Does Jesus Believe in You?

Does Jesus Believe in You?

I want to invite you to take out your copy of God's Word and turn with me to John chapter 2. Hold your place at John chapter 2 verse 13. Today we're going to consider a very interesting question. Does Jesus believe in you?

One of the most common questions we consider and ask and maybe have been asked is, do you believe in Jesus? But a question we probably don't ask and maybe have never asked is the question, does Jesus believe in you?

And that doesn't even sound like it makes sense. Because when we think about believing in someone, we immediately think about acknowledging their existence. And that is sadly what much of evangelicalism thinks believing in Jesus is.

They think believing in Jesus is merely acknowledging that he exists. Remember years ago I was a paraprofessional, which was a person who works in a classroom with children, not the teacher but like the assistant teacher.

And I remember how many conversations I would have with the young people. I was in seminary at the time, so I had the opportunity to talk to these young people. And often the conversation would go to spiritual things because they knew I was in seminary.

They knew that I was at that point a youth pastor, associate pastor. So they would often say, well I believe in Jesus. I've accepted Jesus. I know Jesus. But when I dug down into the mire of what that meant, believing in Jesus was like acknowledging he exists.

Like if somebody came and said they believe in fairies, or if they believe in mermaids, or they believe in aliens, or they believe in the tooth fairy. It's merely an acknowledgement of existence. Like I believe in that thing.

But the Bible does not use believing in Jesus in that sense. To believe in Jesus is not merely to acknowledge his existence, but rather it is to trust in who he is. It is to have faith in who his, what his nature is, and what his name is, and who he is as the God-man.

To believe in Jesus is more than merely acknowledging his existence. And so when I ask you, does Jesus believe in you? You say, well of course he believes in me.

I'm here.

I mean, I exist, right? Descartes said, I think, therefore I am, right? Even if I thought I didn't exist, my very thoughts would prove that I do. Because to think means I have to be able to exist to think.

And I think, therefore I exist. And that's the idea of, I think, therefore I am. So how can Jesus not believe in me?

I'm here.

I know I'm, you know I'm here. You're looking at me.

How in the world could Jesus not believe in me? But what we're going to see today in this text is after the cleansing of the temple, which is what we talked about last week, and we're going to go back over what we learned last week in just a moment.

But after the cleansing of the temple, it says, as Jesus was in Jerusalem, there were people who believed in him. But Jesus did not believe in them. Now, your Bible may say, did not entrust himself to them.

But what we're going to see, it's the same word. That when it says, Jesus, when it says they believed in Jesus, but he did not entrust himself, the word there is the word, the word for faith. They believed in him, but he did not believe in them.

He did not entrust himself to them. He did not trust that their faith was true. That's what we're going to talk about today. So let's stand and read the text. We'll be beginning back at the beginning of the story, which of course, as I mentioned before, is the story of the cleansing of the temple.

And the text reads so. It says, the Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there.

And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, Take these things away.

Do not make my father's house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for your house will consume me.

So the Jews said to him,.

What sign do you show us for doing these things? Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple.

And will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this. And they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

And now for the text that we will focus most of our attention on today. Beginning at verse 23, it says, Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.

But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man. For he himself knew what was in man. Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Lord, this morning as we gather around your word, and as we seek to draw from it the precious nectar of truth, the precious filling food of the word, Lord, may it be that we consider the truth of this passage and the implications that it has for all of us.

Lord, we know that there have been many a man who have proclaimed faith in Jesus only later to demonstrate that his faith was not genuine. And Lord, while it would never be my desire to place an undue burden upon the people of God that they live in fear at the same time, it would be wrong of me, O God, to not point to the many, many, many passages in your word which remind us that there is such a thing as a false brother.

And so today, may it be, O God, that you give us balance in our understanding. May you lift up the brokenhearted and may you bring down the prideful. Lord, your word tells us that you give grace to the humble.

Lord, may we be humble. But it also tells us that you resist the proud. So, Lord, if we are proud, break our pride today and help us to, as Paul has told us in his writings, to evaluate ourselves with right judgment, always looking to Christ as the only one who can provide us the righteousness that we so need, as my brother has just said in his prayer.

Thank you, Lord, for giving us the righteousness of Christ. So now, God, keep me from error. Open the hearts of your people. And for those who are not yet your people, bring about salvation that only you can do.

In Jesus' name, amen. Last Sunday was Resurrection Sunday, and I preached verses 13 till... Well, I read verses 13 to 25, but I did not get all the way through the text. And when I went back and considered some of what I had said, I realized there were even things in the text that I went over that I didn't say.

I was focusing my attention last week on Jesus' words when he says, tear down this body, and I'll raise it again in three days, because of the theme of resurrection. But for just a moment, I would like to go back and just make a few brief comments that I maybe overlooked last week in our continued exposition of John's Gospel.

Because John, in this section, is telling a narrative that so many of us are familiar with. We know that Jesus cleansed the temple. As I mentioned last week, the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, tell us that Jesus cleansed the temple on the week of his crucifixion.

In fact, I believe it was the Monday of the week of his crucifixion when he went in and cleansed the temple. But John's Gospel tells this story much earlier in the narrative. John's Gospel begins with the first week of Jesus' ministry life.

It begins with the delegation coming from the Pharisees and confronting John the Baptist. And then it continues on through John saying, Behold the Lamb of God, Jesus calling his first disciples, and then going to the wedding at Cana.

That's the first week of Jesus' recorded ministry, according to John's Gospel. And it's right after that that it says Jesus went to Capernaum with his family, his mother, his brothers, and his disciples.

And then he went to Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem he cleansed the temple. And so there is debate. Is there two cleansings of the temple? Or is John just getting the story drastically out of order? And as I said to you last week, I tend to believe that John isn't concerned with chronology, but is concerned with theology.

And I think that it is possible, and quite likely, that this is actually John just telling this story at this point for the reason of reminding us of Christ's authority. He shows us Christ's authority over the natural, which was the wine.

Now he shows us Christ's authority over the supernatural, which is the temple. And he identifies the temple as his Father's house. Notice he didn't say our Father's house. In the great model prayer he says, Our Father who art in heaven.

But he didn't go in and he said, This is our Father's house. No, he says, You have made my Father's house a house of trade. He identifies himself with God and saying, This is my Father's house. I still, to this day, I go to my dad's house, and I still feel like it's mine, because I grew up there, right?

And so I can go to daddy's house and still feel like it's Keith's house, right? Because I go there and I feel at home. It's my dad's house, therefore it's mine, right? Not in the sense that I would go and run roughshod over it, but I feel at home.

This is mine. It's my home. It's my family home. Jesus walks into the temple. He says, You've turned my Father's house into a house of trade, a marketplace. In the other Gospels, he says, You've turned my Father's house into a den of thieves or robbers.

So is there two cleansing of the temple? Is there one? I think it's fine to believe that there are one. And last week I said, If you think that there are two, there are many theologians who agree with you.

John MacArthur would agree with you. R .C. Sproul would agree with you. James Montgomery Boyce would agree with you and many, many others. There are people who do agree that it's only one cleansing. A .W. Pink would be one.

A .W. Pink wrote this. He said, The points of likeness between the two stories are so striking that unless there is irrefutable evidence that they are separate events, it seems to us the most natural and most obvious that they regard the same thing.

So A .W. Pink's point is just they're just so similar and there's really no reason to believe it's another event. But it could be. And as I said last week, if you disagree, I don't think that's a point of contention.

One of the things we have to do with the four Gospels is we have to harmonize the stories.

And as we go through John's Gospel,.

We're going to find there are some things that are quite difficult to harmonize. Mike mentioned the wiping of the hair with the woman going and cleansing the feet. Like that story is told different ways in all four Gospels.

And you have to kind of figure out, did this happen three or four times? Is this one time being told three or four different ways? And that's one of the more difficult things you have to do in Gospel study is studying harmonization.

And when I preached through the Gospel of Mark last year on Wednesday nights, part of what we did was we harmonized the narratives as we went. Some things that we learn in this text that I didn't mention last week, as I said, I didn't mention about harmonization, but I wanted to mention it this week.

But there's also a few other things that we notice. One is the references to Scripture. The first reference to Scripture here is after Jesus has cleansed the temples, the disciples remembered a passage.

They remembered Psalm 69, verse 9, which says, Zeal for your house will consume me. This is one of those times where it's important to recognize that the disciples themselves, after being filled with the Spirit and coming back and looking at the situation that had happened with Christ, they are able to apply Old Testament texts to Jesus.

Old Testament texts which may, in their original context, have been pointed to David or had been pointed to someone else, and now they would say, but it's actually, it finds its full and final fulfillment in Jesus.

And this is just another important truth that we don't want to forget when we're studying the Scripture, is that the purpose of the Old Testament is not to provide us with an outline for a continual nation of Israel, but all of the things that happened pointed to Jesus, right?

A lot of the ways that the Bible is interpreted today has a very Israel-central hermeneutic, but the Bible has a Christo-central hermeneutic. Christ is at the center even of the Old Testament. When we see this again, another passage, of course, is cited when it says, zeal for your house will consume you.

That's Psalm 69. And then later in this same passage, it's not a passage cited, but it's a prophecy made. Jesus makes a prophecy. He says, tear down this temple and I will raise it again in three days.

And they look back and they say, He was prophesying. He was saying what was going to happen. He was talking about Himself and that is exactly what happened. It says that His disciples remembered that He said that and they believed in what He had said.

So Jesus is prophesying even about His own life and events that would happen in His own life. One other interesting point before I move on is when it says in verse 20, it says that the Jews said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple.

We don't have very many time markers in the Gospels to try to figure out when something is happening, but this is a pretty important one. Like I said last week, I went right past this, didn't mention it, but I wanted to mention it today because we know that the temple that they're referring to is the Herod's Temple.

Remember I talked about Zerubbabel coming after returning from the exile and building the temple and then that temple, of course, was in the Battle of the Maccabees. And then later building on that, they built the temple complex.

Herod's Temple is built and it's referred to as Second Temple Judaism because it's the second temple, the first one being Solomon, which was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar when Babylon came in, of course.

So the reason I bring this up, we know when Herod began to build the temple, it was around 20 BC. These men just gave us a time marker. They said it's been 46 years. They didn't say it's been about 50.

They didn't say it's been about 30. They said it's been 46 years. So if Herod's Temple began to be built in 20 BC, when is this? This is 26. This is the year 26. Now again, could we be a year or two off?

Yes, but this puts a time marker as to when this event took place. This is another reason why, and now I'm going to blow your mind. It's another reason why I believe this is actually the end of Jesus' ministry, not the beginning.

Because a lot of people believe Jesus died in 30, and He could have. But Jesus was not born in year zero. Jesus was born several years before what we would call year one or year zero. There is no year zero.

How do we know that? Because Herod was alive when Jesus was born, and Herod died well before year zero. Herod died, I think it was 3 BC, wasn't it? So if Herod's still alive enough to commission the death of every child two years old and younger, then Jesus has to have been born before 3 BC.

So this would put... Let's say Jesus was born in 4 BC. I'm sorry I didn't tell you you were going to be doing math today. But if Jesus was born in 4 BC, let's say one year before Herod died, how old would He be in 26?

30 years old. This would be Jesus' 30th year. It's just an interesting time marker. I'm not absolutely trying to prove anything, but this would be what we typically refer to as the final year of Jesus' life.

So again, is it likely that this was the one cleansing of the temple? Possibly. I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm just pointing out the fact that we have very few time markers. Oh, there is another time marker.

And this one might... You might hear atheists bring this one up because this is important. What other event was happening? What other time marker are we given about the birth of Jesus in the Gospels? Quirinius was governor of Syria, according to Luke.

If you read Luke's Gospel, it says that Caesar Augustus sent out a decree that all the world should be counted. A census would be taken. When Quirinius was governor of Syria. Here's the problem. Quirinius was not governor of Syria until somewhere around 5 or 6 AD.

Well after Herod was dead. Oh, the Bible is contradicted. A lot of people argue that. Atheists will argue that. They'll say Quirinius wasn't governor until later. Herod was alive here. This is where the Gospels do not agree.

What they don't tell you, and this is something that you need to keep in mind, is often people were governor multiple times. And there's a very good chance that Quirinius was governor earlier. And that's what a lot of scholars have come to conclude, that Quirinius served as governor more than once.

And therefore, this is referring to a time prior. But all of these things matter. When we start digging into the history and we start getting into the narrative of the Gospel, and you may think this morning, well, what does this have to do?

You started talking to us about false faith. Why are you bringing this up? Because if you're going to believe these things, you should know the Bible. One of the most difficult things in the world today that I find as I go and talk to people, is people who claim to trust in Jesus Christ, but know nothing about Him.

They know nothing about His Word. They know nothing about how we got the Bible. You know why so many people are looking towards Rome right now, in Roman Catholicism? And it is happening. There's a big look towards Rome right now.

Because Rome has convinced people that they are the reason why we have the Bible that we have. And most Protestants don't know how to even begin to respond to that. Why do you have the Bible that you have?

Why does it have 66 books and not 73? Or 84, like the Eastern Orthodox Church? Can you give an answer to that question? Can you give a defense for the hope that is within you? Why do you think we have the Academy here?

Why do you think that for the last decade, we have focused on teaching these things? Because Satan is not using the Church of Satan and Anton LaVey and Wicca and all that junk to go against his church.

He's using false gospels to go against his church. And if you cannot articulate the truth, you will get caught up in the falsehood. And if all you have are the feel-good feelings that come along with Sunday morning, you will not have a robust enough faith to stand when the day of testing comes.

Because that's the point of what we're about to read about these people who believe.

They saw signs.

They were excited. They were caught up in experience.

But they did not have genuine faith.

Anyone can believe for a season, as long as the season is filled with joy. But what happens when the darkness comes? What happens when the day of testing comes? You've ever heard the phrase, easy-believism?

Easy-believism is just what it sounds like. It's easy to believe. And I will say this. In the simplest of terms, it is easy to believe. But it's impossible to trust, apart from the work of the Spirit of God in your heart.

You see, salvation is not hard. It's impossible. Salvation is not difficult. It's out of reach without the work of the Spirit of God in your heart. That's part of what comes along with understanding the nature of man as we do.

Understanding the doctrines of grace as we do. This Saturday coming up, I have a debate on the doctrine of predestination. It's not something I like to debate, but I was invited. And I did not want to turn down the invitation.

So I'm going to be debating that doctrine. And I reached out to the man I'm debating. And I said, what is your doctrine of man? Because that's all I need to know. Do you believe man comes to salvation by a choice of his own free will?

Or do you believe that salvation is a supernatural act of the Spirit on the heart? That's all I need to know. That's the debate. The whole question of predestination, election, Calvinism, Arminianism, it comes down to this question.

Is man, without aid of the Spirit of God, able to trust in the truth of God? I'm going to say something that will surprise you. He is able to believe, but not trust. Because we're going to see right here, people believe.

That's right, it's not saving faith. There's a difference between false faith and genuine faith. Here's the real thing you need to realize. Jesus knows the difference. That's what this text says. It says, He knew the heart of all men.

Jesus knows when we're faking it. Jesus knows if our hearts are genuine. So go back to the question. Do you believe in Jesus? Does Jesus believe in you? So let's go. Let's look at the text as to what it says.

It says right here in verse 23.

It says,.

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in His name, when they saw the signs that He was doing. That's a very important part of this, recognizing the impetus of their faith. Now what signs was He doing?

It doesn't tell us. Cleansing the temple is a sign. I mentioned that last week. Cleansing the temple was a sign of a prophet.

The prophet comes in.

He sees the house of God has been made a marketplace,.

And the prophet comes in,.

And like the prophets of old, he proclaims God's judgment. That's a sign. If this is the final week of Jesus' life, if John is looking forward in the narrative, we know there were other signs that Jesus did during the last week of His life.

In fact, what would be one sign that was in the mind of everyone the last week of Jesus' life? John's Gospel points this out to us. Lazarus. Hey, remember that guy who was four days dead? By now he stinketh.

Well, he's up walking around.

And what did they want to do?

They wanted to kill Jesus, and they wanted to kill Lazarus.

Why?

Because Lazarus was testimony as to who Jesus was. And so people saw what Jesus was doing, and heard about the miracles that Jesus could do. And by the way, there were many that were not recorded. John chapter 21, verse 25, says that most of what Jesus did is not recorded.

It says if all the things Jesus did were recorded, there wouldn't be enough books in the entire world to contain all that He did. So we don't know how much He was doing, and every day what was going on.

He was doing things, and people saw it. People got wrapped up in the emotion of it. People got wrapped up in the experience of it, and they were excited, and therefore they believed. By the way, there's not, there's not really different words for belief.

They all come from the root of pistou. The idea where we get the word faith is translated faith, it's translated believe, it's translated trust. It's funny because they got multiple words for love, but faith is sort of this general idea.

Believe, faith, trust, all falls under the root of this idea of pistou. Believe. It says many believed in His name when they saw the signs that He was doing. Ellicott says this in his commentary. He says the original words imply that their faith was dependent upon the signs which they gazed upon.

Without entering into the deeper meaning, it was the impulsive response of the moment. The impulsive response of the moment. You ever seen somebody give an impulsive response to the gospel? That's what we're shooting for in modern Big Eva evangelicalism, isn't it?

We're trying to create an atmosphere that is so conducive to creating an impulsive response that we actually create the impulsive response with all of the atmosphere. The music gets low. The lights, I'm sorry, the music gets high, the lights get low.

They begin to churn out the music, creating an atmosphere that's almost hypnotic. A few years ago, we did a conference here and I played the song from one of these churches and it was so rhythmically hypnotic that Brother Andy shouted out, turn it off or something like that.

It was like that's enough.

Because it was listen to the rhythm, the rhythm of heaven. Listen to the rhythm. Now, that sounds awful because I'm not trying to make it sound good but when you've got somebody on the keyboard,.

That's do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,.

And it's that over and over and you've got somebody on the drums.

Who's ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, and you've got somebody on the ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,.

And you, and just, you can, we can do it together. And then at one point in the song, the lady says,.

We want to hear your heartbeat.

And everybody's, go look it up.

I did a whole podcast about it. It's emotional manipulation to drive conversion and what it creates is false conversion. Emotional manipulation to drive conversion.

Creates false faith.

Here's the thing. Jesus wasn't doing that. I am not at all confusing what those knuckleheads are doing with what my savior did but I am saying this, spectacle creates enthusiasm. Spectacle creates enthusiasm and what we see with Jesus is spectacle.

Even when he said, hey, don't go tell anyone what they do.

They went and told people.

Because it was the most amazing thing they'd ever seen in their life and so they would run and they would go and they would tell people and people would come but you know what would happen when these crowds would come?

Jesus didn't have a tent revival and say like, won't you come? Others are coming, right? Like that's the way, like the evangelist would do. No, Jesus would say something that would run them all off. In John chapter 6, thousands of people come to Jesus.

By the end of John 6, it says the disciples are standing there and Jesus says, y 'all leaving too? I mean that's the Keith paraphrase but that's what he says. He says, are you guys going to leave as well?

Because after Jesus preached, it says they were so offended, they turned and walked with him no more. Jesus is not the one who started the church growth movement. He started the church decline movement.

Like he could clear out a group quick because he'd call them out. You know in John 6, people came to Jesus because he fed the 5 ,000 and they wanted to be fed again and Jesus says to them, right to their face, he said, you didn't come to me because you believe in me, you came to me because you got filled.

You came to me because I filled you up with food. You came to me because of the spectacle and because of the blessing and benefit. But you didn't come for me. Not truly. And this is why in verse 24, it says, but Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people.

I believe there is a play on words here. This is hard to see in English, easy to see in the original language because the original language using that root pastuo uses that twice. It says that they believed in his name but for him, he did not essentially believe in them.

John MacArthur actually, that's his interpretation. He says though they believed in Jesus, Jesus did not believe in them. Godet says he had no faith in their faith. I like that. Warren Wiersbe, there's a name you won't hear me quote a lot.

He's a good guy though. But you won't hear, I mean, I just don't quote him a lot. Warren Wiersbe, I like this. He said they were unsaved believers. Dude, put that in your lexicon, an unsaved believer because that's exactly what it is.

Leon Morris said this, he said, Jesus looked for genuine conversion, not enthusiasm for the spectacle. He looked for genuine conversion, not enthusiasm for the spectacular. Actually, I said spectacle, but he says spectacular.

This is a man I'm not, I've not read a lot of, but his name is Gerald Borchette. And he says this, he says, the real point is that Jesus did not believe their believing. For people who have been brought up on a regular evangelical dose of hearing that humans determine their own destinies and that people become Christians by their believing, it is indeed salutary to remember that Jesus had something to say about what is acceptable believing.

Because Jesus knew what human beings are like, he was not confused about what was authentic and inauthentic believing. They saw the signs, Jesus saw their heart. And Jesus could see that their so-called faith was based on the spectacle.

Now, I have to mention this, Martin Lloyd-Jones, Martin Lloyd-Jones actually talks about this in his comments on this passage. He said, it almost seems contradictory to something Jesus says later. Because there's a time in John's gospel where Jesus says, if you don't believe what I'm saying,.

Believe what I'm doing.

Right, this is in John chapter 10, verse 37. He says, if I am not doing the works of my Father, then don't believe in me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.

So at that point, he's like, even if you don't believe what I'm saying,.

Look at what I'm doing.

So there seems to be almost a sense in which it's contradictory, not that I'm at all accusing our Savior of contradiction, but it almost seems contradictory. Here, it seems like he says that they're believing in the spectacle, but they're not believing in him.

And later he says, hey, if you don't believe what I'm saying, believe what I'm doing, like the spectacle matters. Here's where I think the balance comes in. And the balance is this. When it comes to Jesus, if all you have is the spectacle, if all you have is the enthusiasm, it will not last.

It won't last. There's gotta be more than just the spectacle and the enthusiasm. This is why, I've told this before, and this is, I don't know why this stuck with me, but this is a statistic that stuck with me.

It's in Ray Comfort's book, Hell's Best Kept Secret. If you've never read that, I commend it to you. Hell's Best Kept Secret, it's a small book. It's like a booklet. But he talks about false conversion.

And he said, back in the 70s, there was a evangelistic crusade, lasted, I think, a week. In that crusade, 30 ,000 decisions were collected on the cards or whatnot. 30 ,000 people made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

A year later, the follow-up committee, again, 30 ,000, that's gotta be huge, right? They've got committees on top of committees. They've got a group doing this. This evangelistic crusade, the following year, followed up with every one of those people and found only 30.

Not 300, not 3 ,000, not 10%, not 1%, but 30 of the 30 ,000 were still continuing in any visible expression of faith. And you tell me that spectacle and enthusiasm doesn't lead to false conversion. If that's all we have is spectacle and enthusiasm, it will not last.

False faith is a thing. In fact, I'm gonna give you three kinds of false faith today. Three ways to consider false faith. Number one is what James calls dead faith. If you read James 2, in fact, why don't we just do that?

Roll over to James 2.

I won't have it on the screen, but we can read it together.

Go to verse 14. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? Now, it's important. I do wanna say, some Bibles just say, can faith save him?

But it is important to add the article there because in this moment, James is identifying a type of faith. And the type of faith he is identifying is dead faith, which is not living faith. So understand, he's not saying, can faith save?

He's saying, can that type of faith save? That's an important exegetical reading. And then he goes on to say, if your brother or sister is poorly clothed, lacking in daily food, and one of them says, go in peace, be warm, be filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?