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Do you have any brothers or sisters? If you don't, well,
I guess good for you. I think my brother probably wishes he didn't have any siblings.
He used to just talk about how I used to always, and this is true by the way, I used to always get him in trouble.
Without going into all the details though, we didn't have our tussles over the years and I will just say it this way.
Did you ever put your brother through a window twice and then we'd try to cover it up?
That was pretty ugly. And I thought my brother and I had a really bad relationship until I heard the stories about my dad and my uncle and the fights they used to have and I thought, you know, we were pretty light.
But, you know, just having a brother or a sister, it doesn't necessarily have to be a physical fight.
A lot of times it's just competitions. We have something called sibling rivalry. I mean, you can go back to Cain versus Abel, right?
Always want to prove ourselves to be the best. What if you're a
Jesus brother or sister? You know, sometimes we think about that and just go, boy, it must have been really rough because Jesus does everything perfectly all the time and everything.
I don't know. I mean, we don't have these kind of things recorded for us. I'm pretty sure he never put one of them through a window.
But this morning we're going to see in our text the relationship between the half -brothers of Jesus and him, but basically
I want to focus on it from the perspective of Jesus because it's unique, I think, in that he's dealing with people in his own household.
We're used to this. I think most of us have had this experience. People are in their own household or in their own family who are unbelievers.
Well, how about if you're the Lord and you have people in your own household, in your own family who are unbelievers?
I think that's got to be tough. It's got to be difficult. We're going to see a little bit of that this morning.
I'd invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 7. John chapter 7 as we leave.
Chapter 6, the bread of heaven discourse, all that's taken place there.
And we move on into chapter 7. Let me read our text beginning in verse 1.
After this, Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea because the
Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews' feast of booths was at hand.
So his brothers said to him, leave here and go to Judea that your disciples may also or also may see the works you are doing.
For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.
For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, my time has not yet come, but your time is always here.
The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.
You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come.
After saying this, he remained in Galilee. Now just by way of review, kind of catch us up to where we are.
What is a gospel? Well, we know what the gospel is. A gospel, and we're looking at the gospel according to John, the
Apostle John, is a proclamation of the good news, but they're extended versions. You wouldn't hand somebody this as a tract, but it's an extended kind of look at the life of Jesus Christ.
And with John, it's that he, Jesus, existed eternally, came to earth voluntarily, took on a human body, never ceased to be
God, lived a sinless life, died a sacrificial death, and was raised from the dead on the third day.
John wrote his gospel several decades after Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each of the gospel writers focused on a different aspect of Jesus' life and ministry.
Matthew presented Jesus as king, thus he gives the kingly lineage of Jesus and really presents him as the rightful heir of the throne of David.
Mark stressed Jesus as servant, and so pictures him in little vignettes of him serving others.
Luke, the physician, unsurprisingly, focuses on the humanity of Jesus.
Now each of these gospels, if you look at Matthew, Jesus as king, we'll see him get rejected as king.
If you look at Mark, you'll see him as both king and servant, but it kind of focuses more on the servant.
If you look at Luke, you won't come away thinking he's only a man, because that is not said, but the emphasis is on his humanity.
And with John, the emphasis is on the deity of Christ, that is, that he's God. Now we just went through really a few amazing days when he is faced, when
Jesus is faced with this mass of people, it says 5 ,000 people, but that would be 5 ,000 men.
When you add in their wives, their children, it's probably at least 20 ,000 people that he fed with two fish and five loaves.
The people see that, they're excited, they think this could be great, we could have a perfect welfare state, food forever, so they want to make him king.
He senses this, eludes them, goes off to pray, sends his disciples across the
Sea of Galilee at night, and if you recall, he, after praying, starts walking towards them, and what happens?
There's a great storm, the disciples are in a panic, and finally here he comes up on the boat, they see him,
Jesus, or Peter walks out to Jesus, falls in to the water, Jesus lifts him up, puts him in the boat, and instantly they're on the side of the
Sea of Galilee over by Capernaum. The crowd goes off and finds him the next day in Capernaum, and thus we have this whole discourse where Jesus declares himself to be the bread of life, come down from heaven, and all these challenges and all this, but if you'll recall, what happened at the end of chapter 6 was this,
Jesus exhibited or explained, showed them, told them what the high cost of discipleship was, how much it would cost them, how invested in him they had to be to be his disciples.
He said, you have to consume my flesh and drink my blood, in other words, my life, my death,
I must be everything to you, and what happened? A bunch left, and he turned to Peter, the disciples, and he said, are you going to leave too?
Do you want to leave too? Peter, answering for the twelve, said, to whom would we go?
You alone have the words of eternal life, and so they stayed and everyone else left.
And if you look again at our text, well, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but that's where we left off, and this morning we're going to see an unusual interaction between these half -brothers of the
Lord and the Lord himself, and I want you to notice the contrast between how
Jesus sees the situation and how his brothers see the situation.
Their focus as opposed to his focus, and we're just going to use three kind of danger markers to separate this conversation between Jesus and his four half -brothers.
First, there's danger in Judea. Danger in Judea. I want you to notice first in chapter, or verse one, that there's a time gap between the events at the end of chapter six and where we are now.
It just says, after this, and you go, okay, well, after this, like the next day, maybe a long weekend, or maybe six months, it's probably about six months.
There's a lot that goes on. If you work out the entire chronology of the ministry of Jesus, and you look at the other
Gospels, there's a lot to fill in here, but we have to keep in mind what
John's purpose is. It's to highlight certain events and to draw attention to one singular fact.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He is God in the flesh.
And so other incidents that other Gospel writers wrote about are not his focus, and he skips over all of them, and he just says, two words, after this, okay, six months later,
Jesus went about in Galilee. Some texts say after these things, but it's the same matter.
Now again, think about what had happened. There were 20 ,000 plus people. I don't know how many had followed him, but a large crowd.
And there were a number of people who would claim to be Christians, claim to be his disciples who had gone with them, but all these disciples, scores, maybe hundreds of disciples, so -called followers or learners, left.
So all that's left is the 12. What does he do with them after that? Well, this is a period that some theologians call the retirement ministry, where Jesus just goes off and starts collecting
Social Security and his pension. No, that's not what it means. Retirement ministry means he was retired from public ministry.
He wasn't out there doing large events anymore. There weren't any more events of 5 ,000, 20 ,000.
He was just up there in the area of Galilee, mostly teaching his disciples. That was the focus.
And when you think about it, there's good reason to be spending time with the disciples, because in less than a year now, in about six months, they're going to be the ones in charge.
They're going to have to run the church. They're going to have to take the gospel to the four corners of the earth, as it were.
But no major public demonstrations of his deity. This is just a time of preparation with the disciples.
Now also note that the plot to kill Jesus, the plot to seize him, is underway.
Look at verse 1 again, the second part of it. He would not go about in Judea, meaning go about just means to travel.
So he was traveling about in Galilee, and now he would not go to Judea. Why? Because the
Jews were seeking to kill him. Why? Well, it doesn't mean every single Jew. It refers to, as John often does, to the
Jewish leadership, the religious leaders. Why would they want to kill Jesus? Well, you have to go back to John chapter 5.
You don't have to go back there. I'll read it for you. But if we just remember what happened, he healed this man who had been lame his entire life and he'd done so on the
Sabbath. And what happened? They were mad. They wanted to know who'd done it. And in chapter 5, verse 15, we would read this.
The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the
Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. They saw that as a violation of their laws, because it was work, they said, rather heartless.
Verse 17, but Jesus answered them, my father is working until now and I am working.
Verse 18, this was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, to put an end to him.
Because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
They wanted him for breaking the Sabbath, yes, but for blasphemy, for saying things about God and about himself that they did not believe were true.
And from there, from Jerusalem, Jesus had gone out into the countryside. If you recall, there was kind of, you know, on one side of the camp, as it were, there was
Jesus and his disciples, and then there was John the Baptist and his disciples. And then there was the trip into Samaria and from Samaria to Galilee.
But Jesus knew that he was not welcome in Jerusalem. He knew that he would be in trouble if he went to Jerusalem.
So he remained north of Jerusalem, up by the Sea of Galilee this entire time.
Now there was an upside to that, and that is this, that many of the people who would not have heard him in that area were able to hear him and visit with him and see him.
So there was danger in Judea, bad idea for him to go there. Secondly, there was danger ignored.
The brothers would ignore that danger. They were oblivious to it, I would suggest, because it was festival time, it was time for a feast.
Look at verse 2, now the Jews' feast of booths was at hand. And this is arguably, according to the historian
Josephus, it was the greatest time of the year on the Jewish calendar. It would be about October, a nice time to visit
Israel. It's not too hot, not too cool, it's like, you know, the three bears, just right.
And it was a grand time, it was a great time in Jerusalem. Why the feast of booths?
Why did they call it that? Because they built a lot of booths, kind of like tents.
I don't know why people are so into camping, it doesn't really appeal to me, but this is kind of like a massive camping adventure.
Everybody from outside the city would all come in, and they would build these little like huts out of wood and leaves and just whatever, you know, just to kind of keep you out of the sunlight,
I guess, so you could sleep in a little bit. But they would put these booths everywhere, all along the streets of Jerusalem, and up on top, if you had a solid roof on your house, they'd put them up on your roof, everywhere they could put one, they would, because everybody was coming in to celebrate this time of the year.
Now, why were they celebrating? Well, they were celebrating the harvest, specifically the harvest of grapes, but they would also take the time to remember things like, it really was about a time of remembering
God's faithfulness to them while they were wandering in the wilderness those 40 years. And so they would mark things like when
Moses struck the rock and water came out of it, and they had a ceremony that they would do at the pool at Siloam.
They would sacrifice 70 bulls. They would light up the inner court of the temple.
I mean, this was a major celebration. Everybody would come. And no one, no one would miss the festival or the feast of booths.
Look at verse 3, so his brothers said to him, I mean, the presumption is by them that he's going to go.
So they say to him, leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing.
The half brothers of Jesus, James, Joseph, they're not named here, but James, Joseph, Simon and Jude, also known as Judas.
I mean, one is Greek and one's not, but I mean, it doesn't matter. It's the same word, Jude or Judas.
Knew that Jesus had many who were interested in him in Jerusalem. They were disciples in the broadest sense of the term, much like the disciples who had left him when he finished the bread of life discourse, bread of heaven discourse.
It was this as if they were saying, look, you're going to go, you need to go. Look, we're all, we're all going to go, let's go together.
We'll all have fun and you can do that whole discipleship thing that you do. You do your, your thing and look, there's going to be a crowd.
Everyone who is anyone is going to be there. You need to be there. Look at verse 4, for no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly.
If you do these things, show yourself to the world. Verse 5, for not even his brothers believed in him.
I'll get back to that in a minute, but I want to just say some things about his brothers and you'll understand why as I kind of develop this a little bit.
In Matthew chapter 13, and you can turn there for a moment, Matthew chapter 13, verses 55 and 56, and I'm going to be backing up even a little bit more in here.
I just want to talk about the brothers so we can kind of understand this whole dynamic of who they are.
And it does have some import, some impact on our lives today.
Verse 55, is this not, or is not this the carpenter's son?
Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man, talking about Jesus, get all these things, all these things that he's been teaching us?
Well, let me ask this question. Why does it matter who his brothers are, his half -brothers?
Because there are a billion Roman Catholics in the world. We're surrounded by Roman Catholics, 90 plus percent of our neighbors and friends are
Roman Catholics, although that demographic may be changing now that we are importing so many Islamic folks into the region.
But it's important for us to understand this because it is a
Roman Catholic doctrine that Mary was perpetually a virgin.
Why does that matter? Well, it matters because it's inaccurate, but it also leads to a number of inaccuracies in Roman Catholic doctrine that ultimately lead to worshiping
Mary, I think I would say. But here's the defense, the Roman Catholic defense for understanding that these were not his literal brothers, meaning not his half -brothers, born of Joseph and Mary, whereas he was only born of Mary.
Reason number one. The first thing to understand is that the term brother has a broader meaning than just natural brothers.
It can mean biological brother, but it can also mean an extended relative or even a spiritual brother.
And this is, again, from Catholic Answers, when Paul writes, Jesus appeared to more than 500 brothers at the same time, we need not infer from this verse that Mary gave birth to more than 500 children, insert laugh track.
Somebody should do their writing for them because it's not funny. And if you look at 1 Corinthians 15, guess what?
You would never draw the idea that these would be Mary's kids, but you do get that idea from Matthew 13, and I'll talk more about that in a moment.
There's a second reason for that. These brothers, the first one is just arguing about the word. Second reason, these brothers are never called the children of Mary.
Okay, I think they're linked to her, certainly, although Jesus himself is, and then they cite two verses in which he's called the son of Mary.
The third reason, James and Joseph, also called Joses, who are called
Jesus' brothers, are indeed the children of Mary, just not Mary, the mother of Jesus. And for that, they assert one verse, which doesn't say, by the way, that those are the same guys.
And here's the problem I have with that. It's a very thin argument, and here's the reason why. The Jews are very traditional.
They don't make up names like many people do today. I read some names, and I'm like, you know, I think, honestly, that people go, okay, let's take a consonant, and they spin the consonant wheel, and whatever comes up, they take that, and then vowel, you know, and then they mash together a name.
Or they take, today, we'd take things like, the Jews would not do this. They would not name one of their kids
Apple, or Rock, or any other kind of bizarre thing, like, you know,
Moon unit, or, you know, they would not do that. This is not something that they would do.
And, you know, a few years ago, there was this ossuary, possibly, of Jesus.
And it was like, oh, this is a slam dunk. It's Jesus' bones, because it's Jesus, the brother of James, the son of Joseph.
That would describe, like, half of Jerusalem. I mean, this was very…these names were very common.
Look at Roman Catholics today, and I'm not knocking anybody with these names, by the way. I'm just going to say that if you look at Roman Catholic families, where are they very likely to name their girl?
Mary, or Maria, or Martha, or, you know, some variation on that.
And really, you know, the truth is, all these names are related. And just like Judas, or Jude, or James, or all the…the very small pool of names from which they would draw over, and over, and over again.
And the Roman Catholics do the same thing today. Peter, Paul, you know, I mean, they just pick the same names over and over.
And by the way, we do some of the same thing, and that's fine. But that argument does nothing, you know, saying that there's a couple of boys, or sons, who are named in another passage.
It doesn't mean that it is or isn't Mary, or those…it has nothing to do with it.
It doesn't prove anything. The fourth argument they make, and I think this is the worst, they appeal to church tradition.
They cite a book called the Gospel of James, which they acknowledge, by the way, to be a fraud. In other words, it's not a gospel, and it wasn't written by James, but they cite it anyway because even though it was written in 150
AD, and James would have been at least 160 years old when it was written by their reckoning, or maybe 140 years old by my reckoning.
In other words, he didn't write it. It doesn't matter to them because it says what they wanted to say, therefore, it's evidence.
I think that's pretty weak. It's much more natural and logical to take it as it reads.
Let's go back to Matthew 13, and I'm going to back up to verse 54 and just read it this way. And coming to his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue so that they were astonished.
This is Jesus speaking to his hometown crowd. They were astonished and said, where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?
Is not this the carpenter's son? Isn't this Joseph's son? Probably dead by now.
And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? And they took offense at him.
But Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.
They're in a huff because he's speaking, he's preaching with such authority. Who is this guy?
Who does he think he is? And so they start reciting all the reasons why they should discount him, why they should minimize him.
He's Joseph's son. He's Mary's son. Now, according to Roman Catholic tradition and understanding, we're supposed to understand brothers as cousins or distant relatives.
So let's try that out. Let's just insert that meaning here. Is not this the carpenter's son?
Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his male distant relatives James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
And are not his female distant relatives with us? Where then did this man get all these things?
It doesn't make any sense. Because it's talking about a family unit. They're trying to disparage it.
Just go, these people aren't, you know, they're nothing. He was just,
Joseph was just a carpenter. All he did was make stuff, furniture and, you know, construction projects and Mary, you know.
And come on. It has, the idea then that they would appeal to far -flung family members is pretty mind -boggling.
And why do they do all that? Because they want to cling to this idea of Mary being a perpetual virgin.
Why? They give her all kinds of supernatural powers. She can hear all prayers.
She answers things. She does all these amazing things. And she becomes, in fact, an intercessor for Catholics.
And when I say that they raise her to basically deity, that's not much of an exaggeration.
They give her stature that she would not claim for herself. Another verse, you don't have to turn there.
I'm just going to read it. Mark chapter three, verses 31 to 33. And his mother and brothers came and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
So they show up and they're calling out to him. And a crowd was sitting around him,
Jesus, and they said to him, your mother and your far -flung distant relatives are outside seeking you.
That would impress him. And he answered, who are my mother and my brothers?
Now, if these are really distant relatives, then why would he say that? Because he goes on to describe what?
Those who do the will of my father. You know, he's talking about those who are believers.
Those are my mother and my brothers and my sisters. That's my family, in other words.
Is he really supposed to be concerned about what these far -flung relatives, that they're there?
Or would he refer to his brothers and sisters in the faith as my far -flung relatives? No. Now let's go back to the text.
I just want to do that as an aside. And part of the reason I wanted to do that is because, again, you have so many
Roman Catholic friends, relatives, who are deceived into believing a system that is unbiblical.
Now, is this alone going to transform their thinking? No, but, you know, I think with most of us, what happens is there's kind of a drip, drip, drip, where biblical truth starts penetrating our mind and our thinking, and we start thinking, you know what, everything that I believe is wrong.
And that's when we flee to the cross. Now back to our text, verse four again.
These are Jesus' half -brothers. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly.
If you do these things, show yourself to the world. What are they trying to say to him? Listen, no one is going to know who you are.
You're doing these things in secret, in Galilee, in a backwater town, in a, you're off, off, off, off, off Broadway.
You need to go to the city of heavenly lights. You need to go to the place where people are.
You need to get on the big stage. You need to put yourself out there, son. Make a name for yourself.
Show yourself to the world. Let everybody see what you can do. Now, we'll argue about his faith or their faith in a moment, but if he really was the
Messiah, his brothers know that no Messiah is going to gain his rightful place by sticking around in Galilee.
That's not the place to be. And this is the one time of the year where, you know, even more so than any other time, every
Jew is going to make it to Jerusalem because this is the big bash, the big party.
And they wanted Jesus out on the center stage. All those people, and Jesus was going to stay in Galilee?
Well, that's just not right. But we know their motives are not right. I mean, whatever their thinking is, we know that their motives can't be right because of verse five, for not even his brothers believed in him.
What does that mean? It doesn't mean that they completely doubted.
It means that they didn't have faith. It means they weren't his disciples. It means they didn't believe that he was the son of God.
I mean, we can speculate about what his parents had told them growing up, but it would just be speculation.
But they suggested that he go to Jerusalem and perform these things. Were they mocking him?
That's possible. I don't think that they were. I think that they had seen him do some things, maybe not all of them, but they'd likely seen him do some works when they weren't like the disciples, though, who had seen
Jesus walking on the water. They'd seen all these things that he could do. And then you still have Judas, who didn't believe
Judas Iscariot. But does this mean, or what does it mean that they didn't believe in Jesus?
Well, it means that they continuously had a lack of faith that he was the son of God. Now, does that mean that they necessarily thought he was delusional?
Not necessarily, but they weren't saved. They didn't believe savingly. And I think it really is a testimony of the power of God that when we see the book of James and we realize that that's written by the half -brother of Jesus, when we see the book of Jude and we realize that's written by another one of his half -brothers, we see that they go from unbelievers to believers who are willing to pay quite a price to follow
Christ after the resurrection. Here's a truism.
Unbelievers may make right decisions. They may do good things, but their motives are never right because they're not born of a desire to please
God because they do not love God. And these men at this time did not love God.
They wanted Jesus to go. Their exact motivations are not known. Maybe they thought they'd hitched their wagon to Jesus.
Maybe somebody suggested earlier the first service, maybe they wanted to embarrass him. It's not really clear.
I don't really think that that was their motivation, but whatever their motivation was,
Jesus wasn't gonna go. He knew that he was a wanted man in Jerusalem and it was not time.
Now, consider the situation he's in. He's down to a handful of disciples.
His own brothers don't believe him. And they're asking him to do something that he ultimately knows would result in his death.
I think I might've been a little discouraged with these guys. I might've even said something back to them. But we've seen danger in Judea, danger ignored.
They're oblivious to the danger. And third, we see danger declined. Jesus is having nothing to do with the suggestions, the plans of his half brothers.
Look at verse six. Jesus said to them, "'My time has not come yet,' or yet come."
What did that mean? Well, it means this. It means it wasn't time for him to go to the festival, the feast of booths.
But it's more than that. Knowing that the cross was in front of him, this was not the time for him to go and to be crucified.
If he arrives, if he goes with his brothers, it's very likely that he'll be taken into custody and executed.
It's not the proper time for that. We know that he was to be put to death in the spring as the
Passover lamb. And we know that now, the one sacrificed for others. But later in this gospel,
Jesus said that he would lay down his life, meaning that he would do it voluntarily at the time of his choosing, not the choosing of others.
He would die according to the father's will. And this was not that time.
Furthermore, it's better for him to arrive after everyone else is there. Well, just imagine it this way. Let's just say, and this is what happened.
We'll see next week what happens when Jesus goes into Jerusalem. But let's just say Jesus' brothers get there.
What's the first thing that they're likely to be asked by those who know them? Where's Jesus?
And what are they gonna say? Well, he's back in Galilee. He wouldn't come with us, which is fine. That's exactly what he wanted.
So when he arrives, it's going to be a surprise. One man writes this.
He says, to arrive with the crowds all assembled, all jammed into these booths, an expectant gave him a far better opportunity than to go at the beginning.
However, none of this, none of the danger, none of the opportunities, none of this would have been obvious to the brothers of Jesus.
They just wanted to go to the feast. And Jesus is not gonna hold them up.
He's not gonna slow them down. Verse six, again, the second half of it, but your time is always here.
Now, he didn't mean time in the same way for them. He wasn't talking about their death.
He was talking about their going to the feast. There was no hidden meaning when he was talking about their time.
He just says, look, whenever you guys wanna go is fine. It has absolutely no impact on the plan of God.
Your time is always here. You can go anytime you want. It's not like they had anything to worry about.
Look at verse seven. The world cannot hate you. Now, again,
I think this would be kind of like, I'm sure they didn't understand it when he said it. The world cannot hate you.
I wanna just park there for a moment and just think about this. The world cannot hate them.
Why? Because they're unbelievers. Unbelievers don't hate unbelievers for being unbelievers.
They have that in common, right? We see it today. If you agree with the common wisdom, the politically correct thinking of our day, then you're just fine.
You fit in. Jesus in John 15 said, if you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.
When you go along to get along, people like you, but because you are not of the world, he's telling his disciples this, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
Jesus tells his own brothers that they're unbelievers, even though I think they know that. They are not his disciples.
And he says, look, the world cannot hate you. You guys go, you've got nothing to worry about, go. But look at the contrast.
But it hates me, continuing in verse seven, but it hates me because I testify about it, that its works are evil.
Jesus does not belong to the world. He's not part of their sinful thinking and living, but even more, he tells them about their sin.
He exposes their sin. John chapter three, the light of the world or the light came into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light.
Why? Because their deeds were evil. If you're in the dark and you go out suddenly into the light, what happens?
You're blinded. And in a spiritual sense, it's the same thing. When you're surrounded by folks who are deep in sin, whose life pursuits,
I remember the first job I had, and now I was an unbeliever, but the first job I ever had was in a warehouse.
And I was amazed that every single person there seemed to be focused on one thing. From Monday to Thursday and then
Friday morning, all they could think about was Friday night. It was all about punching the clock, getting their day in so they could collect the paycheck on Friday and go get blasted
Friday night. That was life. It's an empty, empty world.
And when you enter that, just even as a regular
Christian, whatever that means, when you're just trying to live a life pleasing to God, what happens? People don't like it.
It rubs them the wrong way. How much more if you're the son of God? And you say, listen, you're in sin, you need to repent.
No one is neutral when it comes to Christ. If you're a Christian and you despair sometimes because you think my sin is so great, well then you can eventually catch yourself and just think, but I have a great
Savior who loves me not because of who I am, but in spite of who I am. But if you're not a
Christian, you don't like this holiness stuff.
You don't like this belief and this stop sinning stuff, repent stuff.
This week, I mean, I was pretty amazed. I don't know much of anything. I don't know much of anything about the
NFL, but I don't know much about Tony Dungy, former coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
Now he's a TV analyst, at least for the moment. He still has a job. But it was amazing to watch how he was attacked this week.
All the slander, the things said about him. What did he do? He said he would not have drafted a particular player because of all the distraction that this player represented.
This player, while he was in college or after he graduated from college, publicly declared he's a homosexual.
Now, I know Dungy is a professing Christian, but again, I know nothing about him or his theology, nothing.
What I do know is how viciously he was attacked. I heard him called on the radio, a liar, a bigot, a hypocrite, a homophobe, someone took to Twitter, several people took to Twitter and talked about his son, who a few years ago committed suicide.
And they wondered if his son had committed suicide because Tony Dungy, being a
Christian, couldn't possibly love his son if his son was a homosexual. So they started theorizing that his son must've been a homosexual.
That's why he killed himself. This is acceptable, why? Because Tony Dungy said one thing.
He said that this player drafted in the seventh round who isn't fast enough to be a defensive back and isn't big enough to be a linebacker, basically was a marginal prospect and might not be worth all the difficulty, all the attendant distraction.
Well, what distraction? Well, for example, he had a reality show set up, a deal set up before he was even drafted.
They canceled that thing, that whole project later, but he was gonna be on the Oprah network. They were gonna follow him around.
And even now we get ESPN bulletins about this player's team and they're following him around and I'm just like, he's some great big thing.
If he gets cut, that team is gonna catch all kinds of flack. But everything
Dungy said was true and he never mentioned the Bible, sin, homosexuality, repentance,
Christ, any of that. But the attacks have been unrelenting. People want him to get fired from his job.
Why? Because he said something that was true. But it's something that goes against the grain.
It's something that goes against the culture, the reality of our day, where you can't say anything negative about someone who's homosexual.
When you view the world through the lens of sin, everything is good.
Everything that's, let's put it this way, everything that's bad is good. What does the
Bible say? It says they'll call evil good and good evil and that's exactly the world we live in.
And when you view the world through the lens of sin, that's your worldview. But when you view the world through the lens of scripture, when you see it as it actually is, people are gonna hate you.
And when you say something to somebody about morality or anything, they're going to be offended.
And if you've never offended anyone by anything that you've said, if you've never been called the name, if you've never been told you're holier than thou or whatever, then maybe it's because you don't display enough of Christ to offend them.
Maybe it's about time somebody does get offended by something that you say, even though you're not trying to be offensive.
Just tell the truth and watch how people react. Now look at verse eight.
Here, just kind of a recap here. You go up to the feast, Jesus says to his brothers. I'm not going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come.
He's going to go. He's just not going now. But you guys run along, you have fun. Again, for Jesus, it was not the right time.
When he showed up, things were going to change, but this was not the time for him to go and he was not going to undergo what surely would have been a premature death, a death, an untimely death.
There was much for him to do in the next five or six months prior to his death and this was not the time for him to end it.
So what happened? How did they leave it? How did this all end? Well, in verse nine, after saying this, he remained in Galilee.
That's it. He just stayed there. Now we're going to see next week what happens next, but this really, this passage shows, in some respects, it shows this, that there is a dividing line in how we view things and how we ought to view things.
There's a line of demarcation to those who belong to Christ and those who are of the world.
It shows how we view things differently than they do. Christianity is not a religion of do this and don't do that.
It's not be baptized, get your first communion, et cetera, be confirmed, do all the things that the
Roman Catholic Church teaches. It's not a matter of works. It's not a matter of going to confession.
It is a matter of faith, of belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, of personal investment. Even as he said in John chapter six, of being, of consuming his flesh and his blood, of being consumed by him, having him be your all in all.
His perfection in place of your sin, his death atoning for your sin, his resurrection, being raised from the dead on the third day.
That is Christianity, not what you do. But when you live out your faith, when you, as a disciple of Christ, when you live out as a disciple of Christ, you're going to draw attention to yourself.
The world will hate you. Let's pray.
Father in heaven, it is sometimes mind boggling to just think about the life of Jesus, to have siblings, even half -siblings, to think about how they would not believe in him until much later, to see him hold back himself.
Hold back, why? Because he knew that the Father's plan must be carried out to a
T, and yet his brothers, his own flesh and blood, not understand that.
Father, we do live in a world where we're surrounded, even some of us have unsaved family and friends.
It can be discouraging. They can get angry with us, make accusations at us.
Father, our calling, what you have commanded us to do is to be faithful, to do what we can, to be witnesses, to tell the truth, to expose sin where it exists, to do so in love, and with the expectation that you will use our words, which really ought to be your words, scripture, to effect change in the lives of those around us.
Father, would you save many of our Roman Catholic families? Friends, neighbors, trapped into a system that would mislead them, that would teach them that it is not faith alone that saves, but faith in church, and faith in doing good, and faith in doing the right things.
Father, let our eyes be fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter, the finisher of our faith.
Trusting in him alone. For any here this morning who do not know you,
Father, I pray that even this morning would be the time where you would convict them by their, by your spirits, of their need for Christ Jesus.