John 10:22-25 (You Must Believe In The Divine Son)

When we chose the Gospel of John, about 80 % of the people in this room were not here.

So it's good every now and then to remember why we chose the Gospel of John, because by making that choice, we were committing to a multi -year dive into one of the

Gospels as a brand new church plant. We wanted to do a Gospel, it wasn't our first book that we did, we actually, we did

Ruth, which is off the books, you can't find those sermons anywhere, maybe one day they'll come back, but first we did

Jude, because we wanted to be a people who contend for the Gospel of Christ. And then as we were asking ourselves, what does the

Gospel of Christ mean for us as a brand new church, what does it mean to have a high Christology, what does it mean to know

Jesus Christ, we decided to start with the Gospel, with the bedrock, with the foundation, because as a brand new church, what other foundation could we build upon than the rock who is

Jesus Christ. Now when we chose John, we weren't saying that the other Gospels were inferior to John, all of them are excellent, and all of them are worthy of our study, but we really felt like that the purpose that John was writing with really resonated with our hearts.

Matthew, if you remember, his purpose was to a Jewish audience, and he wanted to write and show how all of the

Old Testament promises were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Luke was written to a Gentile audience, and he was trying to let everyone know that these promises don't just apply to Jewish males, but they apply to whether you're male or female,

Jew or Greek, they apply to the world. Mark was written immediately, with urgency and passion, it's because it was written by Peter, it's the testimony of Peter that Mark was written by.

His Gospel is a Gospel that the Kingdom of God has come, and it's going to not just come, but come in power, and it's going to come immediately in power, and it's going to overtake the world eventually, and overthrow the

Roman Empire, and it did, 300 years after that Gospel was given, it overthrew the largest empire on earth, and it's still overthrowing empires today.

Anyway, all three of the synoptic Gospels have some aspect of the

Kingdom of God, John though is going to answer how, the synoptic

Gospels answer what, and when, and why, John is going to answer how, how do we get into the

Kingdom of God, how do we inherit these old promises, how do we become members and citizens of a

Kingdom that will never end, that will never perish, and that will take over the cosmos, how, and John is going to answer that by grace through faith.

John is the one who says that no one can come to God unless, or to Christ unless God draws him, so John is alerting us that this is a

God -centric salvation, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and all the promises that they're communicating only come about by the sovereign hand of God, and as we thought about that, we thought that there could be no better introduction to the church, no better book to begin with than the

Gospel of John. We will be a teenage church by the time we finish, but that's okay too.

John teaches us the doctrines of grace. John teaches us that our salvation is by God and His work and His power alone.

Now, we get John's purpose, which is listed in chapter 20, verse 31, and we need to cover this more frequently than we have.

It's been a couple weeks since we've done it, but I want to share with you what the purpose of the Gospel of John is, and it comes to us in chapter 20, verse 31.

This is what it says. But these things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him, you will have life in His name.

There's a threefold purpose to the Gospel of John, that you would believe that He is the human Christ in fulfillment of all the

Old Testament promises, that you would believe that He is God in the flesh. He's not just man, but He's fully

God, and that by believing those things, you will have life in His name, and by not believing those things, you will not have life.

The Gospel of John describes to us heaven and hell and how they lie in the balance of faith in the

God -man, Christ. And that theme is advanced over and over and over in this book.

We are going to meet with that theme next week as we deal with John 10, verse 30.

This week, we're probably not going to be able to get to it, but I will reference it here. John 10, verse 30 says, That's the most explicit claim that Jesus has made verbally about His divinity to date.

He's saying that I and the Father are one, and He's not talking about theological unity.

He's not saying, I believe the same things God believes. He's not saying that. The Pharisees would have probably been like, yeah, us too.

He's not talking about missiological unity. That word just means a theology of missions. He's not just saying,

I'm in alignment with God's purposes, and I'm doing the kinds of things that God has told me to do. Pharisees would have probably said, yeah, us too.

They got it wrong, but they would have probably said that. Jesus is saying that He has substantial and essential unity with God, that He is in one substance and one essence and one being and one nature and one glory and one majesty and one divinity with the

Father. He's saying, I am God. That's what the statement means.

And it's the most explicit claim that He has made thus far, and it incenses the

Pharisees against Him. For my children, that just means they got really mad.

Now, as you know, I tend to take my time. So we have had a few chapter, a few sermons already in John 10, four on the first 18 verses, two and three verses that followed it, and there's probably four or five more that are coming on the rest of John 10.

But we have one opportunity to cover the gospel of John, and we want to cover it well. So today, there's going to be a lot of background that's going to aid us in our time through the rest of John 10.

There's going to be some background on a brand new feast that is mentioned, because that feast has never been mentioned in the gospel of John, and it's only mentioned in the gospel of John, so we need to understand what it is.

We're going to be looking at how Jesus' timeline in this passage is narrowing down. He's running out of time.

His life is coming closer and closer and closer to its end, and we're going to see one final public interaction.

This is the final public interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees before His Passion Week.

We're going to see how that, in the end, has application for us. So, if you will, turn with me to John 10, 22 through 25, and we will examine these things together.

At that time, the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon.

And the Jews then gathered around Him and were saying to Him, How long will you keep us in suspense?

If you were the Christ, tell us plainly. And Jesus answered them, I told you, and you do not believe.

You do not believe the works that I do in my Father's name. These testify of me.

Let's pray. Dear God, I pray that what we would take away today is not just Jewish culture, intertestamental period, feast, and how they were established.

Lord, I pray that the details that we learn would be interesting, but more than anything, that they would guide us to an adoring, passionate, overflowing worship of Christ, the

God -man. Lord, if we're confused about that, we're confused about the only thing that matters.

Lord, I pray that in the end, that we really would lean into that simple faith, faith in Christ, because,

Lord, that is ultimately all that matters and all that separates us between heaven and hell is belief in the

Son of God. Lord, I pray that we would walk away as Christians emboldened in our belief, more passionate about our belief, more convicted, more in love with You, more hating of our own sin, more deliberately trying to live a life of holiness.

Lord, if there's someone here today who does not know Jesus Christ, Lord, I pray by the power of Your Holy Spirit that You would awaken them, that You would shake them out of their spiritual grave, and that at the sound of the preaching of Your gospel,

You would breathe new life into them. Lord, we ask these things in Christ's name.

Amen. One of the things that's hard for us to notice in passages like this is the gaps in time that happen, because there's a gap in time between verse 21 and verse 22 that John didn't tell us about.

When we get to the end of 21, he doesn't say, and three months passed, and then verse 22.

He assumes that we've read and studied and that we know our Bible, and that's a good assumption.

We should be doing those things. But John doesn't fill us in. He doesn't fill us in because he thinks that we ought to know some of these things.

So today, we're going to learn some of these things so that we can see them in the text and so that we will be able to navigate and say, ah, look, time is passing, and that's going to be really important.

Jesus has a three -and -a -half -year ministry. The reason that we know Jesus has a three -and -a -half -year ministry is not because Christian culture has told us so, not because Sister Susie who taught your

Sunday school put it on a flannel graph. We know. I don't know if you know what those are.

We had them when I was a kid. We had a three -and -a -half -year ministry of Jesus because of the gospel of John.

We know it because John recorded four Passovers in his book.

That's how we know that it's a three -and -a -half -year ministry. There's a couple months in John 1 that are before the first Passover.

The first Passover happens in John 2 where Jesus goes to the city, and then they're asking him all these questions, and he says, if you destroy this temple,

I will rebuild it in three days. That's the first Passover in John. They misunderstand everything. They reject him out of confusion.

And then you have a whole year that happens in between John 2 and John 5.

And just a few events are recorded. The Samaritan ministry is recorded. Jesus' time with Nicodemus is recorded in verse 3.

Then he comes to Jerusalem in chapter 5, and he heals a man on the

Sabbath. And that moment is the moment where the Jews decide to kill him. Everything after that is hatred and murderous rage where they want to kill the

Son of God. But that's the second Passover. It says, the feast of the Jews. That's the Passover. Now between John 5 and John 6 where the third

Passover is mentioned, an entire year happens that John doesn't cover. John is not concerned about covering those events because he knows that Matthew and Luke have already covered them.

That's the Galilean ministry of Jesus that Matthew and Luke cover in their gospel. So John 6, third

Passover happens. Now, that means that two and a half years of Jesus' life occur between John 1 and John 6.

That means that from John 6, he only has one year left of his life. From John 6 to John 19 where he dies.

That means that the whole gospel is disproportionately focused on his final year.

But we can narrow down even more than that because John 7 says that he goes to another feast.

That's the feast of booths. And that's the feast where all of the Jewish males, it's one of the three high holy feasts, they come to the city of Jerusalem.

They camp out in these little handmade booths or tents. And Jesus is teaching them there in the temple or in the city of Jerusalem.

John 8 also continues the festival of booths. It doesn't change. So you have Jesus saying things like,

I am the living water. I am the light of the world. I am before Abraham was,

I am. He's saying those things in the same week as John 7. John 9, the

Pharisees at the end of John 8 pick up stones to kill him and he leaves the city of Jerusalem. As he's leaving the city of Jerusalem, he interacts with this blind man.

Same day, same week, he interacts with the blind man. The Pharisees follow him and they get into this theological debate in John 10.

So John 6, John 7, 8, 9, and half of John 10 is one week.

And it's three months after the Passover because that's when the feast of booths happened. The feast of booths was in September.

The Passover was in April, so six months. Jesus has six months left to live by the time that you get to our passage last week.

When you get to our passage today, Jesus has only three months left to live. It says this in 19 through 23.

A division occurred among the Jews because of these words. Many of them were saying, he has a demon and is insane.

Why do you listen to him? Others were saying, these are not the sayings of one demon possessed.

The demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he? Gap starts right there. Three months happened between that question mark and verse 22.

Three months. Verse 23 or 22. At that time, the feast of dedication took place, which is in November, December.

So Jesus's life now is three months shorter in this verse than it was in verse 21.

John assumes again that we will see these things. But most of us, because we grew up in a

Christian culture that doesn't talk about these things, don't know what the feast of dedication is. I would be shocked if the majority of the people in this room know what the feast of dedication is because we just don't hear about it.

We don't learn about it. The Old Testament doesn't mention it. It is not one of the feasts that Moses prescribed in the law of God.

So if it's not in the Mosaic law, and it's not in the prophets, and it's not in the histories, and it's not any of that, where do we get this feast of dedication?

And why, if it's not mentioned in Moses's law, does Jesus participate in it? And how do we know when it happened?

And there's so many questions that we have. Well, we have to do some work in history if we're going to understand these things.

We don't want to skip over these details. We want to understand where these things come from. This is a detail in our

Lord and Savior's life. He was in Jerusalem in December praising God at a feast of dedication.

We'd like to know what that means so that we can walk with him through his life and even understand the things that he's going through.

So we need to go back into history. This feast was a week -long celebration that happened at the end of November and at the beginning of December.

It's also known as the Festival of Lights. In the modern world, it's known as Hanukkah.

So Jesus actually participated in a 2 ,000 -year -old celebration of Hanukkah.

It's called the Festival of Lights because all of the Jewish people would light candles, and they would put them in their windows, and they would bring them into the city, and they would light up the entire landscape of Jerusalem to celebrate and to thank

God for his deliverance, which we will talk about. This happened on the 25th day of Kislev.

The Jewish calendar doesn't match up with ours, so that's the end of November going into the beginning of December.

That's why the Jews celebrate eight days of Hanukkah right there at the beginning of December.

Again, it did not originate in Old Testament scriptures. It originated in this period of time called the

Intertestamental Period. All that means is between the Old and between the New Testament, between Malachi and Matthew, those 400 years that exist right there in the middle that we kind of skip over.

We read the end of Malachi 4, and we start in Matthew 1, and it seems seamless to us, but there are 400 years that existed in between those two books, 400 years of silence where God's not speaking to his people in the same way that he did, 400 years of no prophets, 400 years of no

Bible books, 400 years of the people eking out an existence apart from the blessing of God.

Now, there are books that exist in that time period. We're going to reference one of them today. It's the book of Maccabees, but it's not inspired.

It's not an inspired canonical book of the Bible. It's a history book of the Jewish people, and it's worth reading for the history, but it's not in the

Bible, or at least it shouldn't be. If you go to a Catholic church, it will be in there, but it's not scripture.

It's history, so I point that out. Now, the

Old Testament ended sort of anticlimactically, if we remember. The Garden of Eden is this wonderful, beautiful moment where God is speaking, people are obeying, he's breathing life into his subjects.

It's perfect obedience. It's naked and unashamed. It's glorious, and then sin falls upon the world, and by the time you get to Malachi, it's not a garden.

It's a desert. God's not speaking anymore. God is silent. There's no revelation anymore. It's deadness.

It is the exact opposite of Eden. It's anti -Eden, anti -paradise at the book of Malachi, and it just comes to a screeching halt.

And you can be tempted, if you're a Jew at that time, to think where in the world and how in the world are

God's promises going to come about? Imagine our country is 200 and something years old.

I can't remember the exact number. They were a country without God's voice and revelation for 400 years.

400 years. It's unbelievable. This was a period of great difficulties for the

Jewish people, a period of tremendous suffering for the Jewish people. When you get to the book of Malachi, it's written about 400

BC. The Persian Empire had taken over. The Persian Empire was in control of Palestine and Judah, which meant that Israel did not have a king on the throne.

They were an occupied people. And around the 300s, we're advancing a little bit now,

Philip of Macedon had a son named Alexander. They call him Alexander the Great. And he rose up in tremendous power.

He was a brilliant, brilliant general. He was a courageous fighter and an incredible diplomat.

He convinced most of the armies not to even fight him, but to fight for him against the

Persians. It was unbelievable. He said, I'll let you believe whatever you want to believe. I'll let you do whatever you want to do.

Just help me fight the Persians. He was an incredible tactician and diplomat. Over the course of about 20 years, he conquered the entire

Persian Empire, all of it. And he built upon it so that he amassed, at that time, the largest human empire that had ever existed before the age of 30.

He was a brilliant, brilliant general. People were even worshiping him as a god because of his accomplishments.

Now what happened? I'm not sure if this is the timeline or not, but as they were worshiping him, he dies.

He dies early. We're not sure exactly how. Maybe he was poisoned. Some people have a theory that he was bitten by a mosquito and he got malaria.

We're not sure, but he died. And he died so young that he didn't even have a successor to the throne.

He had not even named anyone to be his successor. So there was this period of great instability in his

Greek empire where four generals basically emerged as the ones who were going to divide his empire up into four basic parts in perfect fulfillment of Daniel chapter 7, by the way.

So if you go back to Daniel 7, Daniel 7 predicted it before it happened. And, oh, by the way, that's why liberal scholars today say that Daniel was written after Alexander the

Great, because they don't want to give Daniel credit for a prophecy that came true when it clearly is a prophecy that came true.

But that's beside the point. These four generals eventually stabilized, and two of them were fighting over Judah.

The Ptolemaic, who came out of northern Africa, and the Seleucid. You don't have to remember these names, but if you do, you get extra points.

Can you imagine life at that time? It would have felt like that.

Life in war -torn Judah. You've got the Ptolemaic Egyptian armies thinking that that land belongs to them.

You've got the Seleucid Syrian armies thinking that that land belongs to them. And you're caught in the crosshairs, almost like Ukraine today, who's caught in the crosshairs with Russia, saying, no, this land belongs to me, and we're going to take it from you.

That is exactly what was happening to the people of Judah at that time. People were coming in and constantly fighting over their territory, knocking down their buildings, setting fire to their monuments, killing their people.

That's what it felt like for about 100 years in Judah, or 50 or so. Until the

Seleucids stabilized, and they became the primary leaders of the region of Judah. Now, there was tremendous pain under the

Seleucid monarchy. They were brutal. They loved

Alexander and worshipped him, and they wanted to bring Greek culture to every square inch of their property.

So that means that they wanted to bring Greek culture to the Jews. Now, that's just not art and philosophy and Plato's writings.

That means they want the Jews to worship Zeus and the other pantheon of gods.

Now, even though the Jews had a sordid history of idolatry, they, at this point, were actually fairly good.

From about 400 to about the time of the birth of Christ, idolatry was not really an issue for the

Jews, unless you want to talk about idolatry of bibliolatry, where they worshipped the

Bible more than they worshipped their God, which I think is, how can you do that? But the climax of their pain came under a man named

Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus Epiphanes came to power in about 170

BC, and his goal was to make them bend the knee to Greek culture. Now, a fun fact about this man is that his name was

Antiochus. He chose the name Epiphanes because it means supreme one or supreme ruler, but the

Jews thought it would be a great joke to rename him, change one letter and call him Epiphanes, which means madman or lunatic.

They were playing word games even back then. He was the first king to persecute the

Jews on the basis entirely of their religion. He was the first king to try to end their sacrifices, end their adherence to the law, which is covered, in fact, in Daniel chapter 9.

He came into Jerusalem and he stopped the sacrifices. He came into Jerusalem and he stopped them from circumcising their children.

He came into Jerusalem and stopped them from obeying the law and the Torah, and he even set fire to the copies of the

Hebrew Bible, which is why we have more copies of the Greek Old Testament today before in the 200

AD or 200 BC time frame than we do the Hebrew Old Testament because Antiochus burned them all.

He apparently didn't read the text. He just was looking for Hebrew characters, so he burned the

Hebrew text and he kept the Greek text, which is called the Septuagint. He tried to end the

Jewish religion. He tried to seize control of it, but the Jews wanted nothing to do with that.

The Jews resisted, so Antiochus did what any tyrant would do. He came in with his armies.

He took over the town, took over the temple, and he mandated in the year 167

BC that they worship Zeus. He came into the Holy of Holies.

That's the deepest part of the temple, the part where the high priest can only go once per year. He marched boldly and insanely in there, and he sacrificed a pig on the altar of God, defaming the altar, incensing the

Jews, and he installed a statue of Zeus inside the temple, which is why

Daniel calls this the abomination that causes desolation. The Jews were spewing magma at this point, and while they were entirely outnumbered, while they were entirely out -weaponed, while they were entirely out -resourced by this powerful army,

God miraculously delivered them in an eight -day war where they followed this man named Judas Maccabeus.

He was the son of the high priest at the time, and they won. They not only kicked him out of their town, he never came back.

He was embarrassed thoroughly by this campaign. Now, if you want to read about it, it's in 2

Maccabees, but I do want to read you a longer quote from 2 Maccabees chapter 8 just to give you an idea of what happened in this time.

Now, Maccabees and his followers, the Lord leading them on, recovered the temple in the city, and they tore down the altars, which had been built in public square by the foreigners, and they also destroyed the sacred precincts, and they purified the sanctuary, and they made another altar of sacrifice, and then striking fire out of flint, they offered sacrifices.

And after a lapse of two years, and they burned incense and lighted lamps and set out the bread of the presence, and when they had done this, they fell prostrate and besought the

Lord that they might never again fall into such misfortune, but that if they ever should sin, they might be disciplined by God with forbearance and not be handed over to the blasphemous and barbarous nations.

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the 25th day of the same month, which was

Kislev. And they celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing in a manner of the

Feast of Booths, remembering how not long before during the Feast of Booths that they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals.

Therefore, bearing ivory -wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his holy place, and they decreed by public ordinance and vote that the whole nation of the

Jews should observe these days every year. So while this feast was not sanctioned by Moses, it was central to the

Jewish identity from the time of about 167 to the time of Christ to be a Jew meant to participate in this festival of dedication, the dedication of the temple after it had been defamed by this disgusting, maniacal dictator named

Antiochus. That is why in the Gospel of John we see Jesus participating in this feast because it was central to the

Jewish identity. Verse 22 says, At that time the feast of dedication took place at Jerusalem.

It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the portico of Solomon.

So just to recap for a second, three months have passed since verse 21. Jesus is now in Jerusalem in winter, and he's walking in the city, in this area called the portico of Solomon.

It's winter, which is an important detail, not only because that's when the festival of dedication happened, but it's a stark metaphor for the spiritual deadness of the city.

167 years before, they were ready to fight and lose their lives for truth, for righteousness, for God.

167 years later, spiritually decayed and dead.

How quickly can a culture slip and fall into depravity? How quickly, 150 years after some of the great movements of God in this country, have we fallen into such disgusting depravity?

It's easy to do. Again, we're halfway through the narrative of John, but we're in the very final months of his life.

Very soon we're going to be in John 11, where he's got only a week and a half left to live. John 12, where he has a week left to live.

John 19, where he's slaughtered. Very soon. This is the final public event in the life of Christ that we're going to deal with today, happening at the festival of dedications.

And it's going to emphasize over the next couple weeks, the deity of Christ. Now, I do want to remind us that the whole gospel of John is about the deity of Christ.

John 1 begins with the eternal Christ living in eternity with God. So John 1 is about magnifying the

Lagos, the Christ who is eternal, one with God. John 2 is the author of creation, creating wine out of nothing.

He had water and he spoke wine into existence, circumventing the entire natural order because he's the author of creation.

John 3, he shows divine wisdom with the scholar, the most intelligent man that they had to offer.

He comes to Jesus, ask him questions, and he looks like a fool because God is infinitely more intelligent than even the wisest human beings.

John 4, he's the savior of the world who saves an entire pagan city. John 5, he's the divine healer who heals someone who's been suffering for 38 years.

John 6, he's the Lord over creation. John 7, he's the divine teacher. John 8, he's the great I am.

He says three I am's in that actual chapter. I am the light of the world, I am the living water, and before Abraham was,

I am. And they got it. They got what he was saying. Many people will say today that Jesus never claimed to be

God. He does it all throughout the book. He did it so consistently that they tried to kill him.

Why are we so smart that we can't read what's happening in the text? John 9, he's heaven's true light, and the

Lord of the Sabbath. John 10, he's the good shepherd, the door to his sheep. And then in the back half of John 10, he says

I and the Father are one. They try to kill him again. They got it.

We don't. They tried to kill him four times in the Gospel of John so far.

Have you followed with that? John 5, for this reason, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because he was not only breaking the

Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. They tried to kill him in John 5.

John 7, after these things, Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he was unwilling to walk in Judea because the

Jews were seeking to kill him. John 8, 59, therefore, they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

John 10, 31, the Jews picked up stones again to stone him. John 10, 33, this is the

Pharisees talking. For a good work we don't stone you, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, have made yourself out to be

God. John 10, 39, therefore, we're seeking again to seize him, but he eluded them. They are trying to kill him because he's been clear.

He's been clear on his declaration that he is God. And they hated him for it.

They've hated him ever since John 5 for this. Now, I want us to understand that the

Pharisees are not wrong in their motivation to preserve the

Mosaic law. They're wrong in who they're accusing. They're not wrong in their motivation.

They're wrong in who they're accusing because, as we read earlier in Leviticus 24, 16, the one who blasphemes in the name of the

Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregations shall certainly stone him, the alien as well as the native.

When he blasphemes the name, he shall be put to death. If Jesus were not God, he should have died.

The reason that they're wrong is not because they don't understand Leviticus 24. It's because they don't understand who

God is. God came in the flesh, and they want to kill him. That just shows who the actual blasphemer is, who the actual idolater is, who the actual one who has sinned gravely against their

God. Any other person on earth, this would have been legitimate, but not Jesus because he is

God. All throughout this gospel, their blindness has been apparent to us, hasn't it?

John 1, John 2, they hate him because they don't understand him. John 5, they hate him because they do understand him.

John 8, John 9, John 10, they hate him in a climactic, unhinged sort of way that's gonna lead them to murder him.

Their rejection has now climaxed by the time we get to John 10. They hate him because they do not know

God. With the time remaining today, I want us to look at this interaction that they have with Jesus, at least in part, we're not gonna get to the whole thing.

You're used to hearing that, so that should be a comfort to you. The two things that I want us to see is that they bring an illegitimate dispute against Christ, and that Jesus answers them with an undeniable declaration.

They bring in hypocritical, illegitimate dispute, Jesus answers them with an undeniable declaration.

Let's read the text one more time. At that time, the feast of dedication took place at Jerusalem, and it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon.

Then the Jews gathered around him and were saying to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.

And Jesus answered them and said, But you do not believe the works that I do in my Father's name.

These testify about me. This is the dispute. This is how the scene begins. They come bringing an accusation, a confrontation, and a disputation, and it's based on not sincerity.

When they say, how long are you gonna keep us in suspense? That is dripping with sarcasm. They don't mean that. They just picked up stones to kill him.

They know who he's claiming to be. They are not in suspense. So what are they doing?

They're trying to turn the crowd against him so that they can murder him. That's their plan. It's a very public place where this is happening.

The portico of Solomon. The portico of Solomon is the most ancient part of the Jewish city at this time.

When the Babylonians came in in 586 BC and they burned the city to the ground, they forgot, or intentionally, they left this 600 -foot -long retaining wall that bumped up against the temple that had this porch that was laid out before it with 40 -foot -tall

Roman colonnades with a roof over top of it, and people would come, especially in the wintertime, and they would get shelter from the rain and the snow.

In Jerusalem, which was higher elevation than the rest of the Jewish nation, it would snow there, and it rained a lot in the wintertime.

So people would go there to get out of the elements. So when you have a festival in Jerusalem, you're guaranteed that a massive crowd is going to be there.

So why do they come to Jesus there? Because they want to turn the crowd against him. It's ironic.

During a festival that's celebrating a human leader who freed them from oppression, that they missed a great spiritual leader that Jesus is who's going to free them from Satan, sin, and death.

The Pharisees are constantly missing it because they're blind. They say, how long will you keep us in suspense?

If you're the Christ, tell us plainly. They knew that that was what he was claiming to be. That question is filled with hypocrisy, and it's a trap so that they can turn the crowd against him, and we have to understand why they want to do this.

They can't kill Jesus if the crowd is not on their side. And last week, we saw that they lost the crowd.

Do you remember? They overplayed their hand. Jesus was teaching. Jesus was having this amazing sermon, the good shepherd, the door of the sheep.

He's preaching, but then at the end, he calls the Pharisees thieves and robbers and liars, and you can imagine how angry that they are sitting there listening to Jesus embarrass them in front of the crowd.

The crowd is the people that they felt like were theirs. They felt like they owned the crowd. They ruled them with an iron fist.

So the Pharisees, instead of thinking about what they were going to do, instead of responding with sense, they lost it.

And they said, this man has a demon. This man is insane. And the crowd realized what was happening.

The crowd realized that the Pharisees were overplaying their hand. The crowd says, a man who's demon -possessed can't heal the blind, can he?

That rhetorical question tips us off to the fact that the crowd's like, what are you talking about?

They had overplayed their hand and they were losing the crowd. The crowd was not following Jesus because they loved him.

The crowd was not following Jesus because they were saved, but they were following him because he was more reasonable than the unreasonable

Pharisees. And they felt threatened to the core by that reality.

So Jesus leaves town for three months because they want to kill him. When he comes back, the

Pharisees are not over it, to say the least. They've so stewed and sat on this that the moment they see him in the temple in the portico of Solomon, that same rage comes right back instantly.

Think about the kind of hatred that you have to have to after three months of not seeing someone to immediately have all that rage come back to you in an instant.

That's the kind of rage that they had. But this time they do it differently.

They realized they made a mistake last time. They over responded and they lost the crowd.

So what they needed to do this time is they needed to trap Jesus. They've had three months to talk about their game plan.

And now they're saying, we need to get Jesus to admit that he's God. Plainly speaking, we need to get him to admit that because the crowd's going to hate that.

When the crowd hates that, they're going to turn to us. And when they turn to us, we're going to kill him. And the reason that they believe that is because they did not have authority to kill anybody.

Rome was occupying Jerusalem at that time and they could not participate in capital punishment.

So why is the crowd so important? Because Pilate needed the city to be at peace.

When the city started rioting and when the city started going crazy, and when the

Pharisees were whipping the crowds up over anything, Pilate's job security was going down because if Caesar heard that Pilate could not keep

Jerusalem under his thumb, then Caesar was going to kill Pilate and put another governor in charge.

Pilate's job security was completely on the line when the Jews whipped up the crowd against him.

So the Jews needed the crowd. They needed the crowd so that they could whip them up into a frenzy and get them to scream and chant and do all kinds of things so that Pilate would cave in.

And Pilate often caved in. That was their playbook. That would be fully accomplished three months from this text.

When the Jews whip up the crowd and they say crucify him, crucify him, and Pilate didn't have the backbone to stomach it.

So they killed him. They're trying that playbook here. They want to kill him here, but they can't.

Again, these statements are dripping with sarcasm. But Jesus responds with an undeniable declaration.

In general, he didn't even have to say the things that he said. He's already said them. He's basically through the gospel said, when

I turned water into wine, I was telling you plainly. When I said destroy this temple and I'll raise it up in three days,

I was telling you plainly. When I confounded your scholars, when I rescued an entire Samaritan village, when

I healed a man on the Sabbath, when I fed large crowds, when I walked on water, when I said I'm the living water, that I'm the light of the world, when

I did all those things, especially when I said before Abraham was, I am, I was telling you plainly, but you were too dull to hear it.

I've told you, but he specifically, in this answer, going back to John five,

John five verse 36, but the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John for the works which the father has given me to accomplish the very works that I do testify about me, that the father has sent me.

So when Jesus says here that I told you and you don't believe the works that I do in my father's name, these testify about me.

He's quoting what he said back in John five and he's saying that these works tell you who I am. I don't have to say it plainly to you.

They show that I am from God. They show that I am God. Now the question we need to wrestle with is why?

Why do the Pharisees remain in unbelief? They saw miracles that we've never seen.

They saw all kinds of things that should have led them to believe. You have all kinds of church services today that try to manufacture emotional experiences to woo people into the kingdom.

They had more evidence than any of us. Why didn't they believe? They had the best miracles to look at.

They had the best preacher in the world to look at. That's Christ. They heard compelling sermons. Why did they not believe?

And the reason for their unbelief is because they were dead. That's what John has been teaching us. You cannot believe in your own human effort.

You need God. Look at what he says in John 3, 16, a verse that is often misunderstood.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

It says whoever, whoever believes. What about the Pharisees? Can they believe?

No, they can't. How can you say that? Look at verse 17, verse 18.

For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he's not believed in the name of the only begotten

Son. Whoever believes can believe because God has allowed them to believe. Whoever doesn't is under the judgment of God.

They can't believe. The Pharisees can't see. Jesus said in John 2, I know the heart of man and I'm not gonna trust myself to that.

No one comes to the Father unless God draws him. We've seen this over and over. They are under the judgment of God so they cannot believe in the

Son of God. It says in verse 19 in chapter 3, this is the judgment that light has come into the world and men love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.

For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come into the light for their deeds will be exposed.

When you watch football games and you see John 3, 16 on their eyes, you never see John 3, 19. You never see

John 3, 20. They're under the judgment of God and the judgment of God is this, that they hate the light and that they love.

They don't come to Him because there's a lack of evidence. They got it. They understood what

He was saying. They rejected it. They didn't come to Him not because Jesus wasn't winsome enough do we actually believe that Jesus was not winsome, was not compelling.

They didn't come to Him not because He didn't have the right apologetic and if they were to just share the cosmological argument for the existence of God then they would have came.

They didn't come because they hate God. They didn't come because they hate the light. They didn't come because they didn't want their evil deeds to be exposed by the light because that is what light does.

Light exposes sin. Light reveals darkness. Moral terror is hanging over the hearts of the reprobate because they do not want to be exposed for their wickedness and that is why billions do not believe today and that is why they did not believe back then.

John 7, 7 says, this world cannot hate you but it hates me because I testify about it that its deeds are evil.

Jesus says, I'm intentionally testifying about the evil in the world and it's inflaming them and they're hating me because of it.

Jesus is not like many evangelical pastors who say that I'm going to try to win the lost with really winsome speeches and really like tell them stories and anecdotes and make everybody feel nice and happy.

Jesus is saying, I testify about its wickedness. If Jesus did that, then why don't we do that?

The world hated Jesus because he told the truth and those who live in lies hate the truth because they don't want their deeds to be uncovered.

You don't believe this? Go stand outside of an abortion clinic and say, don't murder your baby.

You're not going to get smiles. You're not going to get people to say, you know, well, gosh,

I'm so glad you told me that and there will be some who will repent and who will choose not to murder their child but it will be the minority because men love the darkness instead of the light.

You tell a homosexual to leave their life of sin, to repent because it's an abomination to God and to turn to Jesus, you will get fomented hatred.

We as American people are the kind of people who don't like conflict.

We don't like to ruffle feathers. We like to placate people with niceties, especially as Christians because the world has trained us to believe that if we offend them, then they can say we're bad

Christians. Apply that standard to Jesus. Sin causes unbelief.

The love of sin causes a hatred of God. No matter how much evidence you put in front of a person, no matter how much you try to convince them or win them over, if they love their sin, they will hate

God. Only God, taking out the heart of death and giving a heart of flesh will convert a man to faith and a woman to faith.

Only God, who breathes life into our corpse of sin, can resurrect us into life.

You've never been to a funeral, I hope, where the dead person stood up and started talking.

That would cause therapy for decades. We were dead in our trespasses before Christ, and it is only by Christ's work that we were made alive.

That's why the Pharisees don't believe. John 7, 17 says, if anyone is willing to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak of myself.

Jesus says one simple way that you can know if someone is a believer or not is if they're willing to obey God. If they're willing, doesn't mean they're perfect at it.

The person who loves sin and hates righteousness is not a believer no matter what they say. The person who increasingly hates their sin and loves

Christ, that's a Christian. That's a believer. It doesn't mean you're perfect, but it means you're striving towards holiness.

You're striving to love your Savior. That's a Christian. You bear the mark of someone who's been given a new heart.

You bear the mark of someone who the power of sin has been crucified on the cross with Christ. You bear the mark of someone who like Hebrews says, that every weight has been thrown off of you so that you can run the race.

And if you don't have that, you're still in chains. You gotta come to the light.

If you're not a Christian, I'm not gonna tell you to raise your hand. I'm not gonna tell you to sing a song.

I'm not gonna tell you to fill out a card. I'm gonna tell you that if God is stirring your heart, turn to Him, run from the darkness and run to the light and He will save you.

He promises in His word. If you're a Christian today and you're observing this interaction with the

Pharisees, just know that Christ loves you and hates your sin enough to die for you.

He hates your sin enough that you would never willingly live in it. And if you are living in sin right now to repent, not to repent in shame, not to repent in guilt, not to repent with a big wooden paddle that you beat yourself up with.

To repent knowing that Christ loved you enough to die for those things and He died for those things already.

So don't live in them anymore. You were bought out of sin. Do not go on living in it.

Greater love has no one than that and that love conquers all sin and death and fear.

Flee from your sin. I think the church also has application here in this passage.

I think the church also universally needs to repent. Jesus testified about wickedness and He felt comfortable doing it.

Jesus called out sin. He named it. He was honest about it and it made the world angry and that's okay.

We're not being unloving by speaking the truth of the Bible no matter what the world says. We cannot have the world define for us what love means.

When the world defines what love means, we'll have a sick, erotic, perverted description that they're gonna hold us to when we have the one who invented the term.

We let the Bible define what love is and we the church are loving when we proclaim the gospel.

All of us together and we'll see more in the weeks ahead are called to live like Christ, are called to love and rest in the truth of the gospel that He died for us while we were yet enemies.

He raised us up to new life, made us new creations so that we could live in His gospel and not so that we could do nothing.

Derek sang Psalm 2 earlier that the nations rage. Why do the nations rage? Because they're not yet submitted to Christ.

Psalm 110 says that all of the nations will be put under Jesus' feet eventually, that His gospel will be effective.

We've gotta stop living like we're losers and we've gotta start living like we're victors. The gospel of Jesus Christ will accomplish its purpose and it will accomplish its purpose when we the people of God declare it to the ends of the earth.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank You that the power in Your church is not based on us.

Thank You that the power, the fire, the effectiveness is not based on our winsomeness and not based on our intelligence and not based on our communication and not based on anything.

The power is in the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes and those who believe only believe because of You, God.

Thank You. Thank You for the gift that You've given to each and every single one of us,

God. We don't believe because we're smart. We don't believe because we're spiritual. We see all throughout the

Bible that we're unclean rags, we're worms, we're filthy, we're polluted, and yet You are so good and so kind that You chose to make us pure.

When Judas Maccabeus through holy zeal ran

Antiochus Epiphanes out of Jerusalem and purified the temple, he was reenacting the gospel because You, Lord, ran

Satan out of our life and You purified us and made us a temple holy unto You not because we deserve it but because You are glorious.

Lord, we thank You for Your grace and Your gospel and Your love. And Lord, I pray that we would magnify it all the days of our life.