John 7:25-36 (Forbidden From Heaven)

The Shepherd's Church

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There's a few occasions where you can look back and you can say that a generational changing event has occurred.

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Where something that is not going to change just our life, but our kids' lives and our grandkids' lives.

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And certainly an event like that happened this week. One of the greatest basketball minds that ever lived announced his retirement this week from Duke University.

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As you can imagine, I am a Duke fan. This is the all -time winningest coach in college basketball history, by far.

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It's not even close. He's second all -time in national championships, and that's only because he lived in an era where basketball was more competitive than it was for John Wooden.

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That's not me making excuses. He would have long surpassed Mr. Wooden had he lived in that time.

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Number one in players who ended up in the NBA, number one in conference titles, three Olympic gold medals when the

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Olympic team was not that good. Now you say America beats all of the rest of the nations, okay, what's the big deal?

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We've got the NBA. When he took over, Mike Krzyzewski took over, it was in the garbage.

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It was not a great team. Three gold medals. I can hear you're impressed right now.

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He stands in a league all of his own. Let me just give you a couple metaphors, help put him in a category.

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He's the George Washington on top of college basketball's Mount Rushmore. It's not even arguable.

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He's the Tom Brady of college basketball, but maybe even more so. He's the pinnacle of what it means to be a coach.

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Now I love this man, and he clearly announced his retirement recently, which caused the college basketball world to go into a sort of a panic, if you will, and lots of people actually were frustrated because of his choice for successor.

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They were thinking that it was going to be someone with great pedigree or someone that had college basketball coaching experience as a head coach.

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He didn't do any of that. For 41 years, Mike Krzyzewski has been coaching at a high level, and yet he picked someone on his staff who had no coaching experience whatsoever other than the assistant coaching that he did under Mike Krzyzewski.

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He wouldn't have made most people's list, and what I found so interesting is how the internet went crazy over this, and everybody was like, he should have picked

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Jeff Capel, or he should have picked Mike or Steve Wojohowski. These are household names in Duke circles,

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I know you know them. He should have picked one of these people to take over.

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Brad Stevens, NBA coach, great pedigree, nice looking, Grant Hill maybe, he picked none of them.

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So I'm watching all this happen on the Duke fan book page, which I am one of their top fans, and I'm watching all this go down, and people are just, they're talking about what if he would have done this, or what if he would have done that, and finally

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I had enough. I said, I am sick and tired of everybody questioning the greatest coach of all time, who is smarter than us, who has better leadership than us, he's a graduate from West Point.

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He has more basketball acumen than we do, he's earned the right to make the choice on who is his successor, so we as couch potato, remote control bearing people need to let him make his choice, and we need to just be okay with that.

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That's essentially what I said. This inflamed some, it settled others, and we're just talking about a game.

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We're just talking about basketball. But what happens when we're talking about God? Because I can make the argument that Mike Krzyzewski has earned the right to make his choice, but you want to get a crowd of people upset and frustrated, you tell them that God himself has a right to make his choice in salvation, and who are we to question him?

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Now questions of fairness, questions of how could

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God choose some for salvation, how could God not choose others for salvation, all those questions are relevant, and what

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I want to do today, because our text today deals with this, I want to handle this with sensitivity,

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I want to handle this from the Bible, and I want us to look at what

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God's word says about his choice in salvation, and I don't want to be the one who's offensive here.

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I think a message like this could offend. I think a message like this could frustrate, just like that Duke chat room.

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But what I want us to do is I want us to look at the word of God, and I want us to wrestle with his word and his text, and at the end of the day, if we're offended or if we're frustrated, let it be with his word, because the

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Holy Spirit there will even help and guide and teach. So with that,

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I want us to look at what Jesus says. Now as a sort of beginning text before we get to John, I want to read

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Luke 9, 26. If anyone is ashamed of me and my words,

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I will also be ashamed of him. Now there's a lot in the Bible that's hard. There's a lot in the

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Bible. There's a lot of Jesus's words that are hard for us to understand that we could want to cower away from, but Jesus said if we are ashamed of him and his words, then he will also be ashamed of us, so let us not be in that place, but let us run towards the truth of what

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God is saying in his word, and let us understand it, and not just not have shame.

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It's a double negative, I know. Let us also have joy in who God is.

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So this is our text from today from John. We're going to look at that briefly, and then we're going to do what

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I often do, and we're going to go all over the Bible for a little while, and then we're going to come back. This is what

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John 7, 33 through 34 says. Therefore Jesus said, for a little while longer

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I am going to be with you, and then I am going to him who sent me.

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You will seek me, and you will not find me, and where I am, you cannot come.

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Shut out of heaven is what Jesus is saying, barred from relationship.

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He's not saying you will seek me, and you possibly can find me. He's saying you won't find me.

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He's not saying where I'm going. You might be able to come if you're good, and if you go to church, and if you participate in communion, and you do baptism, and all these other things.

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No, he's saying where I'm going, you can't come, which means that they're not only rejected because they have rejected him.

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They're condemned because he's rejected them. That's what that means. So what

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I just want us to do is just look at the whole Bible for a second. I want us to look at the whole biblical case of this, and I want us to see who

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God is in this, and then at the end, I want us to pray, to be able to rejoice in who

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God is, love him for who he is, not a phantom that we've created in our minds, so let's pray.

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Holy Spirit, I pray that there would be no pride, or pleasure, or any sort of misplaced emotions on my part, because you've allowed so many all throughout history to understand some of these verses,

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Lord. Lord, it's by your spirit that we understand your word. Lord, your word has beautiful realities to say to us as believers, things we could never possibly deserve, never possibly earn, and yet,

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Lord, your word is also fierce. Your word also communicates wrath. Your word communicates judgment.

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Your word communicates things that, as moderns, we don't like to deal with. We don't like to talk about.

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We don't like to see. We don't like to witness it, God, and I just, I pray that you would allow us to enter into these passages today and see who you are.

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Lord, I pray that we would not have an incomplete picture of who you are. Lord, I pray that we would have a fuller, more beautiful picture of who you are, that Lord, we would begin to see you as you revealed yourself in scripture, and that Lord, when we see that, that we would rejoice, in Jesus' name, amen.

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The primary way I want us to talk about this topic is to just ask the question right up front, what is an unbeliever?

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What is an unbeliever? Because when the Bible talks about what an unbeliever is, it talks about it from two different vantage points.

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The Bible talks about the temporary unbeliever and the permanent unbeliever.

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The temporary unbeliever is that one who eventually, in their lifetime, is going to come to Jesus.

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From our perspective, when we're living life, we may be an unbeliever right now, we may not be walking with Jesus right now, we live second by second, moment by moment, and from our perspective, we are an unbeliever, but what the

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Bible says is from God's perspective. If you are in Christ, or if you're ever going to be in Christ, you were always in Christ.

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That's a temporary unbeliever. Let's look at some verses to understand this. Ephesians 1, 4 -5.

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Just as He, that's God, chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love,

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He predestined us to the adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will.

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This means that before we chose God, God chose us, which means that there's two perspectives at play.

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There's our perspective of how we live our lives, and there's God's perspective of how He sees eternity, and both are happening simultaneously.

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And from God's perspective, if you are a Christian, or if you ever become a Christian, then

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He chose you before the foundations of the world. That means before space, before time, before matter, before light, before darkness, before anything existed,

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God in His infinite foreknowledge chose you to come to Christ and to be holy and to be blameless because He predestined you in love.

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When we talk about what people call predestination, or what people call election, or what people call effectual calling, or what people call

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Calvinism. When we talk about these things, we don't often talk about them in love, but it says in love

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God predestined us to be His kids, to be His children. He chose this,

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He paid for this, and He applied this to you and I in space and time on the finished work of Christ on the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit, which means that, again, God's perspective, you were always His. Our perspective, at some point, we were converted.

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At some point, all that God was doing in eternity intersected with your reality and you became a

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Christian. Both are true. There was a time when you were an unbeliever. There was a time when you got saved, and in God's perspective, you were always

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His. All that is true. And I would even say that if God has done all of that, then

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His grace is irresistible. That's a theological term in what's called the tulip, the five points of Calvinism.

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I normally don't use it because I don't like being pinned down and being said, oh, he's just a five pointer. But I'm using the term right now specifically because who in the world could run away from a

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God who chose you in eternity? Who in the world could be lost if God made the choice before the foundation of the world?

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We're not that powerful. John 6, 44 tells us that if God chose us, then there's nothing else for us than to eventually be

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His. It says, no one can come to me unless the

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Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. So what that's saying is, first off, the plainest reading in that text is we don't have ability to come to Christ unless God Himself does the drawing.

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Look at it from the opposite perspective. We don't have the ability to resist if God is the one doing the dragging.

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That word drawing, as we talked about in John 6, 44, means to drag. It's the same word that Paul uses when he and Timothy, or no, he and Silas were literally dragged out of the city, their head bumping on the concrete.

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They didn't have a choice. They were dragged by more powerful men, and how much more so we've been dragged by an all -powerful

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God. We don't have the ability to resist. Look at John 6, 37.

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All that the Father gives me will come to me. It doesn't say might.

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It doesn't say possibly. It says all that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me

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I will never cast out. Talk about assurance of salvation. Almighty God's power has guaranteed it.

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Almighty God's power will sustain it. You can't lose what God has done in Christ if it's for you.

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I love the fact that we sang Psalm 137 today. That was from the

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ESV, and it was written in such a way that the stanzas rhyme, so I'm going to read it to you now in the NASB and just show you who in the world could run away from God.

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Who in the world could run past His grace? This is what it says. Where can

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I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're there.

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If I make my bed down in Sheol, behold, you're there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will lay hold of me.

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If I say, surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be as night.

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Even the darkness is not dark for you, and the night is as bright as day. Darkness and light are alike to you, for you formed me in my innermost parts.

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You wove me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

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Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it well. My frame was not hidden from you.

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When I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth, your eyes have seen my unformed substance, and in your book were written all of the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were not even one of them.

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How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God. How vast is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.

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He knew us in eternity. He knew us before we were born. He knows every millisecond of our lives, so that when we die, we always die in God's timing.

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There's not a single person who died that God was like, whoops. He says,

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I know your days. When we go out into the world and we live our lives, we are immortal until God is finished with us, because God's hand himself is sustaining us.

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From our vantage point, there was a moment in our life where we were an unbeliever, but from God's vantage point, we were eternally known and eternally chosen, so that he would not only save us, but that he would sanctify us, and that eventually he will glorify us.

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That's what it means for us, temporary unbelievers, forever, from God's perspective,

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Christians. There's another category. Now, if you think that topic is not talked about very much in church, the flip side of that coin is definitely not talked about in church, because if God makes a choice for some, then it seems to me that he's made a choice for all.

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Now, you can argue and you can say that, well, God actively chose the believers and God passively chose the unbelievers.

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It's a distinction without a difference. God is the one who made a choice in salvation, and it wasn't because of us, and it wasn't because of our goodness, and it wasn't because of their badness.

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We're just as bad as unbelievers who are never going to come to Christ. We're just as wretched, just as wicked, just as deserving of hell.

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So what I want us to do now is I want us to look at God's perspective. We can look at man's perspective, and we can say that permanent unbelievers are people who are never going to come to Jesus.

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They're going to live their entire life from beginning to end, and they're never going to come to God. Jesus knows that.

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So from his perspective, he knows who's going to come to him. He knows who's not going to come to him, and his word actually says things about the ones that he knows are not going to come to him.

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So that's what I want us to look at for a moment. Ephesians 1 or 2, 1 through 3 says,

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And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world.

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According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

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See that phrase, sons of disobedience? Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

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Do you see the two groups of people in this one verse? It says you were dead in your trespasses.

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You formerly walked in the course of this world. You were formerly under the bondage of the prince and the power of the air that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

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Notice that phrase. There are children of God who were temporary unbelievers who've been rescued out of the power of Satan, and there are permanent unbelievers whose title bears the fact that they're sons of disobedience.

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They're children of unrighteousness. It's their children who remain dead in their sins, who will continue on in their lust and in the desires of their flesh until they ultimately endure the wrath of Almighty God.

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From God's perspective, all people are born dead. God's people get a resurrection.

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The ones who are not God's people stay dead. They're not just born dead, they're born blind.

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2 Corinthians 4 says, in whose case, he's talking about unbelievers, permanent unbelievers, men and women who will never turn to God, in whose case the

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God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that God of this world is

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Satan, so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

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They are blinded so that they cannot see. It doesn't say that they're blinded so that they might see, they're blinded so that they can't see.

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Now, I don't want to give too much power to Satan. I don't want to create a dualistic framework where God chooses his and Satan does his thing and both are equal and opposite, none of that.

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The reason Satan even has power at all is because God has allowed it. Think about the book of Job, Job is a righteous man.

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Satan goes up to the throne of God and he says, and God says, where have you been? He said,

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I've been roaming to and fro throughout the earth and he says, have you considered my servant Job? God is the one who asks

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Satan, have you considered my servant Job? God is the one who gave Satan permission in order to frustrate

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Job, harm Job, break Job and God is the one at the end who gets the glory for all of this.

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We have to have a larger vision of who God is, not just that God is the one who does good things for us, which he does, he also has done good things for those who will never be his and he gets glory even in that.

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Jesus, this passage is so striking, Satan has blinded the eyes of the unbelieving world, but Jesus himself shows that he ultimately is the one who causes them not to have sight.

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John 12, 35 through 40. So Jesus said to them, for a little while longer, the light, that's him, is among you.

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Walk while you have the light so that darkness will not overtake you. He who walks in darkness does not know where he goes.

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While you have the light, believe in the light so that you may become sons of the light. These things Jesus spoke and then he went away and he hid himself from them.

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Jesus is the light of the world and you may say, Jesus is the light of the world, anyone can believe, all they have to do is open their eyes, but the

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Bible doesn't say that their eyes are closed. The Bible says that their eyes are blind. The Bible doesn't say that if you could just preach a passionate sermon and say, oh blind man, open your eyes, if you could increase the intensity of the light so that greater and greater magnification of photons are hitting their hollow eyes, it's not going to help.

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Their eyes are blind. If you could put the sun right in front of their face, if such a thing were possible without liquidating them, they still could not see because their eyes are blind.

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It's not that their eyes are closed. Look at what Jesus continues on.

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It says that he hid. The light of the world hid from these people. Jesus is keeping them in their blindness.

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Look at what it says in verse 37 through 40. But though he had performed so many signs before them, yet they were unbelieving.

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And that's in space and time. They were unbelieving because they did not believe in Jesus. But look at God's perspective here.

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This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah, the prophet, which he spoke, Lord, who has believed our report and to whom is the arm of the

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Lord been revealed. For this reason, they could not believe. For Isaiah said again, he has blinded, that's

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God, he has blinded their eyes and he has hardened their hearts so that they would not see with their eyes and they would not perceive in their heart and be converted so that I would heal them.

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Jesus is barring any possibility of their repentance so that his grace would be forced to heal them.

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Isaiah says God blinded their eyes, God hardened their hearts so that the uncomfortable thing that we don't like to consider is that so that they would remain in their sins, they would remain in the darkness.

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And this is over and over in Scripture. We just don't talk about it. The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.

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The Lord has made the wicked for a good purpose for their destruction.

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Our dear Romans nine, he has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires.

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So it's not the power of man. It's God. Our brother

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Scott preached on first Peter two, six through eight recently. This is what this is, what this passage says, for this is contained in Scripture.

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Behold, I lay in Zion as a choice stone, a precious cornerstone. That's Jesus. And he who believes in him will not be disappointed.

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This precious value then is for you who believe. It's for you who believe.

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But for those who disbelieve, the stone, the builders rejected, this became the very cornerstone.

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That's human's perspective. That's space and time. They rejected him. But now look at God's perspective in verse eight, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense for they stumble because they're disobedient to the word and to this doom.

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They were also, they were appointed.

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I know this makes us uncomfortable. I know the strikes against what we've always been taught, but there's two categories of unbelievers in the

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Bible. There's those who are appointed eternally for life. And there's those who are appointed for death by the same sovereign, righteous, holy

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God. Now, our question is, are we going to worship this God?

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Are we going to question this God and say, how dare you make these decisions? In Matthew 13, 11 through 15, the disciples come to Jesus and they're, and they're concerned.

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They're like, Jesus, why don't you just speak plainly to the people? Why don't you stop speaking in parables so that the people will understand what you're saying?

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Jesus, you're talking, you're talking gibberish to these people. They don't understand. Why don't you, why don't, why don't you be more winsome and why don't you be more attractional and why don't you do all these things?

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And this is what Jesus says to you. It has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them, it has not been granted for whoever has to him more shall be given and he will have an abundance.

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But whoever does not have even what he does not have shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables because while seeing they do not see and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

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In their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, you will keep on hearing, but will not understand.

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You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive for the heart of this people has become dull with their ears.

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They can scarcely hear and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they would see with their eyes here with their ears and understand what their hearts and return and I would heal them.

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God's perspective, man's perspective. They are unbelieving. They are rejecting, but yet there's a sovereign hand of providence over this that says if they turned,

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I would heal them, but I'm not letting them. God's perspective and man's perspective are working together in these texts and we're seeing a theme that God is sovereign over both the salvation of believers in the damnation of the reprobate and in both

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God should be glorified for who he is. Mark says it more plainly in 4 chapter 4 verse 12, so that they may be ever seeing, but never perceiving, ever hearing, but never understanding.

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Otherwise they might turn and be forgiven. I know this is a heavy point and I know that most of us want to say, what kind of a

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God is this? But when we ask the question of fairness, we don't understand that fairness dictates that all of us would be destroyed.

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That fairness dictates that we get what we deserve. We have not gotten what we have deserved and I will argue in just a moment that even those who go to hell for an eternity have not gotten what they've deserved.

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And in both cases, God is proving himself to be gracious. If we feel that we need to question

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God, Romans 9 is the perfect argument on why we should not do such a thing.

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You will say to me then, why does he still find fault? For who has resisted

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God's will? On the contrary, Paul says, who are you, O foolish person, who answers back to God?

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The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this? Will it? Or does the potter not have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one object for honorable use and another for common use?

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What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and make his power known, endured with great patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction, and he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon objects of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, namely us, whom he also called not only among the

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Jews, but also from the Gentiles. When Paul says, what if God, although willing to demonstrate his justice, he's talking about the

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Garden of Eden. In the day that you eat of the fruit, you shall surely die. God's justice and his righteousness demanded a punishment for their sins.

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They ate of the tree and they did not die. We may want to ask, and R .C. Sproul has a wonderful clip on YouTube that you can look up.

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We may want to ask, why is God's punishment so severe? It's not so severe. Because God told them what they were supposed to do and they did not do it, and yet God in his mercy did not strike them down.

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He let them live. He let them live not one day. He let them live another day.

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And another day. He let them enjoy deep, satisfying breaths.

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He let them enjoy relationships. He let them enjoy city building. He let them enjoy vocations. He let them enjoy relationships and intimacy and wine and great food and all of their lives.

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He let them enjoy these wonderful mercies and benefits of living on planet

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Earth, all the while they were rebelling against him and hating him. When we ask the question, that's not fair, you're right.

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It's not fair. Fairness would have demanded that the human project came tumbling down in the

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Garden of Eden. No humans, never again. All people would have fallen short of the glory of God and all people would have come under the punishment.

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But God demonstrates his mercy in that objects of his wrath who will never repent are given life.

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They're given lifetimes of blessings and they're given heaven here on Earth as a gift, even though they're going to reject him.

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God is infinitely merciful to those who have turned against him, and he's incomprehensibly merciful to us who were just as wicked, who hated him just as fervently.

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There is nothing good in us like we read in Deuteronomy 7, 7. He did not set his love on us because of us.

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What I think we have done is we've come to too low a view of God and too high a view of ourselves.

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We don't think that our sin is that offensive. We don't think that our wickedness is that big of a deal. But yet to God, it was an incomprehensible act of grace not to let us fall into his wrath and be saved by his own son falling under his wrath.

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If we can't see the depth and the shock of that, it's because one of two things has happened.

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We either have too low a view of who God is or we have too high a view of who we are.

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God is sovereign over and over and over again. And these are just some of the verses. God is sovereign over the salvation of both the righteous and also the damnation of the unrighteous.

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There is no accidents. God is sovereign. He's in control. Now, I say that because now

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I want us to turn to our text for today, and I want us to see how Jesus himself says,

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Where I go, you can not. Jesus didn't stick around for the argument about free will.

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That was a joke. It's a little heavy right now, so I was trying to lighten the mood a little.

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He didn't ask permission to tell them that they can't follow him. He said it. He meant it. And I want us to explore it.

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Now, when we come to this text, we realize that the people have been going through a feast.

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It's the Feast of Booths. So let's turn now to John 7, 25 -36, and let's see what

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Jesus is communicating to his people and to the people who are not his people.

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John 7, 25 says, So some of the people of Jerusalem are saying, Is this man not the one whom they are seeking to kill?

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And yet, look, he is speaking publicly. And they are saying nothing to him. The rulers do not really know that this is the

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Christ, do they? However, we know where this man is from. But when the

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Christ comes, no one knows where he is from. And then Jesus cried out in the temple, saying, teaching and saying,

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You both know me, and you know where I am from. And I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you do not know.

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I do know him, because I am from him, and he sent me. So they were seeking to arrest him, and yet no one laid hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.

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But many of the crowd believed in him, and they were saying, When the Christ comes, he will perform more signs than those which this man does, won't he?

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The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.

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Therefore Jesus said, For a little while longer I am going to be with you, and then I am going to him who sent me.

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You will seek me, and you will not find me. And where I am, you cannot come.

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The Jews then said to one another, Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? He does not intend to go to the dispersion among the

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Greeks and to teach the Greeks, does he? What is the statement that he said, You will seek me, and you will not find me.

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And where I am, you cannot come. This was perplexing to them as much as it is to us.

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Now if you remember, the city is filled with joy because of the Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths was this wonderful moment in the time of Israel where they were to gather together and they were to build these little booths and live in.

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It doesn't sound wonderful to me because I'm not a camper, but they would camp outside of the city, they would build these little booths, and they would put palm branches over it, which was always a symbol of joy, and they would gather together as the people outside the city to celebrate the

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God of the harvest. The God who had brought them safely out of the land of Egypt, and they were mobile people who were living in the wilderness en route to the

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Promised Land. And the joy of the Festival of Booths was that God fulfilled His promises and gave them a home in the land of Israel so that they no longer had to live in booths.

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So they re -entered into booths for a week during this festival in order to celebrate the goodness and faithfulness of God.

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Millions of people would have funneled into the city because this is one of the high holy feasts in Israel. You would have had people from not just Jerusalem and Judea, but from Samaria and from the uttermost parts of the earth who were

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Jews, but who did not live in Israel. People from Rome and Spain and other places would have traveled, who were

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Jews by birth, would have traveled to Jerusalem so that the city would have swollen from about the size of Lowell to the size of Boston, possibly.

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Yet it would have been still the same size geographically as Lowell. So you'd have had people shoulder to shoulder.

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People not able to move in the city. It would have been crowded. It would have been a place that was ready to worship, and yet here you have

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Jesus telling a crowd of people that they will be shut out of heaven. Do you see the contrast?

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This joyful celebration of God's faithfulness, and yet God is demonstrating

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His faithfulness here even in election. Even as far back as John 1 .1,

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the author has given us a hint as to what was going on here. John 1 .11,

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excuse me. Jesus came to His own, and His own people did not accept

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Him. And they didn't receive Him because they could not. John 1 .4 makes this clear.

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In Him was the light, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

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The reason that they didn't comprehend it was because they were blind, spiritually dead, rejecting

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Jesus at every turn. And really, John 7 as a chapter has just been one of many chapters showing us that the rejection that's been boiling under the surface in the gospel of John is increasing.

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In John 1, they're agitated over who Jesus is. In John 2, they're embittered over who

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Jesus is. In John 5, they have a sort of homicidal rage over who Jesus is. And by John 7, they're in the mood to murder

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Him. Now, we know that they could not do that because it was not His time, and that no one could take away

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His life. Only Jesus could lay down His life, and He would do that six months later during the time of Passover.

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But what I mean to tell you is that rejection, hatred, anger, they're all bubbling under the surface here in John 7, and they want

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Him dead. Now, from our human perspective, we've talked about both perspectives, human and God's.

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From a human perspective, the reason that they are being rejected by Christ is their confusion about Christ.

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You cannot know God if you're confused about who Christ is. You can't. So from their perspective, they were confused, and this confusion manifests itself in multiple layers, which we'll look at right now.

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The first thing is that they were confused about His authority. If you remember, a couple weeks ago in verse 19 through 20,

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Jesus said, Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you carries out the law? Why are you seeking to kill me?

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And the crowd answered, You have a demon. They were confused about who Jesus is.

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They didn't know who He was, because if they knew that He was the Son of God, they would not have ever dared to say that your work must be attributed to the power of Satan.

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Now, there's a dynamic going on here that I need to explain.

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In verse 19 through 20, we hear the unified chorus of the entire crowd. Judean, Galilean, and Gentile world

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Jews, all in the same city, crying out, You have a demon. Universal rejection has come.

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But today in verses 25 through 26, we see a part of that crowd, a subset of that crowd.

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Not all of the Jews from all over the world, just the Jerusalem Jews, are going to cry out.

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This is what they say. So some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, Is this man not the one whom they are seeking to kill?

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And yet, look, he is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to him. The rulers do not really know that this is the

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Christ, do they? What's clear here is that these

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Jerusalem Jews know, they've heard through the grapevine that the priests and the

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Levites and the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin want to murder Jesus. They've heard it, they know it, and they're even saying,

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Is this the one that we've been hearing these rumors about, that he's the one that we want dead? And they're in a sort of dilemma, and the dilemma is a question of authority.

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If the Pharisees want, who have unrivaled authority here in Jerusalem, what they say goes, no other voice matters when it comes to the religious leaders.

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They are the ones with authority. So if Jesus is speaking, then why aren't they shutting him down?

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That's their question. And if Jesus has unlimited authority and unrivaled authority, then why do they want to kill him?

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That's the confusion at the heart of it that they're dealing with. And this is not a confusion that's just happened in John 7.

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It's been going on all throughout the text. In John 2, they demanded a sign because he overturned their temple, and he humiliated them like no one had ever humiliated them before.

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And they asked him, who has given you the authority to do these things? John 5, he heals a man on the

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Sabbath, and they said, they demanded an explanation. By what authority do you do these things? There was a running sort of competitiveness with the

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Pharisees, who had authority, that they were clenching white -knuckled over the leadership of the temple grounds, and they were looking at Jesus and saying, who are you?

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Who do you think you are? You're coming in here challenging our authority, and you're challenging our theology, and you're challenging our traditions.

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Who do you think you are, Jesus? And again, if Jesus has all the authority, then them wanting to kill him is a sin on a cosmic level.

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This whole moment is rife with confusion. The crowd does not know who he is. They even say flat out, the rulers do not really know that this is the

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Christ, do they? This is a question of authority. They're saying, do the rulers know that he has more authority than them?

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Is it possible that this man could be the Christ? Now don't give them too much credit here.

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This sounds like that they're open, this sounds like that they're seeking, this sounds like they're looking, but just the very next verse, they're back into the depths of confusion again over his origin.

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It says in verse 27, however, we know, however, we know where this man is from.

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So they're saying, the rulers really don't know that this is the Christ, do they? But we know who this man is because we know where he's from.

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Because when the Christ comes, no one will know where he's from. This is a strange sort of myth that was happening in the city of Jerusalem during the time of Jesus.

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That when the Messiah came, no one would know where he was from. This was going on among the crowds.

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And the myth basically said that when the Messiah comes, he will step out of heaven, based off Malachi 3 .1,

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that your God whom you've been seeking will suddenly appear at your temple. They were believing that their God would show up in the flesh, and he would suddenly appear at the temple, and no one would know where he was from.

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And because they said Jesus is from Galilee, he cannot be the Messiah, based off of their local mythology.

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They got some parts of the text right, but not all parts of the text right. Now the

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Pharisees knew better. They knew that the Messiah was supposed to be born in Bethlehem. When Jesus was born,

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King Herod went to the Pharisees and said, where's the Messiah to be born, king of the Jews? And they said, in Bethlehem of Judea, based off of Micah 5 .2.

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So the Pharisees knew where the Messiah was going to be born, and yet, they even had the ability to go check it out.

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Just like we have today, birth certificates. They had records that were kept at the temple on every child's birth in Judea.

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They could have went to the temple, they could have checked out the records, and they could have seen that, oh, he was born in Bethlehem, in a stable.

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They could have seen this. And yet, they did not go looking, or if they did, they chose to hide it.

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They said, this man is from Galilee, how could he be the Messiah? They didn't go looking because they didn't want to find out, and they didn't want to find out because they wanted to cling to their authority, and so that they could keep the crowds in confusion, so that they could keep the crowds under their thumbs as well.

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The irony goes even deeper when you realize that Jesus is both God and man, because they didn't know where Jesus was from as a man.

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They thought he was from Galilee. He was born in Bethlehem. He was born as the David, the coming king of the

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Jews. No one knew where he was from. So actually, ironically, their little myth was true.

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And yet, as God, none of them knew that he actually was from heaven, that he actually had stepped onto the shoals of this earth as a man, whereas he stepped out of eternity,

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John 1 says. He stepped out of eternity. He was from God. So they didn't know where he was from as a man.

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They didn't know where he was from as God, and they missed the fact that he was both the long -awaited king of David.

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He was going to come, and he was going to sit on the throne of his fathers, and he was going to rule over a kingdom, and he is at the same time the long -awaited return of God, the king of heaven, who was going to heal his people of their sicknesses and of their wounds, and by his stripes we were going to be healed.

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He is both king of Jerusalem and king of heaven, and they knew none of it. They were confused about his authority, and they were confused about his origins.

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They were also confused about his divinity. Verse 28 and 29 says,

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Then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, You both know me, and you know where I am from.

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And he says this because he's already told them in John 5. And I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you do not know.

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I know him because I am from him, and he sent me. Now the word,

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I want you to imagine the scene here. Probably two million people in a city that can only hold a couple hundred thousand.

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There's no room. Jesus has lost the crowd a little bit because now they're speculating on his origin.

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They're talking amongst themselves on where is he from. Is he from Galilee? He can't be the

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Messiah, and everybody's talking. Everybody's whipping themselves up into a frenzy. No one can even hear themselves speaking, and Jesus cries out.

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That word for cries out means to scream. It's the harshest word that you can use for raising your voice.

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It is a shrill, it is a shrieking scream. And it's the same word that's used of Jesus on the cross when he's hanging there, and he cries out, and he gives up his spirit, and he says, it is finished.

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So the same word used on the cross is used here of Jesus, who calls the crowd to attention.

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The crowd who is basically arguing so that they can't hear a word that he's saying. He cries out, and what he tells them is that you do not believe, you cannot believe.

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Now, if you're in a public speaking class, the first thing that they would tell you is probably don't alienate your audience right off the bat.

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Jesus grabs their attention and then says, you not only don't believe, you can't believe.

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And you imagine the crowd going back into an uproar again. And then say, what do you mean?

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We're the Jews. We're the people of God. We're the people who are going to inherit the promises of God.

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We have the temple. God's in our temple. You want to go look, go find out. He's right over there. They think that they're somehow immune to this because they have some sort of special status, but yet the

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Bible says that true Israel is Israel that believes in God and not just bears a physical mark of circumcision, they're circumcised in their heart.

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These people's hearts are far from him, and they're confused about many things. And they turn against Jesus here.

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It even says that they, now, of course, they couldn't do that because verse 30 says, so they were seeking to arrest him, and yet no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come.

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Verse 32 says the Pharisees heard the crowd whispering about these things, about him and the chief priests, and the

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Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. I don't know, I learned this this week, but the temple itself had its own little police force, the temple grounds.

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And they were supposed to be a sort of nonpartisan police force that only operated in the temple, but the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees exerted so much power and authority and influence over the temple that they became their personal brute squad, essentially.

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So they go to their brute squad and they say, you go arrest him, you go take him, you go get him and bring him to us and we're going to kill him.

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And it says that they couldn't. A highly trained special forces type unit couldn't get one man in a crowd because his hour had not yet come.

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They were confused. They were confused about his identity, they were confused about his origin, they were confused about his divinity, they were confused about his hour, thinking that they somehow had power to arrest this

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Jesus. But the final confusion that they have in human terms was the one that sealed their fate.

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They did not have true belief. But many in the crowd believed in him.

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They believed in him because of his signs, it says. Look, when the Christ comes, he will not perform more signs than those which this man has done, will he?

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All throughout the narrative of John, we have seen that the crowd doesn't believe in Jesus for who he is, they believe in Jesus for what he's done.

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And in John 2, he says that he wouldn't entrust himself to that kind of belief. He wouldn't give himself over to that kind of belief because he knew the wicked heart of man and he knew that they didn't want him, they wanted his stuff.

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They treated Jesus like a genie in a bottle or like a vending machine. Jesus, give us these miracles and then maybe we'll believe in you.

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And look at what they say, they say, when the Messiah comes, will he do more than this? They didn't believe he was the Messiah. John 20, 31 is the formula for belief.

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Believe that he is the Christ, the son of God, and you will have life in his name. They didn't believe that he was the Christ, they didn't believe he was the son of God, and therefore they will not have life in his name.

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Their belief was flawed. And from a human perspective, this is why they're condemned.

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Because in space and time, they rejected the one and only son of God. But from God's perspective,

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I want you to see what Jesus says. They rejected Jesus, but Jesus also rejected them.

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Look at what it says in verse 33. We've read this verse. Therefore Jesus said, for a little while longer

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I'm going to be with you, and then I'm going to him who sent me. You will seek me and will not find me.

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And where I am. What I want us to understand about belief is that belief is happening on two different levels.

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It's happening on the human level, where we're responding to the things that are happening in our life. And it's happening on the divine level, where God is making choices.

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In this passage, we see both. That they are rejecting Jesus. They're culpable.

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They have done what they should not do, and they are rejecting him, and therefore they're condemned. We agree with that.

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If you reject Jesus, then you go to hell. That is what every church basically says, hopefully.

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But under the surface of this, there's also the divine perspective that Jesus is sovereign over both salvation and also damnation.

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And why would we want to believe in a God who wasn't fully sovereign? He is sovereign over both.

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Jesus says to us that he came to seek and to save the lost. He would say to us in this moment, repent and believe.

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He would say to us, trust in him, turn to him. But to this crowd, he doesn't say that. He doesn't say, turn to me and I will heal you.

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He doesn't say, repent and believe. He says, you cannot come. You will never find me.

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You will never step foot where I am going. You will be shot out of heaven. The Jews then said to one another, where does this man intend to go?

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That we will not find him. Do you hear the pride there? God has said you cannot come.

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And they said, says who? Where is he going to go where we can't find him?

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Is he going to go to the dispersion of the Jews? Is he going to go to Rome? Caesar, we know him, he'll turn him over.

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We love Caesar. We have no king but Caesar, that's what they said. He will seek me and you will not find me.

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And where I am, you cannot come. How do we make all this apply?

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How do we bring this plane down on the runway and talk about what does this mean for us as Christians?

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Well, I think for starters we need to understand that we are commanded to share the gospel with every single person on the face of the earth because we don't know the mind of God.

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We live in a human perspective and we don't know who God has saved and we don't know who

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God has condemned. So we preach the gospel like obedient children to a world full of orphans and we do it obediently and we do it passionately and we do it for a lifetime.

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And at the same time we know that those who respond to the power of the gospel are not responding because we're really good at what we do.

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They're not responding because we're winsome or because we won an argument or because we presented a silver bullet argument that just so happened to win them into heaven and they tripped and found

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God's grace. No, we are humble in knowing that we preach

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Christ crucified and everyone who believes, believes because he has set his love and affection on them just like it says in Deuteronomy.

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I think also we have to remember that we need to hold all of God's attributes in tension.

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Today we've looked at wrath, we've looked at justice, we've looked at righteousness, but let us remember that Jesus is fully

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God and that all of God's attributes find their perfect completion in him.

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Colossians says that he is the image of the invisible God so therefore every attribute of God finds its perfect completion in Christ.

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That means that he's holy. That means that no one is pure enough to worship Christ and to be loved by Christ.

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He's in a class all of his own in purity and holiness and we have all fallen short of the glory of God so that leads us to humility.

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But we also know that Jesus is eternal, that he's everlasting, that he has no beginning and no end which means that he doesn't wield his wrath like a divine sword.

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He wields his love and patience and grace and mercy and yet he holds people accountable for their decisions as well.

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We remember that if Jesus is

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God then he's also good. When we get upset and frustrated and say this doesn't seem fair, this doesn't seem loving, every decision that God makes is good.

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If you believe the Bible you believe that at a base level that God is good and all of his decisions are good and when we read in the

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Bible that God has prepared some people for life and some people for destruction although we are not good people and we look at that and we see that that doesn't sound good, we can have confidence that it actually is good because God himself is good.

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It's not a circular argument, God is infinitely perfectly good. When Job stood at the mountain and God questioned him and he said where were you when the foundations of the world were made?

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Where were you when I made the mountain goat and I made the Leviathan and I made all of these different things and Job says,

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I can't speak, I can't speak because I've realized for the first time in my life that you're so infinitely good that I can't even possibly imagine how good you are so here

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I am, I'm going to stand silent and just listen and worship. If we know that God is good even the hard truths of the

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Bible can be seen through the lens of his goodness that God is always good and he's always gracious and he's always faithful.

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If we know that Jesus is God we also have to have a category for his justice and wrath.

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God does pour out his wrath. First and foremost for the believer he's poured out his wrath on Jesus Christ instead of you.

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His love and his mercy and his holiness and his wrath are all perfectly pulled together like the colors of a rainbow at the cross.

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He poured out his wrath on his one and only son so that you and I could be set free and for those who do not experience his eternal grace we also know that God in his long suffering and patience has given them more than anyone could ever deserve.

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If you and I were to go to hell right this moment we have gotten better than we deserve because we've lived a lifetime of enjoying the graces of God.

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We're not entitled to anything. We live in an entitled culture. We live in a culture that says I'm owed this and I'm owed that and we live in a culture where young men will stay at home and make more money than a man who worked 50 years of his life and now is on social security.

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We live in an entitlement age and our entitlements have determined how we interpret scripture. We're not entitled to anything.

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We are entitled to the wrath of God and yet because of Jesus Christ we are saved. That should cause our hearts to sing with joy and sing with praise.

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I want to end by juxtaposing these two ideas. Jesus pronounced condemnation on one group and he said you cannot come where I come.

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I want you to remember that even though Jesus pronounced condemnation on one group he was condemned for you.

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Jesus knocked one group out of heaven but the reason that you and I can go to heaven is because he was locked in a tomb for three days and he died for us so that we could experience life.

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And that is the gospel, right? That Jesus was treated as our sins deserved so that you and I could be treated as his righteousness deserves.

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He got what we deserve and we get grace. When we read a passage like John 7, you will seek me and you will not find me.

01:01:52

And where I am you cannot come. I want you to read that through the lens of now as a

01:01:58

Christian. This is what Jesus would say to you. You will seek me and because of what

01:02:03

I've done you will find me. And where I am because of what

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I've done for you, you will also come by Christ alone, through faith alone, by grace alone, to the glory of God alone.

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Let's pray. Lord, we know that we are not saved because of our effort and we're not saved because of our righteousness and we're not saved because of our decisions and we're not saved because of our intelligence to say a really spiritual prayer that strong arms you into saving us.

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And we're not saved because ink dried on a piece of paper on a box that says, I gave my life to Jesus.

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And we're not saved because we sat around a campfire somewhere and sang a song and then raised our hand and all that.

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Lord, we're not saved by any of these things. We are saved because you are holy, because you are righteous, because you are good, because you are gracious, and because you determined even in our sinfulness, even in our undeservedness to pour out your mercy upon us.

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It's inherently not fair. It's not fair that anyone would experience so great of mercy and grace.

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It's not fair that anyone would be saved. It's not fair that your son had to die so that some, so that those who walk on the narrow path and those who enter through the narrow gate would experience so great the blessings.

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Lord, we are indebted to you at every single turn. You, at every moment of our life, past, present, and future, have been doing us good.

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And Lord, instead of us, the clay, looking at you and saying, why did you make us this way or why did you make them that way?

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Lord, I pray that just with pure humility, we would say,

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Lord, why did you spare me? Why did you save me? What have

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I to offer you? And Lord, when we see it that way, Lord, I pray that we would just live in a sort of unadulterated praise and grace because you have done so good, so much good.

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I'm losing words even to describe it. Lord, fill our hearts with praise. In Jesus' name, amen.