John 7:1-9 (The Regulation Of Rebels)

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Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the Shepherd's Church podcast. What you're about to hear is Sunday's sermon, but it's not the one that was preached live on Sunday.

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That audio recording has failed. So we've re -recorded the sermon, and that is what you're about to listen to.

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So thank you so much for listening, and I hope you are blessed. Now, I think it's safe to say that we live in a highly regulated country.

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There are laws for seemingly everything. You have environmental laws and e -commerce trade laws. You have regulations on employment and child labor, and that's a good thing.

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You have labeling regulations, but you have to have a label and you have to have certain information on soup cans in the grocery store.

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We've got pharmaceutical regulations and housing regulations, and we've got regulations for testing and energy and building codes and probably regulations for breathing.

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We've got regulations for everything, and more are coming out every single day, especially in Massachusetts.

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I remember when we moved here, one of the people at the seminary, I can't even remember who it was, said, hey, welcome to Massachusetts.

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You're probably breaking a law just standing there. And I was confused by that.

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I was like, what do you mean? And they said, well, Massachusetts has so many laws that you're probably breaking one right now and you don't even know it.

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This week, I actually remembered that statement, and I went to look at some weird laws that are on the books in Massachusetts just to see if I'm a lawbreaker, because I want to know these things.

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I think you would want to know as well. So I found out this week that in 1659,

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Christmas was outlawed in the commonwealth. Thank you, American Puritans. Now, if you have put up a

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Christmas tree, if you've put up Christmas lights, if you celebrate Christmas in any way by singing carols, then you are guilty, which means that now you have to pay five shillings penalty to the local magistrate.

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And don't worry if you don't have any shillings. I'm sure there will be someone there to exchange it, because the government has left this law on the books.

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So apparently, they still intend to enforce it, right? I found out this week that it is illegal for you to snore in Massachusetts with your windows open.

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It's illegal to snore. Now, you can snore with your windows closed all you want, but how dare you leave your windows open and snore?

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What a public health crisis that would be. It's illegal. I probably broke that law this morning.

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In Massachusetts, I found out that it is illegal to have an unlicensed goatee.

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So if anyone in this room has a goatee, myself included, we are guilty if we do not have a license to carry that man blanket on your face.

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I found out this week that it's illegal for a man to go to church without his rifle.

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I have no idea when this law was written. I have no idea why it's still in the books, but it's illegal to go to church without your rifle in hand, which probably makes church one of the safest places in the country.

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But there you go. This one is kind of crazy. It's illegal to take a bath in the city of Boston unless a doctor prescribes it.

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It's also illegal to go to bed without a bath, which kind of forces this interesting conundrum, if you will.

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It's almost like the doctors and the lawyers got together and said, hey, I think we can make a lot of money.

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Let's tell them that they have to have a bath, but the only way they can get a bath is if they come to my office and get a prescription for it.

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We're going to make millions. I have no idea if that's actually what happened. I have no idea why these laws will be on the books, right?

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So far, I think I've broken, and you've probably broken, all of them. There's a law that says there's no scaring of the pigeons in the city of Boston, so now my kids are lawbreakers.

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But by far, the best law that I've seen in all of this is the law not to add tomatoes to clam chowder.

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For the last 18 months, I've been saying government has no purpose. What is the point of government?

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Why does government exist? I'm being funny, but I've been frustrated at government and how little common sense government has, but this is actually a good law.

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Who would ever put tomatoes in clam chowder? That sounds disgusting. I'm not even from New England, and that seems like a good law.

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Maybe even a small piece gives me faith that the government actually matters.

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No tomatoes in clam chowder. Excellent, excellent law. Now, while these regulations may seem a little bit weird to us, these regulations are given by government to regulate our behavior, and not all of them are like this.

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We have speed limits, and we have everything else that are meant to govern our behavior in good ways. But what

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I want us to understand is that regulations are given in order to show us what a particular society deems as good, moral, and decent behavior.

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So when we look at regulation, we see what a society deems as good, and when we look at the punishment, we see what a society has deemed as bad.

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Just like you cannot add tomatoes to clam chowder because that would be a specific kind of tyranny, we see that a culture enshrines in law the things that it values.

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And in that sense, there is a limited legitimacy to the role of government.

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Because even in the Bible, God has established government to restrain the evil in society and to promote the good.

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That doesn't mean that the government always gets everything right, but according to God, God puts in power certain governments.

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God puts in power people who will restrain evil in society and who will promote the good.

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And it's helpful for us as Christians to understand that when a secular regulation restrains evil and it promotes good, then we have an obligation to obey.

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When we don't have an obligation to obey is when a secular regulation prohibits what

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God has said, especially in His Word. If a government says you cannot do what

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God has told you to do in His Word, or you must do what God has forbidden you to do in His Word, then we cannot obey.

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We cannot be regulated by anything that violates God's holy scripture because His authority is ultimate for the

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Christians. So in some ways, we're the same as everyone else on earth in the we live under temporary and limited secular governments who are attempting to regulate our behavior.

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That is true for every person on earth, no matter what government they live in, no matter what form of government they live in.

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They live under some sort of organization that is attempting to limit and regulate their behavior.

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But unlike everyone else on earth, government is not our highest authority and our national citizenship is not our highest and primary citizenship because as a

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Christian, we are governed by God and we are a citizen of heaven. We are regulated by scripture and what

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He says about all things is more important to us than anything. And it's not just governments.

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God's regulations supersede everything. His ways are higher than any authority in our life, so much more than Congress, CEOs, bosses, spouses, families, friends, neighbors.

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We can be humble and we can submit to any authority so long as that authority agrees with God.

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But when that authority disagrees with God, like our boss or our family or whatever, when that authority disagrees with God, then we must follow

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God and not man. And the way that you'll know what you're actually following is when you interact with the crisis.

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You'll know what you're regulated by when you interact with the crisis. So, for instance,

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I knew a man who never broke the speed limit, or at least I don't know of a moment that he did. He drove perfectly in the bounds of driving under the speed limit and he was prideful about this, actually.

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He was very, very proud of the fact that he never broke the speed limit.

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That is until his wife went into labor for the first time. And you see this man who is prideful and passionate about not breaking the law, when his wife goes into labor, he is speeding to the hospital because ultimately his allegiance was higher to his wife than to the government.

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And that's a good thing. You'll know what you're regulated by when the crisis comes.

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You will know what restrains your heart when the problem happens.

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For instance, there's many churches in America today who have proclaimed sola scriptura, but yet because of COVID -19 and because of other governmental agencies, they've closed down their doors.

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They've chosen not to meet. They've chosen to neglect Scripture, which says, you shall not neglect the gathering so that they can follow the government.

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You will know what you are regulated by when the crisis comes, and it will be either

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God or man. Because the truth is all of us are regulated by something.

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The world is regulated to the things of the world. The Christian is regulated to the things of God, which is exactly what we're going to talk about in today's passage.

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Today, we're going to see how Jesus interacts with basically four different crises.

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And while his time on earth is coming quickly to an end, his ministry looks like he's losing momentum, his family is putting pressure on him.

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And in those moments, he's maybe tempted to cave, but Jesus, unlike any of us, never caved.

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But it's in that crisis moment where we see what Jesus is regulated by, what restrains

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Jesus, what fuels Jesus, what drives Jesus. And it's in that that we're going to see how as a

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Christian, how we can be regulated in the same ways that Christ was, to the glory and honor of God.

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So if you will, turn with me to John 7, 1 through 10, as we look at what

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Jesus was regulated by, and then as we look at what you and I are regulated by as Christians today.

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This is what the text says. After these things, Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he was unwilling to walk in Judea, because the

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Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Feast of the Jews, the Feast of the Booths, was near. Therefore his brothers said to him, leave here and go into Judea, so that your disciples may see your works which you were doing, for no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly.

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If you do these things, show yourself to the world, for not even his brothers were believing in him. So Jesus said to them, my time is not yet here, but your time is always opportune.

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The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify of it, and that its deeds are evil.

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Go up to the feast yourself. I do not go up to this feast, because my time has not yet fully come.

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And having said these things to them, he stayed in Galilee. But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he himself also went up, not publicly, but as if in secret.

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Lord God, thank you so much for this day, and thank you for the fact that we can examine your word together.

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Father, I pray that you would help us understand your word. I pray that you would help us see from the text what it means to be regulated by you and your word alone.

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Lord, we've seen regulations from earlier that were silly and that were funny.

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We've seen regulations in our own lives that there's all of these regulations on the books that we're supposed to obey.

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And yet, Lord, over all of that is your authority. You have given us the regulations that we are called to obey in Holy Scripture.

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And Lord, I pray that we would learn how to obey your word. In Christ's name, amen.

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Now, as I said before, you'll know what regulates you and what motivates you and controls you and what you value when the crisis comes.

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And while I do not believe Jesus himself was in a moment of crisis in the way that we understand that term, there are four events that are bubbling under the surface in John 7, 1 through 9, which

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I think most people would have been in crisis on. And I think most people, if not all people, would have caved on.

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And I want us to explore these four things together as we begin our time. And the first is that Jesus had very little time left when we get to John 7.

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By the time we get to John 7, 1, Jesus has about seven months of his life left to live.

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He's seven months away from death. And that's a shocking part of the narrative because chapters 1 through 6 really cover the minority of Jesus's life or the majority of Jesus's life, excuse me, and John chapter 7 through 21 really cover the minority of his life.

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John 7 through 21 covers seven months of material, whereas John 1 begins in eternity and then he's born and then that covers all the way up to the last, to where seven months left of his life.

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So 32 years is covered by John 1 through 6 and only seven months is covered by John 7 through 21.

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And that's intentional. While the minority of Jesus's life, as far as time is concerned, is covered by those chapters, it is the majority of his impact in the reason why he came.

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So that's why John devotes extra material towards it. But I want to show you how we get that number

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I want to show you how we understand that Jesus is really coming up on the last seven months of his life because I don't want you just to take my word for it.

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I want you to see that John himself has left the clues in the text so that we can understand this together. And John, what he does is he leaves, he tells us about the

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Passover. The reason that we know Jesus's ministry is about three and a half years is because of John.

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John tells us that there are four Passovers in the life of Jesus, which means that his ministry was somewhere between three and four years long.

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The first Passover was in John chapter 2 when Jesus was publicly, right after Jesus was publicly heralded by John the

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Baptist, right after he chooses his first disciples, right after he performs the miracle of watering the wine at the wedding feast in Cana, then he goes straight to Jerusalem to attend his first Passover feast.

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And that is when his public ministry officially began. And when

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Jesus gets to Jerusalem, we see from the text that he starts flipping over tables and casting out the pagan merchants and cleaning out the temple of all of its idolatry.

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He's angering the Jewish establishment. All of that on his first day in public ministry.

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And from that, from the very first day, Jesus put in motion the very forces that would eventually kill him.

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His death wouldn't be for three more years, but that was the very first Passover. And that was the signal that Jesus's ministry had publicly begun.

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Now, when you ask yourself, what did Jesus do in his first ministry? Well, he cleansed the temple. That was the first thing. He spent some time in the city.

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Interestingly, talking with theological leaders like Nicodemus, John tells us. However long he spent in Jerusalem, it wasn't long.

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Then he left the city, he and his disciples and a crowd of interested spectators, and they did ministry for a season in Judea.

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They traveled through Samaria and they spent a few days teaching the Samaritans there. They eventually wound up in Galilee, which became the base of Jesus's ministry operations.

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And they stayed there until that year was up. I think actually the vast majority of Jesus's time in his first year of ministry was spent in Galilee.

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Which brings us to John chapter 5. John chapter 5 is the second

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Passover that's listed in the gospel of John. So what you have is the first year of ministry last from chapters 2 through 4 of John's gospel.

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And then when you get to John 5, you're in the second year of Jesus's ministry when he attends a feast known as the

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Feast of the Jews. Now, John doesn't tell you that it's a

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Passover in John chapter 5, but he also doesn't qualify it either. Every time that John uses the term the

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Feast of the Jews without a qualification, meaning the Feast of the Jews meaning that it was the

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Day of Atonement or the Feast of the Jews and it was the the Feast of Booths or anything like that, if he doesn't qualify it then it's always the

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Passover. The Passover was the ultimate of the three major feasts in Jerusalem.

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It was the highest and the most important feast of all the three major feasts in Israel. So when

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Jesus and his disciples returned back to Jerusalem because all Jewish men and their families needed to go to Jerusalem in order to participate in this feast, we know that Jesus is returning in John 5 to the

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Passover. So as soon as Jesus gets back into the city of Jerusalem in John 5, the same angry mob of priests who hated him for cleansing their temple in chapter 2 are still angry at him today.

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It would be a mistake for us to believe that they had gotten over it. Jesus is not riding into town or walking into town with fanfare from Jerusalem's elite priestly class.

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He had a year of ministry that was angering them, and they had a year to stew about it over the embarrassment that they had felt.

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They had a year of hearing stories about Jesus healing people in Galilee and his ministry growing.

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They had a year of his popularity increasing. They had a year of reports coming from their own scribes and their own

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Pharisees talking about the ministry and the miracles and the magnificent works of Jesus, and by John chapter 5 they are seething.

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But of course Jesus didn't let that intimidate him. He came to do the works of God, and he came to a man who had been sick for 38 years.

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Let's let you know that Jesus is kind of doing the same thing that he did before. Before in John 2 he came to a temple that had been sick for 46 years, and he cleansed it.

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Here he comes to a man who had been sick for 38 years, and he cleansed him. He cleansed a temple in John 2, and here in John 5 he is cleansing a man.

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He looked at the temple, and he said, tear this temple apart, and I'll rebuild it in three days, and he looked at the man who had been torn apart, and he said,

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I will rebuild you. Take up your mat and walk. Jesus is showing that he came to do the works of God, and the works of God are the same works of God that he'd been doing all along, and when the

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Pharisees found out about it they wanted to kill him. Now you can summarize the career of Jesus in this way.

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Year one is the year that the Pharisees hated him. Year two is the year that the Pharisees wanted him dead. Year three is the year that they finally killed him, but let's not skip ahead too quickly.

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Maybe you're wondering what happened in Jesus's second year. John 5 says it began in Jerusalem when he healed this man, but what else happened?

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John doesn't tell us, and John doesn't tell us because he has a point, and we'll talk about that in a moment, but if you want to know what

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Jesus did in his second year, then you have to go to Matthew and Mark and Luke because John just doesn't talk about it.

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So we'll briefly sketch that just for a moment. I want you to know what Jesus did in his second year so that you'll have some context, and then we'll get to John chapter 6, which is the third

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Passover. So after Jesus has this encounter with the Pharisees in John chapter 5, he returns back to Galilee, which was his base of operations, and he spent the early part of his second year teaching and preaching.

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It was perhaps during this time that he gave one of his most famous sermons, which is called the Sermon on the Mount, along with other teachings and parables and lessons that were concerning the kingdom of God, and he does that for a couple months, right?

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Maybe four months, five months at the most, but around the middle of the second year, Jesus shifts his focus from doing teaching and ministering himself in order to empower his disciples so that they can begin going and doing it as well because Jesus isn't going to be around forever.

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Jesus knows that he's going to die. Jesus knows that he has to get these disciples prepared in order to do the works of God, so he tells them.

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He sends them out, 70 of them in total, in pairs of two to all the towns and villages in Galilee and Israel to proclaim the kingdom of God and the word of God so that they can get practice doing what

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Jesus is going to call them to do eventually when he resurrects and ascends to heaven.

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Now, when the disciples come back, they're overjoyed. They say, even the demons obey our words, so when they tell the demons to leap out of the chest of people who've been afflicted by demonic oppression, the demons listen to them because God had given them power and authority over the demons, but Jesus looks at them and even says, don't rejoice in that.

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Rejoice that your names have been written in the book of life. So even in that, we see

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Jesus is huddling his disciples together and teaching them after they've come back from their mission trip and preparing them for the sort of life that they're going to be living after he ascends to heaven when the kingdom of God has come and when they're the very first evangelist of that kingdom and that they are the ones who are going to be killed for that kingdom.

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At the end of that sort of season of time where he's sending out his disciples, now we're transitioning to the latter half of the second year, he begins doing unbelievable miracles that are not only raising his popularity with the crowds but are inflaming the anger and the ire of the

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Pharisees. For instance, he healed a centurion's servant, which was an unbelievable thing because he's healing someone who is a

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Roman Gentile and the Jews would have been incensed about it. They would have been angry about it.

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They would have been...their minds would have been blown because Jesus, we have our sick people too.

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Why are you healing this Roman? Why are you healing this Gentile? Why are you doing that, Jesus? I think

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Jesus is showcasing to them that his salvation is a worldwide salvation and it's meant to go to all the peoples of the world, so it was natural for him to heal a

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Roman centurion servant, even though it would have caused great angst and frustration between him and the

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Pharisees. He also raises two people from the dead during this time period.

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He raises a young boy from the town of Nain at the request of his widowed mother, and he raises the daughter of a well -known synagogue leader.

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His name was Jairus, so he raises Jairus' daughter, which were huge, important miracles.

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They were popularity -inducing miracles, and they were Pharisee -anger -inducing miracles.

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Now, by the time we get to John 6, we're at the very end of year two, the very end. Jesus gathers this crowd around him, and he feeds them in the midst of the wilderness, and they immediately attempt to make him king, and you can kind of understand why.

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They've been watching him heal dead people and raise them from the dead and feed hungry people. Like, they kind of felt like that life was going to be great because if one of us dies,

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Jesus will just raise him back from the dead. If any of us are hungry, he'll feed us, and I'm sure if he can do those things, then we can figure out everything else.

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So, life with Jesus looked really, really good to this crowd, and they tried to grab him and seize him by force and make him king, to which

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Jesus utterly rejected that. He goes off to be by himself.

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The disciples end up leaving because they've got next stop on their ministry calendar is Capernaum, which is across the

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Sea of Galilee. So, they head off. They get into this massive storm, and Jesus walks out on water and rescues them and brings them to the other side.

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The final events in the second year of Jesus's ministry is when Jesus, the crowd meets back up with him in Capernaum.

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They find him, and they're like, why did you not want to be king? Why did you refuse our offer? And Jesus preaches this sermon that causes many of his own disciples to leave him, and it causes many of the crowds to leave him, which ends the events of year two.

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So, what I want us to see is that in year one and year two, Jesus's popularity is increasing tremendously.

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By the time you get to John 6, the third Passover, Jesus is entering into his last year, and he does so on the fact of sending away many people in the crowds.

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He's thinning the crowds, which is a fascinating feature in the narrative.

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Now, we turn over to John 7. We know now that Jesus is in his final year. That's what we've just learned.

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We turn over to John 7, and there's a new feast. It's not the Passover. John 7 says, after these things, after the

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Passover, meaning Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he was unwilling to walk in Judea, because the

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Jews were seeking to kill him. That word walking in Galilee is a verb in Greek called peripateo, which means to walk around or to move about, and that verb is in the imperfect tense.

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So, in a very literal wooden translation, you might say something like this, after these things, meaning after the

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Passover, Jesus continued to move about Galilee for a season, since he was unwilling to spend continuous time in Judea, because the

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Jews were seeking to kill him. So, what John 7 is telling us is that after the

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Passover, Jesus came back to Galilee, and he was walking around, moving about, doing ministry in Galilee for a period of time.

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And you want to know how long that period of time is, you have to turn over to verse 2. Verse 2 says, now the

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Feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. Do you see how Feast of the Jews is clarified by the Feast of Booths?

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So, from John 7, 1, when Jesus was walking around doing ministry in Galilee, until John 7, 2, when

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Jesus is now getting ready to leave to go to the Feast of Booths, there's about five months of gap in that time period.

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And the reason we know that is because the dates of the Feast. John 6 is when Jesus was about to leave to go to the

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Passover, that would have been in April. John 7, 2, when he's about to leave to go to the

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Feast of Booths, that would have been in September. So, it would have been about five months, maybe five and a half.

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So, by the time we get to John 7, 2, Jesus has seven months left of his life to live.

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Three years have already occurred, or three Passovers have already occurred.

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Now he's at the Feast of Booths, which means that on the final Passover, the fourth Passover in John, when

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Jesus is murdered, there's only seven months left before that happens, from September to the next

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April, April AD 30. Now, for a second,

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I do want to describe, before we continue moving on, why does John leave out these gaps?

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There's this one -year gap between John 5 and John 6, and then there's the six -month or five -month gap between John 6 and John 7.

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Why does John leave out so much important information? Why doesn't he give us more on what

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Jesus is doing? Because it certainly would be interesting. You could have filled many more books full of information, and I think there's two reasons why

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John decided not to do that. The first is theological, and then the second one is practical.

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John tells us in 21, chapter 21, verse 25, that if he were to write down everything that Jesus ever did, it wouldn't even be able to fit in all the books that have ever been written in the world.

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All the libraries in the world wouldn't be able to contain everything that Jesus did. So, John says,

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I'm not going to be exhaustive here, I'm going to be selective. And the reason, or the things that John is being selective on, are the things that he thinks are most important, because he wants us to believe and be saved.

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That's the purpose of his book. So, John, in chapter 20, 31, tells us, these things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in him, you may have life in his name. John is saying that, out of all the things that I could have told you,

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I've chosen these things so that you would believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, that he's the Messiah, that he's the God -man who came and died for you and I, but he's not just that.

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He's the Son of God, who is perfectly, powerfully in the right place to be able to save us.

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He stood in our place as a man, and he also had the power to save us as God. He's the God -man, and then by believing in him like that, you'll have life in his name.

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That's what John is saying. John is letting us know that he has, he's not trying to be exhaustive.

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He's trying to be selective on what he shares with us, and he doesn't feel the need to share everything that happened in the life of Christ.

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He wants to share only what is most important for his purpose, and his purpose is that we would believe. Now, that's the theological point.

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The practical point is that John wants to backload his gospel with the final moments of Jesus's life.

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The majority of Jesus's life is recorded in just really quick moments in the gospel of John, just examples of things that are happening to build the tension of the

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Pharisees, to build the tension between Jesus and the crowds, like all that stuff is happening very quick from John chapter 1 to chapter 7.

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We've been on a roller coaster ride moving forward at a breakneck pace so that we can get to what John feels is the critical data that he wants to give us in his gospel, which is the

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Passion Week. That seven days in Jesus's life cover the majority of the text in the gospel of John, and for good reason, because John believes that it is the most important thing that he could ever tell us about Christ.

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So, in the entire book, the cross is literally looming over the narrative, which creates a sort of crisis in John chapter 7, because now

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Jesus is pressing towards the cross. Again, Jesus is not in panic here, but the waning time that he has left is bringing some urgency to the narrative, and John is using that urgency to show us that Jesus does not act like the world.

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He's not reactive or hasty, but yet he's regulated by God and God alone.

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So, in the beginning of this message, we talked about how there's all of these regulations that we live under as being citizens in America, and ultimately all of that power is subservient to God, because God is the one who establishes governments and overthrows governments and all of that.

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So, beyond the regulations that we live under in our life, we live under the regulations of God, because we're

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Christians. So, John is showing us how Jesus is living perfectly under the regulations of God.

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He is not panicking when his time is running short. That's the crisis, but he's living as a man who's perfectly regulated to God.

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That's the first crisis, is that his time is running short, and we proved it as we walked through the gospel.

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The second crisis in Jesus's ministry is the waning influence that he's experiencing. In year two, the crowds were growing.

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Jesus never had a larger ministry. He probably had what would be equivalent of a mega -church back in that time period.

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People loved him. His discipleship community was thriving. His disciples were going on mission trips, and things were so successful that, again, the crowd tried to make him king, which

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Jesus thoroughly rejected. And then, not long after this, the crowd find

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Jesus in Capernaum, and they listen to him preach the hardest and the most unbelievable message that they had ever heard, eat my flesh, drink my blood, and if you don't, then you have no part in me.

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And many of them were personally offended, causing them to abandon him. So, here you have

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Jesus's ministry looking like the momentum is collapsing. He has seven months left.

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People are leaving him. Less people are going to be serving with him.

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Less people are going to be giving in his ministry. Less people are going to be following him, and you get, along with this fact, that all of the leadership in Jerusalem is totally against him, wanting to see him dead, and you've got this glim, depressing moment for the followers of Jesus who think that his ministry is going to continue to grow in popularity because that's all that they had seen to that point.

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They saw him start with nothing and grow to this massive ministry, and this moment in John 6 to John 7 is the turning point where everyone is going to leave him.

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It starts in John 6 with this hard sermon where many leave him, but eventually

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Jesus will walk up the road to Calvary, and that's a sort of crisis in the gospel of John, and it's especially true for his family who is beginning to put pressure on him because they did not want to see him fail, and that's the third crisis that I would say.

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The first is time. He's running out of time. The second is that some of his disciples were leaving, and his ministry looked like it was leaking people so that it was growing smaller and smaller and smaller.

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The third crisis is that his family is beginning to put pressure on him for good reason.

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Now, to understand this, we need to dip back into church history and tradition, and even John's gospel alludes to this fact that Jesus's earthly father is dead, which meant that Jesus was the head of his family.

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That meant that his brothers looked at him as an older brother, yes, but also they looked at him more like a father figure because Jesus's dad is dead, so he's now responsible for the entire family, and we know that Jesus's earthly dad,

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Joseph, is dead because of a couple lines of biblical evidence that I want to share with you. The first one is that the very last time that Joseph is mentioned in the gospels is in Luke chapter 2, where it says his parents, that's

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Jesus, went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of Passover, and when he was 12 years old, they went up there according to the custom of the feast, and as they were returning after spending the full number of days required, the boy,

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Jesus, stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents were unaware of it.

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Instead, they thought he was somewhere in the caravan, and they went a day's journey. Back in those days, you had large caravans of people from the same town.

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Maybe they were family. They were aunts, uncles, nephews, cousins, and all of that, and they would all travel together, and there'd be massive caravans of people because it was safer to do that.

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It was more resourceful to do that, and it would not be uncommon at all for your child to be over at Aunt Judy's house, or Uncle Nick's, or, you know, whoever else.

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I know those aren't Hebrew names, but the point is is that it wasn't uncommon for your 12 -year -old to kind of be walking around among the caravan, and you not to see them for a little while, right?

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So, after a little while, they don't see him anymore, and it when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem looking for him.

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I think this also says something about Jesus's responsibility as a kid. Like, his parents had trust in him, so they didn't immediately go looking for him, and when they finally realized that this was out of character, they do go looking for him.

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So, it says they went three days. After three days in the city of Jerusalem, they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

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Now, when Joseph and Mary saw him, they were bewildered, and his mother said to him, son, why have you treated us this way?

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Behold, your father and I have been anxiously looking for you. And he said to them, why is it that you were looking for me?

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Did you not know that I had to be in my father's house? And when Jesus says in my father's house, that really means about my father's business.

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Now, what I find so interesting about this passage is that that is the last mention of Joseph in the entire gospel narrative.

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Twelve years old is when the average Jewish child male would be considered an adult.

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So, here what you have is, instead of Jesus being characterized as working in Joseph's shop, you have him being characterized as working in God's house.

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He's now an adult, and like a good man, he must be about his father's business. But instead of going in the business of Joseph, he's going in the business of God.

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And what you have is, from that moment on, Joseph is going to exit the narrative stage left.

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The curtains are closing on Joseph because he has fulfilled his God -designed purpose.

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He got the Son of God to adulthood, which is what God had called him to do.

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And because he protected him and got him to adulthood, his ministry purpose is finished.

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Think about it this way. Joseph is the one who protected Jesus from King Herod when Herod wanted to kill him as a child.

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He's the one who took him to Egypt and protected him in the land of Egypt. He's the one who safeguarded Jesus's life all the way up until the point to where Jesus is now 12 years old, a man in the temple, and God is essentially saying, well done, my good and faithful servant.

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You have accomplished the mission that I've set out for you to accomplish. And then Joseph, at some point between year 12 and the moment that Jesus enters into ministry, at some point,

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Joseph passes away. And we know that because of the second line of evidence, the wedding at Cana, because Joseph is not there.

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There's no mention of Joseph at the wedding, only Mary. So when we see that in John 2, when the wine is running out, it's the worst possible moment for that to happen during a wedding feast, which would have brought tremendous amount of shame upon the entire family.

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It would have been customary for Mary to take this matter to Joseph so that Joseph could fix the issue, but she doesn't because Joseph's not there.

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She goes to Jesus so that he would be the one to help avoid or help them avoid the family shame.

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He's the one who's going to help them with the issue of running out of wine because that responsibility fell to him as the oldest son now, the head of the household.

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That's the second line of evidence is that Mary brings this problem to Jesus instead of Joseph because Joseph is gone.

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We know at the end of Jesus's life, just in case Joseph were out of town on a business trip or something, we know at the end of his life that this is absolutely true because when

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Jesus is hanging on the cross and he looks down at his mother and he looks over at his disciple

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John and he says, John, this is now your mother. Mother, this is now your son. He is saying to them that the role of head of household now is shifting from me to John because Joseph is not there.

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If Joseph were there, he would have been standing by his wife looking at the death of their son and he would have been comforting her.

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He would have walked her home. She would have went to sleep that night under the care of Joseph, but she doesn't because Joseph is gone and her oldest son now is dead.

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Jesus, as the last act of kindness to his mother, makes sure that someone is going to be there for the rest of her life to look after her and care for her.

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That's what he's doing. All of this is meant to show us that Jesus was primarily responsible for the well -being of his family.

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As the oldest son of a father who had passed away, he had stepped into a father -like role as provider, as caretaker, and as the one who's going to look after his brothers and sisters and manage the family estate.

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One of the key roles in that is not just financial. It's not just responsibility and all of that.

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It's safeguarding the family's honor. Jesus was the protector of his family's honor because when you live in a culture like that, honor and shame are paramount to societal success.

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That's why Mary runs to Jesus when the wine is running out because he is the safeguarder and the protector of his family's honor.

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If they run out of wine, the family falls into disrepute and ruin. So Jesus is playing the role that every

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Old Testament patriarch was supposed to play to safeguard the honor of his family and to protect the family from shame.

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Now, we've talked about a crisis of time. We've talked about a crisis of losing disciples.

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The third crisis is a family crisis because as Jesus's ministry begins to decrease and as the family starts to interpret the decrease as Jesus's ministry is failing, then what

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Jesus's brothers are going to be interpreting here is that Jesus cannot fail.

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He's the one who's supposed to protect our honor so that if his ministry is trending downward, we need to intervene.

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Because if his ministry collapses into failure, then honor will be stripped away from the family and dishonor and shame will be poured out on top of the family so that the brothers are coming to Jesus to try to help.

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Now, John leaves the brothers unnamed in chapter 7, but for Matthew and Mark, we learn that you've got five, or sorry, four brothers.

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James is the oldest other than Jesus. Then you've got Joseph Jr., you've got Jude, and you've got Simon. These are the men that approached

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Jesus in John chapter 7 and they came to help him because they were perceiving that his ministry was failing and in that they were actually helping themselves and their mother because if his ministry failed, then shame would fall on them.

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Now, I want to disagree with the vast majority of pastors and sermons that I've ever heard on this topic and I want to disagree with myself because I've read this passage as if the brothers were trying to mock

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Jesus. I've heard sermons that they're saying, you know, even his brothers didn't believe in him and they're talking about the brothers in this sort of defiant, antagonistic, mocking posture towards Jesus.

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I don't think that's what's happening at all. I don't think the brothers are actually coming to rub

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Jesus's face in his failure. I don't think they're coming to rebuke him for his messianic expectations.

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I don't think any of that. I think they're coming to him because they see that his ministry is failing.

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They want to help him because if his ministry fails, dishonor will come upon them and they were coming to give him worldly wisdom to help him get his ministry back on track.

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They weren't mocking him. They weren't being belligerent or cruel. I think they were actually trying to help him.

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It doesn't make any sense that they were mocking him because if they were mocking him, the head of their family, then they would actually be harming themselves.

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They would be heaping shame upon themselves and no one would have ever done that. So I think what they're doing actually is they're trying to help him.

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Look at what it says in John 7. Now the feast of the Jews, the feast of Booth was near.

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So his brother said to him, move on from here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see your works which you are doing.

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For no one does anything in secret which he himself, when he himself is striving to be known publicly.

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For if you are doing these things, then show yourself to the world. I think it's clear that James and John or James and Joseph Jr.

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and Jude and Simon, all of them yet don't have saving faith. They don't understand who

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Jesus is. They don't understand that Jesus is God. So they're offering him counsel that is very worldly because that's all that they are.

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They're worldly men at this point. They're not saved, redeemed in spirit in 12 men. They're giving him worldly counsel on how to gain more people, get more momentum, and to save his ministry from falling into dishonor.

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That is what they're doing. And we can see that sort of shame and honor dynamic playing out in multiple different scenarios in the gospel.

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It also plays out today in the Middle East where shame and dishonor are some of the worst things that you could ever experience.

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And it was a father's job even today in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, in Yemen, in Omar, and all those different places.

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It is the father's job to safeguard the honor of the family. So that's what Jesus' brothers are doing.

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And the opportunity that they're going to recommend to Jesus as their brilliant idea is the

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Feast of Booths. They're going to tell Jesus, go to the Feast of Booths and do public demonstrations and public miracles because that's going to get your ministry back on track.

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And we need to understand why they're thinking that way before we continue. The Feast of Booths was also known as the

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Feast of Tabernacles. It was one of the three great feasts in the Jewish calendar year. Every Jewish male and his family had to travel to Jerusalem in order to celebrate it, and it was the most popular of all of the feasts.

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Passover was the most important, but the Feast of Booths was the most popular because of the joy and the thankfulness and the happiness that sort of penetrated that whole feastly celebration.

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The Feast of Booths occurs in late September after the harvest had came in, and it was a celebration of thankfulness to God for the crops that he had blessed his people with.

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Why was it called the Feast of Booths? Because the traveling pilgrims would construct these booths, these little tents made out of wood and covered with palm branches or leaves to keep the sun out as a makeshift roof, and they would live in these little booths for the entire seven days while the festival was ongoing, which is a fascinating feature of the narrative.

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You and I, maybe you're camping oriented, but imagine this huge campground of pilgrims outside the city of Jerusalem living in booths, and that was the most popular festival of the entire

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Jewish calendar. And the reason it was so popular is because it really caused the people to identify with the

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Exodus generation who had no homes, and it was there to increase their gladness and their gratitude that God had not only given them a land to live in, but he'd given them homes and crops and bountiful blessings so that when you're sitting and living in this tent, it would have caused your heart to sing that I'm going home to a home, to a house, to crops, to livestock, to family, to all these things that the

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Exodus generation didn't have. And it was there to remind you that God is faithful to his promises.

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Now, the reason Jesus' brothers saw this as a golden opportunity to reclaim their momentum for his ministry was because all of Israel would be there.

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The city would be filled with huge, joyful crowds, maybe in excess of 800 ,000 to a million people would have been there.

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So what they're asking him to do is to basically go into the city of Jerusalem, which is overcrowded at this point, and do public miracles so that you can increase your following.

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Hundreds, if not thousands of new followers would be flocking to Jesus in their mind. It would put Jesus publicly on the map, it would regenerate interest in his ministry, and maybe those disciples who quit following him during his hard sermon in John 6 would repent and would come back and would begin following him again.

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So what the brothers are doing is they're inviting him to go with them so that they can manage his ministry for him and help him get back on track, but Jesus wanted no part of it.

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So here you have four crises. You have the fact that Jesus is about to run out of time. He's losing momentum, it seems, to his family.

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His family was getting nervous about it, and they present him with this great opportunity to go to the city of Jerusalem and reclaim his momentum, and Jesus rejected it.

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And you may be wondering, why would Jesus reject it? And it's here that we have to understand that Jesus is not regulated by his flesh, he is regulated by God.

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Look at what he says, my time is not yet here, but your timing is always opportune.

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The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its deeds are evil.

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Go up to the feast yourself. I do not go up to this feast because my time has not yet fully come, and having said these things, he stayed in Galilee.

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Now we'll learn next week that Jesus ends up going to the feast of Booth's, but he doesn't go when his brothers tell him because he's seeing that his brothers are responding in a worldly way.

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And that really is the point, the world responds with being restrained by worldly regulations.

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The brothers saying, go to the capital city, which is where the seat of power is, that's a worldly thing.

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Go to the places of power, go to where the people are, do the kinds of things that wow the crowds, build a following, have an impact, grow a successful ministry.

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This sounds like a worldly slogan on how to grow your business. They weren't sharing godly wisdom with Jesus.

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They weren't mocking him, but they weren't sharing godly wisdom with him. They were trying to put on an infomercial on how to grow your ministry so that you can have more success, so that more people will follow you.

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So why? So that honor will come to the family and not shame. They were looking to build a worldly empire with Jesus as its figurehead, and that is absolutely not what

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Jesus came to do. That's worldly wisdom that they're sharing, and Jesus will not be regulated by it.

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And he rejects it for a couple different reasons. The first is because it's worldly thinking that's obviously not from God.

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Jesus is the one who never adopts worldly thinking. He's born in a manger in Bethlehem, not in a palace.

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He's the one who comes on the first day of his ministry, he's flipping over tables and he's calling the Pharisees whitewashed tombs.

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He's the one who loved sinners and ate with tax collectors and forgave prostitutes, and he's the one who went to the

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Samaritan town and talked with the woman and then started healing and ministering to people who were the outsiders and the down -and -outs and the broken.

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He's the one who rebuked the well -to -do. He's the one who preached hard messages to scare away the goats.

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He's the kind of man who passed on the large crown in order to go by himself and pray.

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Nothing about Jesus' ministry followed the wisdom of the world. Nothing. If Jesus were alive today, they would have tried to put him on conference stages, they would have tried to make him sign book contracts, put out a teaching series, and maybe even have a study

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Bible named after him. They would have done all of the same things today that they did back then, you know,

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Jesus going to the Feast of Booths to publicly show himself. There's all kinds of ways that we publicly try to elevate pastors today, and I think

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Jesus would have rejected all of it because the wisdom of the world didn't factor into Jesus' decision -making.

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He was there for the wisdom of God. It wasn't a sin to go to the festival, and it's not a sin for a pastor to speak at a conference.

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The problem is not in the timing, or the problem is not in the going, but it's in the timing because it wasn't consistent with what

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God wanted Jesus to do. You see, we always think that we can come up with a worldly solution when

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God's ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and these men were not telling

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Jesus to go in the way that God had told him to go, and therefore he rejected their wisdom.

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These brothers were operating under a worldly calculus. They were saying, we need to think about the numbers, and the growth, and the status, and the impact, and the opportunity, and the bottom line, and we need to think about all of these things like so many churches today think through.

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They're not thinking about faithfulness to God. They're not thinking about the wisdom of God. They're thinking about how do we get more people? How do we put on a big show?

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Maybe we install a new sound system or a fog machine, or we get talented, beautiful -looking musicians who wear skinny jeans on stage, and then we'll draw large crowds, and then we'll water down the message so that we don't offend anybody, and we make sure that we continue to get people to give, and we'll spend the majority of our time focused on pop culture instead of looking at the truth of the

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Scriptures. We'll take advantage of book deals and speaking engagements. We'll build momentum, and we'll hold events where people are going to want to come to, like events talking about movies and stuff like that.

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Then we'll do whatever we can to reach more people, and start more services, and plant more campuses, and pay for more

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Google ads, and Facebook ads, and hire corporate executives to bring people into the church, and we'll do all of that because they're so focused on the world's way of thinking instead of thinking like the things of God, and they've turned the church into something that looks more like Disney World than the house of God, and the problem is that Jesus never did that.

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He could have. He had the perfect opportunity, but instead of indulging the flesh, He was regulated, and controlled, and restrained, and obedient to the words of God, He didn't want fans.

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He wanted men and women who understood the word of God, and who followed Him for that. Now, His brothers did eventually come to faith, but they did not come to faith just yet because at this point, they were controlled by the things of the world, and they were thinking in the ways of the world, but it wasn't just their ideas that He rejected.

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He was also rejecting their timing. Look at what He says. My time has not yet come, but your time is always opportune.

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He's telling them that their understanding of time and His understanding of time are totally out of sync.

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As worldly people, they think that Jesus is as desperate as they are. He's willing to go to Jerusalem and do whatever it takes, anything short of sin, in order to get

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His ministry back on track, perform miracles, redeem His family, do all this, and they don't realize that His true ministry was not about the miracles.

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It wasn't about the healing. It wasn't about the sermons. It wasn't the large crowds. His true ministry was to go to Jerusalem and die, and only when the

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Father told Him to do that, only when His hour had come. He is not on earth to act impulsively or reactively to get

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Himself killed at a moment that's not consistent with God. He was regulated by not only

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God's thoughts, but by God's timing. Therefore, He refused to go. It was opportune for them at that moment for Him to go, because they wanted

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Him to fix the problems that they saw with His ministry. So they wanted Him to go right then and there, but an emergency on their part did not mean an emergency for Christ, because Christ was not controlled by their timing.

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He was controlled by the timing of God. He waited until it was the right time to go, and the right time for Him to go was when

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God said, and we'll talk about that just in a second, the third reason He rejects their wisdom.

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It's not just because it was worldly thinking and worldly timing, but it also demonstrated a worldly allegiance.

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He said to them, the world cannot hate you. Why? Because they're a part of the world. He says, but it hates me because I testify of it that its deeds are evil.

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Jesus is saying the reason that the world, or the reason that Jerusalem hates me, the reason that the crowds wanted to illegitimately make me a king, the reason that some of my disciples left me, and the reason, dear brothers, that you're not understanding me is because you're worldly.

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You don't understand the thoughts of God and the ways of God and the things of God. You only understand the way the world works, and because of that, you do not understand me.

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He's saying, you're not in danger of going to Jerusalem because you belong to the world, and they'll love you, and they'll receive you, and they'll accept you, but I am in danger of going to Jerusalem if I go in some cavalier way, because they'll grab me, and they'll crucify me, because I'm not of this world.

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Jesus is saying, I have to safeguard my death until the exact right time when

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God has revealed that I should die, because no one is going to take his life away from him except him.

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He's the one who lays down his life. No one can take it from him until God allows it to be laid down, so he rejects their thinking, their timing, and their allegiances to the world, and he sends them away to go to the feast, which leads us to our conclusion.

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We began today talking about regulations and considering what are you going to submit your life under? Are you going to submit your life under the regulations of man, which if those things do not conflict with Scripture, that's a good thing.

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You should follow worldly regulations if they do not contradict with Scripture, but we've seen today that when the world came in the form of Jesus's brothers to get him to follow their worldly wisdom and it contradicted the word of God, that Jesus did not buckle under the pressure.

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He didn't buckle under the pressure that his time was running short in his ministry. He didn't buckle under the pressure when some of his disciples were leaving him.

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He didn't act in panic or in fear. He did not buckle under the pressure that his family was nervous and putting pressure on him, and he did not cave under the weight of new and exciting ministry opportunities that were not from God.

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He was obedient. Every moment of Jesus's life was lived out in obedience to God and God's plan in God's time.

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He never caved, and he's the only man to ever live that way, which is why

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God gives him the name that is above all names. That's why God calls him Victor. That's why the angels ceaselessly sing out his praise.

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That's why he's heaven's king, and that's why he's our perfect savior because none of us have ever lived that way.

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None of us have obeyed all of God's regulations and commands in scripture. We've not obeyed his commands.

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We've not obeyed his laws. We've not obeyed his statues. We've not obeyed his ordinances. We've not obeyed any of it, but yet even in that there's hope.

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Not in ourselves. If we would be damned if it were not for Jesus Christ, because we have disobeyed and we've rebelled against all of God's regulations.

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If we were in Jesus's sandals, we could have never done what he did in John 7.

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We would have crumbled. Think about it. If you knew like Jesus knew that you only had seven months left to live, and you knew who was going to kill you, and you knew when they were going to kill you, you know how and why they were going to kill you, and you even knew where it was going to happen.

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If you knew all of the detail that Jesus knew, you would not have went to Jerusalem.

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You would have left Israel. You would have moved to Rome. You would have moved to Europe.

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You would have moved to South America. You would have moved somewhere far away to save your own skin.

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You would not have walked into the city like he did. You and I would have caved under the pressure.

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But Jesus walks joyfully right into the lion's den. Seven months after John 7, he walks joyfully into the lion's den of Jerusalem, and he let them rip him to shreds.

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We wouldn't have done that. We would have crumbled under the waning pressures of a waning career.

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If our vocation was failing, and everyone was turning on us at work, and our boss hated us, and we had people leaving our team and doing all kinds of things, we would have quit our job and moved to another job or got a different vocation.

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Not Jesus. He kept on working. He kept on doing even until he was the only one left.

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We would have crumbled. We would have folded under the family pressure. If our family came to us and gave us the same amount of pressure that they were giving

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Jesus, we would have crumbled, and we would have caved because all of us do. We all cave in some way.

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We all sin. We all fall short of the glory of God, and you and I have a lifetime of examples of rejecting

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God's regulations, not following God's word, and folding. Maybe you say,

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I could have done what Jesus did in John 7. That's not that difficult. Well, you haven't. Over the course of your life, every single command that God has ever given, you and I have disobeyed.

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Think about the 10, just 10. We've not loved God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength ever.

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We've never loved our neighbors. We've loved ourself. We're broken the commands of God. We have broken his regulations.

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Command number two, we've all worshiped idols or put our hope and faith in something other than Jesus. We're lawbreakers.

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Command three, we've taken God's name in vain. Every one of us has said something in our life that has made his name common.

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Command number four, we've spurned his Sabbaths. We've not rested in Christ. We're lawbreakers.

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Command number five, we've disobeyed our parents. Command number six, we've been angry at someone, which is murder in our own hearts.

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That's what Jesus said. Command seven, we've lusted and committed adultery in our hearts. Command eight, we've stolen something.

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Command nine, we've borne false witness and we've lied at some point in our life. Command 10, we've all coveted someone else's stuff.

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We are lawbreakers. We have spurned God's commands and we deserve eternal death because of it.

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But praise God that Jesus Christ is coming to take our place. The reason

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Jesus came and lived a perfectly obedient, regulated life to the commands of God is that he obeyed

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God when we couldn't and he obeyed God in our place. Jesus came to live a life of obedience so that he could share his perfect, spotless record with us.

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And he died a regulated death, dying perfectly in God's timing, exactly when

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God planned for him to die so that he could be crucified for our spotted, tainted record.

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Do you see what is happening here? Jesus gives us his righteousness. He takes away our, he takes our laundry list of sins upon himself and he gives us his blank slate of righteousness to be ours, our status.

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You don't get that unless you're in Christ. You don't get that unless Jesus is the one that you have placed your hope and your faith and your trust in.

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Jesus lived a perfectly regulated life and died a perfectly regulated death exactly when

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God said. John 17 tells us when the hour finally does come. He says, Father, the hour has now come.

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This is the last week of Jesus's life. And he says, glorify your son so that your son may glorify you.

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Even as you gave him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given to him, he may give eternal life.

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And this is eternal life that that they may know you, the only God in Jesus Christ whom you've sent.

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Jesus is saying that because of his perfectly regulated life and his perfectly regulated death, that now he has the authority over all flesh and everyone that God has given salvation to,

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Jesus receives. That means that if you have been given to Jesus, then you are saved.

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And why? What is the purpose of all of this? So that Christ could rescue you out of your sins and send his faithful Holy Spirit to live inside of you to cause you to grow.

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He's given you his perfect status, although you're still a sinner today. You still struggle.

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You're still angry. You're still sinful. You still do things. He's paid the penalty of those sins already, but he's now sent his spirit into you to help you change so that you will look more and more like him so that we can begin living a regulated life to God so that we will begin being obedient to the commands of God.

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You and I, the rebels of grace, because of what Jesus Christ has done, we have become treasures of righteousness unto

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God so that our lives will be increasingly regulated by him, increasingly obedient to him, learning how to submit to him in all of our ways, learning all that his word says about us, and learning all that his word says for us to do in this world while we wait for him to return, growing in courage and in righteousness and in holiness and in passion and in worship.

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That's the point of our life, to be transformed from rebels to people who are regulated by the commands of God.

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If you're not a Christian here today, it means that you don't have the affections of Christ. You don't have a hatred for sin.

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You don't have a love for holiness. You don't have a passion to grow in obedience or a desire to grow in repedience and repentance, an eagerness to please

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God. You don't have a growing love for the scripture or a sorrow over your sin, an urgency to pray, an avoidance of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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You don't have the manifestation of the fruits of the spirit. If these things are not true for you, then I ask you to simply turn to Jesus Christ to be saved.

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I would tell you to pray. I would tell you to pray that Jesus would receive you into his kingdom and that he would save you.

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I would ask you to pray that he would do the work that he did in every

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Christian for the last 2 ,000 years by giving you his righteousness and taking away your sin and by giving you his

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Holy Spirit to be with you and help you and help regulate you so that you can live according to the things of God, so that you will be saved.

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So if you're not a Christian and you're listening to this message and you understand the weight of the sin in your life, you know you can't save yourself, you know you can't respond to God, you know you can't obey

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God's commands, and you know that at the end of your life you are going to be held guilty by God for all of the ways that you have broken

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God's law. If that is you, then I ask you to turn to Jesus Christ and receive him as your Savior and pray and he will welcome you as full citizens.

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If you are a Christian here today and if you're listening to this message, I just want to remind you that your highest identity is in Jesus Christ.

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You can and must begin living a life consistent with Scripture.

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That's what I mean when I say living a regulated life is living a life consistent with Scripture, obeying the commands of God, understanding that you've been redeemed and forgiven and justified and sanctified so that you would be made friends with God, children of the promise adopted and empowered by the

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Holy Spirit so that you would cherish the very words of God, so that you would imitate Jesus, so that you would reject the world's counsel like Jesus did in front of his brothers, so that you would cling to what the

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Scripture says. Like Jesus, you would consider

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God's timing more important than the timing of the world so that your will is in God's hands, your decisions are in God's hands, you're following every word that God has said, never craving to the world or your flesh or your family pressures or comforts or pragmatism or any of that stuff.

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But in light of what Jesus has done for you, living for him, living a life in submission to Scripture, living a life of joyful obedience, living a life where truth defines you, living a life where his commands are shaping you, living a life where his word is driving you, living a life that you are surrendered to, rejoicing over, and celebrating in the truth of the word of God.

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That is the life that Jesus died to give you, and that is the life that he showcases to us in John chapter 7.

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And I want to end with another verse written by the Apostle John. This is in the book of 1

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John, where he says, but this we know, that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments.

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What John is saying is the way that we will know if we really are in the faith, if we really know

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Jesus, if we really have saving faith, is if we keep his commandments. The one who says,

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I have come to know Jesus and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth of God is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God has been truly perfected.

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By this we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked.

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In John 7 we saw the way that Jesus walked. He rejected the thinking of the world, he rejected the timing of the world, and he rejected the allegiance of the world so that he could live a life totally regulated and in submission to God.

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And because he lived that way for us, now we can live that way for him.

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Lord, thank you so much for this passage where we get to see you interacting with your flesh and blood brothers, and Lord, even in that, not caving to their desires but showcasing to us how you are regulated by God's word alone.

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Lord, help us to live that way. Help us to live with your commands as central and highest in our life.

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Let us obey you in your scripture, and let us reject the ways of the world that lead.

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To death, and let us do so joyfully. In Christ's name we pray.