miracles of Jesus

WHY DON’T PEOPLE BELIEVE? — John 12:37-50

unbelief, Uncategorized

INTRODUCTION;

It is now only a few days before the crucifixion and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 36 tells us that Jesus hid from the multitudes in order to spend some concentrated time with His disciples before His death.  In this passage of Scripture, John 12:37-50, the apostle John gives a summary of the public ministry of the Lord Jesus to the nation of Israel, and then he gives Jesus’ response to the nation.

I.  JOHN’S EVALUATION OF THEIR UNBELIEF (verses 37-41)

John has three things to say about the Jew’s rejection of Jesus.  First, it was illogical, considering all the miracles Jesus had performed to prove He was the Son of God.  There are two aspects of Jesus’ miracles that John emphasizes.  In verse 37, John uses the words “so many miracles”.  Not only were there many miracles but there were also many kinds of miracles, some of which were repeated.  For example, there was the feeding of the 3000 and the feeding of the 5000.  There was also the raising of Jairus’s daughter as well as the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  The large number and the great variety of miracles demonstrated Christ’s power and gave the people many opportunities to observe and examine them.

Jesus performed His miracles “before them”.  Most of His miracles were not done from a distance or in secret, but right in front of their very eyes.  To reject these miracles was to deny the obvious.  The apostle John expresses amazement that, though the Lord Jesus performed so many mighty works, the Jewish people as a nation did not believe in Him.  As John mentioned before, their unbelief was not caused by any lack of evidence.  The people did not want to believe.   They refused to believe.

Secondly, their unbelief was predicted.  In verse 38, John quotes Isaiah 53:1 when he says, “Lord, who has believed our report?  And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”  There is a question over who is speaking in this quote:  “who has believed our message?”.  To say that it refers to Isaiah and the other prophets doesn’t fit with verse 2, nor with Isaiah 52:15 or chapter 54 of Isaiah.  I would like to suggest that the speaker in verse 1 is the nation of Israel — the future nation of Israel which will have come to believe in Jesus Christ.  This new Israel that is to come is looking back to the time of Christ and asking, “Who believed the message we received then?  How many recognized the “arm” or the power of God in the miracles of Christ?”  The obvious answer is “not many”, not many at all.  The form of this question is an emphatic way of saying that the message was rejected.

Thirdly, in verses 39-41, John declares that their unbelief was decreed by God.  In verse 39, he says, “For this cause, they could not believe.”  Then John quotes the words of the prophet Isaiah, saying, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart; lest they see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, and be converted, and I heal them.”   Let’s not misunderstand the words of John and the prophet Isaiah.  The people are not being condemned against their will, or before they have an opportunity to choose for themselves.  John is writing here about a cause-and-effect relationship and God is not the cause of their spiritual condition.  They are the cause.  What they persist in doing, they will become.  It doesn’t say that they can’t repent or that God won’t forgive them if they do so.   God has not put an obstacle in their path.  They have stubbornly put an obstacle in God’s path and God is allowing them to have their way and experience the consequences of their disobedience.

The word “hardened”, in verse 40, comes from the Greek word for “callus”.  I’m sure we’ve all had calluses on our hands or feet before, haven’t we?  Wherever there is a callus, the skin is not as sensitive to touch or pain because that hard callus covers the nerves underneath it.  That same process can happen spiritually.  The more a person rejects the Gospel message, the harder it becomes for him or her to receive it.

One of the early church fathers, Augustine of Hippo, commented on this passage of Scripture.  He said, “If I be asked why they could not believe, I answer without hesitation, ‘because they would not; because God foresaw their evil will, and he announced it beforehand by the prophet.’ ”

Pastor Ray Stedman used an illustration that brings this principle across clearly by applying it to our human bodies.  Here is his illustration:

“Tie your arm to your body and leave it tied, unmovable, for a week.  When you untie it, you will find that you can hardly move it; it will have lost its ability to function, not because God wants people to lose their arm function.  No, but God determined the law that says, ‘use it or lose it.’ . . . It is also true of one’s moral life.  If you don’t exercise faith when you have the opportunity, you will gradually lose the ability to do so, until there will come a day when you cannot exercise faith.  By the law of nature, then, God has hardened your heart and blinded your eyes.  Having chosen that, that is what you become.  If you refuse to act on truth, you will finally lose the ability to recognize it.  It has been said,

“There is a line by us unseen, that crosses every path,
The hidden boundary between God’s patience and His wrath.”

II.  BELIEF IN MIND, NOT IN ACTION (verses 42-43)

As the apostle John continues to evaluate their unbelief, he makes a statement in verses 42 and 43 that could be misinterpreted if it isn’t tied to his previous statement.  John is not saying that many of the authorities became followers of Jesus Christ.  What he appears to be saying is that many of the authorities were entertaining thoughts that Jesus was the Messiah, but there was no evidence of a commitment to follow Christ at that point in time.  True faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is life-changing.  The indwelling Christ overcomes the fear of man and gives the true believer the desire and the power to stand firm in the face of opposition.  There is no such thing as a secret disciple of Christ.

In 373 A.D., a man by the name of John Chrysostom spent some time alone in the mountains of Antioch, seeking to know God better.  He learned from that experience that, with God on His side, he could stand alone against anyone or anything.  That lesson was put to the test later on in his life.  In 389 A.D., he was appointed patriarch of Constantinople, where his zeal for reform antagonized Empress Eudoxia, who had him exiled.  Allowed to return after a short time, Chrysostom again infuriated Eudoxia, who sent him away again.  How did Chrysostom respond to such persecution?  With these words:  “What can I fear?  Will it be death?  But you know that Christ is my life and that I shall gain by death.  Will it be exile?  But the earth and all its fullness are the Lord’s.  Poverty I do not fear; riches I do not sigh for, and from death, I do not shrink.”

The rulers of the Jews, on the other hand, refused to confess Jesus Christ before men because of their fear of the consequences.  The approval of men was more important than the approval of God.  That attitude ruled out the possibility of any real commitment to Jesus Christ as their Lord.  There were two exceptions.  After the crucifixion and death of Jesus, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea risked their reputations and their lives when they asked Pilate for the body of Jesus Christ so that they could give Him a King’s burial.

III.  THE SERIOUSNESS OF REJECTING CHRIST (verses 44-50)

After finishing his evaluation of that situation, the apostle John now quotes the words Jesus spoke to them at that point in time.  Verse 44 says that Jesus “cried out”  He raised His voice so that everyone could hear what He was about to say.  Here is His first statement:  “He who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.  And he who sees me sees him who sent me.”  Jesus is saying that He and the Father are one in essence.  They are both God.  To see Him is to see God because Jesus is God in the flesh.  Jesus’ second statement is:  “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.”  C.S. Lewis, the author of Mere Christianity and many other Christian books, said these words:  “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  When we become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord, we see life from a different perspective, don’t we?  The apostle Peter said it well in 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light,”  The present and future are much brighter and clearer when we know the Lord, aren’t they?

Now Jesus tells us the other side of the story.  Judgment is for those who refuse to believe in Him, but Jesus is reminding them that His first coming is a time of grace, not of judgment.  He came to earth to save the world, not to judge it.  But He warns them that there will be a last day and that will be a day of judgment and condemnation.  His own words will condemn them if they refuse to believe.  He is giving them a final notice, and He adds that His words are the words that the Father has told Him to say to them.  You can add verse 36 to the end of verse 50.  “When He [Jesus] had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid Himself from them.”

Have you ever received a final notice in the mail?  There was a cartoon in Readers’ Digest Magazine many years ago.  A wife was opening the mail and she said to her husband, “The bank says that this is our last notice.  Isn’t it wonderful that they aren’t going to bother us anymore?”  It’s never wise to ignore final notices, is it?  A man received a “Second Notice” from the IRS that his tax payment was overdue and that unless it was immediately forthcoming, he would face legal action.  He hurried to the IRS office with his payment in hand and said, “I would have paid it sooner but I never received your First Notice.  The clerk replied, “We ran out of ‘First Notices.’  Besides, we discovered that the ‘Second Notices’ are much more effective.”  Jesus’ words here at the end of chapter 12 are God’s Final Notice.  It’s a call to believe in Him for salvation and to live for Him until our last day on this earth.

In the children’s fantasy, Alice in Wonderland, Alice came to a junction in the road that led in different directions, so she asked the Cheshire Cat for advice.

“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

The Cat is right.  It doesn’t matter which way we go if we don’t care where we end up.  But most of us do care where we end up, don’t we?  The decisions we make throughout our lives do matter.  We all come to forks in the road of our lives and make decisions that will impact our future.  If we have Christ in our lives and His Word in our hearts and on our minds, we have all the light we need.  Psalm 119:105 says, “Thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  But God’s Word not only lights the way.  It is also used by the Holy Spirit to empower us to obey as we meditate upon it each day.  Joshua 1:8 says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do all that is written in it.  For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”  Will we allow God to be successful in using our lives for His glory today and every day of our lives?    .

CONSTRUCTION SITE:  Completed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SAY IT! WE DARE YOU! — John 10:22-30

John 10:22-30, Uncategorized

INTRODUCTION:

Do the words “I dare you” bring back any memories from your childhood?  Were you being challenged or coerced to do something you really didn’t want to do or say something you really didn’t want to say?  Was it something that might get you into trouble?  Did you give in to the pressure and take the dare?  Were there negative consequences?  Did you wish you hadn’t given in to the pressure?  Or did you refuse the dare in spite of the things people said to you?  Most of us have been in that situation at some point in our lives, haven’t we?

Jesus was no exception.  In this next passage of Scripture, John 10:22-30, we are going to see how Jesus responds to such treatment directed at Him.

I.  THE SETTING (verses 22-23)

The scene hasn’t changed, but the time has.  Verse 22 begins about two and a half months after verse 21.  The apostle John is going from one feast to the next.  Verse 22 begins with the words, “Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem.”  This was not one of the Old Testament feasts that God required the Jews to celebrate each year.  This feast celebrates the cleansing and rededication of the temple in 164 B.C. after the Maccabean revolt ended the harsh rule of Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of Syria.  It is still celebrated today as Hanukkah (“To dedicate”).  John probably tied these two feasts together because Jesus is, once again, going to be using the metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep.

The rest of verse 22 says, “It was winter”.  John may have written those words to confirm that it was no longer the Fall season, and as an explanation for Jesus’ presence in Solomon’s colonnade.  Jesus was poor and may not have possessed any cold-weather clothing.  Solomon’s colonnade, unlike the various courtyards in the temple, had a roof over it and offered some relief from the cold weather outside.

II.  THE CONFRONTATION (verse 24)

Jesus’ time of meditation comes to a quick halt as the Jewish leaders close in on Him and surround Him.  They have been planning and waiting for the time when Jesus would be back in their neighborhood again.  They’ve been rehearsing the question they want to ask Him, how they want to say it, and how they are going to respond to His answer.  Now Jesus was trapped within their circle and His forward progress had come to a sudden halt.  The leaders of the Jews had maneuvered themselves around Jesus so that escape was impossible.

In verse 24, they say to Him, “How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”  They phrase their words in such a way as to put the blame on Him, and they are saying, “How long are you going to disturb and upset us by your teachings?  It’s your own fault that we don’t believe you.  If you’re the Christ, then say the words:  ‘I am the Christ [the Messiah].’  We dare you!”  They are “twisting Jesus’ arm”, so to speak, in order to get Him to say what they want Him to say.

III.  JESUS’ INITIAL RESPONSE (verse 25)

When you were growing up, can you remember hearing the words, “I told you already but you weren’t listening”?  If you’re a parent, you may have said those words to your children.  It’s humiliating and embarrassing to be on the receiving end of those words, isn’t it?  How about the phrase, “How many times do I have to tell you!”  That one really makes you feel ashamed.  Jesus is about to give these leaders a “gentle scolding”, at least that’s how it starts.  He looks around at them and says, “I told you, and you do not believe”.

When did Jesus tell them that He was the Messiah?  That’s a question that needs an explanation.  Jesus never said to the Jews, “I am the Messiah”.  Only in His conversation with the woman at the well in Sychar, did Jesus say, “I who speak to you am He” when she spoke of the coming Messiah (John 4:26).  However, the word “Messiah” had a different meaning to the leaders of the Jews.  They believed the Messiah would come suddenly with the armies of heaven to conquer the Romans.  They pictured Him as a handsome, distinguished man dressed in Royal robes.  The Lord Jesus was the opposite of that description.

When Jesus said, “I told you”, He may have been referring primarily to the description He gave them of Himself two months earlier, right there in the temple.  At that time, they were listening as Jesus referred to Himself as the true shepherd and called Himself “the door of the sheepfold”, and “the good shepherd”.  There are many Old Testament scripture passages that refer to God as a shepherd, such as Genesis 49:24; Psalm 23, Isaiah 40, Jeremiah 23; Ezekiel 34, and Zechariah 11.  They were familiar with those scriptures.  They knew those words were the equivalent of calling Himself the Messiah.  The word “shepherd” was often used as a figure of speech, referring to the ruling king (1 Kings 22:17).

In the rest of verse 25, Jesus continues by saying, “the works that I do in My Father’s name, these bear witness of Me.”  Not only did Jesus tell them, but He also showed them by His miracles that He was the promised Messiah.  Many of His miracles fulfilled the prophecies that were made about the Messiah in the Old Testament scriptures.  Isaiah 35 speaks of the coming of the Messiah, and in verses 35 and 36, the prophet Isaiah describes the miracles He will perform saying,  “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.  Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy.”    Isaiah mentions these miracles several times in his book of prophecies, and he wrote those prophecies down over 700 years before the birth of the Lord Jesus.  The Jewish leaders were very familiar with those prophecies.  They also knew that Jesus performed every miracle on the list.  Those amazing miracles, along with many others, offered conclusive evidence that Jesus was the promised Messiah, yet they refused to believe and chose to oppose Him all the more.  The problem wasn’t a lack of evidence, but a lack of faith in spite of the evidence.  Why didn’t these leaders become convinced by the evidence and respond to Jesus in faith as other people have done?

III.  THE CAUSE OF THEIR UNBELIEF (verse 26)

In verse 16, Jesus gave them the reason for their opposition to Him.  He said, “But you do not believe because you are not My sheep.”  Others have believed based upon that evidence, so the problem wasn’t a lack of evidence.  Notice what Jesus did not say.  He didn’t say, “You are not My sheep because you do not believe.”  In that one sentence, Jesus is communicating the God-ward and the man-ward aspects of salvation.  They were not chosen to be His sheep and given the gift of faith, and they chose not to be His sheep by their unbelief.  From a human standpoint, a person becomes His sheep by believing, but from the divine standpoint, a person believes because he or she is God’s sheep.  Divine sovereignty and human responsibility are wrapped up in those words of the Lord Jesus (John 6:36-37; John 8:47).

IV.  THE RESULTS OF FOLLOWING HIM (verses 27-29)

In verses 27-29, Jesus proceeds to tell them what they are missing.  I consider these three verses to be the strongest and clearest passage on the assurance of salvation in all the scriptures.  Jesus begins by saying, “My sheep listen to my voice.”  They listen with the desire to obey their shepherd.  Then He says, “I know them.”  Jesus has a personal relationship with each of them.  They are special to Him.  Just as He said in verse 14, “I know my own and my own know me.”  For these reasons “they follow me”.  They trust their Shepherd and follow Him wherever He leads them.  Jesus is speaking of those who have placed their trust in Him, yielded their lives to His control, and seek to be led by Him and imitate Him.

Now Jesus describes to his listeners the greatest miracle that He has ever performed.  It is greater than all of His physical miracles because it is a spiritual miracle and it lasts forever.  It’s a miracle that He continues to perform in the lives of people today – people He knows intimately and has drawn to Himself.  The Lord Jesus begins His description of that miracle in verse 28 when He says, “and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.”  Eternal life sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it?  But it’s not just the length of life but also the quality of life, both now and forever.  King David gives us a taste of heaven in Psalm 16:11, where he says, “Thou wilt make known to me the path of life; In Thy presence is fullness of joy; In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever.”  Heaven is not only going to be a place of eternal life, but also of eternal enjoyment.  When we think about what we will be missing, it adds to the enjoyment of what we receive by the grace of God.  Jesus said, “. . . they shall never perish”.  The word “perish” means to be destroyed forever, to be punished in hell for all eternity.  That is what we all deserve because of our sins, and that is what Christ delivers us from when we choose, by His enabling, to follow Him.

All of us like the feeling of security, don’t we.  We like to feel secure in our jobs and in our relationships with people.  Here is an example of the loss of security.  The sales manager of a company and one of his sales representatives stood looking at a map on which colored pins indicated the company representatives in each area.  “I’m not going to fire you, Wilson”, the manager said, “but I’m loosening your pin a bit to emphasize the insecurity of your situation.”  There’s one employee who went home feeling anxious and insecure!  If you are a devoted follower of Jesus Christ, you can rest in the fact that your eternal security isn’t pinned to a wall;  it’s nailed to the cross of Christ.  He did it all.

I love the imagery that Jesus used here in verse 28, and also in verse 29, to describe the security of the believer in Him.  He said, “no one shall snatch them out of My hand.”  We use our hands to hold and secure an object.  Likewise, we are safely and comfortably in His grip, and nothing or no one is going to be able to pry us loose because He is never going to let go of us.  But Jesus doesn’t stop there in His description of our security as His sheep.  He adds, in verse 29, “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all.”  We were a gift from the Father to Jesus before the foundation of the world (John 17:9-10; Ephesians 1:3-6), and His Father is “greater than all”.  He is the greatest power in the universe and He cares about His sheep and loves them also.  The proof of the Father’s love and care is found in the next statement made by Jesus:  “no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”  If you’re a true child of God, evidenced by a changed life, you’re in the best of hands.

Why did Jesus change His imagery from the shepherd to the imagery of hands?  Didn’t the shepherd imagery convey protection and security strongly enough to his listeners?  As always, Jesus has a good reason for what He says and does.  Once again, Jesus is taking the minds of these leaders of the Jews on a journey back into the Old Testament scriptures, this time to the Psalms.  There are many places in the Old Testament that speak about the hand of God but there are four verses from three different psalms that are directly related to Jesus’ use of the word “hand”, and He is refreshing their memories.  The first verse is Psalm 119:173, which says, “Let your hand be ready to help me.”  The Psalmist is saying, “I need your hand” – “I need the security of knowing that you are near and prepared to act on my behalf because you care about me.”  In Psalm 115, the psalmist contrasts the heathen idols with the Lord, and in verse 7 he says, “They [the idols] have hands, but they cannot feel.”  Idols have no feeling in their hands because they aren’t alive.  They lack emotions and sensitivity.  The last verse ties directly into the passage of scripture we are studying.  Psalm 95:6-7 says, “Come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.  For He is our God, and we are the people of His pastures, and the sheep of His hand.”   Then, in verse 8, the psalmist says, “Don’t harden your hearts.” 

Jesus brought those psalms to their minds for a reason.  He’s saying to His listeners, “Your Maker and your true Shepherd is standing in your midst.  You’re surrounding Him!  Come close to Me and worship Me with humble and joyful hearts, as the psalmist said.”  “Obey the words of the psalmist and don’t harden your hearts to Me and My words.”  Jesus is giving them an invitation to worship Him, and He adds to the words of the psalmist when He says, in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.”  He and the Father unite their hands of protection because they are one and the same God.  Charles Spurgeon said, “It’s like the church bells ringing, calling out and inviting the people to worship.”

CONCLUSION:

Are you a worshiper of God?  Are you a worshiper of Jesus Christ?  You can’t be a worshiper of the true God if you are not a worshiper of the Lord Jesus Christ because He is God (John 1:1-3, 14).  All of us are worshipers.  We all worship someone or something.  We all value something more highly than anything else.  Each of our lives is oriented in a particular direction and this orientation affects our thoughts, our motives, and our priorities.

Do you hear the “church bells” ringing in your heart?  Is God inviting you and drawing you to worship the only true God?  That’s the proper response to the Lord Jesus Christ because He is God.  As the psalmist said, “Don’t harden your hearts.”  Respond to His leading and draw close to Him.  Make Him the object of your worship today.

If you are a devoted worshiper and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can learn from Jesus’ example as He responded to the external pressures exerted upon him by the Jewish leaders.  He didn’t give in to their demands but stood His ground as they tried to force Him to say things that would be misinterpreted and used against Him. The Lord Jesus always did the will of His heavenly Father while He was here on this earth.  That was His delight because of the closeness of their relationship.  As His sheep, it should be our delight to follow Him in spite of opposition because our closest and most secure relationship on this earth is with Him.  

Here is a true story of how sheep reacted when others were trying to lead them astray.  During World War I, some Turkish soldiers tried to steal a flock of sheep from a hillside near Jerusalem.  The shepherd, who had been sleeping, suddenly awakened to see his sheep being driven off on the other side of the ravine.  He could not hope to recapture his flock by force single-handedly, but suddenly he had a thought.  Standing up on his side of the ravine, he put his hands to his mouth and gave his own peculiar call, which he used each day to gather his sheep to him.  The sheep heard the familiar sound.  For a moment they listened and then, hearing it again, they turned and rushed down one side of the ravine and up the other toward their shepherd.  It was impossible for the soldiers to stop the animals.  The shepherd was away with them to a place of safety before the soldiers could make up their minds to pursue them — and all because his sheep knew their master’s voice and wanted to be with him and follow him.

When others try to manipulate you or lead you astray, remember whose sheep you are and choose to follow closely after Him.  You’ll be glad you did, and so will He. 

CONSTRUCTION SITE:  COMPLETED

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