John 7:40-52 (Rejected For Christ)

The Theme of Rejection in John 7

Sometimes a sermon is supposed to teach you new things, maybe new cultural things that you never thought about before, new interesting details in grammar, Greek or Hebrew, and sometimes a sermon is meant to remind you of what you've already heard.

For the last six weeks, we've been in John chapter 7, and today, the Lord really laid it on my heart that we would look at the entire chapter as a whole, as a reminder of what we've learned, but also to see something that we haven't seen before in this.

Running throughout the entire chapter of John is this theme of rejection. It really is the entire chapter, and we've seen it from God's vantage point, that he came in the flesh, and that he came to his own city, he came to his own people, and his people received him not.

In John 7, that rejection is palpable. He walks into the city that was to house the presence of the living God, and they reject him for various reasons. But we also have seen that Jesus himself rejected his own people.

It says in John 7, 33 through 34,. Therefore Jesus said, For a little while longer I am going to be with you, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will seek me, and you will not find me. And where I am, you cannot come.

What we've seen is that Jesus himself has looked out at the crowds, and he said, You can't come after me. You can't follow after me. And because Jesus himself, God in the flesh, that's God's vantage point, has rejected this group of people, they end up acting out the rejection that Jesus said.

God himself spoke, and you would think that if they disagreed with him, which they did disagree with him, they would have tried to repent. They would have tried to turn. They would have tried to say, Jesus, you don't know what you're talking about.

I have a good heart. I actually will end up finding you. I actually will end up running after you. But they don't, and they can't. Their behavior confirms what Jesus said in verse 34, that you will seek me, and you will not find me.

And where I am, you cannot come. Now today, I want us to look at chapter 7 as a whole, and I want us to look at three things. Number one, I want us to look at the myriad of ways that this people rejected Christ.

And as we see all of the ways that they rejected Christ, I want us to notice that that rejection actually grows, because without the Spirit of God restraining evil, evil gets worse. Evil grows more intense and more passionate for its own means.

And what we see in this passage is that this is the very beginning of the end. They are passionately looking to murder Jesus. They end up eventually murdering Jesus. So we're going to see that this evil is growing in the book of John.

The rejection is growing. But what we're also going to see is that it doesn't stop at Jesus. You see, if they killed him, you would think that their rejection, their moment of hatred would be over, but it's not.

Because all those who love Jesus end up getting the same treatment as Jesus. Those who are loving Jesus end up rejected just like Jesus. So what we're going to see today is that rejection doesn't stop with Christ.

If you love Jesus here today, at some point in your life, you're going to experience rejection. You're going to be hated by those who hate God, because the living God lives in you if you're a Christian.

So if you will, turn with me to John 7, verse 40 through 52, as we examine these truths together. The passage says, Some of the people, therefore, when they heard these words, were saying, This is certainly the prophet.

Others were saying, This is the Christ. Still others were saying, Surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is he? Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the descendants of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?

So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them wanted to seize him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then came to the chief priest and Pharisees and said to them, Why did you not bring him?

The officer said, Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks. The Pharisees then answered them, You've not also been led astray, have you? No one of the rulers of the Pharisees has believed in him, has he?

But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed. Nicodemus, who came to him before by night, being one of them, said to them, Our law does not judge a man unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing, does it?

And they answered him, You are not also a Galilean, are you? Search and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee. Let's pray. Lord, you say in your word that you know our frame and you know that we're but dust.

And Lord, you also know, as our creator, that the things that we most passionately dislike is to be thought negatively of, rejected, persecuted, hated, misunderstood, maligned. Lord, our hearts crave from the moment we're born to be accepted and to be loved and to be understood and known.

And those things are true. For all of us who are in Christ in this room, those things are true. We are known, we are accepted, we are loved. And yet, Lord, because you love us, you let us go through pain.

Because you've chosen us out of this world, you allow us to suffer in this world. You allow us to suffer as a proclamation of your gospel. You allow us to suffer so that we can show the world the hope that we have in Christ.

It says that it is a gracious gift that you've given us suffering. Lord, I pray that we would learn to suffer well. Lord, I pray that we would learn to be rejected with joy. Lord, I pray that we would count it as our great honor that we would suffer the same things that you suffered, that we would be ready and willing always to lay down our lives for you.

In Christ's name, amen. The theme of John 6 is God's divine sovereignty over salvation. The theme of John 7 is human beings' propensity to reject God. And there's various ways that human beings reject Him.

And it goes all the way back to John 6, verse 66. That's the first way that we see them rejecting Him in this series of a myriad of rejections. We're going to go through 9 or 10 of them today. But it begins in John 6, 66, where it says,.

As a result of this, many of His disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore. The first way that we see that Jesus was rejected is that He was too harsh. He challenged them in their sin.

He preached raw messages that offended their sinful nature, and He was too direct. He didn't scratch their itching ears like many pastors for the last 2 ,000 years have been prone to do. He wasn't as sensitive as they wanted to be.

He didn't applaud for them when they were following Him and signing commitment cards. He didn't beam from stage and was excited about how many people have signed up to serve this week, or how many people are in a group this week, or any of that stuff.

He saw half-hearted, lukewarm people who did not love Him for who He was, and He preached a fiery message that would purposely and intentionally send them away. He said, Eat my flesh and drink my blood, knowing what kind of message that was, and knowing what that message would accomplish.

He sovereignly opened up the floodgates of rejection on Himself, and they left Him, and they abandoned Him. And Jesus did this because He wasn't looking for half-hearted followers. Jesus did this because He was not desperate for numbers.

He didn't want the next megachurch. Jesus did this because He did not want to entertain people with His programs, or with His offerings, or with His light show and laser show, or anything else. Jesus wanted people who would go beyond the aesthetics and lay down their life and follow Him.

They would take up their cross, lay down their lives, lay down their preferences, lay down their opinions, lay down their grievances and their grumblings, and just follow Him for Him. He was intentionally harsh in order to chase those people away.

And that one rejection set off a course of rejections that we read about in the Gospel of John in the 7th chapter. The second, this is now we're in John 7, verses 3 -5, is that Jesus wasn't spectacular enough.

It says in verses 3 -5, which is His brothers, Therefore His brothers said to Him, Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples may see Your works which You are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly.

If you do these things, then show yourself to the world for not even His brothers were believing in Him. Jesus wasn't spectacular enough for His brothers. His brothers had bought into the hype, into the excitement of a budding celebrity pastor, brother named Jesus, whose fame and reputation were growing, the crowds were growing.

And now, because of John 6, when Jesus preaches this hard message and people are leaving Him, His brothers are in PR crisis mode trying to figure out how do we get this ship back on track. And the way that they want Jesus to get the ship back on track is to go into Jerusalem during the biggest festival of the year, the most joyful festival of the year, and do signs and wonders in order to get the people to follow Him again.

They thought His ministry was about keeping the masses happy. They thought His ministry was about large crowds and compelling messages and signs and wonders, and they missed who Jesus was. They were treating Jesus no different than Bethel and Elevation and Hillsong, and I'm sorry I'm naming churches, but these churches do that.

They prostitute Jesus for an experience, and that's what His brothers thought Jesus was doing. They thought He was there to provide the crowds with an experience, and they did not understand who Jesus was.

And they left sorely disappointed. You think to yourself, they didn't stay. They didn't say, Jesus, we're sorry. We came at you wrong. Forgive us. We want to repent. You're the one in charge. They didn't say any of that.

They left Him. They went to Jerusalem without Him because He didn't follow their vision, their plan for His ministry. They didn't realize that He came to seek and save the lost, not to entertain the goats.

Because of that, they left Him. Just a short time later, Jesus goes into the city of Jerusalem without His brothers, without the crowd that had just abandoned Him. So you've got two levels of rejection here.

The crowd had left Him. His brothers had left Him. And now, you've got a group of people who think that they love Jesus, but they're rejecting Him because they think He's just a good man. It says in verse 12 of John 7, there was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him, and some were saying that He is just a good man, that He's a good man.

To say that Jesus is just a good man is a nice way of speaking blasphemy that will end up with you in hell. Because He's not just a man. He's God. They're not dealing with Jesus as He truly is. They think He's a nice man.

They think He's a good man. Maybe they feel sorry for Him, that the Pharisees want to kill Him, but they do not see Him as God in the flesh. They do not want to worship Him. They do not believe that He is divine.

And as a result, they're rejecting Him. They're rejecting Him because they like Him. How many times do we see this in the modern church today? We have people who are fans of Jesus. They like Jesus. Jesus is a good person.

He's a good man. He's a good teacher. He's a good this or that, but He's not Lord. Any affirmation that falls short of fully man and fully God is heresy and is dishonoring to God. This little subsection of the crowd was the pro-Jesus crowd here in Jerusalem on this day.

They were the make-Jesus-great-again crowd. They were the ones that would have showed up at His rallies. They were the ones who were trumpeting Him. No pun intended. But they had no idea that they were violently opposed to Him.

They had no idea that they didn't understand Him, that they actually hated Him because they did not know Him. You see, the heart of idolatry is taking the infinite God, bringing Him down and making Him into an image that looks more like the creation than the creator.

So they were taking the God-man, ripping Him, stripping Him of His divinity and saying, this is who He is. He's just a good man. That's idolatry. That's blasphemy. And Jesus would look right at this crowd who liked Him and say right along with the crowd who did not like Him, you will seek Me and you will not find Me.

And where I am going, you cannot come. And they cannot come, not because of their anger towards Him, not because they want to kill Him, but because they like Him and don't understand Him. To the other half of the crowd, the opposite case is true.

They think Jesus is too contentious. They think that He's a troublemaker in Israel. They're not saying that He's a good man. They're saying, no, no, no, no. This Jesus is a troublemaker. It's the fourth way that they reject Him.

It says in the back half of verse 12, others were saying, no, on the contrary, He leads the people astray. So unlike the crowd who cheered for Him, this crowd, this half of the crowd, this part of the crowd, thinks that Jesus is causing trouble.

Now, the reason that they think that He's causing trouble is the exact opposite of the reason that the other group thought that they loved Him. The other group loved Him because He opposed the Pharisees, and He opposed their policies, and He opposed their movement.

They thought with Jesus, they were getting a new movement that was going to set them free, that was going to give them new leadership. They thought all of these things. So the crowd that hated Him, hated Him because He opposed the Pharisees.

He opposed the leadership. He opposed their policies. He opposed their authority structure. And because He was out of alignment with their political religious system, they thought that He was a troublemaker.

They thought that He was a rabble rouser, and they rejected Him. The next layer of rejection happens in verse 15. It says this, the Jews were then astonished, saying, how has this man become learned? Having never been educated.

They believe Jesus is unfit and ignorant. So not only has the crowds left Him, not only has His brothers left Him, not only is half the crowd or some of the crowd thought that He was a good man, and others thought that He was a rebellious man, part of the crowd thought that He was unfit and ignorant, and this was the ancient version of modern day elitism.

He didn't go to our schools. He didn't read our books. He didn't listen to our lectures. He didn't sit in with our professors. He wasn't groomed by our elite residencies and our programs in Jerusalem.

He's a country bumpkin redneck is what they thought of Him, and they looked down their nose at Him and rejected Him. They said, we're too smart for you, Jesus. You're not smart enough for us, Jesus. Imagine the irony of that.

They rejected the Lord of glory because He didn't come from their schools and He didn't go to their places of learning, and they rejected Him. Imagine when God showed up and set up an authority structure that superseded theirs that they wouldn't submit to, that ultimately would end up in their condemnation, and yet they still rejected Him anyway.

Now at first this rejection was soft, hatred, it was partisan, it was social, it was political, it was economic and academic, but Jesus saw right through it. He saw that underneath the surface of it was boiling a sort of hatred that was going to end up murdering Him and killing Him.

All of these people who hated God were not going to stop at attacking His upbringing and attacking His social status or attacking His educational status. No, they were going to continue on until they eventually murder Him, and Jesus knew their intentions.

It says in verse 19 and 20, Jesus says, did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you carries out the law? Then why do you seek to kill Me? He knew. He knew that their rejection was going to bubble up and grow to the point where they murder Him.

He knew it. And yet look at how they respond to Him. The crowds answered, you have a demon. Who's seeking to kill you? So they not only rejected Him for all of the reasons that we've said, now they think He's crazy.

For them to say that Jesus has a demon is the equivalent of them to say that He's insane. Now we've learned that that accusation that Jesus has a demon is akin to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and it's an unforgivable sin that this group charges Him with, so we've learned that.

But just on the surface here, from their perspective, they're looking at Jesus and saying, you're out of your mind. What's wrong with you? Nobody's seeking to kill you. Isn't it ironic that they think His words are out of step with reality?

They are the crowd who killed Him. They're the ones who ended up looking crazy because they ended up defying and denying the word of the living God. Now, some in the crowd actually had the guts to say and to speak and to admit that people wanted to kill them.

Do you see how pluralistic this crowd is? Everybody's got a reason to reject Jesus. It looks a lot like our society, doesn't it? They don't all have the same reasons for rejecting Jesus, but they have a reason for rejecting Jesus because at the heart of human beings is sin, and sin fuels us to hate and reject God.

Now, we put all our creative spins on that and we reject Him for all sorts of various reasons, but the heart is still the same. Some in this crowd in verse 25 say, some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill?

So what I want you to see here is they have a sort of passive ignorance. They haven't, they've heard that the Pharisees want to kill somebody. They've heard that somebody's going to die, but they're like, is it Jesus?

They've been so concerned with the affairs of their own life, they've not even kept up with the fact that this Jesus is claiming to be God. This Jesus is healed. He's done things that would put Him on the same level as Yahweh the Father, and yet they're like, is this the guy?

They're so disconnected from their circumstances. They've walked through life sleeping. They don't know what's happening in this moment. The most earth-shattering events that have ever happened in human history is when Jesus came, and when Jesus lived right in front of them, and yet they're sleeping.

They're passively ignorant. They've rejected Him out of what they don't know. They didn't investigate. And when they were finally confronted with Him, they wiped the sleepy out of their eyes, and they reject Him.

Another group, also functioning in ignorance, not passively but actively, is not going to reject Jesus for what they don't know. They're going to reject Jesus for what they think they do know. It says in verse 27, however, we know where this man is from.

We know where Jesus is from. But whenever the Christ may come, no one knows where He is from. Do you see what they're saying? Like, Jesus, we know who You are. We know where You're from. We've got it all figured out, and You are not the Christ.

Now, beyond the sheer arrogance of that statement, they don't know who He is. They don't know where He's from. They've rejected Him out of a sort of arrogance that they think they know. They didn't even realize the fact that He was born in Bethlehem.

That was their chief accusation against Him. When the Messiah comes, He'll be born in Bethlehem. Another accusation is when the Messiah comes, we won't know where He's from. This was a local myth that the Messiah was just going to up and appear at the temple, and He did.

In John 2. He came to the temple, and they're like, who is this guy? He did what Malachi 3 said. Every aspect of this He fulfilled, and they think they know something. They think they know who Jesus is.

They're rejecting Him out of their ignorance. Another group. In v. 31, it's going to reject Him because He doesn't do signs and wonders like they want Him to do. It says in v. 31, many in the crowd believed in Him, and they were saying when the Christ comes, will He not perform more signs than those which this man has?

The heart of the Jewish crowd that was saying these things was like, Jesus, what have You done for me today? We like that You've done a couple tricks and a couple wonders. We like that You multiplied that bread back in John 6, but what have You done for me now?

They're rejecting Jesus because He's not their vending machine. They're rejecting Jesus because He hasn't done as much as they thought He would do. They're looking to clap whenever Jesus heals someone.

They're looking to cheer whenever somebody speaks in tongues. We see this all the time in the modern church where people roar and they cheer when glitter falls from the sky or when holy laughter breaks out and everybody falls down on the ground slain in the Spirit and barks like dogs.

This kind of signs and wonder mentality is what they're rejecting Him for because He's not doing it as much as they think He should. Jesus didn't come to be a magician. He didn't come to be a genie in a bottle.

He didn't come to give them all of their desires. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came to show that His signs and wonders were to validate His words, that His words have divine authority to speak so that when He speaks, He's speaking the words of God.

He didn't come to pull rabbits out of hat and to have a magician show. He came to validate that He was the one and only Son of God and that when He speaks, God speaks. When He acts, God acts. When He does, God does.

That's what His signs and wonders are for but that perverse generation rejected Him because they didn't like the way that He did His signs. They're like, don't give me the giver, give me the gift. That's what they're saying.

They rejected Him. The final group rejected Him because they had a flawed theology. I went to a seminary with a lot of people who ended up rejecting Jesus because of a misunderstanding of what the Bible says.

I went to seminary with one gentleman who left the faith and became an atheist because he had a very flawed view of what the Bible says. This is what this crowd says in 40 and 41. Some of the people, therefore, when they heard these words, were saying, this is certainly the prophet.

And others were saying, this is the Christ. Others were saying, surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is He? There's three accusations in here. He's going to be the Moses-like figure, right?

But He wasn't Moses enough for them. He wasn't Mosaic enough for them. He's going to be the one like David, right? But He wasn't Davidic enough for them. He's going to be the Messianic king, but He wasn't Messianic enough for them.

They're looking back into the pages of the Old Testament, and they're like, well, I think I understand what Deuteronomy 18 is saying. I think I understand what 1 Samuel 7 is saying. And they missed that Jesus is the one those passages pointed to.

He is the greater Moses who's going to reconcile man and God through fulfilling the law. He's not just a prophet, He's God. He is the Davidic king who's going to come and set up an eternal kingdom that's going to have eternal dominion and glory and power.

He's going to sit on the throne of His father David. They just thought that was in Jerusalem. They didn't realize He was going to ascend to sit at the right hand of God. They had no idea the kind of reign that He was going to bring, the Messianic reign.

They thought that He was coming to bring peace for Israel, status for Israel. They thought He was going to overthrow Rome and that Israel was going to be the dominant empire so that all the world looked at Israel and was like, wow, I wish we could be in Israel, so that the Jews could self-righteously look back at them and say, but you're not.

That's the way the Jews operated in this time period. At the time, the temple itself had massive boundaries so that Gentiles could not come in. We talked about this. There was markets and there was people and there was all kinds of things obstructing the Gentiles because they hated them.

There was even a sign that said Gentiles cannot go beyond this point or they will be killed. They hated the Samaritans. They hated the Gentiles. Anyone who was not of them, they hated. So when they look at the Bible and they see Jesus hanging out with Samaritans and Jesus hanging out with the centurion or those things, they say He's not Mosaic enough for us, He's not Davidic enough for us, and He's not Messianic enough for us.

Therefore, He must be rejected. Over top of this entire crowd, the words of Jesus ring true. You will seek me and you will not find me. And where I'm going, you cannot come. This crowd rejected Him because He was too harsh, because He wasn't spectacular enough, because He was just a good man.

He was a troublemaker. He was unfit and ignorant. He was outright crazy. Passively, they rejected Him through ignorance. Actively, they rejected Him through ignorance. They rejected Him because He didn't have enough signs and wonders and they rejected Him because He didn't meet their theology.

And it doesn't stop there. Their ideological rejection grew into physical acts of violence against Jesus. It always begins with ideological rejection. You don't just end up in a persecution moment out of nowhere.

It starts with annoyance. It starts with bad opinions, just like it does in John 1. It starts with questions of authority, like it does in John 2. It moves to annoyance of His sermons, like it does in John 4.

It moves into misinformed views about His nature and His mission, like it does in John 5. And then it morphs and it goes deeper and it goes deeper that as those ideological views are not repented of, they end up becoming stronger and they end up propelling the person into violence against the Savior.

And unless the Spirit of God causes repentance, it will continue to grow. And it does continue to grow until they eventually turn on Him. Chapter 7, verse 33 and 34 shows how physical violence is going to be coming against Him.

It says, so they were seeking to seize Him. They wanted to grab Him, but no one laid hands on Him because His hour had not yet come. Verse 44, some of them wanted to seize Him, but none of them laid hands on Him.

This is not just theological at this point. This is not just emotional and social at this point. The crowd is in that space. The crowd is rejecting Him out of emotional, theological, academic, and all of these various things.

The leaders now, we're looking at the leaders. They're ready to pounce because what we've seen is their rejection has grown into physical brutality. And God, the Holy Spirit, does not stop them. Jesus says, you will seek me and you will not find me.

The condemnation that He pronounced on the leadership of Israel. In Matthew 22, He says, this kingdom is going to be ripped away from you and given to another. The condemnation and the woes that He's pronounced on this generation means that the Holy Spirit is not causing them to repent.

And they are going deeper into their hatred of Jesus. So deep, in fact, that now they want to seize Him. It's moved outside of their heads and it's now in their hands and their fingers are tickling, ready for the moment where they can grab Jesus and murder Him.

Their hatred has so infected their hearts that they're ready now. And the only thing that stopped them from grabbing Christ was that it was not His hour. This is what it says. They want to seize Him. They also want to arrest Him.

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things. This is verse 32. And the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to seize Him. Some translations render this word arrested. So they want to grab Him.

They want to put Him in a cell and not just a cell to keep Him quiet. Not just political arrest. They want to put Him in a cell to rob Him of His dignity. They want to rob Him of food and water so that they have the opportunity to go grab a high priest, a couple of false witnesses, so that they can conduct a sham trial and crucify Him on the cross.

And had it not been for the sovereignty of God, they would have done that here instead of in John 19. John 7 begins by saying that they wanted to kill Him. And it ratchets itself up all throughout the Gospels.

Look at John 8. Jesus said, That's the first time they actively picked up stones and tried to kill Him. That's John 8, 58 and 59. John 10, the Jews again picked up stones to kill Him. John 11, 47. And they were saying, what are we doing?

For this man is performing many signs. And if we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him. And the Romans will come and they will take away both our place and our nation. Do you see what their heart is?

They don't care about the truth, they care about their place and their nation. They don't want Jesus to start a riot so that the Romans come in and take away their authority. John 11, of course, turns over to John 12.

And John 12 is the beginning of the Passion Week where they're actively working. This convention that they've called is actively working to kill Him. Back in John 7, the leaders who now are wanting to kill Him are now actively acting out rejection on those who even sympathize with Jesus.

Do you see how it progresses? They not only reject Him, but they're rejecting the ones who are even sympathizing with Him. Look at verses 45 through 47. The officers, that's the ones that they dispatched earlier to go and arrest Jesus.

They came to the chief priests and the Pharisees and they said to Him, why did you not bring Him? These are professional bodyguards. This is the secret service. Why did you not get Jesus and bring Him back to us so that we could kill Him?

The officers answered, never has a man spoken the way that this man speaks. They're not even saying that they believe Him. They're just saying that He spoke well. The Pharisees then answered, you have not also been led astray, have you?

You see how they mock the guards? How they talk down to them with condescension because they like Jesus. The hatred of God in their heart causes them to hate the ones who even affirm or like or find any sort of redeeming quality in Jesus.

These men are not Christians. These guards are the same ones who will arrest Jesus in the garden and bring Him to Caiaphas' house and maybe probably one of the ones that will punch Him in the face during His trial.

These are not people who are ready to bow down and worship Jesus, but just because they placidly affirmed Him, the Pharisees hate them. The next group that we see is one of the Pharisees. It ends up in verse 48.

And he says this, No one of the rulers of the Pharisees has believed in Him, has he? So out of all the ways we've seen Jesus rejected, now we're seeing Jesus as people or people who affirm Jesus being rejected.

The first is this group of soldiers. The next is this statement uttered by the Pharisees where they say, there's not anybody here that believes in Him, right? It's kind of like what the mob used to do, where they would walk to your donut shop outside and they would see the owner and they'd say, sure would be a shame if this donut shop went up in flames.

And then the donut shop owner is like, what do you mean? Sure would be a shame if this shop went up in flames, right? And they understood the point. And they say, well, what could I do to prevent such a thing?

And then the mobster would say, oh, you know, I think my boss would be more than happy to protect you from such a thing if such a thing were possible. And then they would give him money every week. They got the point.

The Pharisees are saying something very similar. It sure would be a shame if anybody in the Pharisees believed in this Jesus. They're exerting political pressure here on the Pharisees to say, it is not okay for you to believe in Jesus.

It is not okay for you to turn to Him and for you to worship Him. You see how they're rejecting Him. It's slight. See how they're rejecting even the possibility that anyone would follow Him. It's slight.

But the pressure's there. After rebuking the guards, after threatening the Pharisee community, they even curse the crowds, which is an interesting thing indeed. It says in verse 49, but this crowd which does not know the law is accursed.