Is Faith A Tug-O-War? - [John 12:36b-43]

Well, let me ask you this morning, are you competitive? Do you compete when you play games?

I could put it in a less kind way, are you a bad loser? I think, you know, as a child,

I think I was probably in the hall of fame of bad losers, really, really bad. But you know, things happen as you get older.

First of all, you know, I hope that gradually as I enter my, you know, declining years, that I would, my more wise years is what

I meant to say, that I would certainly see the folly in thinking that I should or could always win.

But I think maybe more importantly, as I enter my retirement years,

I can't run anymore. I can't jump anymore. I can't do a lot of the things,

I can't even ride a bike, because the vibration puts my hands, makes them all numb and everything.

So I just think, well, the less you can do, the less you have to be competitive about. And the more you can just say, well,

I can't do that. You know, I can't do that. I can't do that. And I think my kids would tell you certainly that, you know, board games,

I was always a gracious loser. Where are they? Probably not.

But there's something, I don't know if you've ever done this. If you've ever been in a tug of war, there's just something super competitive about it.

I mean, you absolutely do not want to lose. I mean, it's one thing like, have you ever seen the tug of wars where they have like a pit of mud in the middle?

And so you don't want to be dragged into that. But even if it's just a little like line that you don't want the flag to cross, you know, or whatever, it's like all out.

You are pulling and pulling and pulling and you don't want to be the guy who gives in or the first one dragged across.

And I mean, those things can go on for quite a while. And sometimes we talk about people that are not saved as if they're in some kind of tug of war with God, right?

That God's drawing them, but they're resisting and that there's this kind of struggle going on between the two of them.

Well, I hope, you know, first of all, I hope we could see if we just kind of think about that for a moment, that it's really kind of silly.

But more importantly, as we go to our text this morning, I want us to see that that's not the case at all.

It is, there's nothing like that in scripture. Let's turn to John chapter 12. So we continue through the gospel of John.

John chapter 12, and I'm going to pick it up this morning in verse 36, which is where we ended last week.

But I have just one thing to sort of add as we transition into this new section.

John chapter 12, verse 36. Is faith a tug of war?

Well, no. When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.

That is to say from the crowd that was around him, the Jews. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him so that the words spoken by the prophet

Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore, they could not believe.

For again, Isaiah said, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn.

And I would heal them. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.

Nevertheless, many, even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the

Pharisees, they did not confess it. So they would not be put out of the synagogue. For they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

Now, how would you, how would you go about proving that Jesus is both truly man and truly

God? How would you prove that Jesus is the promised Messiah?

How would you demonstrate that to people? How would you prove that only faith in Jesus can save them from the wrath of God?

Well, if you're the apostle John, the beloved apostle, as I like to call him,

Jesus' best friend, the answer was write this gospel. The gospel of John, an extended track to prove these very things.

John certainly had an advantage. He had a few advantages. First of all, he was an eyewitness. He was there.

He walked and he talked and he ate and did everything with Jesus. But his second advantage, of course, is he had the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity, to make sure that he was writing exactly what

God wanted him to write and exactly the things that would lead a person to faith in Christ. Two weeks ago, we looked at the aftermath of the triumphal entry.

Some of the Greeks had approached Philip. They wanted to see Jesus. And he went to Andrew.

And then the two of them went and told their master. After Jesus used a metaphor about a grain of wheat to teach about the necessity of his death, he taught about the high cost of discipleship, the high cost of following him.

And last week, Jesus told those listening that his soul was troubled. He prayed that the father would glorify his name, the father's name.

And then he's answered audibly. There's a voice out of heaven. And neither of the groups who offered opinions about this voice were right.

Remember, they said it was thunder and others said it was an angel. Well, he had just addressed the father and they denied it just flat out just that quickly.

The obvious answer was that Jesus had prayed to the father and that the father had answered. And our

Lord then prophesied of his crucifixion, which was absolutely contrary to what the

Jews wanted, what they expected from their Messiah. They understood that Jesus claimed to be both the son of man and the

Messiah. And so they basically asked him, how can this be? How can this be that you are the son of man and you're going to die like this?

This isn't what we want. And this isn't what's supposed to happen. Are you really the son of man? And rather than answer that, he urged them to repent, to believe.

And then he left and hid himself. And that's where we pick up this morning. And this morning, this is kind of interesting because there are no words from Jesus here this morning.

This is an interlude. If you're writing a book and you have a section of dialogue and then you want to fill in some gaps, kind of help the story move along, you narrate.

And that's exactly what we see here this morning. The apostle Paul is narrating. He's writing, looking back 55, 60 years later, he's looking back at things and he's saying, this is what happened and this is why.

So he answers, he gives four answers. And this morning, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask the questions that he gives the answers to.

So I'm going to ask the questions. I have four questions and I'm going to, I'm going to give you a big hint.

Question number two is going to consume most of our time this morning. Of the four questions, question number two is going to be a lot longer.

He's going to give us a lot of answers. And so then I'm going to ask the questions so that his answers will kind of flow a little bit better.

Question number one, why did Jesus go into seclusion? Why did he do that? And again, at the end of verse 36, we see that he did do that.

And when Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.

Why did he do that? Why did he hide himself for the crowds? Why didn't he go on and explain things more?

Well, his public ministry to the Jews had drawn to an end. He was done proclaiming the truth to the

Jews. We get a little bit more information by looking at verse 37.

Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him.

So Jesus, who likely had been teaching the temple, leaves the temple, goes back to, or starts heading back to Bethany, and he is done preaching to these crowds.

John also emphasizes the unbelief of the nation of Israel. They still did not believe in him.

And as I was thinking about this, I couldn't help but think about the many signs it says here. Back to Nicodemus in John chapter three,

Nicodemus comes to him at night. John chapter three, verse two, this man, Nicodemus, came to Jesus by night and said to him,

Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs.

That you do unless God is with him. These were miraculous signs. These are things that were not, they were supernatural.

A regular human being could not do them. So he says, we know that God is with you.

We know that God is working through you. Now from John chapter three to John chapter 12, we have a period of many, many months here.

And Jesus has done many more signs. So all these cumulative signs, all these things that people knew about, whether it was raising

Lazarus from the dead, whether it was feeding of the 5 ,000, whether it was raising other people from the dead, healing the man born blind, on and on and on it goes.

All those things, and yet they still did not believe.

So why does he withdraw from them? Well, what else is he supposed to do? What else can he do? He had done enough miraculous acts, enough signs to cause the teacher in all of Israel, the teacher, the premier teacher,

Nicodemus, in all of Israel to know that he was from God and later on to come to faith.

But these Jews, these crowds, the nation of Israel were not believing.

Given the fervor exhibited by the people as Jesus entered Jerusalem in the triumphal entry.

They all knew about Lazarus. And the words of John here are meant to emphasize the sheer number, the volume of these signs.

They were not willing to take Jesus on his terms, even with all of these signs.

They love the miracles. They love the power of God on display, but they did not love Jesus. Now, were there exceptions?

Did some believe? The answer is yes. We can pick out individuals throughout the gospel. There's a fairly large group, even at the last ring, the raising of Lazarus or the lasering of Lazarus who come to faith.

But the vast majority of those who were aware of Jesus and the signs that he performed were not believers.

So he's done with the public ministry. But the second thing is he needs to spend the last few days that he has.

This is probably on Tuesday. He's going to be crucified on Friday. So what's he going to do? He's going to pour himself the last few days into preparing the disciples for what's going to come after his resurrection.

He's going to spend time with his friends and one enemy that he...

He's going to spend time with him too. But he wants to prepare them for what's coming. And that's going to be his primary focus from now until chapter 18.

So that's question number one. Question number two. And this is where we're staying, camping out.

Who caused the Jews not to believe? Who caused the

Jews not to believe? Why didn't they believe? And there are two answers. Number one is the

Jews themselves caused it. The people themselves caused it. Look at verse 38.

So that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? So in 36,

Jesus leaves. 37, we talk about the many signs and the fact that many don't believe.

They still don't believe. And that first word there, so. It's a

Greek word, hati. And it shows purpose. It shows the reason. So that, right?

This is the very purpose. Why? Why didn't they believe?

So that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. This is a fulfillment of prophecy.

John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in AD 90 or thereabouts, writing about it, and he goes, why didn't they believe?

They didn't believe because the prophecy of Isaiah needed to be fulfilled.

In Isaiah 53, you don't have to turn there. Very familiar passage, the suffering servants.

I'm just going to read verse 1 because it's what he cites here. Who has believed what he has heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Now, you might sit here and you might say, well, wait a minute.

This is prophecy. So if John's saying that it's a prophetic fulfillment, well, of course they didn't believe because it was decreed by God that they didn't believe.

But in the context of John, God had sent Jesus to preach. Thus they, as Isaiah says here, they heard from us.

They heard from the Godhead, right? They heard from the Father and the Son. What did Jesus do? He only said the things that the

Father wanted him to do. So they have heard from us, from the first and the second person of the Trinity.

And also in the context of John, they were shown many signs, thus revealing the arm of Yahweh.

That's what that means in the Hebrew, the arm of Yahweh. Well, what does that mean to show the arm of Yahweh?

You know, this arm isn't like what it used to be. But the idea is the power of God.

It's showing the power of God. It's on demonstration in the person of Jesus, in his miracles, in the signs that he does before these people.

They have his preaching. They have the signs. They have the words and the power of God on display.

And what do they do? They do not believe. Israel had everything that, you know, atheists say they want.

Well, you know, if I could just talk to Jesus, if I could just watch him do what he was doing. They had it.

And they did not believe. The desire of their hearts was not for a savior for their sins.

They wanted a savior for their nation. And there's a little mini aside there.

I mean, politics should never get in our political desires, should not get in the way of our love for Christ.

But the greater lesson is this, the truth of God. The word of God is sure. It is the measure.

Our longings, our dreams, our ideas about what should happen. If they are in conflict with the specific revelation of God, we have to jettison them.

We have to get rid of them. Our hearts are not the measure of biblical truth.

The Bible is always the measure. It's always the standard. We may be convinced of something.

They were convinced that Jesus was this political deliverer.

But they were wrong. And he was never intending to be a political deliverer. So they could be sincere, but be sincerely wrong.

And there's a particular benefit to this Hottie Clause, so that we need not think that Israel's rejection of Jesus forced

God to change his plans, right? They reject him and God's like, Oh, I didn't see that coming.

I'm going to have to come up with another way for this to all work out because I was going to install Jesus on the throne.

And now that, you know, I've got to go to plan B. It's always

God's plan. He is working out his plan always. The nation of Israel, everyone that rejected

Jesus chose not to believe what they saw and what they heard. They chose not to believe.

So they were responsible. But also, the other reason that they didn't believe is because God caused their unbelief.

Look at verse 39. This is where it gets hard. We can accept the fact that sinners reject

Jesus. Verse 39. Therefore, they could not believe. For again,

Isaiah said, He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn.

In other words, repent, and I would heal them. Now, if you recall the first several verses of Isaiah 6, when he saw the heavenly glory of the

Lord and he hears the angels who attend to him, Isaiah's response was roughly, Woe to me,

I am undone. Let's turn to Isaiah 6 for a moment.

And I'm going to start reading in verse 8. And I could go through.

I love the vision of Isaiah and what he sees up there and the angels saying to another, one cries to another, holy, holy.

I love all that. But we're going to skip ahead of that a little bit and look at verse 8. Isaiah writes,

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us?

Then I said, Here I am. Send me. Isaiah volunteering.

And this is the charge he gets. And he said, Go and say to this people, Keep on hearing, but do not understand.

Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn to be healed.

In other words, what Isaiah is being told here is, you're going to go and you're going to preach and no one is going to believe you.

And the effect of your preaching is not going to be guilt or some kind of revival.

But what he says there, their heart is going to become dull, their ears heavy, their eyes blind.

This is your mission. You're going to dull the people to me. Why? Because basically he doesn't want them to see.

He doesn't want them to hear. He doesn't want them to understand. So in verse 11, Isaiah says,

Then I said, How long, O Lord? How long am I to do this? How long am

I to be out on this mission that is going to only harden the hearts of the people?

And he said, Until cities lie waste without inhabitants and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste.

Isaiah probably thought, boy, I'm not volunteering for anything again. This is pretty rough, man.

They were not going to believe him. And ultimately their land was going to be taken. Their cities were going to be destroyed.

They were going to be taken into captivity. Let's go back to John.

Now let's just think about what Jesus has been doing, going through Israel predominantly, preaching to them, teaching them, correcting their understanding of scripture, doing signs.

And what happens at the end of this? Most of the people don't believe. So what's been going on?

They hear, and their ears are heavy.

Their eyes are dull or blinded. Their hearts are dull. They have no desire.

They just do not believe what, they don't want to believe what Jesus is saying because they know what they know.

As with Isaiah, the question before Jesus or the issue with him wasn't about the numbers.

It wasn't about getting the masses to repent.

It was about faithfully proclaiming the truth. That's always the case, right? That's always the burden of a preacher is to tell the truth.

Even for us when we're evangelizing, what do we do? We tell people the truth and we trust the

Lord for the results. Isaiah did.

Jesus did. And that's our goal as well to be faithful. The presence and ministry of the

Lord Jesus Christ was the very instrument of God to demonstrate what he had caused in his people.

That is their hearts to be dull, their ears to be closed, their eyes to be closed.

Well, now somebody will say, well, that's not fair. How can God hold Israel responsible? After all, if he blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, how can he blame them for not believing?

Well, wait a second. Didn't he also send his son into the world to suffer, to live among them, to live just like they did and in every way be tempted and tried?

And didn't he also teach them the truth? Didn't he also show them many signs?

Didn't he just tell them to walk in the light while the light was with them? We say this often.

We probably can't say it enough. Man is responsible. God is sovereign, yes, but man is responsible.

And it's here right in this passage. Remember, they even heard the voice of the father.

I mean, I could go on and on about all the evidence that they had, but they chose not to believe.

The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which happens to be the subject of Sunday school.

For those of you who missed it here this morning, we'll be doing it again next week. A little free advertisement. Chapter 3 says this of God's decree.

God hath decreed in himself from all eternity by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass.

Yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.

You say, that's a lot of words. What does it mean? It means God is sovereign, man is responsible.

But God is sovereign in such a way that he is not touched or tainted in any way by sin.

There are other means by which God has ordained that sin eventually comes about, but he is not the author of sin.

Now to the unbeliever, this is doublespeak. After all, if God has decreed everything that will ever happen, and it has to happen because he's working out his decree and his decree is not a flow chart, it's a decree.

He spoke and it's going to happen. And if that's the case, then

God has to be responsible. How can he not be responsible? And again, the confession of faith, he does no violence to the will of the creature.

In other words, the unbelieving Jews did exactly what they wanted to do. God did not force them against their will not to believe.

This was their will. Let's just generalize this.

Let's zoom out a little bit. We all choose, we all act in accordance to our nature.

You know, I mean, if you want to look at animals, dogs act like dogs, cats act like cats, you know, all the animals act like animals, kids act like kids.

We understand all these things. But somehow we think, well, maybe unbelievers should act like believers.

Maybe they should respond to the gospel as if they are believers. Let me just take it a step further.

As a believer, if somebody comes up to you on the street and they say, friend, have you heard the good news that Jesus Christ saves sinners?

Do you just go, dude, I am offended by what you're saying to me. Don't even talk to me.

You know, I don't need to hear what you have to say. I don't say that. Why don't

I say that? Because I love to hear people preaching the gospel. I love to see people being faithful. I'm going to encourage that person.

The same exact thing as an unbeliever. You know, you're going to walk by them. You're going to ignore them.

Why? Because we have different responses to the truth. The light has come into the world and men love the darkness.

They love their sin. But as believers, we're brought into spiritual life.

We've been brought to spiritual life. And so we are able to do what pleases the Lord. That doesn't mean that we always do, but we have that capacity.

But what does the writer of Hebrews say? Without faith, it is possible to please God. No, it's impossible to please

God. Why? Because it's not within your nature. Things that are not of faith do not please him.

So, you know, getting back to my opening for a moment. To frame this as, you know, the whole idea of evangelism or the gospel as some kind of tug of war between God and the unbeliever, where God is pulling as hard as he can, and the unbeliever is pulling as hard as he can.

And there's this struggle. And boy, I sure hope God is able to, you know, somehow pull him over the line or maybe get some friends to help him.

It's absolute rubbish. In fact, it's borderline blasphemy. That whole picture.

And we say sometimes, you know, Lord, draw this person. Well, that's right. But convict him, save him, give him a new spirit, a new heart.

No one prays this way. Lord, I know you can't change the heart of so and so.

I know you would not, you know, in any way impinge upon their will. I don't want you to regenerate that person.

I just want them to go to heaven. So, however, that works. Nobody prays like that. We understand that people are dead in their sins and trespasses.

That they need a new heart. That they need new desires. And the whole idea of the creator of the universe not being able to overcome his own creature's will.

That's kind of silly. And I really do feel compelled to go to one more text.

Let's look at Romans 9. As I've said on a few occasions when the kids were younger and we sit around the dinner table,

I'd ask them some kind of difficult question. Where do we find the answer for that in the

Bible? And eventually they caught on that the answer was always in Romans 9. And then sometimes

I'd trick them up, of course, and ask them a question that had nothing to do with Romans 9. They'd go, oh, Romans 9?

Wrong. Go to your room. Romans 9, beginning in verse 10.

And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather

Isaac, though they were not yet born and had not done either good or bad.

Okay, so these are what we would see as morally neutral little babies in the womb.

In order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger.

As it is written, Jacob, I loved, but Esau, I hated. Before they'd done anything,

God says, Jacob, I loved, but Esau, I hated. Why? Because one was elect,

Jacob, and one was not, Esau. What shall we say there?

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? And Paul says in the strongest terms, by no means.

In the Greek, it's may genitoi. It means never, no way, not a chance. In fact, some translations will say,

God forbid, because that's the point. That there's no way that there is injustice on God's part.

He's not unfair. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy.

And I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.

For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I might show my power in you. And that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

Well, was that fair to Pharaoh? Paul answers that. So then he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, why does he still find faults? Is it fair? For who can resist his will?

Paul writes, but who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this?

Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump, one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

What if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

In other words, those that he's not going to save, he's patient with them.

He lets them sin, but he's going to show his wrath. He's going to display his justice. Why? Verse 23, in order, so that in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.

Listen, if we didn't understand God's justice, God's wrath, the fact that he hates sin, then we wouldn't understand how great his mercy is.

We wouldn't understand how great his salvation is. We wouldn't understand how great his forgiveness is. And that's the point

Paul's making here. Let's go back to John, back again to this point.

God is sovereign. Man is responsible. The Pharaoh did what he wanted to do.

The Jews here did what they want to do, but they did it according to their nature. God is sovereign. Man is responsible and is often said this way.

Or this phrase often attends this, you know, well, how do you reconcile those two things? They seem contradictory.

Well, the truth is what? You don't reconcile friends. If they're both taught in scripture and scripture never tries to reconcile the two.

Well, how do you understand that? How can God be sovereign and man be responsible? There seems to be a contradiction.

You don't reconcile friends. They're both true. They run in parallel lines. You say, well, I don't understand that.

God does. Question number one.

Why did Jesus go into seclusion? He was done with his public ministry. Question number two.

Who was responsible for the Jews not believing? It was the Jews and it was God. Fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah.

Both in them not believing, them refusing all the evidence and the judicial hardening of God.

His act in hardening their hearts so they would not believe. Both are responsible.

Question number three. Who did Isaiah see in a vision? Who did Isaiah see in a vision? Verse 41.

Again, this is something that we would not know apart from John by the Holy Spirit telling us.

Isaiah said these things. He gave us these prophecies because for the very reason that he saw his glory and spoke of him.

Well, whose glory? Who was Isaiah speaking of? The Lord Jesus.

In Isaiah 6 when he sees that vision, who's he seeing? He sees Jesus. Well, how do you know that?

Because he saw his glory and he spoke of him. He spoke of him in Isaiah 53 among other passages.

It's amazing how scripture ties together this man, the

Apostle John, teaching us to understand Isaiah better than we would have otherwise.

Isaiah is often called the fifth gospel because it speaks so much of Christ. If you read the servant songs, you can't help but think of Jesus.

I think it's, well, I won't try to rattle them all off. But the first one is Isaiah 42. That one I can tell you.

Okay, question number four. Question number four.

Why did some who believed not say anything? Why did some who believed not say anything?

Let's look at verse 42. And it's clear here that many in leadership believed.

Verse 42a, Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him.

Now, we only know of two for certain who came to faith.

We would know by reading through the New Testament that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea came to faith.

But nevertheless, John, with the benefit of the Holy Spirit and hindsight and understanding what has happened, what's transpired in all those years, says that many of the ruling class, the

Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, men of that sort, the men in authority, believed

Jesus. They believed him. They listened to his teaching.

They knew of his miracles. And they said, you know what? This is right. This is the right guy. And even though the vast majority of Jews rejected him, many, it says in power, believed.

And you think, well, that must have had quite an effect, right? A revival, a reformation. In Israel, the whole

Jewish religion turned upside down. Well, not exactly. Why not? Verse 42 gives us the answer, the second half of it.

But for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue.

This is a real threat that loomed over them. Remember what happened to the man born blind in John chapter 9.

And I'm going to read some of it. You don't have to turn there. I'm going to read some of it. But even his parents were afraid to talk to the

Pharisees and to give them really straight answers about Jesus. Why? Because they didn't want to be put out of the synagogue.

And in John chapter 9, we really see the harshness of the Pharisees opposed to the love of Jesus.

Verse 29 says, We know that God has spoken to Moses. That's the

Pharisees. But as for this man, they're speaking of Jesus. We do not know where he comes from.

The man answered, the blind man, formerly blind man, says, Why, this is an amazing thing.

You do not know where he comes from. And yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners.

But if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.

If this man were not from God, he could not do anything or he could do nothing. They answered him,

You were born in utter sin, and you would teach us. And they cast him out.

As I said, when we taught through this, to be cast out of the synagogue, we think, you know, if you're cast out of Bethlehem Bible Church, what do you do?

You know, you go down the road to some pagan church and you join it. Sorry. But in those days, it's everything.

It's everything. This is, it's not just a place they went on Saturday, on the day of worship.

This was their life. So to be on synagogue meant nobody would talk to you.

It meant you had, you know, so no social life. You had no worship. You couldn't come in. You couldn't go to the temple.

You couldn't do anything. You had probably no employment, no means of making a living.

You're basically reduced to begging and shunned. But in verse 35, after he was cast out, verse 35,

Jesus heard that they had cast him out. And having found him, he said, Do you believe in the son of man?

And it goes on from there. But the difference between the two, the leaders of Israel who believed intellectually, they understood who he was, but they were afraid of their peers, essentially.

So they weren't going to confess it. This man, they knew what would happen to him. This man paid that price.

And what happened? Jesus went and met with him. That man will be in heaven.

These leaders, I don't think so. Look at verse 43.

They loved the applause of men. 43, for they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

They love the approbation. They love the pats on the back. They love the deference. They love being able to walk around town and have people move out of their way because they were important.

They loved having, being on the kind of the inner ring, the inner circle. There was a price for confessing

Jesus and they weren't willing to pay it. They thought about possibly not being a pillar of society anymore, possibly not being somebody with authority anymore, and they weren't going to do that.

They would have gone from the highest level of Jewish society to being outcasts.

And they weren't going to pay that price. And that's what

Jesus says all the time, right? If you don't love me more than father, sister, mother, brother. If you love the world more than you love me.

All these things. He's always setting up these dichotomies, right? It's either this or that. Follow me or follow something else.

They considered the costs and they weren't willing to pay it. Question number one, why didn't

Jesus go into seclusion? Number two, who was responsible for the Jews not believing? Number three, who did

Isaiah see in a vision? Number four, why did some who believe not say anything? Fear of man.

Listen, salvation is not a contest. It's all of God. It's by grace through faith in Christ alone.

No one chooses of their own free will to believe. But listen, they do exercise their will to believe.

What's the difference? The difference is that sinner's will must be set free. Jesus said, if he sets you free, you are free indeed.

Peter writes about us needing a new heart. It must be granted to us.

Paul writes about the need for being raised from spiritual death, as it were, to spiritual life by the grace of God.

The triune God must work in you in order for you to be saved. He must convict you of your sin.

He must cause you to be born again. And he must grant you faith unto repentance. That is how we are saved. It's a difficult, difficult topic.

But the key elements, again, just to repeat, God is sovereign, man is responsible.

How do those two things mesh together? I don't know, but in the divine mind, they do. Men are held accountable for what they see, for what they hear.

I loved, I was watching this video of a Mormon interacting. He's going to go on a mission interacting with James White this last week.

And this young man, he's 18, and he's talking with James White. And James White expresses concern, not only for his soul, but he says, you know, the more truth

I tell you, the more you are responsible for. His concern is for, he goes, you're looking at a greater judgment.

You want more knowledge, and that's good. But I'm telling you, the more I give you, the more I hope you repent. What we do, essentially, there is some truth to that, right?

I mean, we don't want to put people under a greater burden, but the only way out of any sin burden is through the

Lord Jesus Christ. It's by faith in him alone. It's his life, his death, his resurrection.

If we don't believe in that, if you don't believe in that, there's no hope of heaven. If you fear mankind, if you fear your peers, if you fear what people are going to think about you at work or at school, there's no hope of salvation.

But I would appeal to you today, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Flee to the cross and trust yourself entirely in him.

Let's pray. Father, these are difficult, difficult things.

They're weighty things. But when we consider all that you granted the people of Israel to just think about being able to listen to the

Lord Jesus Christ, expound the scriptures, to correct all the wrong teaching that was going on.

You have heard it say, but I say to you, to hear, as it were,

God teaching his own word, to see and to hear of the wondrous works that he did while he was on this earth.

And to still refuse to believe because he doesn't meet the expectations they had set.

They were guilty. Father, you sovereignly do as you please.

You are able to take wretches, people who hate you, thinking even of the apostle

Paul, your enemy and convert them into your greatest missionary.

That's what the sovereignty of God is. It represents hope and father, we praise you for that.

There's hope for the greatest sinner because your arm is able to accomplish that.

Your strength, your power is able to do that. And truly in the end, no one resists your will.

Father, we would pray that you would exert your will on any here today who do not know you.

That you would convict sinners of their need for Christ Jesus, their need for a sin bearer, a substitute for the righteousness of Christ, which is the only means by which a person may enter heaven.

Father, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray.