of certain texts like "Malachi 3:1," that Messiah would suddenly come to His temple out of nowhere. He just like, boom, like a lightning rod will show up; or because of "Daniel 7," Messiah coming on the clouds with great glory. They thought that Messiah would never really be known as to His origin, and it would be this sort of a secret arrival. You wouldn't know His genealogy. You wouldn't know where He came from, you know, sudden, mysterious, supernatural, just like that.
It's what we call really folk theology, urban myths that made their way into theology, and they're getting His origin totally wrong. A few verses later, there's more discussion of His origin with more misconceptions that just drop down. You can see it in the same vein. Verse 41, we read, others were saying, this is The Christ. Still others were saying, no, for is The Christ going to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that The Christ comes from the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So what division occurred in the crowd because of Him?
Well, at least here in this instance, this group of people had a little more knowledge of Scripture than the previous one. They remember the prophecy from "Micah 5" that Messiah indeed would be born in Bethlehem from the tribe of Judah. Jesus, they all thought, was from Galilee, so they assumed He's been born in Nazareth. Of course, John the Apostle, no doubt writing here with perhaps, I can envision him, that's a sanctified imagination, with a smile on his face, a little bit of irony, and he knows his readers have read the other Gospels. The Gospel of John was written two decades at least after Matthew and Luke, and so he knows his readers have already read that and Jesus was born in Bethlehem by the arranged providence of God.
He knows that his readers have read the genealogies of Matthew and Luke in which Jesus is biologically from the seed of Mary into David and that legally He's the heir of the throne of David through His adopted father, Joseph. So John knows that, but in a way, he just lets the ignorance of the people be known without challenging it because you see, he who has ears to hear will hear. If you're really seeking the truth of Jesus' origin, what you would find out is that He was born in Bethlehem. Again, what do we have here? A flight from the truth, a flight from the truth. People dividing, going towards the truth or going away from it.
Now did Jesus challenge some of this thinking about Himself, this false wrong teaching? Well, He did. Look at the cutting reply beginning in verse 28; 28 and 29: then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, "You both know Me and know where I am from and have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know." Look at verse 29: "I know Him because I am from Him, and He sent Me." So Jesus responds to their statement that they know Him, but look, He reaches a different conclusion, crying out an ironic statement.
Now, what I want us to see is the verb "cried out." John uses the Greek word “krazo” (κράζω) to introduce a solemn pronouncement. There's another Greek word, by the way, that signifies even a stronger cry. It's “anavao”—excuse me, “anavoao” (ἀναβοάω)—the verb Jesus used when He cried out from the cross. He used that verb in "Matthew 27:46": Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
John here uses the other verb, “krazo” (κράζω), and he uses it again in chapter 12 of John, verse 44, where we read, "And Jesus cried out and said, 'He who believes in Me does not believe in Me, but in Him who sent Me.'" He clearly wanted His audience to hear what He was going to say, and so He cries out with a loud voice. He raises His voice. J.C. Ryle, commenting on this verb “krazo” (κράζω), writes the following, and I quote: "This is a remarkable expression. We find our Lord departing from His usual practice when we read that He cried or raised His voice to a high pitch. The perverse ignorance of the Jews, their persistence in blindness to all evidence, and the great opportunity afforded by the crowds around Him in the temple courts were probably reasons why He cried. Our Lord is only said to have cried or lifted up His voice in four other passages in the Gospels," and he names them: "Matthew 27:50,""Mark 15:39,""John 7:37," and "John 12:44,"- end of quote.
So Jesus cries out. He lifts His voice to a high pitch. He wants everyone to hear Him, and He says, yes, you do know Me. I am Jesus of Nazareth, and you do know My name, and you do know which town I live in, but you don't really know Me. You don't really know My origin because I'm not just a normal man from Galilee. I happen to live there, but My origin is with the One who sent Me, and you don't know Him. You don't know Him. I do know Him because He's My Father. I am His Son. I'm from Him. He sent Me.
The very idea that in your unbelief and confusion you know Me is ludicrous. You don't know Me. You don't know where I came from. You don't know who sent Me. In fact, later on, as we will see when we get to it in "John 8:19," He says, "You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also." Jesus puts His finger on the problem in chapter 8 and verse 43. Look at what He says there. Just turn the page over and you will see it. Verses 43 to 45: "Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me."
That's the whole point. He says, you want to serve the devil, who is your father. Consequently, you can't hear the truth. Either your Father is God or your father is the devil, and there's no middle ground. You're caught up in a kingdom of lies. You can't know the truth. You can't believe the truth. You can't comprehend the truth. You're in a kingdom of lies.
And although Jesus' hearers, for the most part, did not know God, verse 28 of chapter 7, Jesus plainly stated it. Concerning Himself, He says, "You don't know Him, but I know Him. I know Him." And He uses the Greek verb “eido” (εἴδω). "I know Him. I “eido” (εἴδω) Him." It signifies to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, in contrast to the ignorance of the Jews, the ignorance of the crowds. Jesus had a unique and thorough knowledge of the Father because He is one with the Father, and He alone existed with the Father from all eternity .He alone can uniquely reveal the Father to us, as we learn back in chapter one, in verse 18: "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him."
And in John 17, verse three, Jesus describes the essence of eternal life. And I love this. What is the essence of eternal life? Jesus defines it for us. Very simply, knowing God. Knowing God, really knowing God. Knowing God. "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." You can't know God apart from Christ, right?
Luke 10, verse 22, Jesus makes this powerful, profound statement. "All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one, no one"—airtight, no wiggle room—"no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son." Now watch this: "and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." The only way that we can know the Father is through the Son, when the Son wills to reveal Him to us. Are you asking the Lord Jesus to reveal the Father to you so that you may know Him more deeply? That you may know Him, perhaps, for the first time, and then to know Him more deeply?
Jeremiah 9:23–24—you’re familiar with those verses. We do well to remember them again. Declares, "Thus says Yahweh, 'Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not a rich man boast in his'"—billions and trillions, right?—"riches." Don’t boast in your power. Don’t boast in your cleverness. Don’t boast in your wisdom. Don’t boast in your riches. Don’t boast in anything. "You want to boast," He says, "but let him who boasts boast in this; that he understands and knows Me, that I am Yahweh, who shows loving kindness and justice and righteousness on the earth. For I delight in these things," declares Yahweh.
Regarding unbelievers, Paul said in Ephesians 4:18 that "they are darkened in their mind." They can’t get it, they can’t grasp it. The mind is darkened, "alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart." But the goal of the Christian life is what? It is that we all attain—Ephesians 4:13—"to the unity of the faith," and here it is, "and of the full knowledge of the Son of God." Or as Paul stated it in his goal, his goal in life—Philippians 3:10—"that I may know Him." I want to know Him. My goal is to know Him. Paul, but you know Him. Oh, I’m not satisfied. I want to know Him more.
Is that your aim in life, beloved? If so, if so, if that is your aim, if that is the heartbeat within your chest, if that is your heart’s desire, if that is your longing—as we sang earlier—I want to know You. I want to know You more. If that is the case, then you’re reading and meditating on God’s Word daily with the prayer, "Lord, Lord, reveal Yourself to me all the more that I may know You all the more." We don’t come to the Scripture and say, well, I feel guilty today, as a Christian I should read, I’m gonna check box, you know, check the box, and I read. No, no. We come because we want to know Him. We read—we want to know Him. Oh, to know Him more and more every single day. And if you’ve never done so, I encourage you: read, read, read the Word of God. And if you want to grow in knowing Him more, you read the Word of God. And here’s some additional help that I can guide you as you read the Word of God. Here are some resources: J. I. Packer’s Knowing God is a classic. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy is short but deep. A. W. Pink’s Attributes of God. And then deeper yet and much longer, two volumes, the Puritan Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God. Pastor John MacArthur’s book, The Ultimate Priority, as well. And then John MacArthur’s and Richard Mayhue’s Biblical Doctrine has an easy-to-read treatment of God’s attributes in it.
And as I say this, let me stand with Spurgeon to qualify it, and I quote, "Visit many good books but live in the Bible." Visit many good books but live in the Bible.
And you will only be able to digest this if you come through faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and with the prayer that the Holy Spirit will give you light and be your Teacher. But I remind you that this is knowledge of God. This knowledge of God is not just so that you can have a cozy, syrupy relationship with Him. Knowing God and knowing more of Him will radically change you, transform your life, so that you become more like Christ.
And there's so many implications to this. This will affect your relationships with others so that the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, goodness—become more evident in your relationships with others because the gospel has direct implications on every area of your life, and mine. Furthermore, the better you know God, the more effectively you can represent Him as His ambassador to the lost world. The more you have personally tasted the kindness of the Lord, the more readily you'll be able to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
And so while there were many confused opinions about Jesus, and even to this day, there still are more than ever confused opinions about who Jesus is, you and I need to believe the truth about Him, which we have in His own testimony about Himself. He was sent here by God, He knew God in a unique way, He is the God-sent God, and we can only know God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, "I know Him," verse 29, "because I am from Him, and He sent Me." Jesus, as one author put it, was declaring His divine origin and divine commission. "I know Him because I am from Him, and He sent Me."
Jesus says, "I am sent by the true God, and none of you know the true God. I know Him because I came from Him, and He is the One who sent Me here." None of you believe that, and Jesus here, by the way—mark it down—He's declaring His own deity right there in the temple of Yahweh, claiming that He was one with God the Father. Jesus said, "I know Him because I am from Him." Would you look at verse 29? And I would encourage you, if you have a pen or a pencil, you could circle that little word "from," that preposition.
Now, what you need to know about this preposition is in the Greek, it's not the regular preposition “apo” (ἀπό), which primarily means "from," but rather, it is the Greek word “para” (παρά), which means that Jesus is underscoring that He came from being right beside God the Father in actual location and position. None of the great biblical characters ever made this kind of statement about themselves—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Elijah, Peter, Paul, John, so forth—none of them said, "I came from being right beside God the Father and was actually at a co-equal position relationship with Him," but Jesus did. This is a powerful deity statement.
This akes us back to John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh." Quite simply, Jesus is saying, My true origin is heavenly, it is eternal, it's with the Father.
Let me ask you, friends, this morning, what do you say about the origin of Jesus? You see, the origin of Jesus is clearly heavenly, seen in the virgin birth. That Jesus was born of a virgin means that He was not only, was not merely—pardon me—a man of two human parents, He was the only begotten Son of God. The virgin birth is recorded for us in Matthew and Luke, but it is also predicted in the Old Testament. Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, the virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Emmanuel." It was predicted back in Genesis 3, in verse 15, in that “Protoevangelium”, that first gospel proclaimed, where we read that "the woman's seed will crush the head of the serpent."
Then the virgin birth was part of the early church's confession from the very beginning—the Apostles' Creed. "We believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate." Ironically, it was actually some of the descendants of the Pharisees that provided even more conclusive evidence of the virgin birth. In some of the later Jewish writings, Jesus is said to be the illegitimate son of a wedded woman with a Roman soldier whose name was Pantera. They called Him Yeshua ben Pantera, and the question is, why would they invent a story about the birth of Jesus if He was merely the biological son of Joseph?
Isn't it easier to just stick with that? "Jesus was not virgin birth," they contended. "His father was someone else." So they came up with this false story to show His birth was unusual. But here's the truth that you can flee from or you can flee towards: the man, Jesus of Nazareth, had a heavenly origin. He was the God-man, the God-sent God.
Let's press on and see the callous reaction or rejection. The callous rejection by the—particularly the religious leaders. Jesus' statement of deity must have struck deep into the hearts of the Pharisees because they knew He was claiming to be God. Now, for the Jewish authorities, that was enough for them to arrest Him. So here, Jesus is making another claim to be God. Verse 30: "So they were seeking to seize Him, yet no man laid hand on Him." Either through the providence of God or God's providence of circumstances, or maybe through some miraculous restraining power, no one laid a hand on Him. And here's the reason why—end of verse 30. You see it? "Because His hour had not yet come." That's it. His hour had not yet come.
I love what Pastor MacArthur said concerning this. He said, and I quote, "The reason no man laid hand on Him to arrest Him was because His hour had not come. They were restrained by the invisible hand of God. They couldn't act because they were under divine control." And then he talks about the powerful, overwhelming reality of the invisible hand of God, which controls everything that happens in the universe. And he says this: "Redemptive history is planned by God and executed by God sovereignly, and everything happens according to His purpose and plan and timing." And he goes on to say, "They thirsted for His blood. They were determined to kill Him, yet by invisible restraint from above, they were powerless to do anything. Not a hair of His head could be touched without divine permission because God is in control of absolutely everything." And I love how he ends: "Not only in His life, but in ours."
So, they're paralyzed. What a comforting thought—reality. Not only in His life, but in ours. Remember earlier, the psalm that was quoted by Stuart? "The eye of Yahweh is set upon those who fear Him." His hour had not yet come. His time of trial and crucifixion is months away. No one can force God to act sooner or later than He plans to act. No one can stay His hand. No one can rush Him. No one can delay Him.
Verse 31: "But many of the crowd believed in Him, and they were saying, 'When the Christ comes, will He do more signs than this man did?'" The problem for the religious leader is being compounded here. They're losing control. I mean, it's getting out of hand. The crowd is starting to sway in a certain direction. They believe that He might be the Messiah because of all of the miraculous signs they had seen Him do.
Well, concerning that, by the way, and you see the wind in that direction, blowing in that direction in the Gospel of John, especially when you connect faith with the signs, and we know that most likely here in this case that this is not really a true saving faith, but nevertheless, they're being swayed in a certain direction. As one author said, there's three kinds of faiths. Faith in God, number one, that's faith like the devil and demons. He believes and trembles. Number two, faith in facts. That's a mental assent of certain facts about Jesus, such as birth, death, resurrection. But then number three, faith that saves. That's a personal, the personal moment in which one believes truly on the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
And here, I lean towards the conclusion that the belief here is like the one back in chapter two, verses 23 to 25, where many believed in Him because of the miracles that He did, but our Lord did not commit Himself to them because He knew what was inside of them. He knew their hearts. Maybe it's the kind of believing back in chapter six as well—the disciples who followed Him because He fed their bellies. And they eventually abandoned Him. It's a kind of a temporary, shallow, spurious, counterfeit faith.
Well, nothing here really to indicate that this was a permanent, genuine saving faith, although it may be possible. But again, the combination connecting this to the signs, it just takes us back to those incidents. When the Pharisees heard that many were leaning in that direction in terms of Him being the Messiah, they were extremely concerned, and immediately now, they sent officers to seize Him. Look at verse 32: "The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Him, and the chief priest and the Pharisees sent officers to seize Him." These things—what things? To what things does this refer? Primarily, the fact that some were beginning to consider Jesus, indeed, to be the Messiah, and the fact that many believed in Him. They had heard the whispered talk about Jesus before He arrived, and still more now, whispered talk about Him. Spurgeon, concerning the whispered talk— “kérussó” (κηρύσσω), whispering, muttering, whispering these things, afraid to speak out boldly—he said, because of the Pharisees, and therefore they quietly said it among themselves, "And after all, there is no fire more to be dreaded than a smoldering fire." And so they were concerned, deeply concerned.
End of verse 32: "The chief priest and the Pharisees sent officers to seize Him." The temple police—they're dispatched to go and arrest Him. And then in verse 33, Jesus speaks, and I want us to see the clear warning, the clear warning. This passage gives us not just the truth about where He came from, but also the truth about where He was going. Not just His origin—the origin of Jesus—but also the destination of Jesus. The destination of Jesus—look at verse 33. Therefore, Jesus knew the evil intent of the hearts of these religious leaders, that they had sent temple police to seize Him, to take Him away. This leads Him to make a statement that He will go away, but that it would be on His timetable, not theirs. They have no control over His departure in death, except to be the providentially placed pawns to carry out the crucifixion.
"I lay down My life of My own accord. No one takes it away from Me"—John 10, right? Verses 17 and 18. Jesus explains that His mission on earth is about to be over, because it is nearly—it's gonna be nearly just, I mean, it's six months away, remember that. There's only six months left now for that Passover where He will be arrested and crucified. The next Passover, He's going to die, rise, and ascend to the Father. Jesus said, verse 33, "For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me." In other words, the sands are running out of the hourglass. In a little while— “mikros chronos” (μικρός χρόνος) —He says, little while would be about six months.
The cross is looming in the future, and so He indirectly alludes to His destiny as the Lamb of God. And in order for Him to return to His Father, He knew He had to go through the cross. He had to die and be resurrected. The statement, "I go to Him who sent Me”, likely further incensed the religious leaders. They would see this as Him making another allusion to God being His Father. "I'm going to My Father, I came down from heaven, I'm going back to heaven." And then He tells them—He tells them this—and if you've missed everything else today, may I ask you, sit up straight in your chair and don't miss this. Don't let this pass you by.
He says to them, you will never go to heaven. Heaven is not for everyone. Heaven is for those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is for those who believe in the true Christ, the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and no one else. Either you're in Christ or you're out of Christ. You will die in Christ or you will die out of Christ. And if you die in Christ, you will be with Christ. And if you die out of Christ, you will be without Christ forever.
Verse 34: "You will seek Me and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come." Where is He going? To the Father. They cannot come. Why not? Well, two reasons. Number one, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You cannot go into the presence of God in human, corruptible bodies. You need to be raised up in Christ. You need to be glorified. And number two, their rejection of Christ. They reject Jesus as the Word, as the Son, as the Messiah, so they can't go to the Father because they reject the Son.
And what's that famous verse that all of us pretty much memorized? John 14:6—"Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one, no one comes to the Father but through Me.'" Once again, beloved, we see this reality that Jesus is aware of His pending death, but He knows that His death on the cross is not the end of the story. "I will be with you for a little while longer, but then I will be crucified. I will die. I will be buried, but I will rise from the grave, and I will ascend back to the One who sent Me."
Through His death on Calvary's cross, Jesus is returning to where He came from. He will be returning to the Father. He will be going to the place where they cannot go. They cannot find Him. Why? Because of the disbelief. Because of the disbelief.
Very briefly, I want you to see the clueless reaction, and I want to give points of application. The clueless reaction, verses 35 and 36: "The Jews said to one another, 'Where does this man intend to go that we will not find Him? Is He intending to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What is the statement that He said, "You will seek Me and will not find Me, and where I am, you cannot come"?'" Now the response of the Jewish leaders to these words is again what? Complete confusion, total misunderstanding. They are utterly, completely clueless. They think He means He's going to leave the country, He's going to go some place or places outside of Israel where the small Jewish community perhaps is, the diaspora outside of Israel, and there He's going to teach the Greek-speaking Jews or even maybe the Gentiles themselves. And because these religious leaders are so fastidious when it comes to their legalism, they wouldn't even dare to travel into Gentile territory. They regarded it as filthy, dirty. They would shake off the dust off of their feet if they were returning from that area. So they think that's where Jesus is going, that's what He means. "I'm going to a Gentile territory where you people wouldn't dare come."
Of course, that's not what He means at all. He means He's going to die and rise and ascend to the Majesty on High. That's His destination. He's going back to His origin place. That's His destination. And now we can flee from that truth and say that can't be. Or we can try to find an alternative explanation for what happened to Jesus of Nazareth, all of which—or explanations, all of which—quite frankly require more faith than the one that the Scripture gives us. Or we can move towards the truth and say His origin was heavenly, His destination was heavenly, He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, He is the God-man. "Lord Jesus, I believe, my Lord and my God."
And I want to say to you, sitting here this morning, who's still in your sin, my lost sinner friend, listen and listen carefully this morning. The title of the message is, Too Little, Too Late. Please listen carefully. Jesus said, "Therefore for a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me and you will not find Me, and where I am you cannot come." Not you should not come, not may not come, rather you cannot come. This is a solemn judgment. He's saying that these Jews will die in their sin.
It means that there will come a time in your life when you will seek Me and I won't be there. And that's not a new notion in the Scripture. "Genesis 6:3, 'My Spirit,' God says, 'shall not strive with man forever.'" This is God speaking. Listen, as tolerant and as gracious as God is, God will not strive with man forever and He won't wait open-endedly for us to repent. Before it's too late, I beg you, before it's too late and our years come to an end, we must choose good and not evil, to use the language of "Joshua 24:15," to serve and obey God and not our own selves. For Jesus said, "Unless you repent, you too will perish" ("Luke 13"). It's very possible. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Listen carefully. It's very possible to seek too late, to seek at a time when the Lord will not hear.
Second verse, Proverbs 1:24–29: "Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention and you neglected all My counsel and were not willing to accept My reproof, I will also laugh at your disaster and I will mock you, your dread, I will mock when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm and your disaster comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call on Me and I will not answer. They will seek Me earnestly but they will not find Me because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of Yahweh."
That is why the prophet Isaiah says what he says: "Seek the Lord"—what?—"while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near." There are replete warnings all through the Old Testament and New Testament: waiting too long, procrastinating, kicking the can down the road. "Seek the Lord while He may be found," meaning there will be a time when He will not be found. "Call on Him while He is near," meaning that there will be a time when He is not near.
Hell is really itself truth discovered too late. Truth discovered too late. Jesus makes a sobering, powerful, penetrating statement: "You will seek Me and not find Me." Sinners will seek Him and not be able to find Him. Listen, part of what hell is, is suffering for sin. Yes, "the wages of sin is death." Hell is also resentment, unrelieved bitterness under the destructive hand of a thrice holy God. But hell—hell is also eternal regret without remedy, eternal, everlasting remorse without hope. That's why there'll be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
You know, you try a new recipe, you put together the ingredients, you know, you're working hard three, four hours—recipe—and you bake it, you put it in the oven, it comes out and it's just a flop. And you're like so disappointed, your heart sinks. But you know what? You know what's comforting? You get more ingredients and you could try it again, and you get another chance. Not in hell. Not in hell. Hell is not, as someone said, where Christ is forgotten—it is where He is unavailable. "Where I am, you cannot come," shut out of Heaven forever. End of quote.
The common misconception is that, well, God—I mean, my God—is all love and He's good and everybody who is good and tries to be good, I mean, at the end of the day, God understands, everybody goes to Heaven. Everybody's trying to find God in their own way through this and that and the other and Buddhism and, you know, work performance, righteousness and all of that and through different religions. Anybody who's good. I'm one of the good people, I'm going to go to Heaven—that's how people think.
It's hard to imagine a more clear and devastating statement than this: "You will seek Me and you will not find Me, and where I am, you cannot come." You know what Martin Luther said concerning this portion of the text? He said this, and I quote: "These are terrible words. I do not like to read them."
Heaven is not for everyone. You believe that Heaven is for everyone—that's universalism. That's teaching that God will ultimately save all His creatures, every one of them. But the Scripture is clear, for we read in Matthew 25: "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world'" (verse 34). "He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels'" (verse 41). "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (verse 46). These are the words of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal punishment, eternal life—and the two shall never, ever meet.
And according to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, by our Lord Himself in Luke 16, after both men die, there's a great gulf between both of them, between those places. And that gulf—Jesus makes it crystal clear—this gulf is what? Fixed. Fixed. Not temporarily suspended, fixed. Fixed. Let me say that again: fixed. The words of Jesus stand as a barrier to every form of universalism that says all men will ultimately somewhere in the future be saved. "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life," and the one is as eternal as the other.
And so this is a warning passage, and I want you to just mark in your mind that the statement is made to the various groups in the crowd. It's made to the people in general, it's made to the Judeans, it's made to the pilgrims who came from everywhere, it's made to the religious leaders of the day. They are all given the same sentence—the common people and the rulers—it doesn't matter. There is no class separating the condemned. Either you're a Christ rejecter or you're with Christ.
There's no hierarchy of condemned people. The flames of judgment will fall on the people—all of them—who are just confused about Jesus. And the same Hell will be the eternal abode of the people who hate the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether you're a rejecter or whether you're a person who's straddling the fence undecided, the same warning is given to you. If you're not saved and you get up at the end of the service and you walk out that door, you leave without Christ, refusing Him who is speaking to you, you would be at risk of trampling underfoot the blood of Christ. You would have climbed over mountains of gospel truths.
And if you've never repented and believed upon Jesus Christ, I urge you, I beg you, I plead with you to commit your life to Him right now, this moment. Just right where you are, right where you are sitting, right where you sit, just humble yourself beneath the mighty hand of God and say, "Oh God, have mercy upon me, the sinner." I warn you, there is a coming and final judgment. And it's coming. "It is appointed unto man to die once and then comes judgment."
There's a final judgment coming in which the dead, great and small, will be raised up to stand before the great white throne judgment, and the books will be opened. And God has taken inscrutable records for your whole life, and everything you've ever thought, everything you've ever done, everything that's ever came out of your mouth—God has the entire record. And if you continue in unbelief, you will face all of it, and there will not be one drop of mercy. So much sin, so much judgment.
In this moment here today, God is extending grace to you. In this moment, God is extending mercy to you. In this moment, God is extending the offer of forgiveness to you. Do not be like those people in the crowd—callous rejection. Don't make the mistake to think too highly of yourself that God owes you another offer. You must receive His offer today. "Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart." And if you are unsaved and have not heard the voice of God in this today, I really fear for you.
"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart." And while it is today, come to the Lord Jesus Christ. You have no assurance that you will see tomorrow. Come to Him.
You need to come to Christ today and be saved. He who hardens his heart, though often reproved, shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy. "Proverbs 29:1." "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, today is the day of salvation." If you say no to God yet one more time—if you say no to God, number 558 times—today, perhaps for you, your heart may be irreparably hardened, never to be brought back to the place of repentance.
You need Christ. You need to run to Christ. You need to flee to Christ. You need to come before Christ and humble yourself and say, Lord Jesus, Lamb of God who died for me upon Calvary's cross, have mercy upon me. I am the sinner. Forgive me. I confess my sin. I turn from my life of rebellion. Give me a new heart. Take out this old stony heart and give me a new heart. God, today, don't allow me to go yet another day lost, separated from You. God, would You please save me today? And the Bible says, "The one who comes to Me, I will by no means cast out." "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near."
Let's pray:
Father, we thank You for this portion of Your Word, the sobering words of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, O Lord, we pray with heavy hearts for those in our midst who are in this room but not in Christ. And perhaps they have heard the gospel proclaimed again and again and again and again and again. And they remain in their sin. And they keep saying no to Jesus.
O God, O God, O Lord, the God who rejoices in the recovery of sinners, open their eyes. Draw them to You. Let them see their need of You. Let them see the depths of their depravity and sin. Let them feel the horror of hell in their hearts. And let them recognize that the only remedy to escape the wrath of God in hell is to turn to the wrath bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ, our substitute. And with humility and a heart of love, to say, Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me, the sinner. Change me, transform me, forgive me. I confess my sin. Help me turn from my life of rebellion. Take away this old stony heart of mine, the God-hating heart, and give me a new heart. Take away this heart that loves idols, foremost of which the idol of self. Don't allow me to go yet another day lost and separated from You. Lord Jesus, save me.
Please, Lord, I pray, we pray that You would save sinners today. And for us, Your children, O God, we thank You for what You've saved us from. We thank You that where You are, we will be. "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." We look forward to that day to be with You forever. And in the meantime, Lord, help us to know You more. Help us to pursue to know You more—more of You, more of You—to adore You more, to love You more, to seek You more, and to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into God's marvelous light. We pray this in His name and for His glory.
And we might be still shocked by the brazenness of some of the lies around us—bombarded, we're bombarded by them every single day, from every direction. But you know, the Bible actually describes the flight from truth very, very early in Scripture. The Bible also explains to us why this happens. In fact, you find it in the first few pages of your Bible, in the book of Genesis. Once Adam and Eve sinned, you remember what they did? What did they do? Well, within moments, they were fleeing from truth, trying to cover up the nakedness that they now knew they had.
And not only that, the second thing they do is they hid from God when they heard Him in the garden—fleeing from truth. And so we see the pattern beginning with them and continuing with Cain, and we remember what happened then, continuing with Israel—fleeing from God, fleeing from truth, fleeing from reality. And so we see it throughout the Bible: people either literally, physically fleeing from God and truth, or at least mentally fleeing from God and truth with excuses and denials and blame-shifting and rationalizing and justifying and so forth.
And here's the question: why? Why do people flee from the truth? Why don't they want the truth? Wouldn't you want it? Wouldn't you? Wouldn't we want to know reality? Jesus told us exactly why people flee from truth, and earlier in the Gospel of John, already studied that. You can look at it again with me. Go back to chapter 3, verses 19 and 20. He tells us why people flee from truth. Look at what He says in verse 19 and 20: "And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil." Now watch this: "For everyone who does evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds be exposed."
There's the answer in black and white. The Light of truth exposes you, and if you don't want that exposure because of what you're doing, then you don't want the truth. Then you will flee from it. You will try to escape it. You will go the opposite direction of the truth. If you prefer your evil deeds, you'll want to do them in the dark, so to speak, under the cover of lies and deception.
And we see this flight throughout the Gospel of John. In many ways, as you've already seen, the Gospel of John really reads like a court case. You have the prosecution that comes to Jesus, and they throw charges at Him. They say things like He's a blasphemer, He's a lawbreaker, He's a deceiver, He's even wicked, and they had the audacity to say He's demon-possessed.
And then you have the defense. Jesus defends Himself. He explains where He's from, who sent Him, who authorized Him. And you remember, usually He brings witnesses. He calls to the stand John the Baptist. He calls to the stand His Father, the Holy Spirit, and the writings of Moses. He calls to the stand the Old Testament Scriptures and His own works, and He brings these witnesses, these evidences, these testifiers to say, that's who I am.
And then you have the jury and the judge. And who are they? They're the crowd in John. They decide on Jesus—the people He was speaking to at that time—and secondarily, you and I, the readers of the Gospel of John. We now sit, as it were, like judges and jury—not that we can rule over God—but what we're doing is we're deciding on the facts of the case. And what we find again in John 7 is another flight from truth. We saw already in John 7 how Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths, began to present Himself and the opposition, the confusion that ensued concerning Him.
And we've come today to verse 25 and following, and what we're going to see from verse 25, just to give us the aerial view, from verse 25 to the end of the chapter, what we will see unfold is four unmistakable truths concerning Jesus. And they function like four lights that light our way, and here they are—just keep them in mind as we look at the remaining portion in this chapter, and we'll do this in increments—but keep those overarching four lights to guide our paths, and they are the following: His origin, His destination, His works, and His words. Four truths about Jesus that are plain as day, open and easy to see, and really they're the things that you and I even use to know people. Where's He from? Where's He going? What does He do? What does He say? Right? That's what we do. We kind of ask each other those things about people when we are trying to get to know them, right? Where's He from? Where does He live? Where's He going? What does He typically say? What does He do for a living?
And so in the same way, we're going to see Jesus—His origin, His destination, His works, and His words—clear light for those who want to see. And as you read this, we're going to see people again fleeing from the truth. And then as you do this, you should ask yourself, why are they doing that? Why are they fleeing from what's in front of them? Look at it as a noonday sun. Why? And as you do that, don't just point a finger, but ask—I plead with you—am I fleeing from this truth? Am I coming towards this truth, drawing near this truth, or am I going in the opposite direction? Am I retreating from the truth?
So with that in mind, let us now consider our text, bounded in verses 25 to 36, and let us begin to do that under the following headings. And the first one is, I want us to see the confused crowd, verses 25 to 27: "So some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, 'Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill? And look, He’s speaking openly, and they are saying nothing to Him. Do the rulers truly know that this is The Christ? However, we know where this man is from, but whenever the Christ comes, no one knows where He is from.'"
Origin. Origin. That's the first one, right? The first light. But to make sense of these dialogues, by the way, you also have to realize what John is doing here is he's recording different voices in the crowd. It's not just one person speaking, and some of these voices, as we've seen already—and you could see it in front of you—that they're in conflict with each other. So you have this division, this conflict, this confusion, and it's really intensifying because not only is everyone confused, but you have different groups confused about different things.
Now, just a few verses earlier, back in verse 19, Jesus asked the crowd, "Why do you seek to kill Me?" Remember that, right? And in verse 20, the crowd answered, "You have a demon. Who seeks to kill You?" Now in verse 25, some of the people in Jerusalem were saying, "Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill?" So that's another group. This is a group particularly of people who lived in Jerusalem—the Judeans who lived in Jerusalem, close proximity to the religious rulers, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests. They're well aware of the religious leaders' intention to seize Christ and to execute Christ. And they are confused. You find them here confused.
But why are they confused? Well, because Jesus is in the temple. He's in the temple, and they know the rulers want Him dead. Verse 1, right? Chapter 7, "The Jews were seeking to kill Him." But He is in the temple, and they're letting Him teach, and nobody's doing anything about it. Nobody's stopping Him. And they're confused as to why they don't seize Him and execute Him. If that's what they want, it's their turf, it's their temple, right? It's their territory. They're in charge there. Now the rulers don't say anything, but they know this is the man that they're seeking to kill.
Look at verse 26: "And look, He’s speaking openly, and they are saying nothing to Him." They're just letting Him speak and teach and influence others, and they're not stopping Him. They're just letting Him go on and on, and He's making these strong claims, and in their mind, blasphemous claims, right? We don't get it. Why don't they stop Him? If they want Him dead, why aren't they doing something about it? Then in verse 26, they begin to mull over the thought, "Do the rulers truly know that this is The Christ?" This is a thought that comes into their mind. "The rulers do not really know that this is the Messiah, do they? Do they? Could it be? No, it can't be." The construction, by the way, of the Greek in this thought, "Do the rulers truly know that this is the Christ?"—it requires the construction in the Greek, it requires a negative answer. But the question has been raised nevertheless. It's a kind of question that carries with it its own denial. If they want Him dead, why aren't they stopping Him? Has the faint, remote thought entered their minds? Have they decided He's actually the Messiah? Because they're not doing anything.
However, verse 27—they say, "However"—the thought goes away really fast. Can you see it? "However, we know where this man is from. We know this can't be the Messiah. There's no way. We know His history, we know where He's from." I mean, this is the son of a carpenter, a man named Joseph, a woman named Mary, and of all places, they're from a little town called Nazareth. I mean, if you know anything about the testimony of Scripture, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" That insignificant place in Galilee, out of the main pattern of life and religious life for sure—nothing good can come out of there. No, no, this can't be the Messiah. We know Him, we know where He came from, we know His family, we know His town.
And by the way, they always, always fell back to the fact that He can't be the Messiah because we know where He came from. We know about Him. Remember back in chapter 6 and verse 42, the Jews are grumbling, mumbling about Him and saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I’ve come down from heaven'?" Same thing. We know Him. We know about Him.
Back to our text, and then they add in verse 27, "But whenever The Christ comes, no one knows where He is from." No, no, He's not really the Messiah because we know where He comes from. He's Jesus of Nazareth. When the Messiah really comes, it's going to be mysterious. It's going to be mysterious. We won't know where He comes from. His origin will be mysterious. And this, by the way, was actually a kind of confusion and mythology about the Messiah. Some people at that time believed in that or believed that because of a gross misinterpretation of certain texts like "Malachi 3:1," that Messiah would suddenly come to His temple out of nowhere. He just like, boom, like a lightning rod will show up; or because of "Daniel 7," Messiah coming on the clouds with great glory. They thought that Messiah would never really be known as to His origin, and it would be this sort of a secret arrival. You wouldn't know His genealogy. You wouldn't know where He came from, you know, sudden, mysterious, supernatural, just like that.
It's what we call really folk theology, urban myths that made their way into theology, and they're getting His origin totally wrong. A few verses later, there's more discussion of His origin with more misconceptions that just drop down. You can see it in the same vein. Verse 41, we read, others were saying, this is The Christ. Still others were saying, no, for is The Christ going to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that The Christ comes from the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So what division occurred in the crowd because of Him?
Well, at least here in this instance, this group of people had a little more knowledge of Scripture than the previous one. They remember the prophecy from "Micah 5" that Messiah indeed would be born in Bethlehem from the tribe of Judah. Jesus, they all thought, was from Galilee, so they assumed He's been born in Nazareth. Of course, John the Apostle, no doubt writing here with perhaps, I can envision him, that's a sanctified imagination, with a smile on his face, a little bit of irony, and he knows his readers have read the other Gospels. The Gospel of John was written two decades at least after Matthew and Luke, and so he knows his readers have already read that and Jesus was born in Bethlehem by the arranged providence of God.
He knows that his readers have read the genealogies of Matthew and Luke in which Jesus is biologically from the seed of Mary into David and that legally He's the heir of the throne of David through His adopted father, Joseph. So John knows that, but in a way, he just lets the ignorance of the people be known without challenging it because you see, he who has ears to hear will hear. If you're really seeking the truth of Jesus' origin, what you would find out is that He was born in Bethlehem. Again, what do we have here? A flight from the truth, a flight from the truth. People dividing, going towards the truth or going away from it.
Now did Jesus challenge some of this thinking about Himself, this false wrong teaching? Well, He did. Look at the cutting reply beginning in verse 28; 28 and 29: then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, "You both know Me and know where I am from and have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know." Look at verse 29: "I know Him because I am from Him, and He sent Me." So Jesus responds to their statement that they know Him, but look, He reaches a different conclusion, crying out an ironic statement.
Now, what I want us to see is the verb "cried out." John uses the Greek word “krazo” (κράζω) to introduce a solemn pronouncement. There's another Greek word, by the way, that signifies even a stronger cry. It's “anavao”—excuse me, “anavoao” (ἀναβοάω)—the verb Jesus used when He cried out from the cross. He used that verb in "Matthew 27:46": Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
John here uses the other verb, “krazo” (κράζω), and he uses it again in chapter 12 of John, verse 44, where we read, "And Jesus cried out and said, 'He who believes in Me does not believe in Me, but in Him who sent Me.'" He clearly wanted His audience to hear what He was going to say, and so He cries out with a loud voice. He raises His voice. J.C. Ryle, commenting on this verb “krazo” (κράζω), writes the following, and I quote: "This is a remarkable expression. We find our Lord departing from His usual practice when we read that He cried or raised His voice to a high pitch. The perverse ignorance of the Jews, their persistence in blindness to all evidence, and the great opportunity afforded by the crowds around Him in the temple courts were probably reasons why He cried. Our Lord is only said to have cried or lifted up His voice in four other passages in the Gospels," and he names them: "Matthew 27:50,""Mark 15:39,""John 7:37," and "John 12:44,"- end of quote.
So Jesus cries out. He lifts His voice to a high pitch. He wants everyone to hear Him, and He says, yes, you do know Me. I am Jesus of Nazareth, and you do know My name, and you do know which town I live in, but you don't really know Me. You don't really know My origin because I'm not just a normal man from Galilee. I happen to live there, but My origin is with the One who sent Me, and you don't know Him. You don't know Him. I do know Him because He's My Father. I am His Son. I'm from Him. He sent Me.
The very idea that in your unbelief and confusion you know Me is ludicrous. You don't know Me. You don't know where I came from. You don't know who sent Me. In fact, later on, as we will see when we get to it in "John 8:19," He says, "You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also." Jesus puts His finger on the problem in chapter 8 and verse 43. Look at what He says there. Just turn the page over and you will see it. Verses 43 to 45: "Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me."
That's the whole point. He says, you want to serve the devil, who is your father. Consequently, you can't hear the truth. Either your Father is God or your father is the devil, and there's no middle ground. You're caught up in a kingdom of lies. You can't know the truth. You can't believe the truth. You can't comprehend the truth. You're in a kingdom of lies.
And although Jesus' hearers, for the most part, did not know God, verse 28 of chapter 7, Jesus plainly stated it. Concerning Himself, He says, "You don't know Him, but I know Him. I know Him." And He uses the Greek verb “eido” (εἴδω). "I know Him. I “eido” (εἴδω) Him." It signifies to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, in contrast to the ignorance of the Jews, the ignorance of the crowds. Jesus had a unique and thorough knowledge of the Father because He is one with the Father, and He alone existed with the Father from all eternity .He alone can uniquely reveal the Father to us, as we learn back in chapter one, in verse 18: "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him."
And in John 17, verse three, Jesus describes the essence of eternal life. And I love this. What is the essence of eternal life? Jesus defines it for us. Very simply, knowing God. Knowing God, really knowing God. Knowing God. "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." You can't know God apart from Christ, right?
Luke 10, verse 22, Jesus makes this powerful, profound statement. "All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one, no one"—airtight, no wiggle room—"no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son." Now watch this: "and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." The only way that we can know the Father is through the Son, when the Son wills to reveal Him to us. Are you asking the Lord Jesus to reveal the Father to you so that you may know Him more deeply? That you may know Him, perhaps, for the first time, and then to know Him more deeply?
Jeremiah 9:23–24—you’re familiar with those verses. We do well to remember them again. Declares, "Thus says Yahweh, 'Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not a rich man boast in his'"—billions and trillions, right?—"riches." Don’t boast in your power. Don’t boast in your cleverness. Don’t boast in your wisdom. Don’t boast in your riches. Don’t boast in anything. "You want to boast," He says, "but let him who boasts boast in this; that he understands and knows Me, that I am Yahweh, who shows loving kindness and justice and righteousness on the earth. For I delight in these things," declares Yahweh.
Regarding unbelievers, Paul said in Ephesians 4:18 that "they are darkened in their mind." They can’t get it, they can’t grasp it. The mind is darkened, "alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart." But the goal of the Christian life is what? It is that we all attain—Ephesians 4:13—"to the unity of the faith," and here it is, "and of the full knowledge of the Son of God." Or as Paul stated it in his goal, his goal in life—Philippians 3:10—"that I may know Him." I want to know Him. My goal is to know Him. Paul, but you know Him. Oh, I’m not satisfied. I want to know Him more.
Is that your aim in life, beloved? If so, if so, if that is your aim, if that is the heartbeat within your chest, if that is your heart’s desire, if that is your longing—as we sang earlier—I want to know You. I want to know You more. If that is the case, then you’re reading and meditating on God’s Word daily with the prayer, "Lord, Lord, reveal Yourself to me all the more that I may know You all the more." We don’t come to the Scripture and say, well, I feel guilty today, as a Christian I should read, I’m gonna check box, you know, check the box, and I read. No, no. We come because we want to know Him. We read—we want to know Him. Oh, to know Him more and more every single day. And if you’ve never done so, I encourage you: read, read, read the Word of God. And if you want to grow in knowing Him more, you read the Word of God. And here’s some additional help that I can guide you as you read the Word of God. Here are some resources: J. I. Packer’s Knowing God is a classic. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy is short but deep. A. W. Pink’s Attributes of God. And then deeper yet and much longer, two volumes, the Puritan Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God. Pastor John MacArthur’s book, The Ultimate Priority, as well. And then John MacArthur’s and Richard Mayhue’s Biblical Doctrine has an easy-to-read treatment of God’s attributes in it.
And as I say this, let me stand with Spurgeon to qualify it, and I quote, "Visit many good books but live in the Bible." Visit many good books but live in the Bible.
And you will only be able to digest this if you come through faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and with the prayer that the Holy Spirit will give you light and be your Teacher. But I remind you that this is knowledge of God. This knowledge of God is not just so that you can have a cozy, syrupy relationship with Him. Knowing God and knowing more of Him will radically change you, transform your life, so that you become more like Christ.
And there's so many implications to this. This will affect your relationships with others so that the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, goodness—become more evident in your relationships with others because the gospel has direct implications on every area of your life, and mine. Furthermore, the better you know God, the more effectively you can represent Him as His ambassador to the lost world. The more you have personally tasted the kindness of the Lord, the more readily you'll be able to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
And so while there were many confused opinions about Jesus, and even to this day, there still are more than ever confused opinions about who Jesus is, you and I need to believe the truth about Him, which we have in His own testimony about Himself. He was sent here by God, He knew God in a unique way, He is the God-sent God, and we can only know God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, "I know Him," verse 29, "because I am from Him, and He sent Me." Jesus, as one author put it, was declaring His divine origin and divine commission. "I know Him because I am from Him, and He sent Me."
Jesus says, "I am sent by the true God, and none of you know the true God. I know Him because I came from Him, and He is the One who sent Me here." None of you believe that, and Jesus here, by the way—mark it down—He's declaring His own deity right there in the temple of Yahweh, claiming that He was one with God the Father. Jesus said, "I know Him because I am from Him." Would you look at verse 29? And I would encourage you, if you have a pen or a pencil, you could circle that little word "from," that preposition.
Now, what you need to know about this preposition is in the Greek, it's not the regular preposition “apo” (ἀπό), which primarily means "from," but rather, it is the Greek word “para” (παρά), which means that Jesus is underscoring that He came from being right beside God the Father in actual location and position. None of the great biblical characters ever made this kind of statement about themselves—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Elijah, Peter, Paul, John, so forth—none of them said, "I came from being right beside God the Father and was actually at a co-equal position relationship with Him," but Jesus did. This is a powerful deity statement.
This akes us back to John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh." Quite simply, Jesus is saying, My true origin is heavenly, it is eternal, it's with the Father.
Let me ask you, friends, this morning, what do you say about the origin of Jesus? You see, the origin of Jesus is clearly heavenly, seen in the virgin birth. That Jesus was born of a virgin means that He was not only, was not merely—pardon me—a man of two human parents, He was the only begotten Son of God. The virgin birth is recorded for us in Matthew and Luke, but it is also predicted in the Old Testament. Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, the virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Emmanuel." It was predicted back in Genesis 3, in verse 15, in that “Protoevangelium”, that first gospel proclaimed, where we read that "the woman's seed will crush the head of the serpent."
Then the virgin birth was part of the early church's confession from the very beginning—the Apostles' Creed. "We believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate." Ironically, it was actually some of the descendants of the Pharisees that provided even more conclusive evidence of the virgin birth. In some of the later Jewish writings, Jesus is said to be the illegitimate son of a wedded woman with a Roman soldier whose name was Pantera. They called Him Yeshua ben Pantera, and the question is, why would they invent a story about the birth of Jesus if He was merely the biological son of Joseph?
Isn't it easier to just stick with that? "Jesus was not virgin birth," they contended. "His father was someone else." So they came up with this false story to show His birth was unusual. But here's the truth that you can flee from or you can flee towards: the man, Jesus of Nazareth, had a heavenly origin. He was the God-man, the God-sent God.
Let's press on and see the callous reaction or rejection. The callous rejection by the—particularly the religious leaders. Jesus' statement of deity must have struck deep into the hearts of the Pharisees because they knew He was claiming to be God. Now, for the Jewish authorities, that was enough for them to arrest Him. So here, Jesus is making another claim to be God. Verse 30: "So they were seeking to seize Him, yet no man laid hand on Him." Either through the providence of God or God's providence of circumstances, or maybe through some miraculous restraining power, no one laid a hand on Him. And here's the reason why—end of verse 30. You see it? "Because His hour had not yet come." That's it. His hour had not yet come.
I love what Pastor MacArthur said concerning this. He said, and I quote, "The reason no man laid hand on Him to arrest Him was because His hour had not come. They were restrained by the invisible hand of God. They couldn't act because they were under divine control." And then he talks about the powerful, overwhelming reality of the invisible hand of God, which controls everything that happens in the universe. And he says this: "Redemptive history is planned by God and executed by God sovereignly, and everything happens according to His purpose and plan and timing." And he goes on to say, "They thirsted for His blood. They were determined to kill Him, yet by invisible restraint from above, they were powerless to do anything. Not a hair of His head could be touched without divine permission because God is in control of absolutely everything." And I love how he ends: "Not only in His life, but in ours."
So, they're paralyzed. What a comforting thought—reality. Not only in His life, but in ours. Remember earlier, the psalm that was quoted by Stuart? "The eye of Yahweh is set upon those who fear Him." His hour had not yet come. His time of trial and crucifixion is months away. No one can force God to act sooner or later than He plans to act. No one can stay His hand. No one can rush Him. No one can delay Him.
Verse 31: "But many of the crowd believed in Him, and they were saying, 'When the Christ comes, will He do more signs than this man did?'" The problem for the religious leader is being compounded here. They're losing control. I mean, it's getting out of hand. The crowd is starting to sway in a certain direction. They believe that He might be the Messiah because of all of the miraculous signs they had seen Him do.
Well, concerning that, by the way, and you see the wind in that direction, blowing in that direction in the Gospel of John, especially when you connect faith with the signs, and we know that most likely here in this case that this is not really a true saving faith, but nevertheless, they're being swayed in a certain direction. As one author said, there's three kinds of faiths. Faith in God, number one, that's faith like the devil and demons. He believes and trembles. Number two, faith in facts. That's a mental assent of certain facts about Jesus, such as birth, death, resurrection. But then number three, faith that saves. That's a personal, the personal moment in which one believes truly on the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
And here, I lean towards the conclusion that the belief here is like the one back in chapter two, verses 23 to 25, where many believed in Him because of the miracles that He did, but our Lord did not commit Himself to them because He knew what was inside of them. He knew their hearts. Maybe it's the kind of believing back in chapter six as well—the disciples who followed Him because He fed their bellies. And they eventually abandoned Him. It's a kind of a temporary, shallow, spurious, counterfeit faith.
Well, nothing here really to indicate that this was a permanent, genuine saving faith, although it may be possible. But again, the combination connecting this to the signs, it just takes us back to those incidents. When the Pharisees heard that many were leaning in that direction in terms of Him being the Messiah, they were extremely concerned, and immediately now, they sent officers to seize Him. Look at verse 32: "The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Him, and the chief priest and the Pharisees sent officers to seize Him." These things—what things? To what things does this refer? Primarily, the fact that some were beginning to consider Jesus, indeed, to be the Messiah, and the fact that many believed in Him. They had heard the whispered talk about Jesus before He arrived, and still more now, whispered talk about Him. Spurgeon, concerning the whispered talk— “kérussó” (κηρύσσω), whispering, muttering, whispering these things, afraid to speak out boldly—he said, because of the Pharisees, and therefore they quietly said it among themselves, "And after all, there is no fire more to be dreaded than a smoldering fire." And so they were concerned, deeply concerned.
End of verse 32: "The chief priest and the Pharisees sent officers to seize Him." The temple police—they're dispatched to go and arrest Him. And then in verse 33, Jesus speaks, and I want us to see the clear warning, the clear warning. This passage gives us not just the truth about where He came from, but also the truth about where He was going. Not just His origin—the origin of Jesus—but also the destination of Jesus. The destination of Jesus—look at verse 33. Therefore, Jesus knew the evil intent of the hearts of these religious leaders, that they had sent temple police to seize Him, to take Him away. This leads Him to make a statement that He will go away, but that it would be on His timetable, not theirs. They have no control over His departure in death, except to be the providentially placed pawns to carry out the crucifixion.
"I lay down My life of My own accord. No one takes it away from Me"—John 10, right? Verses 17 and 18. Jesus explains that His mission on earth is about to be over, because it is nearly—it's gonna be nearly just, I mean, it's six months away, remember that. There's only six months left now for that Passover where He will be arrested and crucified. The next Passover, He's going to die, rise, and ascend to the Father. Jesus said, verse 33, "For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me." In other words, the sands are running out of the hourglass. In a little while— “mikros chronos” (μικρός χρόνος) —He says, little while would be about six months.
The cross is looming in the future, and so He indirectly alludes to His destiny as the Lamb of God. And in order for Him to return to His Father, He knew He had to go through the cross. He had to die and be resurrected. The statement, "I go to Him who sent Me”, likely further incensed the religious leaders. They would see this as Him making another allusion to God being His Father. "I'm going to My Father, I came down from heaven, I'm going back to heaven." And then He tells them—He tells them this—and if you've missed everything else today, may I ask you, sit up straight in your chair and don't miss this. Don't let this pass you by.
He says to them, you will never go to heaven. Heaven is not for everyone. Heaven is for those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is for those who believe in the true Christ, the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and no one else. Either you're in Christ or you're out of Christ. You will die in Christ or you will die out of Christ. And if you die in Christ, you will be with Christ. And if you die out of Christ, you will be without Christ forever.
Verse 34: "You will seek Me and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come." Where is He going? To the Father. They cannot come. Why not? Well, two reasons. Number one, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You cannot go into the presence of God in human, corruptible bodies. You need to be raised up in Christ. You need to be glorified. And number two, their rejection of Christ. They reject Jesus as the Word, as the Son, as the Messiah, so they can't go to the Father because they reject the Son.
And what's that famous verse that all of us pretty much memorized? John 14:6—"Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one, no one comes to the Father but through Me.'" Once again, beloved, we see this reality that Jesus is aware of His pending death, but He knows that His death on the cross is not the end of the story. "I will be with you for a little while longer, but then I will be crucified. I will die. I will be buried, but I will rise from the grave, and I will ascend back to the One who sent Me."
Through His death on Calvary's cross, Jesus is returning to where He came from. He will be returning to the Father. He will be going to the place where they cannot go. They cannot find Him. Why? Because of the disbelief. Because of the disbelief.
Very briefly, I want you to see the clueless reaction, and I want to give points of application. The clueless reaction, verses 35 and 36: "The Jews said to one another, 'Where does this man intend to go that we will not find Him? Is He intending to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What is the statement that He said, "You will seek Me and will not find Me, and where I am, you cannot come"?'" Now the response of the Jewish leaders to these words is again what? Complete confusion, total misunderstanding. They are utterly, completely clueless. They think He means He's going to leave the country, He's going to go some place or places outside of Israel where the small Jewish community perhaps is, the diaspora outside of Israel, and there He's going to teach the Greek-speaking Jews or even maybe the Gentiles themselves. And because these religious leaders are so fastidious when it comes to their legalism, they wouldn't even dare to travel into Gentile territory. They regarded it as filthy, dirty. They would shake off the dust off of their feet if they were returning from that area. So they think that's where Jesus is going, that's what He means. "I'm going to a Gentile territory where you people wouldn't dare come."
Of course, that's not what He means at all. He means He's going to die and rise and ascend to the Majesty on High. That's His destination. He's going back to His origin place. That's His destination. And now we can flee from that truth and say that can't be. Or we can try to find an alternative explanation for what happened to Jesus of Nazareth, all of which—or explanations, all of which—quite frankly require more faith than the one that the Scripture gives us. Or we can move towards the truth and say His origin was heavenly, His destination was heavenly, He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, He is the God-man. "Lord Jesus, I believe, my Lord and my God."
And I want to say to you, sitting here this morning, who's still in your sin, my lost sinner friend, listen and listen carefully this morning. The title of the message is, Too Little, Too Late. Please listen carefully. Jesus said, "Therefore for a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me and you will not find Me, and where I am you cannot come." Not you should not come, not may not come, rather you cannot come. This is a solemn judgment. He's saying that these Jews will die in their sin.
It means that there will come a time in your life when you will seek Me and I won't be there. And that's not a new notion in the Scripture. "Genesis 6:3, 'My Spirit,' God says, 'shall not strive with man forever.'" This is God speaking. Listen, as tolerant and as gracious as God is, God will not strive with man forever and He won't wait open-endedly for us to repent. Before it's too late, I beg you, before it's too late and our years come to an end, we must choose good and not evil, to use the language of "Joshua 24:15," to serve and obey God and not our own selves. For Jesus said, "Unless you repent, you too will perish" ("Luke 13"). It's very possible. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Listen carefully. It's very possible to seek too late, to seek at a time when the Lord will not hear.
Second verse, Proverbs 1:24–29: "Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention and you neglected all My counsel and were not willing to accept My reproof, I will also laugh at your disaster and I will mock you, your dread, I will mock when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm and your disaster comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call on Me and I will not answer. They will seek Me earnestly but they will not find Me because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of Yahweh."
That is why the prophet Isaiah says what he says: "Seek the Lord"—what?—"while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near." There are replete warnings all through the Old Testament and New Testament: waiting too long, procrastinating, kicking the can down the road. "Seek the Lord while He may be found," meaning there will be a time when He will not be found. "Call on Him while He is near," meaning that there will be a time when He is not near.
Hell is really itself truth discovered too late. Truth discovered too late. Jesus makes a sobering, powerful, penetrating statement: "You will seek Me and not find Me." Sinners will seek Him and not be able to find Him. Listen, part of what hell is, is suffering for sin. Yes, "the wages of sin is death." Hell is also resentment, unrelieved bitterness under the destructive hand of a thrice holy God. But hell—hell is also eternal regret without remedy, eternal, everlasting remorse without hope. That's why there'll be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
You know, you try a new recipe, you put together the ingredients, you know, you're working hard three, four hours—recipe—and you bake it, you put it in the oven, it comes out and it's just a flop. And you're like so disappointed, your heart sinks. But you know what? You know what's comforting? You get more ingredients and you could try it again, and you get another chance. Not in hell. Not in hell. Hell is not, as someone said, where Christ is forgotten—it is where He is unavailable. "Where I am, you cannot come," shut out of Heaven forever. End of quote.
The common misconception is that, well, God—I mean, my God—is all love and He's good and everybody who is good and tries to be good, I mean, at the end of the day, God understands, everybody goes to Heaven. Everybody's trying to find God in their own way through this and that and the other and Buddhism and, you know, work performance, righteousness and all of that and through different religions. Anybody who's good. I'm one of the good people, I'm going to go to Heaven—that's how people think.
It's hard to imagine a more clear and devastating statement than this: "You will seek Me and you will not find Me, and where I am, you cannot come." You know what Martin Luther said concerning this portion of the text? He said this, and I quote: "These are terrible words. I do not like to read them."
Heaven is not for everyone. You believe that Heaven is for everyone—that's universalism. That's teaching that God will ultimately save all His creatures, every one of them. But the Scripture is clear, for we read in Matthew 25: "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world'" (verse 34). "He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels'" (verse 41). "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (verse 46). These are the words of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal punishment, eternal life—and the two shall never, ever meet.
And according to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, by our Lord Himself in Luke 16, after both men die, there's a great gulf between both of them, between those places. And that gulf—Jesus makes it crystal clear—this gulf is what? Fixed. Fixed. Not temporarily suspended, fixed. Fixed. Let me say that again: fixed. The words of Jesus stand as a barrier to every form of universalism that says all men will ultimately somewhere in the future be saved. "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life," and the one is as eternal as the other.
And so this is a warning passage, and I want you to just mark in your mind that the statement is made to the various groups in the crowd. It's made to the people in general, it's made to the Judeans, it's made to the pilgrims who came from everywhere, it's made to the religious leaders of the day. They are all given the same sentence—the common people and the rulers—it doesn't matter. There is no class separating the condemned. Either you're a Christ rejecter or you're with Christ.
There's no hierarchy of condemned people. The flames of judgment will fall on the people—all of them—who are just confused about Jesus. And the same Hell will be the eternal abode of the people who hate the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether you're a rejecter or whether you're a person who's straddling the fence undecided, the same warning is given to you. If you're not saved and you get up at the end of the service and you walk out that door, you leave without Christ, refusing Him who is speaking to you, you would be at risk of trampling underfoot the blood of Christ. You would have climbed over mountains of gospel truths.
And if you've never repented and believed upon Jesus Christ, I urge you, I beg you, I plead with you to commit your life to Him right now, this moment. Just right where you are, right where you are sitting, right where you sit, just humble yourself beneath the mighty hand of God and say, "Oh God, have mercy upon me, the sinner." I warn you, there is a coming and final judgment. And it's coming. "It is appointed unto man to die once and then comes judgment."
There's a final judgment coming in which the dead, great and small, will be raised up to stand before the great white throne judgment, and the books will be opened. And God has taken inscrutable records for your whole life, and everything you've ever thought, everything you've ever done, everything that's ever came out of your mouth—God has the entire record. And if you continue in unbelief, you will face all of it, and there will not be one drop of mercy. So much sin, so much judgment.
In this moment here today, God is extending grace to you. In this moment, God is extending mercy to you. In this moment, God is extending the offer of forgiveness to you. Do not be like those people in the crowd—callous rejection. Don't make the mistake to think too highly of yourself that God owes you another offer. You must receive His offer today. "Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart." And if you are unsaved and have not heard the voice of God in this today, I really fear for you.
"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart." And while it is today, come to the Lord Jesus Christ. You have no assurance that you will see tomorrow. Come to Him.
You need to come to Christ today and be saved. He who hardens his heart, though often reproved, shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy. "Proverbs 29:1." "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, today is the day of salvation." If you say no to God yet one more time—if you say no to God, number 558 times—today, perhaps for you, your heart may be irreparably hardened, never to be brought back to the place of repentance.
You need Christ. You need to run to Christ. You need to flee to Christ. You need to come before Christ and humble yourself and say, Lord Jesus, Lamb of God who died for me upon Calvary's cross, have mercy upon me. I am the sinner. Forgive me. I confess my sin. I turn from my life of rebellion. Give me a new heart. Take out this old stony heart and give me a new heart. God, today, don't allow me to go yet another day lost, separated from You. God, would You please save me today? And the Bible says, "The one who comes to Me, I will by no means cast out." "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near."
Let's pray:
Father, we thank You for this portion of Your Word, the sobering words of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, O Lord, we pray with heavy hearts for those in our midst who are in this room but not in Christ. And perhaps they have heard the gospel proclaimed again and again and again and again and again. And they remain in their sin. And they keep saying no to Jesus.
O God, O God, O Lord, the God who rejoices in the recovery of sinners, open their eyes. Draw them to You. Let them see their need of You. Let them see the depths of their depravity and sin. Let them feel the horror of hell in their hearts. And let them recognize that the only remedy to escape the wrath of God in hell is to turn to the wrath bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ, our substitute. And with humility and a heart of love, to say, Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me, the sinner. Change me, transform me, forgive me. I confess my sin. Help me turn from my life of rebellion. Take away this old stony heart of mine, the God-hating heart, and give me a new heart. Take away this heart that loves idols, foremost of which the idol of self. Don't allow me to go yet another day lost and separated from You. Lord Jesus, save me.
Please, Lord, I pray, we pray that You would save sinners today. And for us, Your children, O God, we thank You for what You've saved us from. We thank You that where You are, we will be. "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." We look forward to that day to be with You forever. And in the meantime, Lord, help us to know You more. Help us to pursue to know You more—more of You, more of You—to adore You more, to love You more, to seek You more, and to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into God's marvelous light. We pray this in His name and for His glory.
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