John 7:40-52 (Rejected For Christ)

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, and 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, 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. Not a day. 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.

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 officers 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 seventh 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 into the point to 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 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 verse 31, it's going to reject Him because He doesn't do signs and wonders like they want Him to do. It says in verse 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. Still 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. 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 its 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, 1 begins by saying that they wanted to kill Him. And it ratchets itself up all throughout the

Gospels. Look at John 8. Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born,

I am. And they picked up stones to throw at Him. 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, Therefore the chief priests and Pharisees convened a council.

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 -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 may be 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, stands 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, it would be a shame if this donut shop went up in flames. And then the donut shop owner's like,

What do you mean? Sure, it would be a shame if this shop went up in flames, right? And they understood the point.

And they said, Well, what could I do to prevent such a thing? And then the mobster would say, 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. 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. The Pharisees don't even like that the crowd thinks that Jesus is a good man.

The Pharisees don't even like that the crowds are considering His theology. And they look at the crowds and they say,

You all are cursed. They can't even fathom the possibility that someone would like Jesus.

So they've mocked the guards. They've said this political statement so that none of the

Pharisees would repent. And then they look at the crowd and they say, You all are cursed. Perhaps the most personal attack that they launch in this moment is against Nicodemus.

Do you remember Nicodemus? John 3, where he comes to Jesus at night because he's scared of the

Pharisees. You can imagine why he's scared of them. Because they're mobsters and gangsters here in Israel.

They're maniac psychopaths who are trying to kill everybody who loves Jesus. Well, he comes and he says something out loud to the crowd.

He says in verse 50 through 51, Nicodemus, who came to him before, being one of them, said to them,

Our law does not judge a man unless it first hears him and knows what he is doing, does it?

And then they answered him, You are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and see to it that no prophet comes out of Galilee.

We miss the power in that statement. This is almost like being called into your boss's office and saying,

You're fired. It's almost that bad. He's a Pharisee. They've just said,

No one believes in Jesus, right? They've just said that out loud and here Nicodemus, thankfully, he's the one who's going to become a

Christian out of this crowd. After Jesus rises from the dead, he's going to bow down and he's going to worship

Jesus. His whole life is going to be changed. And we've got history proving that Nicodemus was a faithful follower of Jesus.

But even here, he's suffering persecution because of that. And that's what I want us to see.

Although it's not explicit in our text right now, the disciples, every single one of them are going to experience persecution because they've been named with Jesus.

All the disciples but John are murdered for their faith in him because the wickedness of the human heart doesn't just become satisfied by hating

Jesus. It's not satisfied until it kills the ones that he loves and kills the ones who love him.

Stephen stoned to death in Jerusalem. James and John beaten outside the temple. Paul beheaded in the city of Rome.

Peter crucified upside down. Andrew was killed for sharing the gospel in Greece. Thomas was pierced through with four different spears in India.

Philip was put to death in the cruelest manner. It doesn't even mention it in Asia Minor. Matthew was stabbed to death in Ethiopia.

Bartholomew was martyred for preaching. James was clubbed to death in Syria. Simon the zealot was killed for refusing to worship idols.

Matthias, that was the one that replaced Judas. He was burned to death in Syria for preaching the gospel.

John himself was thrown into a boiling pot of oil and only because Jesus said that he would not die a death of martyrdom, he survived without scars.

Just like the men in the Old Testament were thrown into the fiery furnace, John, tradition tells us, was thrown into a pot of boiling oil and it not only did not kill him, they said he didn't even bear a mark.

Every single one of his closest disciples, but John was killed. Because the hatred of the human heart doesn't just hate

Jesus, it hates those who love Jesus. Examples of martyrdom are replete throughout the entire history of the church, 2 ,000 years, and yet Tertullian says that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

They were ripped apart by lions when they were thrown into the ring in the Colosseum. They were impaled on poles.

They were set on fire to light Nero's gardens. They were maimed and they were tortured. They were burned at stakes in Europe.

They were hung by ropes in other countries. They were fired at by firing squads, injected with poison in North Korean prisons.

They were beheaded by jihadists. They were, through 2 ,000 years, made a public spectacle of because the sinful heart hates

God and it hates those who love God. And if they hated

Jesus, they're going to hate us too. That's the point. We have to understand what kind of society that we're living in.

Are we living in a society that's a John 7 crowd where it's just ideological rejection right now?

Or are we living in a society like North Korea and Somalia and other places that are actively, physically torturing

Christians? One leads to the other if the Holy Spirit doesn't get involved, but we need to understand where we're at.

And right now, thank God, we're not in the place where our society is murdering us. But don't be mistaken.

You are not accepted. You are a rejected people. You bear the mark of Jesus Christ and they will reject you in the same ways that they rejected him.

They said Jesus was too harsh. They're going to say you're too harsh if you believe the Bible. If you believe what the

Bible says, they're going to ratchet up the pressure to shut you down and silence you and get you out of their businesses because they don't want to hear the truth.

They want watered down messages of love, inclusion, and acceptance and they never want Christians to talk about sin.

One example, if you talk about homosexuality right now and what it is, that it's a sin, that God calls it an abomination, that's

His words, that God calls it a perversion, that it needs to be repented of.

If you talk like that, that's God's words, not mine. Then you'll be canceled.

You'll be called a bigot. You'll be called a hate monger and you'll be pushed out of polite society just for that.

People will speak all manner of evil against you, but dearly beloved, just know that Jesus didn't call you to compromise.

He didn't call you to fit in with the world. He called you to follow Him because Jesus had a simple message and a simple plan and He was unwilling to go to Jerusalem to drum up large crowds.

They're going to look at us. They're going to look at us, the shepherd's church, and they're going to say, you guys don't care about mission.

This is an attack from inside of supposed evangelicalism. Because we don't make a big show, because we don't have massive big screen

TVs and big sound systems and we don't do everything to produce an emotional effect, people within the evangelical world are going to look at us and say, you don't care about mission, you don't care about the lost, don't you know that the church is for the unbeliever?

Don't you know that people are dying and going to hell? Why wouldn't you make the church look like the world so that you could reach the world? And Jesus never asked us to dress up His bride like a whore so that we could reach the world.

People have challenged me on these points that if you stay around in the church long enough and you fight for the purity of the church hard enough, people will say the same things to you.

Because you believe Jesus is not just a good man, the world's going to look at you and call you a simpleton. Right now, in academic circles, if you believe that Jesus is

God, you might not get your doctoral thesis published. You might not get your grant so that you can do your study.

If I were to go right now and try to get a PhD at Harvard University, I would have to write my paper as if the

Christians believe this and not ever actually say that I believe this because I'd never be published.

Just because we believe that Jesus is the one and only Son of God, we're going to get pressure, we're going to get hatred, we're going to get all manner of evil spoken against us because the world doesn't believe

He's that. The world just believes He's a dead teacher who said some good things on the same level as Buddha and everyone else.

But we must share the Gospel. We can't be silent.

If Jesus is who He says He is, then we can't shut up. Because there's no other name under heaven by which men may be saved.

If we're silent, that is silence is violence. Society tells us that silence and social justice is violence.

No, it's not. If you're silent about the Gospel, then that is akin to violence. They will reject you because of Him.

Do not think that you're going to be popular because you love Jesus. You're not. They think we came to cause trouble.

They think that we're the troublemakers and the rebels and the radicals in this society because we believe a 2 ,000 -year -old message that goes back even further than that into the eternal mind of God.

God Himself said these things are true and they think we're regressive. They think we're xenophobic.

They think that we are out of touch and out of date and that we're on the wrong side of history. We are not on the wrong side of history if we're on the side of Jesus Christ.

And we are not on the wrong side of history if we're on the side of truth and on the side of His Word. It says in Romans 3, 4 that every one of them will be proven a liar because only

God is true. They think we're troublemakers because we share the truth of God.

They thought Paul was a troublemaker. They thought Silas and Timothy were troublemakers, but they weren't.

That's loving. You don't go into a doctor's office and want him to comfort you. You want him to tell you the truth.

If you have cancer, tell me. Don't make me feel better. Tell me what the truth is.

The world is at this point right now where we think that it's unloving to confront sin. It's unloving to share the truth.

It's unloving to be honest. It's not. Don't buy into that lie. It's not unloving.

Share the truth of the gospel and know they're not going to love you. You're not doing it for their love.

You're not doing it for their acceptance. You're doing it because He is worthy. You'll be laughed at because you support life in the womb.

You'll be mocked because you don't think God makes mistakes with gender. You'll be made fun of because you pulled your kids out of liberal re -education camps called public schools.

You'll be laughed at, mocked, aligned, and shunned if you don't attend a same -sex wedding. If you're a baker, you'll go to the

Supreme Court because you didn't bake their cake. If you're a photographer, you'll be sued because you didn't take their pictures. Jesus Christ gave us the truth.

Who are we going to bow down and worship? Who are we going to honor? Who are we going to show love and reverence to and respect to?

Is it the world or is it Christ? They think that we're uninformed, ignorant bumpkins just like they thought of Jesus.

Because we didn't go to their schools or because we don't have their pedigree or because we don't watch CNN or MSNBC or maybe you do,

I don't know. But because we don't do the things that they want us to do and because we don't say the things that they want us to say, they think we're uninformed.

We've been informed by God. What higher authority is there? They think we're crazy.

When we share the Gospel with them, just like they said, Jesus, you have a demon. They think we're crazy when we say that they're in sin and they need to repent.

They're like, what do you mean I'm in sin? What do you mean I need to repent? They look at you as insane when you share that and you don't share it for them.

You don't share it for their approval. You don't share it for their praise. You share it because God is worthy and because He commanded us to go into all the world preaching the

Gospel. That's why we do it. They think we're...

They reject us because of ignorance. Just like they rejected Jesus because they didn't know who He was. They don't know who we are.

They'll say things like, well, doesn't the Old Testament say you can't eat shrimp? Go study.

You don't know what you're talking about. Yes, it says that, but there's three types of law in the Old Testament. Go study

Calvin. Go study Luther. Go understand what the law actually is pointing to. It's pointing to Christ. You don't know what you think you know.

You're rejecting me because of ignorance. And then there's other ignorance that says, oh, we know who you are.

We know. You're the ones who hate my brother because he's same -sex attracted.

I don't hate your brother. I pray for your brother. I want your brother to repent, but I don't hate him. They think they know who we are, but they don't.

The point is, if you are a Christian, then you have Jesus Christ living inside of you.

And if you have Jesus Christ living in you, Jesus is offensive to the world. So they're looking at Him in you, and they're hating you because of Him.

If the world hates Him, it's going to hate you. If the world rejects Him, it's going to reject you. Look at the biblical proofs of this.

John says in his epistle, chapter 3, verse 13, Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.

Don't be surprised. Expect it. Peter says in 1 Peter 4, 12,

Beloved, do not be surprised that the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you.

He's saying it's not strange. He's saying that it's strange if you don't feel rejected. If you're a

Christian, and you are living faithfully, and fully, and passionately, and verbally, and out in the open, and not trying to hide from Jesus, if you're doing that, and you're not rejected, it's a strange thing.

Matthew 10, 22 says, You will be hated by all because of my name. But it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.

Jesus says in John 16, 2, They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he's offering service to God.

Jesus says it in John 15, 18 -21 really, really well, where he says, If the world hates you, you know that it's hated me first, before it hated you.

If you were of the world, then the world would love you. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you.

Remember the word that I said to you, A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

If they kept my word, they'll keep yours also. But these things that they will do for my name's sake because they do not know the one who sent me.

In conclusion, all who are

Jesus's are going to experience pain and trials and rejection.

It's a biblical concept. Now you ask yourself, is it avoidable? Sure. If you go out into the world and you're ashamed of Christ, then maybe you'll avoid being hated and rejected.

But Jesus says that if you're ashamed of him, then he will be ashamed of you. So that's not a good strategy. Maybe you can be afraid.

Afraid to share the gospel. Afraid to share the truth. But Jesus says, in this world, you will have many troubles, but do not fear.

I've overcome the world. 365 times in the Bible, it says not to be afraid. So that's not a good option.

The only option is to understand what the reality is and accept it. If you love

Jesus, you will be rejected. That's it. You have to accept that truth and know it. 2

Timothy says, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

That's the truth. That's the truth we have to accept. And the way that we can accept it is by looking at Hebrews 12.

This is where I want us to end. It says this, Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

We know that we're going to be hated if we love Jesus. The point is to get your eyes off of this and get your eyes onto Him.

For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross and despised the shame. He did not for a moment turn back because the pain was too fierce.

He worshipped God every step of the way up that hill called Calvary, and He did it for the joy so that you and I could come in.

So for the joy that we've been given in Jesus Christ, we run the race.

We throw off everything that's going to weigh us down. Every opinion, every hurt, every pain.

If you were hurt ten years ago, lay it down. If you were hurt yesterday, lay it down and run the race that Jesus Christ has set before you.

Run by looking and focusing your eyes on Him. This Jesus came and He died on the cross and took your sin and gave you

His righteousness and put His Holy Spirit inside of you not to make you sick and not to make you crippled and not to make you maim and not to make you broken beyond repair, but to cause you to run.

To run the race that He has given for you to run faithfully for a lifetime and so that in the end you will stand before Him and He will say,

Well done, my good and faithful servant. Paul says in Romans 8 .18, I consider the sufferings of this life not even worthy to compare to the glory that will be revealed on the day of Christ.

After you have ran a lifetime, you will spend an eternity with Christ. And this little speck of dust that we call life isn't even worth comparing to the eternity that we're going to spend with Jesus.

Run your race. Pick up your cross. Set your face towards Jesus Christ.

Lay down everything that hinders you and run with joy. You will be hated, but you're already perfectly loved.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank You so much that You're honest with us.

Thank You so much that You told us that a slave is not above his master.

And Lord, we are Your slaves. And Lord, we did not become Your children so that we could have our wishes, so that we could have our preferences.

Our bodies were considered good as dead. Our souls were destined for destruction. You bought us and paid for us not to give us back ownership of our life, but to transfer ownership to You.

You're the master. And we're the slaves. And Lord, I pray for contentment that we would be overjoyed from the life that You've given us in this short 50, 60, 70, 80 years, whatever it is that we have left.

Lord, I pray that we would keep our eyes on You, the author of our faith, the perfecter of our faith, and the one who will give us joy.

And Lord, I pray that we would live like lion -hearted, bold men and women for such a time as this.

Our culture is like a sinking ship. And now has never been a time for the church to wake up and to leave this place hungry, passionate, motivated to share the gospel of Christ.

Lord, let them hate us. Lord, let them hit us. Lord, let them arrest us.

Lord, let them do all manner of evil against us, but let us not grow weary. When You come back,